Severing Ties: The Psychology of Estrangement

Every family has a dirty secret, and mine is this. My husband’s estranged from his dad. It was his decision, and he’s rebuffed all attempts to reconcile. It is, to my sensibilities, sour and unpleasant behaviour and I almost didn’t marry him because of it.

Why? Because the concept of family estrangement is anathema to everything I hold dear. Family, for me, is everything. Family is the ultimate tie that binds.

Naively, I thought I could fix it for him, and I used our wedding as leverage. My thinking was: there’s no better time, surely, to let bygones be bygones than during the public announcement of a very private, solemn bond.

Except it turns out that’s not the way it works, at least not anymore. And believe me when I say I tried everything.

Well, I say *everything* but I did draw the line at subterfuge. Smuggle my “father-in-law” (whom I’ve never met) into the venue as a surprise secret guest? I considered it. But it wasn’t the time, or the place. And an enforced “reconciliation” is anything but.

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Better the Devil You Know

We are witnessing a profound shift in family values, and estrangements are soaring because of it. I’m losing count of the number of people I know who are estranged from a family member. I find it desperately sad for all parties involved.

It is a strange new world.

For most of history, family relationships were considered sacrosanct entities based on mutual obligations and duties. They were expected to endure at all costs irrespective of material conflicts or psychological ones.

This once unshakeable conviction in the power of the family unit has crumbled away, and like all seismic change, it happened very slowly then all of a sudden.

First to go were the traditional sources of identity (class, religion, community), which started to buckle in the late 19th century. Personal growth and individual happiness eventually took their place, cemented into our culture by industrialisation (then globalisation) and the higher rates of mobility and population dispersal which followed.

Alongside the weakening of extended kin ties caused by wider spread geographical displacement, the liberalisation of attitudes towards matrimony (and the accompanying legislative changes culminating in the “quickie” no-fault divorce) ushered in greater opportunities for familial alienation.

Why the link between divorce and estrangements? Because sides are taken, and lines are drawn. Divorce is a radical realignment of a family’s structure, and it destabilises what children were brought up to believe is “absolute” and “unconditional” as new people (step-parents, step-siblings) come into the picture.

And so the stage was set for family relationships to become subordinated to our culture’s commitment to the pursuit of happiness, and deciding which people to keep in or out of one’s life has become a way of achieving that happiness. It is, research suggests, a mindset distinctive to our time.

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Marx and Engels

Is it as the bad boys of political science (as I affectionately think of them) said it would be — that eventually, the family unit as a societal norm would self-destruct?

Family, for Marx and Engels, was just another structure designed to retain power in the hands of a gilded few. They dismissed the “hallowed co-relation of parent and child” as “bourgeois claptrap” and saw the provision of social education in public schools as a necessary first step to remove children from parental influence and control.

Fractured, squabbling, dysfunctional family units would give way, they said, to a more collectively harmonious arrangement.

They wanted to do away with marriage entirely, believing that “individual sexual love” would emerge as the dominant form of relationship. And instead of the nuclear family, children would be raised communally in small socialist enclaves.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it, how aspects of their ideology have filtered through into the mainstream. Fascinating, but perhaps not surprising: all public policy discussion, ultimately, is a matter of degree and increment.

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Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

From the perspective of its instigator, estrangement is a positive step onto a better path. Indeed, why else would anyone do it? Although there is lingering sadness, there is also joy. It is an assertion of independence, of strength and personal courage. Sometimes, it is a protective step towards safety. Always, it is a form of taking control of one’s life. And it certainly draws a line under hurtful behaviour.

What is less frequently spoken about is estrangement as a tool with which to punish wrongdoing. Estrangements commonly involve allegations of childhood abuse (emotional, physical, sometimes even sexual) and/or “toxic” behaviours such as disrespectful or hurtful conduct. In all these circumstances, but to varying degrees, some people conclude the only appropriate step to take (sometimes even after a meaningful expression of remorse or demonstrable change) is the cessation of all contact. Many people are comfortable with that.

But what does it look like from the perspective of the person who is left behind, the person for whom the estrangement is unwanted? For them, there are no gains; only feelings of loss and regret, possibly even shame. An estrangement is a version of social ostracism. It undermines the need to belong. It undermines self-esteem, even the sense of self. In certain circumstances, it condemns people to loneliness.

There can be health implications, too — psychological and physical. If the estrangement was unexpected, it can trigger an “open-ended” grief response (“open-ended” because, as long as both parties remain alive, reconciliation is theoretically possible). And yet, the longer the estrangement endures, the less likely it is a reconciliation will take place. Why? Because a commonplace reaction to social rejection is lowered “self-regulation”, which can make the behaviours which caused the estrangement more pronounced.

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The Duchess of Sussex

Meghan Markle made estrangement famous here in the UK. The unsavoury business with her father as a result of which he did not attend her wedding to Prince Harry was, I thought, quite distressing. (My husband, alas, took it on the chin).

And it turns out estrangement can be contagious. For just as Meghan is estranged from most of her family, so too now is Prince Harry (or, as he puts it, “the relationship at the moment is space”). Is this what happens when certain types of behaviour are normalised? Does the once unthinkable end up as an option on the table?

And if you do it once, are you more likely to do it again to someone else? I find even the possibility personally terrifying. I have skin in the game, after all. If my husband is capable of estranging himself from of his own flesh and blood, would he also be prepared to do that to me someday?

Prince Harry, my husband — both are examples of estrangements involving a third party. Prince Harry has Meghan, my husband has his mum. The dynamic is not unusual. The third party provides an alternative social support system to the person initiating the estrangement.

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Hotel California

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think of families — even the estranged ones — as similar to residence at the Hotel California:

“You can check out, but you can never leave.”

Families can be claustrophobic, and sometimes they feel burdensome — there’s no point denying it — but they are also a necessary bulwark against the more transactional components of (modern) life.

This is why the duties and obligations of family life have an enduring, stabilising appeal. Unlike our emotions and our affections, unlike our perspectives and sometimes even our values, they do not change over time. The bonds of family help us navigate life’s impermanence with elegance and grace.

Conflict resolution is not for the feint-hearted. It is difficult, painful work. Not every problem is solvable, but there are plenty of relationships which need not be lost forevermore.

Welcoming new people into our lives to “replace” those who have been lost (or forcibly removed) does bring with it risk. Getting to know someone — properly getting to know someone — is a labyrinthine, long-term undertaking. And even if you spend every day with someone, there is still a part of them which remains a mystery. And as estrangements become more commonplace, so too is the likelihood we end up welcoming in those who themselves have been estranged.

Is it any wonder we have on our hands a loneliness epidemic the scale of which historians are struggling to place in the pantheon?

All that said, if — for example — a parent abandoned me, just walked out of my life to start a new family with someone else — would I find it in my heart to let them back into my adulthood? I think I would struggle, is the honest truth. I conjure this hypothetical sometimes as a reminder of just how hard it is to forgive. And why can’t I shake the feeling that estrangement and forgiveness are incompatible bedfellows?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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