boundaries in – A woman in her 20s grapples with her mother’s renewed relationship with her abusive father, then abruptly cuts a phone call short after telling her mother she feels resentful. Another reader describes being pulled into a loud, heavy-drinking couple’s social li
When a Nebraska reader told her mother she was “feeling resentful” about her rekindled relationship with the man who abused her, the conversation didn’t end with a plan or an apology. It ended with tears, a hang-up, and a phone turned off.
The reader says she has been estranged from her father since she was 12, and she is now 26. She describes the abuse as “emotional. psychological and physical. ” adding that cutting ties was “good for my well-being.” Then. she says. her mother told her she had reconnected with her father and they were dating again.
The reader says she made her disapproval clear and was vocal about the relationship. Her mother, she writes, believes the daughter is making the problem “much bigger than it has to be.” The mother tells her it “shouldn’t affect me” and assures her she “won’t have to see him.”
But in the call that changed the tone, she says she told her mother that she felt resentful. After she said it, her mother started crying, hung up on her, and turned her phone off. The reader says she didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, but she felt compelled to “speak my truth.”
She also describes the ongoing damage she can’t shake: she doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her mom. yet she feels “hurt and unseen.” Conversations—she says—can be hard even about something as simple as the weather. because the back of her mind is always pulled toward the fact that her mother is attracted to someone who hurt her intentionally. She asks for guidance because she’s at “my lowest point” and wants what she calls a “magic solution. ” even while acknowledging that one doesn’t exist.
Abby’s response zeroes in on the central dilemma: the reader can’t control her mother’s choices. but she can protect herself. Abby asks: “Did your father abuse your mother as he did you?”—noting that the reader didn’t include that detail. Abby says a mother’s duty is to protect her child. and that her and her father “did eventually separate.” At this stage. Abby tells the reader. she is no longer a child. She says the adult now has the ability to protect herself from anyone who tries to abuse her.
Abby also points out that there’s no guarantee the reunion will last. She describes the “price we pay for any decision we make. ” writing that her mother may see “much less of her offspring.” For the daughter. Abby suggests it may take “some sessions with a licensed psychotherapist” to emotionally separate from both parents and heal—adding that the reader “should have had therapy after the abuse you suffered when you were younger.”.
A second letter shifts to a different kind of hurt—social, ongoing, and tied to marriage boundaries. In that note, a reader says her husband met a couple he wanted to socialize with. The reader is described as an introvert; her husband is an extrovert.
She says they began spending time with the couple. but she “has never liked them.” She characterizes them as loud. constantly arguing. and talking over everyone else. She says their drinking is a problem too. and that the man sometimes passes out on the couple’s couch or makes a fool of himself in public.
The conflict, she writes, is not whether her husband wants company. It’s that she’s seriously triggered by their behavior, and her husband still wants to socialize with them. She says she’s fine with him seeing them by himself, but he is unhappy that she won’t go.
In her letter, she adds that the couple “know how I feel” and “they keep inviting me,” leaving her to ask for a way to meet both her husband’s needs and her own.
Abby’s answer is blunt about the expectation of participation. She tells the reader she doesn’t have to be available “whenever they snap their fingers.” The advice is to see the couple less often than her husband does.
Taken together. the letters land on a shared question—what you owe other people when they want access to your time and your presence. especially when that presence carries real harm. In one case, the harm is tied to an abusive past and an emotional rupture in a mother-daughter relationship. In the other, it’s tied to repeated behavior that leaves the reader triggered and the marriage at odds.
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Readers are invited to contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
Dear Abby family estrangement abuse boundaries marriage introvert extrovert emotional separation therapy