Anatomy of Serial Estrangement

Reconcilliation that goes awry is a totally chilling prospect - we did it numerous times with all 3 of our children and look what eventually happened - wow what a surprise! What I think is the most problematic issue is that of trust. IMO - lack of trust is the lynchpin of serial estrangement. Just because you reconcile with an EC doesn't guarantee that everything can be kept in the past. I think that most human beings have an inate inability to forget - especially those terrible things that our children have done. Serial estrangements often occur when parties in the relationship are routinely dissatisfied or disillusioned in some way with each other. There can be arguments or disappointments but usually one party will decide that they want nothing more to do with the other and estrangement begins. Serial estrangements occur when estranged parties reconcile and then play out the same drama - repeating the cycle over and over. Our ability to forget the trangressions made against us often seems to be correlated to how much we desire the reconciliation. Someone who really shits all over us is less likely to be trusted - no matter how much we love them. But if we really want them back, we may be willing to overlook whatever they've done to cause the riff. It seems that parents with a great need for reconciling with their ECs might have less of a problem forgetting the hurt that was inflicted by them. But a backlash might occur when they parents begin to experience a loss of their self esteem. Numbness sets in. Then, there are the parents who become disillusioned with their relationships with their ECs. These parents may feel less of a need for the children who are inflicting the pain and so they may want to end the conflict and move on, in the hopes of maintaining their self esteem and a life without the people causing conflict. In our specific case, it was more of a wait and see situation. We would go along in the relationship with our children and then some behavior always would raise a red flag. We then knew it would only be a matter of time before estrangement set in once again. We could almost set our watches by it. Our estrangements always would take place over a period of time - weeks, months, years - whatever punishment which was suitable to fit our "crime". Then, there would always be some sort of in-road made (usually by us), and finally some contact. There would be explanations, apologies and a reconciliation and we would say to ourselves, oh well, maybe this time, the estrangement was because they were in a bad mood or there was a problem with their work or they needed therapy or maybe they just needed to (forgive me) get laid. So we again would do the walking on eggshells routine. We would watch what we say - we would go along to get along - blah blah blah. Inevitibly, enboldened by our comprimising demeanor and willingness to do anything to preserve the relationship, bad behavior would inevitably raise it's ugly head again - we would pick up a lie or there would be slip that indicated betrayal. We would get jerked around a little bit. And we'd think - here we go again. Then, one day, our basic nature just rebelled - and we said - how dare they treat us like this. There was a tremendous urge to tell them to go f__k themselves. And then we started thinking - what would happen if we did? - Somehow, after the 4th or 5th time, It got to be a matter of "what's the worst that could happen" - kind of like a bad version of the boy who cries wolf. What if we didn't blow smoke up their asses this time - tell them what they wanted to hear, what was the worst they could do - stop talking to us, not see us? And because we had been there/done that so many times before, we began to stop caring about what they wanted and started to think about what WE wanted. Sadly, we realized that we weren't really a family anymore - if we were ever one in the first place. Families are supposed to love each other - not do battle with each other. That's not a family I want to be in.