Returning to no contact with my mother after repeated attempts at repair

[Little Wren]

I'm a mother of two young adults, and I'm looking for support as I return to no contact with my 78-year-old mother.  I would appreciate perspectives from people who understand the grief and difficulty of reaching this point, especially after spending years trying to maintain a fragile relationship. I realize my story is long and I thank you for bearing with it if you can.

The incident that brought everything to a head involved an accusation against my son. Described without context, it might sound like a family falling out over a forgotten household item or a misheard sentence. For me, it involves much more: a lifelong pattern of navigating my mother's emotions, her difficulty reconsidering her position, and my repeated attempts to be heard.

The relationship before this happened

Throughout my childhood, my mother's moods could be very unpredictable. My father, my sister, and I lived with her emotional ups and downs. As a child, I felt I had to navigate her feelings rather than simply be a child. She could be controlling, use guilt, and withdraw into silence during her emotional lows. People outside our immediate family have noticed her controlling behavior, too. There were also times when it was nice to be around her.

I have experienced her as stubborn and proud, particularly during disagreements. My father frequently had to intervene, talk her down, and help her see another perspective. He had a way of reaching her that the rest of us often didn't.

My mother is very religious. In conflict, I have often experienced her religious certainty as a conviction that her judgment carries more moral authority than mine. That became especially painful in this situation when she repeatedly invoked God and her conscience to defend what she believed she had heard.

Our relationship was already fragile. I cannot remember a visit without some conflict or emotional tension.

One example occurred during a visit when I went alone to see family ancestral gravesites. I'm interested in family history, and she knew I had planned to go. When I returned, she avoided eye contact and acted visibly upset, but wouldn't explain what was wrong. She barely communicated with me for two days. I came to believe she was upset because it was the day before her Sabbath and she expected me to stay and help her prepare. Instead of telling me directly, she left me trying to work out what I had done wrong.

My father has since died. At his memorial, I broke down crying while my mother sat beside me, and she offered no comforting gesture—not a hand on my knee or even a tissue. We were both grieving, but I remember feeling very alone beside her.

I miss my father terribly. I also miss the way he helped us through conflict. I strongly feel that what followed would have unfolded differently if he had been alive and well.

The accusation against my son

Two years ago, my children and I visited my parents, who live far away. My children generally saw their grandparents only every year or two, while other grandchildren had much more regular time with them. That difference was already a sadness for me, and I hoped our relatively infrequent visits would be warm and meaningful.

During the trip, my son borrowed a fly zapper from a relative to deal with flies in the nearby apartment where we were staying. Before leaving, I put it in the car trunk, with my son beside me. We intended to drop it off at the relative's house before continuing to my parents' home, but we both forgot.

When we unloaded the car at my parents' house, I noticed it and said that we had forgotten to take it out. My mother later claimed she heard me asking my son why he had brought it there, as though I were blaming him.
She did not ask me about it then. We stayed another two nights, and she still said nothing.

The day after we returned home, she sent a text message saying that my son had taken the fly zapper intentionally and hidden it in the trunk so I would not see it. She called it stealing and suggested he should do chores to pay for returning it as a lesson in honesty and responsibility.

I was shocked. My son is quiet, respectful, and has never been in trouble. She had not asked either of us what happened before deciding he had deliberately taken and concealed something.
I explained immediately that I personally put it in the car and that we had simply forgotten to return it. My account has never changed.

Even the sentence she believed she heard would not, by itself, establish that he stole anything. What especially hurt was how quickly she assumed my son stole it, rather than asking a question to clarify.

Other things had happened during that visit

At a meal of Thanksgiving leftovers, my mother singled my son out in front of everyone and told him to wait until everyone else had eaten and have what was left. Another grandchild was not treated the same way.

My son withdrew to the basement. I later found him visibly upset, sitting alone on the concrete floor. My mother said she had been worried about there being enough food, but from my perspective there was plenty, and the way she singled him out was humiliating.
She also blamed him for eating chocolates when he had been upstairs asleep and someone else had distributed them.

Together, these incidents left me wondering why my quiet, respectful son was being judged or singled out during one of his rare visits with his grandparents.

I want to be honest that my initial response to the accusation was angry and protective. I questioned how she could love her grandson and treat him that way. Later, I used strong language about what I saw as an unhealthy pattern. I am not presenting myself as someone whose every sentence was perfectly measured. But I was truthful about what happened from the beginning, and I repeatedly tried to explain the actual problem.

I did forgive her

Over the following weeks, my mother apologized, almost profusely, and said she loved my children, and at times acknowledged that she should have asked questions and had been wrong to speak as she did.

But those acknowledgments were repeatedly paired with her insistence that she knew what she heard. She invoked God as her judge and said she would not lie about it.

She finally sent an apology that I experienced as heartfelt. I told her I forgave her. I also explained that I had not told my son about the accusation because I didn't want to hurt him further. She thanked me, praised his behavior during the visit, and said she had learned a lesson she would never forget.

I accepted that apology and moved forward. This matters to me because the later conflict has increasingly been framed as though I simply refuse to forgive. I had already forgiven her.

Why the issue reopened

The next fall, while I was visiting for my father's memorial, my sister told me that my mother had said she still believed my son took the fly zapper deliberately and still knew what she had heard me say.

At the time, I believed my sister. I felt devastated because I thought the matter had been settled. I did not address it during the memorial visit, but a couple of months later, I wrote my mother a long letter explaining why this had reopened the hurt. I also addressed how my son had been treated and asked for fairness and respect toward him.

There is an important uncertainty here: my mother has since disputed my sister's account. She says she told my sister that she believed my explanation and did not believe my son stole anything. I was not present for their conversation and I don't know exactly what was said or whether my sister interpreted my mother's continued certainty about my words as continued belief in my son's guilt.

Regardless of that secondhand conversation, I directly experienced what happened between my mother and me afterward.

What remained unresolved between us

My mother continued to say she believed me while also insisting that she knew I had said the words she remembered. At one point, she denied having said my son stole the item. I sent her the original text message, and she then acknowledged the wording but again defended it on the basis of what she believed she had heard.

I explained repeatedly that I was not accusing her of deliberately trying to hurt me. I have never needed her to admit malicious intent.

What I needed was for her to acknowledge that she misheard me and should have accepted my explanation instead of continuing to defend her interpretation. Even an acknowledgment that she might have misheard would have meant something.

Instead, she said that retracting what she remembered hearing would violate her conscience and amount to lying to appease me. At the same time, she repeatedly asked us to put the situation behind us and said our relationship mattered more than being right.

That has been very difficult for me to reconcile.

To me, saying she believes me while remaining certain I said words I immediately told her I did not say does not feel like being believed. I am her daughter, and I could not understand why she would hold so tightly to an overheard sentence rather than reconsider it in light of my immediate, consistent explanation.

By that spring, I had repeatedly asked for space and said I would reach out when ready. She continued contacting me with apologies, accounts of how painful the separation was for her, and ordinary messages. I eventually stopped responding and needed no contact. I have used blocking before because I needed genuine quiet.

My recent attempt at limited contact

After several months, I began considering whether I could manage occasional texts without pretending that everything had been repaired.

I still felt deeply hurt. Part of my willingness came from compassion for her and fear of future regret—not from feeling ready or missing the contact enough to want our old relationship back. I worried about doing the wrong thing, especially because she is my mother and has lost my father.

Her recent message disputing my sister's account led me to reconsider whether a small amount of contact might be possible. I told her that I didn't know exactly what she and my sister had said, that I did not want another debate, and that I was willing to exchange occasional texts. I was very clear that contact did not mean the hurt was resolved or that we were returning to normal. I also said that her saying that she believed me from the start, yet being so certain of what she thought I said when we were unloading the car trunk that day was confusing and contradictory to me.

Her response was that she did not understand what I meant by contradictory. She said she had no hard feelings, forgave me for what I had said about her, and hoped my heart would heal. She also said that people cannot heal without forgiving, even when someone intended no wrong.

That response reversed the small amount of readiness I had felt.

I understand that some of my words may have hurt her. But in this context, being told she forgave me, followed by a lesson about forgiveness, felt as though responsibility for the continuing estrangement was being placed on me. It seemed that the remaining problem had become my inability or unwillingness to forgive, rather than the rupture that had never been repaired for me.
She has also sent lighthearted messages and asked whether we would be coming for Thanksgiving. To me, these felt disconnected from how far apart we actually were emotionally.

The final exchange

I explained once more, as simply as I could, that I had heard her apologies for unintended hurt, but that lack of malicious intent had never been the issue. The issue was her continuing certainty about words I did not say and the accusation that followed from them.

I told her I rejected the idea that I simply would not forgive. I had already forgiven her. What I had not been able to move past was her continued insistence on what she believed she heard.

Her final response was that she "accepted that I believed I had not said what she thought she heard". (I had to read that a few times). She then suggested we put it behind us, stop discussing it, be friends, and start fresh. I found her choice of the word "friends" strange.

I did not experience that as the acknowledgment I had asked for. It felt like an offer to stop arguing and resume the relationship without addressing what had damaged my trust.

For a long time, I kept thinking that perhaps one more explanation would finally help her understand. I have now reached the point where I am finished trying. Whether she cannot give me that acknowledgment or will not, I can't keep putting myself through this.

Where I am now

I have decided that I need to return to no contact and use blocking again to protect my mental health. I feel deeply hurt, and communication keeps bringing me back into the same distress.

This is not only about the fly zapper. It is about my son being unfairly accused, my own honesty feeling discounted, and a familiar lifelong pattern in which my mother holds her position while other people are expected to find a way around it.

To me, it feels as though her certainty has taken precedence over our relationship. As a mother myself, I find that extremely difficult to understand. I can't imagine maintaining this kind of conflict with my own daughter after she had repeatedly explained herself to me.

I still have compassion for my mother. I know she misses us and says she wants us in her life. I also know that compassion has not made contact manageable for me.

I am not continuing to bargain for a different response. I am trying to accept that I may never receive the repair I wanted, without pretending that the lack of repair does not matter. Right now, I cannot have a relationship around this unresolved hurt.

I am also thinking about how to keep my young adult children out of the middle if she contacts them because I am no longer responding. They already know about the situation. I do not want them responsible for carrying messages or repairing the relationship.

What I need help with now is not writing another explanation to my mother. I am finished doing that. I need support with the grief, guilt, fear of future regret, and recurring disbelief that we have ended up here.

How have others stopped looking for acknowledgment from a parent who has not provided it? How have you maintained the distance you needed while still feeling compassion for that parent? And how have you found peace when the relationship could not be repaired, rather than simply pushed back into normal contact?

I would value responses from people who understand that choosing no contact can be heartbreaking even when continued contact feels worse.

Thank you for sticking with me if you've made it this far!

[xredshoesx]

in my experience it would be  perfectly normal for a uPD person from my life to react such a way to a mundane item like a bug zapper

gentle hugs to you today Little Wren, because it's definitely about A LOT more than a bug zapper- it's the tiptoeing around her and walking on eggshells, it's the doubting yourself and the way having your son become a scapegoat that hurt both of you. 

there's no easy answer for your question.  I was someone that went completely NC contact bc at a very young age I knew my mother was never going to be able to parent me in a healthy manner so I just decided to do it for myself as a young adult in the world with a lot of positive female role models in my circle as guides.  other folks are able to navigate the complicated relationship of limited contact somehow while protecting their peace.

sometimes people walk both walks and alternate between periods of NC and LC, giving what they can (esp when the parent is elderly and in need of more care) and retreating to NC to get a respite-

I wish it was one easy way to get clarity, closure and then peace- but it's a scab that gets picked at over and over again and doesn't seem to heal....

we can support you through whatever you decide -

be gentle with yourself tonight-

[moglow]

Little wren, my heart hurts for you. The ongoing battle of the compassion that seems to run deeper than we realize with the sure firm knowledge that some people can't be trusted. When that's a parent, it's even worse - there's the whole societal expectation above and beyond what they taught us themselves. It's a lot to unwind.

I've run into something similar with mine where a particular issue between us is supposedly resolved and put aside since it can't be changed, but she repeatedly brings it up whenever there's some conflict in her mind. She uses it as "proof" that I attacked her by confronting her own poor behavior, rather than leaving it be as asked repeatedly and after she's claimed it's behind us.

Bringing it up rips the scab off an old partially healed wound: she made false accusations and assumed the worst, then clung to them come what may. She essentially rewrote the scenario in her mind and no amount of explanation got through. She's chosen hers, and that's that. I could handle that - choose your position and leave it alone already. I'm sick of hearing about it. But it comes up again and again. And after all these years, she has a rotating selection of wrongs to choose from at will.

One ugly situation with mine was literally 20+ years ago - she brought it up *last week*, asking specific questions. Stirred those old feelings again. It was a very painful time for me, I had trusted her and she let me down in a huge way, then claimed to others I lied about it, claimed I turned my brothers against her. But WHY???! To what possible purpose, bring it up yet again after all these years? Again insinuating that I made up a story, it happen differently, that's not what I said before... When I asked her to stop and told her we weren't doing it again, she was abruptly contrite and I'm right and she won't bring it up again. Except that given opportunity, I know that she will.

Worse, in your situation, your mother has lumped it on your child, is clearly discussing it behind your and his backs as if it's fact, while claiming to your face it's resolved . She failed to address that elephant in the room, that if she actually accepted what you said, why is she then discussing it with your sister? I have a big problem with that and he's not my son! Actions aren't matching her words and it's eroded trust.

I don't see how anyone can return to "normal contact" with all that looming, not fully embrace the relationship. It's not this one instance, but the history of similar that landed the same way. Death by a thousand cuts, so to speak. Not now, possibly not ever - there's no timeline. The expectations that we wipe a slate clean while they busily smudge that same slate behind us? Impossible to maintain.

This could be good teaching moments for the young adults in your home - they don't have to take on her (or anyone else's!) stuff. If they choose to have a relationship with her, okay. If not, okay. You choose not and would only ask that they respect your decision. You don't want to discuss her or your lost relationship with her unless they want to understand. They aren't message carriers between you. If they can assume that position and politely refuse to be drawn into her ongoing inner battle, could be good practice for them.

I don't have children but I'm very well versed in what it's like to be a child in his position. And an adult in yours. Finding my peace had been a battle but I'm probably in the best place I been, ever. Finally.

Wishing you and yours all the peace. 🩷