Thank you! I had heard that term before and was racking my brain trying to remember it, because it seemed to apply to this situation so well. My mom is like this with my older brother. They’ve been no contact for over 15 years now because my mom said some racist things about my sister-in-law and niece. But when she describes why she doesn’t talk to my brother, that is never mentioned. It’s always vague reasons like “his wife won’t let him talk to me.”
Thank you! I had heard that term before and was racking my brain trying to remember it, because it seemed to apply to this situation so well. My mom is like this with my older brother. They’ve been no contact for over 15 years now because my mom said some racist things about my sister-in-law and niece. But when she describes why she doesn’t talk to my brother, that is never mentioned. It’s always vague reasons like “his wife won’t let him talk to me.”
There’s an excellent series of posts about it here: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
That’s the exact article I was thinking of!
The whole “they sent me pages and pages of abuse but they won’t tell me why they cut contact!” is wild. You can read. Read.
That was a fascinating read, thanks for linking it.