I’m hurt my cold son tries to push me away

DEAR BEL,

MY HEART is so sore this morning. Happily married for 40 years, we have three wonderful sons, all married and living quite near. I host family lunches around once every six weeks to promote family unity and everyone seems to get on, including the wives and children.

My problem is my eldest son. He seems perfect: good-looking, intelligent with a top job, a lovely wife and a perfect house. His two children are beautiful and accomplished. Although I have a good relationship with him he rarely invites us to his house — we normally have to invite ourselves.

He is always cordial but I never feel actively welcomed. I try to go to swimming lessons with him and the kids on Saturday on my own to have 30 minutes with him to chat.

We have a small London flat where, after three years of not travelling, my husband and I have decided to stay for a couple of months.

Last weekend my son and his family were passing through London on their way to France. I asked him to phone when he arrived. He sent a message to say he was exhausted and would call later. He didn’t. Next morning I sent a reminder and he finally called. I asked what they were doing that day and he said they were going to a restaurant they like.

Taken aback, I told him I was hurt he hadn’t asked us along to see the kids. He exploded . . . ‘it’s not all about you, I want a family lunch, if I had wanted to see you I would have invited you, you are so selfish, etc’.

I said I wanted to see him because I love him and have been missing him and the kids, but it was obvious he did not feel the same.

I’d have thought adding us on to the lunch would have made it more, not less, pleasurable. I cried bitterly after putting the phone down on him as he wouldn’t stop saying hurtful things.

Now I don’t know how to process this. He’s gone away without messaging me. He’s always been a bit of a cold fish and is critical of me and others. I come from a broken family and have done everything in my power to make my family happy. As things stand I don’t feel like seeing my son during the time slot I have been allotted a day before they leave London.

JOANNA

This letter is so sad, and i feel sorry for the pain of rejection you are suffering. But i would be no friend to you if i were to say ‘Oh, you poor thing’ and tell you fibs about family life.

You reveal so much when you say you come from a broken family, then go on to admit the potentially damaging fantasy which lies at the heart of your problem. You say you ‘ have done everything in my power to make my family happy’.

The trouble is, Joanna, nobody can make a family happy. i’m afraid that verb sounds a warning within my brain — that here is a woman full of love making a big mistake in trying to put herself at the control centre of her family.

Your uncut letter tells me just how much money you and your husband have given each of your sons.

But, generous as that is (and so amazingly lucky to have the means), i suggest that such gifts are not a quid pro quo or a favour granted in return for something.

All of us want our offspring to appreciate everything we have tried to do for them, be that driving to football practice or regular help with homework or generous cash. But nobody can demand pay-back.

Please forgive me because i really don’t want to say this — i confess there is a tone in your sad letter which makes

me worry that you are too demanding of the family you adore. How wonderful those shared lunches sound — that is, until you use the phrase, ‘to promote family unity’. Is that really what they are for? Not fun and chat and the companionship of cousins?

Family life isn’t like running a company, you know. Is it possible that your eldest is not really ‘a cold fish’ but an independent man who honestly might not actually want you to turn up at the Saturday swimming because he wants to watch the kids’ progress rather than chat to you? When you write resentfully, ‘I’d have thought adding us on to the lunch would have made it more, not less, pleasurable’ — what are you doing but putting your neediness centrestage, which he calls ‘selfish’?

You will now be thinking of me as mean and cold like your son, but I assure you I’m not. As a mother and grandmother I really do understand those moments when you feel hurt at being left out of the loop. But you cannot coerce affection and attention. My experience tells me that the more relaxed you are, the more your family will want to be with you.

Sending a peremptory text or WhatsApp saying ‘waiting for your call’ (which is what you did) is an instruction not a request.

Assuming a right to be invited to lunch is one way of never being invited in the future.

How blessed you are, compared with so many who write. You love your family and they love you. Why else would they come to those lunches? But I ask you to reflect wisely on a famous short poem by William Blake.

It begins, ‘He who binds to himself a Joy/ Does the winged life destroy.’ You see? Imagine the sweet bird of love handcuffed — and then reflect on the alternative: ‘But he who kisses the Joy as it flies / Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.’

For ‘he’ read ‘she’. . . So please don’t sulk, but look forward to seeing your son and his family next time.