Eight Options to Practice Intentional Distancing With Your Family
Reflections on reframing and normalizing family estrangement. Starting with: Family Estrangement ≠ Family Cutoff
I figured the article that I published last Monday, The Relational Consequences of a Trump Vote, would get some pushback.
I got the expected comments from folks that insinuated setting boundaries with family members about their voting for Trump is a really poor reason for changing the rules of a relationship. Several folks mentioned that voting for Trump doesn’t have the implications that I say that it does. Others alluded to the position of privilege that comes with setting boundaries with families and community members, especially for folks who live in highly conservative areas and either don’t have the resources to move, or are so committed to their communities that they don’t want to move.
One person accused me of suggesting to folks to end relationships with Trump voters, despite the fact that I clearly wrote:
“I’m not suggesting that you end these relationships, or cut these people off, or “set those boundaries”. Cutoffs and premature terminations, especially via ghosting, bring their own psychological challenges.”
I got initially frustrated at this person that he didn’t read the damn article.
But then something else occurred to me.
We have a binaried way of thinking about relationships.
I either have a relationship with you.
Or I don’t.
Yesterday, I introduced the work of Dr. Kristina Scharp, professor of communication at Rutgers, one of the premier researchers on the concept of family estrangement. In an interview with the New Yorker, Scharp defined family estrangement as:
“An “intentional distancing” between at least two family members “because of a negative relationship—or the perception of one.”
Anna Russell, the author that interviewed Scharp and others, highlights the story of Amy. Amy, describes an ongoing struggle that many folks who have left Evangelical spaces experienced: a family choosing their religion over a relationship with their family member. Self-discovery and self-exploration were met with the out-of-context quoting of Bible verses, shaming of marital choices (Amy married a Jewish man), and communication that she was going to hell. Amy’s decision to end the relationship with her parents was the culmination of a four year back-and-forth between her and her family.
It’s important to note that Russell’s article was titled, “Why So Many People Are Going No Contact With Their Parents”.
Family estrangement doesn’t mean ending or cutting off relationships.
It can certainly have that outcome. For most folks who decide to go no-contact, that decision comes after years of attempting to negotiate and renegotiate new family expectations, to no avail. The decision to go no-contact is seldom an impulsive one.
But Russell’s (or the editorial team at the New Yorker’s) choice of title reinforces the cultural narrative of binaried relationships.
You either have a relationship with your parents. Or you don’t.
As Russell describes, family estrangement is an ongoing family transition that starts by recognizing that values and needs no longer align.
In yesterday’s article, I named eight spectrums that Scharp invites us to consider that evaluates the functioning of relationships and families with adult children. (Read more about those spectrums in yesterday’s article.)
For instance, in my 20s, I made the decision that I wanted to live in a big city that wasn’t in Texas, partially to create some distance from my ex’s family, and partially because I wanted to explore a different, more urban part of the US. My family was committed to staying in Texas, a place that I was growing deeply discouraged by. My ex and I impacted the family system by changing the physical distance between us.
Family estrangement also involves clarifying and changing the rules of engagement for family relationships.
When I left, my parents and I discussed the new implications of the new relationship. I would see them once a year for a week for the holidays. (It turns out, airfare is especially expensive when you are earning an entry-level salary.) I would also be diminishing the frequency with which I was able to talk to them. They were sad about the arrangements, and I know that they wish that our values and vision for life were more aligned. But they respected my decisions, and have kept to the agreements that we’ve made.
In a lot of ways, my family estrangement process has involved a more typical “launching” process. I haven’t depended on my parents for many of my adult decisions, and they have by and large rooted me on. The few times that my parents (my mom mostly) have asked me about religion, they do it from a place of curiosity; my mom, despite attending an Evangelical church, has a special gift for asking me about my relationship with religion in a way that isn’t evangelizing or shaming me by threatening me with hell or worrying about my salvation.
I’ve expressed to both of my parents about my desire to not play the overfunctioning, family therapist that I played as a child, including during times that tried to induct me into those roles as an adult. They listened, we made agreements about how to do the relationship different, and we’ve followed through.
I got lucky in that regard.
Frank, author of the Substack Estranged, makes the following observation about the New Yorker article in her own interview with Dr. Monica Cardenas:Russell also interviewed Amy’s parents, who say they want to reconnect. But I think this brings up something that is not well understood about family estrangements in adulthood: the person who has been cut off often will say they're willing “to do anything” to reconnect.
But the truth is that even if they say they are, they're actually not.
They're not actually willing to do anything, because “anything” would require a sustained change in behavior.
So, even if they try to move forward, if the person who's been cut off continues to be emotionally abusive or manipulative or whatever it was that caused the cutoff in the first place, then that person isn’t really willing to do “anything.” Because they either aren’t willing or aren’t able to do the one thing that could make the relationship possible.
So in the case of the parents in the New Yorker article, they say they want the relationship, but are they willing to change their behavior going forward? It's not clear.”
For many folks, family estrangement is an escalation strategy that follows a request from adult children to parents to change their behavior, and an unwillingness from the parents to change.
The reasons for choosing family estrangement as an option are numerous, and deeply personalized. As I alluded to in last Monday’s article, quite a few folks who voted for Harris are exploring the family estrangement policy with their families because a Trump vote, to them, represents an alignment with misogyny and racism. Family estrangement represents an area in which adult children can control the shielding of their own children from bullying, violent, and conspiratorial language and behavior.
The way that I most commonly see family estrangement with adult children is when a parent has an active, ongoing substance issue, or a severe mental health disorder or relationship process that they refuse treatment for. An adult child might initiate intentional distancing, to use Kristina Scharp’s language, as a way to remove themselves from additional, unwanted emotional or financial burden.
summarizes in yesterday’s Substack:“Estrangement isn’t new. We may not have had the terminology or context to discuss it before, but it has always been happening…Now, there’s more space for people to openly share their experiences.”
So let’s get practical.
What does family estrangement look like in real time?
In her 2017 article “You’re Not Welcome Here”: A Grounded Theory of Family Distancing”, Kristina Scharp interviews 52 adult children about their strategies for intentionally distancing from their families of origin. The article lists eight strategies that family members practice when intentionally distancing from their larger families due to family chaos, abuse and other forms of bad behavior, and wildly differing values.
Reducing the amount of contact. This was the most common strategy that her participants described. Some adult children communicated this assertively and directly, while others passively diminished the frequency of interactions.
Decreasing meaningful contact. Adult children limited both the breadth of available conversations, and the depth of the interaction, choosing to leave out important, vulnerable information about themselves.
Moving and staying away. Adult children moved out of the home or to a different state or region of the country. Some adult children also developed strategies to ensure that they wouldn’t return home for the holidays or to erase their digital footprint so their parents couldn’t find them.
Decreasing feelings of closeness or love. Adult children minimized their own emotional reactions, providing flat affect during interactions with family members.
Increasing negative affect. Some adult children went the other direction and openly expressed their anger and disapproval to their parents or family members.
Reducing relationship effort. Adult children avoided attempts to reconnect, and refused reconciliation efforts when they could not be avoided. Some adult children communicated their lack of desire to be a part of the family.
Ignoring role expectations. Adult children actively rejected roles expected of them as adult children. Some adult children limited access to grandchildren, while others shirked the provision and active care for their parents during the aging process.
Delegitimizing. A few young adults relied on legal emancipation. Others referred to family members by the first name, rather than their familial titles (mom, dad, etc.). Other adult children changed their legal name.
Again, these are options that you have for intentionally creating distance within your family of origin. The quantity and severity to which you access these tools are up to you, and dependent on numerous factors, including your own financial and socioeconomic stability, the stage of life of the family that you’re building, and the larger support network that your family is embedded within.
For instance, I’ve chosen options 1, 3, and 7 as my ways of intentionally distancing from my family given both our differing values and my desire to no longer play the unhealthy role I played in my family. I have a client that I’m working with who has chosen in the last few years to decrease meaningful contact with her parents, while still agreeing to have a moderate quantity of interactions with them. I’ve worked with others who practice family estrangement through the increase of negative affect, even though they also choose to keep a consistent frequency of communication.
Family estrangement could also be a temporary, or seasonal decision. For instance, my investment in ignoring role expectations was centered around no longer playing the family or relationship therapist. It’s been quite some time since my family has inducted me into that role, so I feel comfortable spending a bit more time with them, and will likely fly to Texas at another point in 2025 to help them pack and organize some things.
Family estrangement does not mean cutoff, although cutoff could be an option for folks.
All options for family estrangement come with hard choices, grief, and tension. But rather than thinking about family estrangement from a binary perspective—Are we in a relationship or are we not?—I hope this article provides a framework to consider the myriad of options you have to advocate for a healthy family system as an adult, even if that includes intentionally distancing.
If you’d like some help navigating the family estrangement process, Julia and I would love to offer our family coaching services. Learn more by emailing us at sexvangelicals@gmail.com.
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia