Our son is 25. He is our only son. He has not spoken to us in almost 3 years. He does not want us to know his address or phone number and had turned his email completely over to his girlfriend. My husband and I were very close to our son, Michael. Tension began when he met his girlfriend during his freshman year of college. She, Danielle was his best friend from high school's girlfriend. The best friend, Brandon, was Michael's roommate during his first year of college. Brandon broke up with Danielle after he started drinking and going out with many girls during his freshman year of college. After the breakup she went after our son Michael aggressively. She is a very controlling person and he seems to listen and do whatever she asks/demands of him. She was always unkind to us, but Michael was kind to us and called frequently and came home every holiday during his undergraduate years of college. He even asked us for advice about Danielle and other aspects of his life. We listened and encourage him to make his own decisions. We never spoke ill of her, even when he was angry with her. She did not allow him to have any friends and even though he did not like that and many of her other rules,in the end, he did as she wanted. They have now been together for 7 years with 2 years of separation while he was in grad school on complete scholarship with stipend and she was in another state in pharmacy school.
We were very kind to Danielle in spite of her behavior towards us. We paid for our son's undergraduate degree including all living expenses much of which went to dates, gifts, etc. to Danielle. We treated them to dinners, vacations, etc. We even bought him a new car for his undergraduate graduation.
Once he started grad school, she wanted to break up with him and he called us crying and very upset asking for advice and telling us many bad things about Danielle. Two months later at Christmas she took him back and he cut all ties with us. The only contact we have had is her emails and calls which are very unkind. He has been silent.
After almost 3 years of her cruelty and accusations of things we did wrong to Michael as parents,. we finally blocked his email address as he never answered and per her, he didn't read our emails. We tried to write only kind things, per your book, although there were times when we did respond out of anger as she was so cruel in her phone calls and emails. We know our son's writing style and know that these responses were written by her. One time she called and demanded we get him his personal belongings. When we tried to deliver them to him, he yelled out his apartment door "Hey you get out of here" as if we were strangers and then called the police on us. We left his things with the police as he refused to speak with us. That was the last address we knew.
Her father, Larry has taken our son as his son and refuses to assist us in making things right or giving us any information about our son. Michael has an 84 year old grandmother who he was close to, but also has had no contact with her. She accepts it and has just cut him out of her will. We have left him in our will as we love him and he is our only son. Larry has 2 adult daughters, was married to Danielle's mother until Danielle was 2 and says she was a crazy woman. He never remarried and says he speaks with Danielle and Michael about 3 times a day.
Danielle says. I, Michael's mother am crazy and that Michael's father is manipulative. We have never been given a reason for the silence from Michael. Danielle and Larry have said terrible untrue things about us for the past 3 years. Danielle said Michael is angry because he wasn't breast fed and we didn't send him to a private high school. He never said these things to us and we always asked his opinion about things and listened to him openly thus our shock at this estrangement.
Michael was somewhat socially immature. He spent 2 years in kindergarten per his teacher's advice. We never made a big deal of this. Danielle was his first and only girlfriend. He was an introvert. Per Larry, Danielle, a pharmacist and our son Michael a computer scientist are making over $200,000 a year yet Danielle continually sent us emails stating that we owed Michael money after his grandfather's death. This money is 100% under control of my mother and I have no say in what she does with it. I actually think I have been taken out of her will as she blames me for Michael's estrangement.
I know you say in your book to write kind things once a week or so. Our only means of contact was/is email and Danielle was the only one responding and reading our emails. With every email we sent, Danielle responded with a cruel, dramatic response which upset us and made me cry for days. My therapist thought it best to stop contact as I was getting very depressed.
We have no way to contact Michael directly and every time we make any contact it seems as though she uses us to stir up more drama and cruelty. We are hoping maybe without us, she may have to find another source for her drama. She seems to thrive on drama and we were thinking she might now take it out on Michael or Larry.
We wrote a kind last email stating that we had to block all email and calls from Danielle and Larry as the cruelty and threats were to much for us to handle. In this email, we did tell Michael, he was always loved and our door was always opened, but doubt any of the good things we have written have been passed on to him. We think if he and Danielle break up he may contact us, but aren't sure as we really don't know what happened and why we were his allies in October 2005 and by December 2005 we were the his enemies.
Danielle has said that Michael didn't go to his grad school graduation as he was "terrified" we would be there. We did not go as we were not invited. Danielle has said he is "terrified" that my husband will take out credit in his name as they have the same first and last name. She said he has put a watch on his credit report in case my husband tries to do this. This is crazy as we have only given to him financially his entire life and do not want or need his assistance financially. We have never did anything to ever hurt so why is he suddenly "terrified" of us. We wonder if she has done some terrible things in our name without us knowing to make us look bad in his eyes. What would suddenly make us "terrifying"?
If he marries Danielle, it appears we will never see him again. We will never know if we have grandchildren. Danielle has said that they will marry and that we will never see our son again. She also said we will never know or meet any of their children (our possible future grandchildren).
What is the next step? Do we give up on him completely? How will we know if they break up and if this is the reason he is silent? Does he believe we are really as terrible and "terrifying" as Danielle and Larry have said? Is there a way to know if Danielle has done something to make him think we are awful? How can we get the truth to him or if he ever cares to know the truth? We do know she influences him, but also know he could find a way to contact us on his own, but chooses not to.
As you know this is so painful. My husband is having an easier time moving on. I cry every day, but am trying to move forward and realize stopping the cruelty will help. We just want to know if were are proceeding correctly since it is apparent we are currently not wanted in their lives. Do we just have to wait and see if he ever reaches out. What do I do when his grandmother is sick or dies? Once wrote and email when she was hospitalized for a possible stroke and was told via a voicemail from Danielle to only make contact if someone is dead!
We are so hurt, sad...no words can begin to explain the pain.
lostmama
sirens
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