The Family Bond That Doesn’t Necessarily End When Contact Does

You can stop speaking to a family member.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship stops mattering.

Research on family estrangement has found that cutting off contact may end arguments, visits, and phone calls, but it can leave something more complicated behind: sadness, longing, and, for some people, a desire to reconnect years later.

Cornell University sociologist Karl Pillemer conducted the first large national survey examining family estrangement in the United States.

He found that 27% of American adults were estranged from at least one relative — roughly 67 million people.

Pillemer has suggested that number may be low because people find estrangement hard to discuss openly.

About 10% of those surveyed were estranged from a parent or child, while about 8% were estranged from a sibling.

Those numbers show that family estrangement is far from unusual.

What happened emotionally after the separation may be even more revealing.

Ending Contact Doesn’t Always End The Connection

Walking away from a difficult relationship can end an immediate source of conflict.

But Pillemer found that estrangement didn’t necessarily bring emotional relief.

Many people continued to experience deep sadness years later. Some longed to reconnect. Others wished they could go back and handle the conflict differently.

Family estrangement was also associated with anxiety, depression, and social isolation.

That doesn’t mean reconciliation is always possible or advisable. Families can separate for serious reasons, and some relationships may be harmful or unsafe.

But research suggests that ending contact doesn’t automatically erase the relationship’s emotional importance.

The communication may stop.

The psychological connection can remain.

That looks very different from how many friendships end.

Friendships Often Fade Without A Fight

Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst examined how people’s social circles change by following about 1,000 adults over seven years.

Fewer than half of the people who had originally been part of someone’s close personal network remained there seven years later.

That sounds dramatic, until you consider how those relationships disappeared.

They didn’t necessarily end with arguments, betrayals, or declarations that the friendship was over.

Life changed.

People switched jobs. They moved to different neighborhoods. Their routines changed, and the people they regularly encountered changed with them.

Old relationships faded while new ones took their place.

Most people recognize the pattern.

A coworker can be someone you speak with every day until one of you changes jobs. A neighbor can become a close friend until somebody moves. Parents may form friendships around their children’s activities and gradually lose contact when the children grow older.

There doesn’t have to be a moment when either person decides the friendship is finished.

Sometimes it simply isn’t maintained.

Family relationships tend to operate differently.

A former coworker eventually becomes someone you used to know.

An estranged brother is still your brother.

Blood Carries A Different Meaning

The difference isn’t necessarily about who you love more.

Someone may feel closer to a lifelong friend than to a sibling. A trusted friend may know far more about a person’s daily life than a parent or cousin does.

Yet research into helping behavior suggests family relationships can take on special importance when the stakes become extremely high.

When people are asked whom they would help with an ordinary favor, their decisions can depend heavily on who needs the assistance.

Put the same choice into a life-or-death situation, however, and biological relationships become more influential.

That helps illustrate why estrangement can be emotionally complicated.

Family relationships aren’t maintained solely by enjoying someone’s company. They are also tied to childhood, identity, shared history and the knowledge that the relationship itself cannot simply be reassigned to somebody else.

You can make another friend.

You cannot acquire another biological mother, father, brother, sister, or child in quite the same way.

That doesn’t mean people are obligated to maintain family relationships regardless of circumstances. Nor does it mean estrangement is always a mistake.

Sometimes distance is necessary.

The key distinction is that necessary and painless aren’t the same.

A person can believe ending contact was the right decision and still grieve the relationship that was lost.

They can miss someone they don’t want back in their daily life.

They can wish circumstances had been different without believing reconciliation would be healthy.

They can keep thinking about a relationship years after the last conversation.

Friendships certainly can leave lasting grief, too. Some become as significant as family, and losing a close friend can be deeply painful.

But the research into estrangement points to something distinctive about family ties.

Contact can end without providing the clean emotional ending people might expect.

The phone stops ringing. Holidays are spent apart. Years pass.

Yet the person remains part of the family story.

The relationship has gone quiet.

It hasn’t necessarily gone away.