No Contact

I had a number of clients come in reporting they have chosen No Contact with a family member. When I hear their reason I often think the behavior of the family member doesn’t match the client’s response.

How do I handle that in therapy? I support my clients. I don’t have to agree or understand their reasons. I support them in their goals and decisions. I might explore it a little more to help me understand, but it’s their life. They have decided the quality of their life is better without that person in it. So it is. I don’t have to get it to support it.

Trends are often the result of a prior imbalance in society, and my generation has enough stories of spouses who stayed in abusive relationships and children who endured unspeakable atrocities with no respite. And so, as a society, we correct. And more often than not, overcorrect. But don’t worry, we will overcorrect the overcorrection; we always have.

Even for those who have chosen no contact with me in this life, I support it. Everyone gets to decide who is a value add to them. Hell, I’ve wanted to go No Contact with myself at various times. Actually, I have gone No Contact with myself on a few occasions. Self medicating, numbing myself with chemicals, is exactly that; No Contact with Self. So I’m not bitter or resentful of the Larryless lives out there. You’re preaching to the choir.

I’m currently living in a period of time of High Contact with my mom and dad. I’m part of the team that is assisting their end of life process. Neither one of them is independent anymore; they both require a variety of measures to get them through any given week. But by today’s accepted standards I could justify No Contact with both of them. Addiction and codependency occupied enough of their time and attention that I’ve had to go back and retake some emotional developmental work as an adult. I don’t blame them for that; they were working off a partial script themselves. But the impact was tangible, nonetheless.

During my middle years I can remember seasons of occasional contact with them. Every week or two I might check in, briefly, for a conversation. It was usually surface stuff. I don’t recall reaching out to them for life advice or financial help. It was more of a “what’s new” conversation. Everything’s the same? OK, I’ll talk to you soon. Dad and I would occasionally do a wood or basket project, but our conversations weren’t deep. Mom wanted to talk about deep things, but mainly because it made her feel a certain way to have deep conversations.

As they started on a gradual slope of decline, my contact began to increase. Not out of duty or necessity. It just did because it was. But I’ll tell you this: Watching someone you care out move from independence to dependence is pretty unnatural. I came into this world depending on them for everything. Now I set limits and boundaries for the ones who raised me. I’ve taken the car keys from the man who took mine countless times for being a jackass.

Watching my girls grow up and move from dependence to independence was natural. Yes, it was hard watch them grow up and out on a few levels. I struggled with dating and thongs and driving and college and moving out. I’ve felt a melancholy at four weddings, remembering diapers, bottles, and awkward steps. My best guess is I’ve got two more weddings to go, and I expect the same there. But that progression is natural. Because that’s what it is: progress. By design. When we moved the baby into the dorm this past year I cried on the way home. There were three reasons for that. I was sad, I was happy, and I’m not going to tell you the third reason.

Maybe one of the reasons that progression is easier is because the subject of the progress wants it too. The girls were all eager to get on with life and explore the big world in front of them.

But having High Contact with people moving the other direction is different. They’re not enjoying the ride. It’s a roller coaster that ends at a brick wall. We all know it. Nobody gets off that coaster and gets back in line.

So that’s one thing those of you who have No Contact with parents won’t have to see or get to see, depending on your perspective. I guess my perspective is somewhere in the middle of that. There’s things I’ve seen and done with my folks as they’ve aged that I wish I could unsee and undo. Other things have been priceless. But I’m not doing this based on benefit math. Nor am I doing it out of obligation or because I’m a good son (a definition that eludes me).

So why am I doing it? I’m not 100% certain. But my best guess is because I love them and that’s what is in front of me. It seems and feels natural and right. And the value I assign them is not based on what they have done or didn’t do.

They just are and so it just is.