What can you do as a parent when what was initially unconditional love is worn away?
Whenever I hear the term “unconditional love,” the first moment I saw my infant son pops into my head. That’s probably the purest love I’ve ever felt, or will ever feel. All he’d done so far was breathe and cry, and I loved him with a fierce intensity I couldn’t have anticipated.
Yet even this type of incredible, primal love for your child can be worn away and replaced by a necessary and cautious detachment. This occurs often when your now-adult child refuses treatment for a mental or emotional problem; instead, they likely deny or blame you (and others) for their situation and use this as an excuse to remain stuck.
When a parent comes to grips with their now-adult child’s destructiveness, both agony and anger can seep into what was once only love that you felt for them. Years of lying (by commission or omission), stealing, drug or prescription medication abuse, disappearances and reappearances, emotional manipulation, multiple jobs losses, and chronic chaos — maybe even continual suicidal threats – have used up parental reserves.
Certainly, there are many parents who do a poor job of providing even basic safety and security. A child can feel besieged by the instability and emotional onslaught of a parent as well. That reality can make a child’s path to adulthood very difficult, and can leave emotional wounds that can only be healed with awareness, compassion, and time. So those problems can have their obvious roots in never feeling safe or truly loved by your parents.
But troubled adults don’t require unstable childhoods.
Sometimes children get lost.
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When parents are good enough but children still struggle…
Parents may have actually been decent, “good enough” parents. You didn’t expect too much or too little, you focused on letting your children be children. You were understanding and handled parenting with maturity, provided safety, and worked together. Sure, you made mistakes. But the mistakes were normal and unintentional.
Yet children can still develop emotional and mental problems. They may have a diagnosable severe mental illness which creates deep despondency and/or chaotic highs, but refuse treatment. Drugs may be altering their personality and emotions, patterns of thinking and behavior may be distorted and dysfunctional, and impulses may ravage through and control them, as can be found within a personality disorder.
As parents, you’re left to fight through the questions and find your own answers. The guilt can feel immense, “What did we miss? What did I do wrong?” It’s a painful journey to go from watching a toddler take his first steps to overhearing him make a drug deal.
It’s a kind of emotional death. The death of dreams, of hope, and of trust.
A necessary detachment occurs — not abandonment but detachment…
A sense of detachment can begin to happen, as continuing to unconditionally love that child will only end in sabotaging what’s left of your own lives, and the lives of your other sons and daughters, grandparents, and other family members.
A person can still love, and not abandon. But that caring can become cautious. You realize your child is miserable; they aren’t a firefighter or veterinarian or parent as they dreamt of being when they were little. Instead they hop from job to job or give sex for drugs. They’re angry at you and the world and perceive themselves as the perpetual victim. They’ve harmed others, perhaps, and you sometimes worry they could even hurt you.
The need to set boundaries…
So, parents are left to set boundaries. Changing the locks on your doors to keep your twenty-eight year-old from stealing. No longer inviting your thirty-two year-old home for holidays because of their rage outbursts. Cutting off financial support from your forty year-old, hoping they get arrested so at least you know they’re safe. These boundaries can break your heart — but your head knows they’re all that’s left to do. And then you hope things change for the better.
When you don’t agree on what to do…
I once worked with a couple in such circumstances. His twenty-five year-old daughter had a severe alcohol problem, and would call at all hours of the night — or leave suicidal messages and then not pick up the phone. He’d rush over to find her passed out in the bathtub or on the floor.
His wife, the stepmother, had had enough after years of this pattern, “You have to stop. She has to confront this in herself. As long as she knows you’ll save her, she won’t fix it herself.”
Then I saw him raise his head, with tears in his eyes, “I know, but what if this is the time I don’t go and she actually dies? I could never forgive myself.”
The room got very still as both looked at me for an answer. But there wasn’t a right or a wrong answer. Both choices held their own very real fear.
The happy part of this story is that their daughter did recover. Mostly on her own, but with both parents supporting and encouraging her.
If you’re a parent who’s struggling with trying to love a child through the chaos they’re creating, please know you’re not alone.
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How does one distinguish between parents who are “blamed unfairly”, parents so lacking in self awareness they normalised neglect and abuse, and abusive parents who actively gaslight their adult children about their own behaviour?
The fact a child has grown into an adult lacking the requisite skills to self-regulate and cope with life such that they can manage anger safely, don’t need drugs to cope, and can maintain healthy interpersonal relationships undermines any notion that their parenting was “good enough”. They are not responsible for their child’s recovery or resolution, but blame falls at least partly at the parents’ feet. Denying this only makes the situation worse by reinforcing the child’s introjected false narratives of being defective and/or unlovable, and adds fuel to toxic scapegoating dynamics.
The fact they’ve raised such a dysfunctional person, and are so incapable of empathising with that person’s experience that they attend therapy incredulous and baffled, says it all. Any therapist who can’t see that and approach their claims of “good enough” with compassionate scepticism isn’t credible. Frankly, the whole premise of this article is flawed and reveals a concerning lack of understanding of, and prejudice against, some very vulnerable people.
You ask a very good question Aiden. And it can difficult to discern what’s normalization of poor parenting even abusive parenting, and what’s going to be helpful now to that parent (or an adult child by a parent… this can go both ways). If you read a bit more carefully, my advice isn’t to abandon, but to set appropriate boundaries as well as to use some emotional detachment.
I have to say I agree with Aiden. While as adults, our issues to process and reconcile and change are OUR responsibility, it doesn’t mean that our parents are without accountability for their actions. It’s very difficult for someone to be expected to work through their issues AND at the same time be asked to contend with a still-dysregulated parent or one who expects the adult child to maintain an image of themselves that they have created and are trying to manage. I agree that we need to have compassion for our parents because they often passed along whatever they were taught and had their own struggles that led to the parenting styles that they used, though we need to be base ourselves in reality that can enable us to integrate the whole of the situation.
this is 100% so well put. reading through this article I knew something was off. thank you
Wow, this feels really judgemental and shows a lack of understanding of addiction and mental illness. You say” The fact a child has grown into an adult lacking the requisite skills to self-regulate and cope with life such that they can manage anger safely, don’t need drugs to cope, and can maintain healthy interpersonal relationships undermines any notion that their parenting was “good enough”.”
That’s just wrong. My parents raised 4 kids. 3 did well, one became an addict and used for 30 years despite my parents offering every support. Stop blaming parents. Addiction happens to all kinds of families.
“The fact they’ve raised such a dysfunctional person, and are so incapable of empathizing with that person’s experience that they attend therapy incredulous and baffled, says it all.”
The question was not intended for a pissed off whiner but rather a parent who like many others is experiencing deep pain and confusion after being harmed by their abusive adult child. To post on here in defense of your magical make believe victim child is utterly insulting. Find the correct place to post your ridiculous judgement. And also, look up “grey-rocking”, the technique now commonly used by abusers in the name of “handling narcsistic parents”.
her dad was abusive. so cut your judgement ok?
I am a parent, who unfortunately has had to learn to love from a safe distance. My adult child was diagnosed quite late in life with borderline personality disorder and bipolar. I had no idea, but suddenly the behaviors made sense.
The screaming, throwing things, rages for hours, blaming, threats, following me from room to room to continue wildly ranting, irrational thought processes, bizarre demands, gaslighting, lies, cruelty, etc.
The day they physically assaulted me was the last straw. I called the authorities to diffuse things, and told them that did not want to press charges as long as my adult child got help. Of course that didn’t happen, it was one more lie, but it did diffuse the situation and allow me to safely exit the premises.
Now I maintain very strict boundaries. I do not let things escalate, I diffuse it by ending the conversation or deleting the text. If it is an abusive text, I know within a few words and will delete it without even reading it. If things start to take a turn within a conversation, I will make it clear that I will be talked to and treated respectfully or the conversation will end, and I follow through with that.
On a visit, always supervised for my safety, if old patterns begin to emerge such as I described at the beginning, I immediately end the visit and say that it’s time for me to go home. I keep conversations and visits as neutral as possible, avoiding anything that might be triggering. I think of it and treat it as a social encounter I might have with a stranger. It’s sad, but it works.
Facing that the child I knew is long gone has broken me. The adult child I now have is unrecognizable. I will not abandon them. I choose to love, but I do so from a safe distance.
I believe Alanon’s mottoe is “detach with love.” That’s the group of people who are in relationship with alcoholics – I’ve always found that to be a very helpful idea.
It is exceedingly telling that parents seem to conveniently default to “I feel unsafe” and “call the cops” when their adult child identifies the toxic parenting that ensured they never truly felt safe or accepted. Bullying or controlling them adult children until you can’t, gaslight them until they can’t help but react or go no contact; and then play the victim.
I appear to be in the minority of commenters, as I found this article to be helpful and thought-provoking. I have been married for 18 years and we have 2 children. My first and I have always struggled with attachment, even when she was an infant (breast infection cut breastfeeding short, peri and post partum depression were present, difficult/fraught relationship with my own mother, ADHD in a parent and a child, etc). She and her father have always been the primary attachment relationship, leaving little room and support for other attachments. She’s generally a good kid (no substance abuse or risky behaviors yet), but has a deep hostility towards me. Have I been perfect? Absolutely not. Have I been good enough and strived to be more? Absolutely. Is her deep seated hostility really attributable solely to me being a bad parent? I don’t think so, no. Sometimes kids just have their own path that they take, they are human beings afterall – none of us are the exact same. Allowing a child to take personal responsibility for their choices, supporting them when and as needed and in the appropriate ways, and a loving detachment to preserve your own mental health are all necessary to get through difficult relationships where someone we love isn’t able to love us back, or chooses not to at this moment in time.
Elizabeth thank you for commenting. These criticisms have been up for a while – I always leave them there. But I decided to address them in last week’s podcast which you might find helpful. https://drmargaretrutherford.com/409-selfwork-when-emotionally-detaching-or-distancing-are-healthy/
I agree, the article is helpful.
Hi Elizabeth, I agree with you on your comments. I am struggling with a 39 year old married daughter who has been very hostile to me. Her father died of suicide when she was 15. I re-married and she is also hostile to my husband. She has made up so many lies about me throughout the year’s, and it is so hurtful. I do feel I’ve been a very good mother to her. I have made mistakes, but nothing like I am being blamed for. I do feel she suffers from mental health issue’s and has not been properly diagnosed. Her father was bipolar. I am going to step back and take care of own mental health and care and love myself and the people who love me. I will indeed support her if my daughter decides to get help, but for now I need to step away.
As a high school teacher for 20 years, I’ve seen every example: the well-raised kids who have severe issues, and the neglected children who are incredible successes. Detaching with love is the only healthy option. Allowing yourself to be stuck in an endless cycle of enabling and co-dependent behavior serves no one.
Thank you Sue for that… The simplicity of that has sparked hope
thank you for writing this
You bet.
Thank you for the article. I was a young mum (21) and my son a very upset colicky baby and a very difficult child to raise. Then he met his now wife and the last 12 years have been very up and down. She was incredibly unkind and he didn’t do anything about it. We walked n eggshells constantly. We worked hard at the relationship so we could see the grandkids but we saw behaviours that would like lead to elder abuse as nothing ever got better. We discussed openly our feelings about their lack of trust in us as grandparents and weaponising the grandchildren until I was suicidal. I had to step back. So we don’t see our son or grandkids anymore. We hadn’t put our own mask on before helping others – so sad but after 12!years of working on it and debasing ourselves we had to stop.
Hi Mary, Your response sounds so familiar to my situation with my now 35 year old newly married daughter. Colicky, diagnosed with ADHD at an early age and very difficult to raise. There was always drama from either the tags on her clothing bothering her to various issues causing anxiety. She married someone who has the same sort of issues with anxiety, but he also has depression, is clingy, arrogant and still completely dependent financially on his parents. From how I know my daughter she tends to have one person, it use to be me, she would constantly run to and complain to about all her problems and vilify anyone who put up boundaries against her behavior. That person is him now and I am happy to not fill that role in her life, however it seems she now doesn’t have a purpose for me and we rarely see each other. She lives 5 miles away. I have told her how I feel hurt and disrespected and she gets very defensive and brushes it under the rug. She is extremely nice and charming at times, however it’s always right before asking for a favor. Since being aware of this and her disrespectful behavior I have said no to watching her pets, etc… she gets distant and goes to her husband to gain his support against me. We use to go out a lot shopping, day trips, meals, now we never do. She’s my only child. She has sucked the life out of me with the years of drama. You mentioned elder abuse….she use to say, before marriage, that she would love to have a house with an ADU for me when I got older. Over the last several years I started feeling unsafe with that idea. The emotional ups and downs and lashing out at me is not something I want.
This article is exactly what I needed to read today. Thanks for reminding me I am not alone in this struggle of loving with boundaries. It is the toughest thing I ever done. So wearing and time consuming but as you stated necessary to save myself and other family members.
I am glad I came across your article. I have been emotionally detaching from my 35 year old daughter since I slowed down and became aware of behaviors which were concerning. She was diagnosed with ADHD at an early age and was exhausting to raise. But it’s more than ADHD. Lots of drama and being a victim of one thing or another and blaming others. As she got older she became more arrogant and if she was held accountable she would eliminate someone from her life (her father, grandmother). I noticed a lack of empathy and the daughter who always said she would have a home with a granny flat for me to live in when I got older, become someone whom I now feel I would be afraid to be elderly around. She doesn’t show compassion for me and is short with me, jumping on things I say that are just conversational. I don’t enjoy her company anymore. She can be very charming and has a beautiful smile so people are drawn to her. She shows me that side of her…but it’s only right before she asks for something. Maybe she was always this way but I didn’t see it. I know her father is a narcissist. Does it run in families? She is newly married to a man who is nice, however at 35 still dependent of his well off parents. He is entitled and very clingy….now my daughters and my relationship is minimal because of whatever dynamics are going on between them. I vacillate between being sad that we aren’t close anymore and relieved that she is immersed in her new marriage and I don’t have to deal with her behavior. I have been putting down boundaries and it just makes the distance between us wider. These are the reasons why your concept of detaching makes sense. This relationship has been painful for me and for my own well being I need to detach..
Thank you for this meaningful advice. I noted as I scanned through some of the reponses some degree of negativism toward parents generally. While I am certain that in some cases that skepticism is justified, I have also noticed (I work with younger people in my job) that there has been a decline in valuing of parents and their behavior generally for perhaps four or five decades. I won’t generalize to generations.
Let’s just say that at one time, one parent in most families could be at home, and at that time, I believe long-term appreciation for parenting, with growing approval as children experienced life and shared some of the things their parents went through in the process of being parents, tended to grow. Today, with a marriage failure rate of around half, families with both parents working around half, the ability to afford a home for new first-time buyers plummeting and national conditions and “harmony” degrading rather notably, changing climate most are at least somewhat fearful about, and an expanding wealth gap, there is a tendency to have a less rosy outlook. Some of that combination of factors results in a feeling of needing someone to blame, perhaps, because we have continued to sell our children (both at home and in schools) on the potential that the American Dream still exists. Combining all the factors has been a recipe for resentment all around, perhaps, for both parents and children.
My son and I have recently had this conversation. He is 26, unemployed but working ever onward to the potential of hitting the launch button on his business ideas, and shared with me some of the ideas I have included. He feels betrayed that the life he expected to see and the one he and his generation are seeing is different. He pointed out that both at school and at home, the parents and teachers doing the talking didn’t appear to know just how fast the world was changing.
Im sorry to hear about this situation as a son who is in an identical situation I can say that it’s a generational thing. My mum is 68 and I am 38 im not sure if this is a similar age difference but this generational difference would be the biggest change in who parents and their offspring are as people in all of history I think. Look how much the world has changed over the last 30-40 years it’s a lot for us to grow up in this environment that’s goes so against who we are as humans (we only need to necessities to be happy food,water,shelter,love). The huge shift in mass communication and being influenced by external sources makes us prone to being Influenced against our parents advice because we will always find what we wanna hear somewhere else, leading to a massive problem of not hitting problems head on and having a massive avoidance complex as we have a million distractions (ie drugs and other like minded preople to find comfort in and find others deep in denial Whats really going on) our generation doesn’t understand what we have done in the way of choices and actions ro lead us into this mess. I think a major factor of this would be the introduction of the helicopter parent in the 90’s. We lost the idea that being a parent is a choice not just for the individual to ‘have a child’ or give their parents a grand child parents started controlling their children so ‘they’ didnt have any headaches and they didn’t seem a
Bad parent to others in the community this has contributed a lot to people our generation feeling like ‘why did you hav e me’? You clearly weren’t prepared for all the possible outcomes of having a child and we feel like you only signed up for being a parent for 20 years only we hit a certain age early 20’s we start to feel a burden when we haven’t been taught to neccesary life skills navigate as a adult. Advice would be try to understand him as a human being without trying to understand where ‘I’ went wrong. It’s not about u in this instance. Put away all of the sentiment of what you have done for him and what ‘u’ might have done wrong. Unfortunately being a parent is a multi phase responsibility not just the generic toddler and first day at school dream you were sold
I find it shocking that people here in the comments think it’s ok to put blame on the parents for bad choices made by their ADULT children. That is so wrong. Most parents do their best and nobody is perfect but even bad parents can’t be blamed for bad choices made by adults. We are all accountable for our own actions and not the actions or other adults whether they are our children or not
we have gotten so far away from one of the Ten commandments that says, “Honor your father and mother.”
I’m the kid… Born in the mid 90s, I got into drugs early and suffered a severe schizoaffective episode that lasted years, and probably have BPD. Despite that, I graduated university and started my own company, then moved out at 25. When I moved out, it was during COVID and I had believed, probably due to some schizophrenic disease, that my parents would become aliens, demons, or something of the like after taking the vaccine. I thought it was the apocalypse, and it would happen to everyone. I lived in terror basically every day.
I became estranged living downtown, renting an apartment, paying bills, slowly becoming the “successful adult” that my parents wanted me to be. One night, after months of phone calls begging to see me again, I went for dinner with my parents after not seeing them for years. Truly, part of the reason I didn’t want to see them again is because I realized how much healthier I was without them. I feel that I suffered a lot of belittling by my mother and sisters growing up, to the point where I might have classified myself some kind of slave, but when I left home, my mind started to clear and I started to become confident in myself. I was thriving and happier than ever. After we reunited, the phone calls from my mom would become more frequent, including the belittling statements and telling me that I wasn’t good enough, in her own words.
At around 28, I cracked and I dismantled my company and started to live off my earnings and credit. My grandmother had become ill and at 90 years old living alone, someone needed to look after her, and I needed a place to stay. So I lived with her until my parents eventually put her in a nursing home and sold her house, leaving me homeless. While I lived there, I hopped from job to job, getting scammed at one job, and physically assaulted at another, overworked at the third (something like a 20-hour shift I was asked to work) and eventually “time was up.” My parents had no sympathy for me because I lived rent-free for a year and with my girlfriend to boot. When we were kicked out, my girlfriend left me, and my plea to move back home was rejected. My parents are very well off but my mom suggested I find a shelter because I should be in a better place than I am now, and also that she thinks I’m disrespectful, drudging up some outburst I had maybe a year prior when I was at my lowest.
Anyways, I think that this article was her playbook. It’s the detachment of love you’re speaking about, and while she swears she loves me, I just don’t understand how a mother could put her child on the street. The fact was that actually, fourth time was the charm, and the job I got just before I was kicked out was the one that stuck, and I’m still working there today. But I probably would have been fired if I didn’t receive support from the very amazing person who gave me a bed to sleep in when my parent’s wouldn’t. This is all sugarcoating! I’m fine to call it what it is, which is that the unconditional love is gone, and the love is no more. People who practice this rhetoric towards their children simply don’t love them anymore, and that’s very sad but should be called what it is. She doesn’t like me anymore and frankly, after everything I’ve heard her say about me, about her husband, about her sister or others, I don’t think I like her either. My mother can be very cold when she wants to be, and it’s those mothers that I think this sort of rhetoric will appeal to… I’m on my own again and don’t think I’ll ever feel the need to reach out to people who practice wilfull abandonment of their children. I don’t think my mom wants to see me either.
Mine emotionally detached at a very young age. Guess they were ahead of the curve because I’m in my 40’s, late diagnosed ADHD – so now that gets blamed for everything instead of laziness, being a drama queen or general incompetence. Actually, those words sometimes still come up too – just less frequently since the diagnosis.
All I ever wanted was to know they had my back, so I kept them in the loop on most things – they crapped all over the majority of the things I talked about doing – then I wouldn’t do them out of fear and the cycle repeated. I didn’t want to be bailed out “for doing something stupid,” just wanted to feel like someone had my back without judgement, if things went wrong.
I am now just the inconvenient means of accessing their grandchild – and I’ve had to step in a couple of times when they’ve tried some of their “parenting” tactics on my child, because I want him to grow up to be confident in himself while also knowing that Dad’s got his back if he finds himself in trouble.
The less I share, the better the relationship is. So I guess that’s the way it has to be.
Wow… to me that’s not love worn away. That’s love withdrawn, if they ever had the capacity for empathy and caring.
This is a deeply moving and thoughtfully written article that touches on the often-unspoken challenges of parent-child relationships. The piece does an excellent job of exploring the complexities of love, boundaries, and emotional fatigue with both sensitivity and clarity.
I particularly appreciate how it validates difficult experiences while offering insight and compassion, encouraging reflection and understanding rather than judgment. Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt and insightful exploration—it is both comforting and enlightening for anyone navigating the delicate dynamics of family relationships.
This is such a powerful and honest piece. Parenting a struggling adult child can be emotionally exhausting, and the idea of “necessary detachment” really resonates—it’s not about giving up, but protecting both yourself and the rest of the family. Setting boundaries while still offering support is such a delicate balance, and your examples show how painful yet necessary it can be. Thank you for addressing this with so much understanding and empathy.
I realize some of what I’m saying has been covered. As an adult child of parents who were extremely abusive and have read a lot of articles like this. I wish there was an article that said if you abused and neglected and didn’t protect your children, then you need to figure out how to repair that damage and stop gaslighting them.
I am that miserable adult but who at the very least has job hopped. I am not a drug addict or have required any financial assistance. I am angry bc there was no emotional support for life’s common problems. There was a chaotic upbringing that I thought I managed to overcome and as it turns out I feel as though I unraveled in adulthood. My parents are dismissive to the core issues I feel about feeling alone, isolated, no accomplishments celebrated. I began a vicious cycle of self sabotage. Spending money on clothes although I am now debt free I had to learn tough financial lessons bc there was zero dialogue in the home about anything. I was never asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents didn’t know my major in college. I am completely self reliant but sad and bitter. They view me in the way you describe this and that’s fine. I’m going my own way and trying to find stability where I feel that their abandonment was a cause of much inner turmoil.