Despite media stories occasionally highlighting high-profile family estrangements, in many cultures estrangement carries a stigma, a direct challenge to deeply held values about what family should be.
People estranged from families often feel shame or a sense they’ve failed, and carry the distress silently, in private. However, research on estrangement suggests it’s far more common than most people think.
Dillip* is refusing to speak to his brother after a difficult family reunion when his parents visited from India. After his brother’s drunken request for money from the parents and a full-blown shouting match, Dillip still felt his fury. He didn’t want mediation, but his wife and his brother’s wife had insisted.
Marina* is contemplating stopping speaking with her father following years of strained communication and long absences. “I really want nothing to do with him. He only contacts me when he wants something, and I’m worn out by it.”
Todd* has come to the painful decision to cut off all contact with his youngest daughter after many failed attempts to help her kick a drug addiction. His distress became too much after years of her asking him for money, outright stealing, calls from the police for him to come and get her, and his many futile attempts to get her to rehab. “I’m choosing not to see her, speak to her or respond if she is in trouble again. I have to safeguard my own health and mental health now.”
The continuum of estrangement experience
As these experiences highlight, estrangement is not binary; rather, it’s a continuum of reducing contact. At one end, people experience persistent awkwardness, strained silences at meetings or unspoken agreements about what can’t be mentioned, with a guilty wish for respite, as Marina hopes for. Further along is Dillip’s rage and ceasing of contact, with a possibility of reconciliation. Then there’s Todd: complete cessation – a decision to formalise the rupture and with no intention of reverse. Some people choose to permanently block numbers, perhaps moving cities or even countries to create more distance. Each step along this continuum represents changing psychological relationships to the lost person – from anger and ambivalence to loss and grief, despair and often, determination.
Pathways to estrangements
Kristina Scharp describes two pathways: “sudden death” (Dillip) and “fading away” (Todd and Marina), and notes that even the sudden-death cases usually have some prehistory. The “final straw” is rarely the cause but marks the moment that crystallises everything that seems irresolvable. Dillip’s brother asking his parents for money in front of the family is that kind of moment: not just upsetting at the time, but representative of a pattern. Research shows the most common reasons cited for estrangement are abuse and neglect, substance misuse, major value differences, and notably divorce, which becomes a significant risk factor for later parent-child estrangement.
Is estrangement the right course?
In the moment, estrangement can feel like a clean relief, but it may not stay that way, even when it is necessary (in situations of abuse, for example). The research on positive wellbeing outcomes from estrangement is, unsurprisingly, mixed. It seems to depend heavily on the reason for estrangement: cutting off an abusive parent tends to improve wellbeing; estrangements driven by value differences are more equivocal.
And it’s important to note that estrangement may also change the view we have about ourselves. For Marina, no contact with her father has meant a reframing – “I’ve always been the good daughter, the one who shows up no matter what, but now I won’t be.”
Pathways to reconciliation?
Reconciliation and repair may be possible and wanted. And sometimes, as for Marina and Todd, estrangement feels like the only option. In those cases, our support needs to be helping people grieve and cope in the best way possible for them. Researchers have shown that providing people with warmth, validation and safety may be the missing ingredients from the estranged relationships and may provide some comfort.
For Todd, the question of reconciliation is closed – not from bitterness, but from a hard-won clarity about the negative impact on his wellbeing from continued contact. He is now grappling with what psychologists call ambiguous loss – grief for a person who is still alive, and a relationship that has no formal ending. There are no comforting rituals for this loss, no condolence cards. Support groups have been found to reduce shame and distress, helping to validate the loss. For Todd, having this support for his decision may be a good therapeutic option.
While still enraged, Dillip is somewhat open to the option of repair with his brother and is leaning on active support from his wife and sister-in-law to help facilitate this. Marina’s situation is somewhere in between on the continuum; she remains out of contact with her father and is wary of changing her stance in the future.
What all three examples share is the experience of family as something that can fail – and the messy, often lonely work of deciding what to do with that knowledge.
*Each person described here has given permission for their story to be shared. Names and some details have been changed for privacy