The Detachment Wall: How to Let Go of Your Adult Children
Some of us moms have a problem with our attachment to our children, to the point where the bond can become unhealthy.
Can we love our children but not let their choices or behavior make us crazy? Is some detachment actually a good idea?
Is Detachment a Wall?
The idea of detaching from a person can seem terrifying. But is there a way to practice healthy detachment?
Another way of thinking about it is this – when we live detached, we are not placing a wall between us and others. Instead, we are examining our own expectations and dependencies.
With those in perspective, we are freer to love another person because the focus is shifted to them and is not solely on us.
With our adult children, though we love them unconditionally, we try to satisfy unmet needs in us:
- Our need to be needed.
- Our desire to nurture someone.
- Our desire to see that our work and love produces an effect – a child who loves us back.
What we often do is keep a picture in our minds of our child and how they will fulfill these needs and desires for us. What happens when that child rejects us? In my case, and for many other moms, we completely freak out!
What Went Wrong
When we are ‘good mothers,’ we begin to define ourselves by our mothering. While this can be positive and can encourage us to fulfill our role responsibly, by totally adopting that definition we can forget all the other aspects of ‘me.’
When we are our role, when that role is challenging, or when that role is over, what is left of ‘us’?
In dealing with estranged children, we still tend to look within ourselves. We ask ourselves what we did wrong. We obsess over every interaction and question whether we could have responded differently.
Read HOW TO DIVORCE YOUR ADULT CHILDREN AND RESTORE YOUR SANITY.
Also read HOW TO DEAL WITH HAVING AN ESTRANGED ADULT CHILD.
This Monday-morning quarterbacking neglects some basic facts about humans:
You Can’t Control Other People
We surely have influence over our children, but we do not mold them like clay. When they don’t turn out the way we planned, we neglect this fundamental truth.
The Power of Letting Go: How to drop everything that’s holding you back on Amazon
You Can’t Rely on Your Children for Your Happiness
We may have looked ahead to our golden years and seen ourselves surrounded by loving grandchildren. This neglects another fundamental truth: People change. If we rely on other people for our happiness, we may be disappointed.
My source of joy and happiness is an inside job, not dependent on the actions of others.
Find Your Joy: A Powerful Self-Care Journal to Help You Thrive on Amazon
Your Emptiness Is Yours to Fill Up
Your adult children don’t exist solely to fill the void of your unmet needs. Do you need the love and admiration of children and grandchildren to be happy? Perhaps meeting your own needs by loving yourself sufficiently will bring more peace and satisfaction.
Complete People Can Love Completely
I remember well the first time my young daughter gushed about a new boyfriend, saying, “He completes me!” We had many long talks deep into the night discussing how love can be real and true only when two people who are complete within themselves come together.
True love rejects the notion that the other exists solely to please you. True love is therefore not threatened when the other displeases you, because the love is not dependent on the other fulfilling your needs.
Having the other person conform to our desires so we will love them is manipulation, not love. Focusing on “what’s in it for me” is a death knell for true love.
Yet, as mothers, we sometimes forget that in our relating to our adult children. When we can view them with some detachment, when our reactions to them are no longer based on expectations or being dependent on them, we are then able to love them fully and freely.
Do not look at your adult child as completing you, giving you a fulfilled life, or meeting your needs. When you set those aside, you begin to understand love.
What to Do Now?
If you are a hurting mama, laid low in the dust by the estrangement of an adult child, what should you do now?
- Examine your feelings and thoughts. What does it feel like when attachment hurts? What thoughts are you thinking at the time? Can you begin to think differently?
- Be with others and love them, but don’t look to them as your source of happiness.
- Learn to be alone, not lonely. Loving ourselves enough that we can be our best companions is healthy.
- Quit blaming yourself for the state of the relationship. You didn’t and couldn’t control the outcome. Why beat yourself up?
Read WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT MY ESTRANGED CHILDREN… WHAT CAN I SAY?
Here are a few more ideas to help you heal and let go.
- Journal – Writing or sketching your feelings and thoughts puts you in the moment and helps to get you out of your thoughts. Buy yourself a pretty journal and write in it whenever you feel overwhelmed, sad, or lonely.
- Find other mothers in the same boat – Join Facebook groups and share your stories with other women who are going through the same thing. Lift each other up and remember not to fall into the trap of wallowing and continuous negativity.
- Seek counseling or therapy – Look into talk therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy. Online websites like Better Help and Talk Space offer versatile and affordable access to therapists and counselors.
- Read empowering books such as:
Self-Love Workbook for Women: Release Self-Doubt, Build Self-Compassion, and Embrace Who You Are by Megan Logan on Amazon.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chödron on Amazon
Keep Moving by Maggie Smith on Amazon
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz on Amazon
Mind Over Mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine A. Padesky on Amazon.
When we are not attached to any outcome in our relationships, then we can be free and happy. When the state of our internal life is more important than our external circumstances – there lies peace.
Read PARENTING ADULT CHILDREN CAN BE AGONY.
Also, MY ADULT CHILDREN CUT ME OUT OF THEIR LIFE.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Do you still find it hard to let go of your adult children? Or, do you still worry about them and take care of them more than you think you should? Please join the conversation below.
This was a great article for me. My youngest of six just left the nest about six months ago. He is off and in grad school and a serious relationship. He’s making a life for himself and I couldn’t be more proud. The thing is I feel like, I’m grieving the death of something. I am a widow, so my youngest son, and I spent the last 13 years together as a team after my husband passed. Now my youngest son has moved on as he should but I am finding it very difficult to move on. I also sold my family home and moved to a different state at the same time because I thought that that was what was best for me but it’s hindsight it was way too much to do all at once. Any advice for me? I retired a year before he left the nest so as of right now, I have no job no community and I’m living in a strange place. Dealing with emptiness it delayed grief .
Hi.my name is Len and I have to say that you are wrong when you told a mother not to blame themselves that it’s not their fault..I have something something to say on this ..I have a mom that refuses to let me grow up…she loves way to much .anytime I have a girlfriend she tries to beat them up .she’s always trying to help.she asserts herself in all aspects of my life..she tries to befriends my friends .she eveñ tries to brive my friends to give her info on me..if it’s not the moms fault then is it the kids fault no..the kids are the victims here..even when you tell them that they need help or say how you feel ..they just don’t listen..to the mother’s that don’t know how to let go get help cause all you’re doing is putting a wedge between you and your kids
I do find it difficult to let go of my adult children. Sometimes I get very hurt by their lack of concern. I believe I was a good mom. They were given lots of verbal and physical love. They were given my time and concern. I wanted to be both parent and friend. Now I would be pleased to just be their friend. Howeve they never seem to have time for me or their dad. It just makes us sad.
I feel the same Alexis. I have 3 sons, 28,30, & 34. Weeks and months could go by and if it weren’t for holidays, or if I didn’t invite them for dinner or lunch, I think a year would feasibly go by without even a phone call to ask how things are going. They aren’t unloving or unkind, they just aren’t interested and it hurts because I did have dreams of remaining close to the extent that they would reach out to check on me now and then. I try so hard not to be needy that I fear they think I don’t need anything at all. It does make me feel sad some days and I cry all day then try to just live my life and be happy I raised independent adults. But it’s hard on a Mom not to feel like you don’t matter anymore.
My girlfriend has a 30 year old son, who still lives at home. She gets up at five in the morning to make his lunch every day. She does his laundry, cooks most of his meals and talks to him like a boyfriend and a girlfriend. She can’t go on vacation. She doesn’t want to leave them alone. She wants to get back in time to cook him supper. He has a great job and doesn’t pay for anything nor does he do the yardwork. He doesn’t have a girlfriend and I think that’s the way she likes it. I need help it’s an uncomfortable weird situation.
I have grown and learned to love myself and find happiness within but I still am devastatingly sad that my 29 year old Daughter doesn’t want to have a relationship anymore and it’s been almost 7 months. I loved and love her so much and I feel like it wasn’t enough. Our last conversation she said mostly negative things about me. I remember so many positive memories of our relationship we had. I could have never abandoned my Mom or Dad because I love them and care. She said she loved me and cared about my feelings and ends our Mother/ Daughter relationship. Even offered counseling for us and she said no. I just needed to know if other Mothers have gone threw this similar situation and need support from those Mothers in this similar situation.
Dear Rebecca,
I am in a similar situation with my daughter. We had the most loving mother/ daughter relationship. We were like best friends, all her friends called me their second mum. I was the mum that dropped them all off at parties, picked my daughter up early hours in the morning, so she was home safe. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter.
Then overnight she just stopped talking to me.She told me she didn’t need me anymore. She went distant for weeks but now months later I haven’t seen or spoken to her. She occasionally sends a one word text once a fortnight if I’m lucky.
She has no idea the pain she is causing. I feel like I am grieving.
I could never have treated my Mother in this way, she never did any of the things that I have done for my daughter.
I loved and still do love my daughter with all my heart. if you think we could support each other as we are in similar situation. Please message me.