Breaking off contact with family: When parents screw up

Anyone who meets Terry might think that this face should be printed in the dictionary next to the word "self-confidence". Alert eyes that maintain friendly but firm contact with the person opposite, loud laughter and words just bubble out of his mouth, without hesitation or stuttering.

Anyone who thinks that means that there was no struggle in this life is wrong. At 34, Terry has now been through three therapies and it took a lot of inner work to get to the point where Terry is today: feeling pretty okay with himself and the world. The reason why all of this was so difficult had to do with his relationship with his father. Today, Terry has no contact with him at all.

"My relationship with my father was on-off for years, until I had contact with him for the very last time five years ago." Until Terry was about 13 years old, Dad was the big hero. Very charismatic, good-looking, it made an impact when he walked into a room." When Terry talks about that past, there is no bitterness in his voice.

"My childhood was beautiful until he started taking steroids as part of his sporting hobbies. He became extremely violent. Mostly towards my mother, but at some point towards me too. He also had a lot of affairs. At night there were often chases between my mother, with me in tow, and him. Scenes played out like in a film. Drama without end."

While his father's supposed strength and self-confidence inspired security and trust in Terry as a child, the veil of idealization began to lift with puberty. "My father lied about everything, even when the truth was undeniable. As a child, you don't get that, of course. My father was someone who inherently thought that the man was in charge in the house. Women can have an opinion, but he actually knows everything better anyway. My father was an extreme narcissist who only thought about himself. I couldn't trust him anymore."

At 15, Terry left home and broke off contact with his father. His mother stayed with the man who abused her, both physically and emotionally.

“Going no contact” is a phenomenon that has been discussed online a lot for some time now. You can find thousands of reports, including in video form, on Tiktok , YouTube and Instagram . Drawing strict boundaries with your parents for your own well-being, even if the most radical consequence is to cut off all contact with them, seems to have become normal.

There is little scientific data, however, on whether total ruptures between children and parents are more common today than in the past. A report in the New Yorker suggests this based on anecdotal evidence. But there are also those who believe that younger generations are simply more transparent about their experiences. Whether or not young people are "breaking up" with their parents more often than in the past, the question is whether "going no contact" is an important tool for healing emotional wounds or rather a worrying change in our family relationships.

"In our nature as human beings, we all have a longing to have good contact with other people, especially our family, and to feel connected to them," says Michael Kuhn, a psychological psychotherapist in Berlin-Kreuzberg. He often works with people who want to work through problematic relationships with one or both parents.

Among other things, Kuhn prepares reports that are required when a person wants to change their last name, usually due to problematic relationships with the person who gave them that name. "If we consciously cut this connection, there are usually good reasons for it," says Kuhn.

But can a conflict be resolved by breaking off contact? "When a child breaks off contact with its parents, it is always an attempt by the child to save itself. If the parents are prepared to question themselves and examine their position in the conflict, then there can be a solution," says the psychotherapist.

When Terry's first therapist raised this possibility, Terry reacted negatively. "What does she think she's saying, I thought to myself. What kind of advice is that? I'm here to find out how to fix this relationship, not how to end it!" But then the therapist said something that made Terry pause: "You've been trying to mend your relationship with your father for 15 years. But that's not your job. You won't be able to do it if you're the only person doing anything about it."

At some point, years later, Terry started a new therapy. When this too reached the point where the therapist cautiously suggested that breaking off contact might be a good idea, a realization began to crystallize in Terry's mind: "I have to do this for myself so that I don't lose even more energy, nerves, tears and money on therapy than I already have. This has to stop!"

And it stopped. That made a lot of things better. Terry is a person who knows who he is and, perhaps just as importantly, who he doesn't. "Of course I still have my own problems, but they are completely different today than they were when I was still in contact with him and was constantly worrying about what comments or lies would come out next." Nevertheless, Terry is sometimes suddenly overcome by a sadness that things have to be the way they are. "Christmas was really bad this year. It really hit me again how alone this experience sometimes feels. But basically I feel much better about the way things are. Without him."

The fact that we find it so difficult to accept certain truths about our parents and draw conclusions from them is partly due to shame, says Michael Kuhn. "We are deeply grateful to our parents. We cannot help but love them. Nevertheless, emotionally immature parents often accuse those children who set boundaries of being ungrateful. In their eyes, the child's status alone obliges them to obey and submit."

However, these parents are overlooking something, says Kuhn. Those who blame everything on the child's supposed ingratitude do not want to see certain things in their own behavior and ultimately cause even more destruction. "The children then think: But that's not true! I'm grateful! But I don't accept this or that behavior. The core of the dilemma of such parent-child relationships is: We love our parents. But we hate the behavior," says Kuhn. Unfortunately, children do not have the power to change that. Only the parents can do that.

Over the years, Terry has also repeatedly encountered a lack of understanding when the topic of breaking off contact with his father came up. "They would look at him in surprise and then usually say something like: 'Huh, that's your father! He doesn't mean it like that!' or "Yes, but you just have to learn to live with it. That's a different generation." Terry tells this with a laugh and shakes his head. "But he's not 120 years old! You can always try not to be an asshole anymore. Parents have a responsibility not to be an asshole. And if you are one, you can't expect your child to just be okay with it."

When asked whether there was a possibility of being able to have contact with his father, his former childhood hero, Terry answered after a brief pause and a smile: "It would require a drastic character relaunch!" And then continued more seriously: "He is the archetype of a man that I completely reject, from his political views to his lived values. He was violent, he is a violent liar, with no empathy for the pain of others. I don't know how we could get to a point where I could somehow find all of this okay just because he is my father."

Even though there is no reliable scientific data, one thing can be said about the topic of "going no contact": it is mainly daughters who speak publicly about their experiences and who have usually cut off contact with their father. A widely shared post on the subject reads as follows: "I think fathers lose their minds a little when they realize that their daughters don't forgive them everything as easily as their wives do."