CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Radical Acceptance in Families That Won't Meet You Halfway

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

How do you keep giving to a relationship that isn't giving much back? How do you know when you've finally done enough? In this Q&A episode, Whitney answers two questions that arrived from very different places but land in the same spot: radical acceptance. First, a woman exhausted by in-laws who never make the drive, never offer help, and never seem to notice the effort going one direction. Second, a woman whose gone no contact with parents who keep leaving her voicemails claiming they have no idea why.Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and this is the podcast that will help you have better adult family relationships. Today is Thursday, which means I am answering two of your questions. These questions are really about two very different family situations, but the moment I read them back to back, I realized that these people are kind of asking the same question. And that is, how am I supposed to keep giving to a relationship that isn't giving much back? And how do I know when I've finally done enough? I think this is a question that a lot of us have about difficult family relationships. So today we're going to talk about radical acceptance, which is actually going to be our topic next month in August inside the family cycle breakers club.

And radical acceptance is not about approval or giving up or deciding that the other person was right all along. It is the practice of seeing a relationship clearly as it actually is. And as the other person has actually shown up. Radical acceptance is the practice of seeing a relationship clearly. clearly as it actually is. Instead of the version that you keep hoping, it will someday become. And I'll be honest with you, I think that this is one of the hardest things that we have to do in life because it almost always means grieving the loss of something that you really, really wanted and have been continuing to hope for. One of the questions today is about in-laws and effort

and being the family that's always expected to do the driving. And the other is about a parent estrangement. And what it means when the people you stepped away from seem to genuinely have no idea why. Before we get into it, if there's a question you'd like me to take on in a future episode, you can always send it to me by email written out or as a voice note to Whitney at callinghome.com. I'm going to go ahead and read you that first question. My husband and I have a rocky relationship with his family since we started dating over 11 years ago. His whole family lives a few hours from our home and we moved away for work when we got married nine years ago.

His sister had a really hard time accepting me into the family and would frequently make comments that I didn't hang out with the cousins enough help in the kitchen because she yelled at me when I did and that my husband shouldn't have married me for these outlandish reasons she came up with. His parents just brushed it off and said, it's just how she is. Why can't you all get along? I hate having kids who don't talk to each other, etc. I say this to say it damaged the relationship, and we stepped back from being close with any of them and stopped trying to drive hours to see them or attend family events. We also stopped sharing big life events or personal info with them, and they didn't come chasing after us. His parents continued to prioritize the siblings that live close, and my mother-in-law, watches their kids every day while we send ours to daycare as we have no other help. And we work full time. My mother-in-law has never offered to come babysit or really made any

offers to help in any way when it comes to our son. We do live far away, so I understand that, but just wanted to give perspective that nothing has been offered to us. They send us cards for birthdays and invite us all to their events, but they usually only see us if we drive to them. They have only been to our home of eight years twice before my son was born. We had all kind of accepted things, and it wasn't a problem until the adult children all started having kids in the last three years. We have met our nieces and nephews, but we couldn't make it to all the birthdays, so we give gifts in the mail and wish them well via text.

And during this time, the sister apologized for rejecting me for all those years so that we would take family photos with her new baby. But then essentially went back to ignoring us and expecting us to drive hours of way to all their events and be upset when we prioritized our jobs and child first. When I was pregnant two years ago, my husband told his parents that it would be hard to be close with our children if they didn't put more effort into the relationship and they just kind of said nothing and continued to do nothing. When our son was born, my husband didn't invite them to meet our son for two weeks because they didn't check on us the whole pregnancy and tend to be pushy and grabby with

newborns. My mother-in-law threw a fit over the phone about this boundary and just kept saying, but that's my grandson. And my husband gently explained that we aren't close and he had given them many opportunities to get close before the baby came. I feel this damage to the relationship overall and I didn't intend to hurt them but was in a fragile postpartum state and knew my mother-in-law grabbing my baby would result in more anxiety for me than I could handle at the time. While my son was a newborn, they drove to our house a few times and brought us meals and gifts and seemed interested in us and our baby at that time. Now my son is two, and it's been crickets again since he was about six months old,

other than random text three days before an event, with an invite that we almost always must decline due to the late-noticed and long drive. To us, it's clear they don't put in as much effort as the other siblings, and it's painful that they know nothing about our son unless we send them additional information. I've had friends say it's our job as the out-of-town relatives to drive to them, and I feel conflicted about trying harder to spend more time with them and drive their way versus allowing the relationship to dwindle with their low effort. Even my own family has said that they seem like nice people,

and why don't we just call them more or drive to them instead of expecting them to reach out to us? Overall, it feels like a relationship where we do all the work. Techs call them first, ask them curious questions to keep conversations going, and just tolerate any bad behavior from them. Additionally, my husband and I are both sober, and his family is not. He has told them several times he doesn't like to be around heavy drinking and that we will leave early when other people are drunk,

and every time they seem surprised that we follow through on that. It's hard for us to find anything in common as they just want to do what they want to do and aren't curious about our lives or interests at all. My husband has been really proactive in having hard conversations with his sister and parents when they crossed a boundary or said something hurtful, but it always kind of just results in silence or awkwardness.

How do I know if my in-laws' job, genuinely care or take accountability. How do I know when we've had enough conversations about the low effort or poor relationship? I always feel guilty and wonder if they feel equally rejected by us because they're nice people and I'm sure it makes no sense to outsiders that our relationship sucks, but my husband and I are both tired of putting all the work in and feeling invisible. Their grandson deserves better too. Okay. This is a perfect case for me to say that I think this is a situation where we are not talking about abuse. We are talking about very conflicting perspectives, values, and an understanding about what family relationships are supposed to be like and what

constitutes closeness. Okay. So let's start from the top here. From knowing what I know from this question, I would bet that both sides here have some grievances of. about the relationship. While there have been moments in this dynamic that sound like, yes, there was a clear perpetrator and a clear sort of like victim or someone who did something harmful and the other person was on the receiving end, the rest of this really sounds like people who do not know how to build a close relationship when there is distance because it's not something that they have regularly done in the family. If you have a group that's over here, all lives in the same place. And they have multiple opportunities for touch points and seeing each other

and connecting, especially on a surface level, if that's what the family is used to. So they can kind of pop in and out, see each other, run into each other. Those people can often feel closer just because of their proximity, not necessarily because there is a lot of depth to that relationship. And so when you're looking at a family here that might be more of a low effort family or a family that tends to kind of live on the surface, which can still be great family dynamics, just maybe not what all of us are used to in our families. Those families can struggle with building closeness in other ways, especially with people who they do not have all of those routine interactions and touch points with. And it can make it feel like, gosh, we are struggling so much more to maintain a

relationship with these people because of the distance, and we don't know how to connect with them. And this person reiterates throughout this question about how everyone is nice and fine. And yes, they have some differences around how they like to spend their time and, you know, some of them drink and some of them don't. And all of this really sounds like a lot of run-of-the-mill family conflict in terms of like values, what constitutes closeness, what expectations are, et cetera. So this is what brings me to the radical acceptance piece here. You do not live close to these people. Okay. So that means that you are going to have to decide how much you want to invest in these relationships and in what ways. And you're going to have to feel okay.

with the consequences of that. Now, that might mean that you do considerably more driving, planning, commuting than you would like to. And there's a downside to that. But the upside is that you feel like your child gets to spend a lot more time with their family and they get to be part of this unit that is getting together. Now, if you choose to do that, you have to accept that the. that has been your choice because you are doing it as a means to seek this ends, right? I want to

spend time around these family members. I want my child to know them. This is what I have to do in order to make that happen, which means that you ultimately have to relinquish some of this resentment that you have if you are making that choice. Would it be wonderful if your in-laws always drove to you? Yeah. It would be. great if they could live closer to you. It would be great if they would offer help with your child. All of these things would be wonderful. But unfortunately, when it comes to families, we have to live with the hand that we are dealt. And some people get more than others. And I say this about a situation that clearly isn't, this isn't an abusive relationship. This is a dynamic where you are saying this is not the way

that I want things to be. I have some feelings about it. We have tried to express those feelings, and it feels like the other person isn't going to change. Now, if you say, I'm not willing to give so much because they're not giving me anything. And I feel like that resentment and the lack of reciprocity here is just too much for me to bear. It doesn't feel like a good relationship to me. It doesn't feel healthy. That's also a choice that you can make. That you're saying, I radically accept that my in-laws are not traveling to see me. They don't pick up the phone. They don't make much of an effort. And we are not going to do that either. We've decided that we just want to focus on building our family unit that we have here in the city where we live. And we also understand that there

will be some consequences for that choice, ultimately that our children may not know their cousins or their aunts and uncles or their grandparents as much. And that's also going to to be a consequence for the family that isn't making a choice to come visit. What I bet is happening here is that a lot of you in this family have resentment and unmet expectations for one another. And everyone is kind of hoping that the other person will do the thing that they want. So your in-laws are probably saying, gosh, they never come here. They never want to visit.

it, they don't just get in the car, their child is missing out, and you're saying the same thing. And both of you are kind of right. You know, it sucks to have to commute and travel, and it would be nice if we all lived in the same place and everyone could just get along and get together. And I think that there's two ways of looking at this that you could say, we're busy and we're working and we're over here raising our family. So the people with more time and access like the grandparents should come to us. And they might be on the flip side saying, the whole thing.

families here. Why don't they come to us so that they can see everyone all at one time? That would be more convenient than all of us coming and driving. And again, all of you are right in my book. I think everyone's perspective sounds pretty warranted here. I don't agree with like the comments that your sister-in-law is making to you. Like, no, that sucks. Could have done without that for sure. You have every right to leave family gatherings when there is drinking and you're sober and you don't want to be around the drinking, totally fair. And you guys have communicated that boundary and you've acted on it. And if they want to be upset about that, that's their problem. But all of this other stuff is about I need to accept who my family is and what they're willing to give me and what they're

willing to do. And I need to decide what I am going to do with that reality. and get myself into a comfortable place where I can accept the consequences of my choices because none of this is easy. It's all messy. There's downside to all of it. Like it's, I get it. I have three little kids. It's a pain when I have to like pack them all up to travel somewhere, to see someone. But then you're saying, well, I want to see them and I want to do that part. Now there are others of you that are going to say it is absolutely not worth it to do all that work to go and see my family member because they're horrible to me when I get there and we don't have a good time and it sucks. And I get that too.

But in this specific situation, I wonder if your in-laws also feel like you don't want a relationship with them or like they are intruding or sort of like you're not making an effort as well. It sounds like everybody is feeling some distance here, some conflict, some level of resentment, and just feeling like this isn't ideal. And so if you could start with the acceptance of what is, the empowerment for you to decide and walking through, you know, what are we comfortable with? Maybe we want to visit once a year and anything more than that doesn't feel good for us. Maybe we want to invite them to come. And if they choose not to, come, we extended the invite and we feel good about that. You mentioned in this question that,

you know, you haven't been able to take off work and go for like birthday parties. And so you send a text and a gift. There are people that would be on the receiving end of that because I've spoken to them that would say, I cannot believe that they didn't come out here for my kids, you know, first birthday party. I'm so offended by that. All they did was send a text and a gift. And they would feel like that was an unmet expectation for them. And for you, you're saying, you know what, we have to work. And so everybody has to get better at balancing their expectations, dealing with people being disappointed in them when they're making a choice that they have to make for their family and everybody in the family extending some loving kindness and acceptance to one another

when we are all doing our best to show up in a good way with our extended family members. This is like the imperfect kind of messiness and also acknowledging like your feelings are hurt. You're grieving the loss of something that maybe you thought it would be and now it's not. I think a lot of parents go through this in the early days of having their children. They have this image and so do grandparents about what this is going to look like. And when it doesn't look like that, you go through this stage of trying to reassess and figure that out and kind of take everything in. So give yourself some time there. I think this is ultimately a conversation that can be had, expectations that can be sort of

re-evaluated and I see a world where you guys can get to a place where you feel a little bit better about all of this. Thank you so much for calling in and let's go ahead and get to the next question. I went no contact with my parents about a year ago. It really was something that happened after decades of trying to find some way to have a relationship with them. And then finally feeling like I had absolutely no choice but to cut ties for the sake of myself, my children, and our family. start, I didn't have a good relationship with them growing up, mostly due to significant emotional neglect and high conflict in the household. And it got far worse as a teenager. As a young adult, I left home, moved across the country, and essentially went low contact with them. I didn't

know it was called that at the time. When I would talk, I would gray rock them, again, a term I learned much later in life, for my emotional protection. Fast forward to me getting married and having kids, and I constantly had to put up more and more boundaries with them due to the way they would act and treat us all. My kids started wanting nothing to do with them because they felt emotionally unsafe around their grandparents, which is completely the opposite experience they've had with their paternal grandparents. This has gone on for decades. As my kids are now becoming young adults, I tried having many conversations with my parents about it all over the years,

and they would minimize our concerns or agree to them and then continue the behaviors. And finally, before going no contact, I had two very long and intense conversations with them to try one last attempt to move forward. The call ended with them saying horrible things to me that I won't repeat and hanging up on me. Here's the thing. They have since left me several messages on my phone saying they don't have any idea why I am now no contact with them. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. To me, there's so, so much limited connection through my childhood, limited communication through my young adulthood and my explicit statements of concerns while increasing barriers through my middle age. And lastly, two long conversations to summarize it all.

How do they claim to have no idea? This is not the first time that I have heard something like this. And it seems to be a phenomenon among some estranged parents, especially those that I classify as perpetually estranged parents, which are parents that tend to remember. remain in a cycle of estrangement with their adult child, and they show very little to no signs of having the capacity to reflect, reconnect, and reestablish a relationship with their adult child. With these parents, they are often so cloaked in shame and guilt and embarrassment, and they have walls that are built up so, so high around their own wounding from their own childhood and their own

experiences with their parents and in life, that they actually cannot take in any information that contradicts the way that they feel and the way that they see the world. Their defenses are built up so high that even after you write letters and have long conversations, none of this information seeps in. It's actually very dizzying and disorienting to sit with someone that is like this because you can even show them photos, videos, videos, recordings, and they will continue to double down. And I have had experiences with certain estranged parents like this where there is something like even a police report, CPS filing, someone went to jail. And the parent is still saying that didn't happen. That didn't happen like that. That's not the way I remember it. I have seen

parents argue with literal screenshots of conversations or even voicemails where they were the one that left the recording. And then there's all these explanations for like how it was doctor, that's not actually what they said. You're interpreting it wrong. Like, in the face of concrete evidence, they still cannot admit that that's what happened. And there's a lot of Darvo that happens in these situations, right? Which is when someone is denying it, they are accusing you, they are reversing victim and offender, and then all of a sudden you become the one that actually did something wrong. So in these cases where there's been recordings or screenshots or things like that, the parent will start to say, like, I can't believe you would share that. I can't believe

you recorded me. You start to be put on trial for a different behavior and crime than what was actually being discussed. And this is ultimately a protection strategy on behalf of the parent. I think there's also a lot of psychologically motivated forgetting that is another type of protective mechanism. This is very different from people who actually don't remember things, okay? And there is certainly both any adults on the planet can have a different recollection of an event. Our memories are not like a tape that we just press play on and everything comes back exactly how it was. We all have different perspectives and understandings of our memories. And it's very normal for a parent and their child to have different understandings and

perspectives about a memory. What we are talking about here is a complete disagreement on something ever even happening. So a parent saying, I don't remember it like that or no, I think I used these words or, know we were living in this house when that happened and not here is completely different than like this one saying, you've never told me what's wrong. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. We have no idea. When you have many, many situations and letters and conversations and things documented that you know happened, you can't, you can't as an adult write a, let's say, a multi-page letter, and I've seen this happen, and I've seen the actual conversation of an adult

sending a long, long letter, the parent responding back to it. This letter has 100 examples of what went wrong in the relationship. And then six months later, the parent is saying, you've never told me why you're upset with me. That is not a difference in, like, memory or perception. This is a is an actual fact that we have evidence of that you had an exchange of words. You received this information. You allege in the moment that you read it or you were sitting in front of me while I said these words to you. And now you're telling me that that never happened. It's very difficult to have a conversation with someone when they're responding that way to objective facts. Now, your parent could say, I know we had a conversation, but I still don't understand why you're not speaking to me.

I'm still not clear on what's wrong in our relationship, or I don't see the issues in the same way that you do. That is very different. So for this adult, I would say, like, it is very hard to have a relationship with someone that you are living in a completely different reality from them. And it sounds like you're trying to make sense of this in your mind and to say, like, how is it possible? Like, I did explain myself. How do they not understand that I did do this? I have proof. I have it there. And I would say, you know, this is a tactic that's often used in relationships to disorient you

and to make you feel confused. You know, it ultimately becomes gaslighting when you have objective proof that. that a conversation occurred and someone keeps telling you that you've never had that conversation. That's like you and I recording, you know, you're watching a recording of me saying these words. And then after you say to me, I watched this video that you did about this question. And I say, I never did that. What are you talking about? That video doesn't exist.

And you try to convince the other person that their reality, it's like not true. You know, that is fundamentally gaslighting when that happens as a, pattern over time within a relationship. So it makes complete sense why you are so confused by this. I want you to know that you are not the first and only person to have experienced this. And I think sometimes it helps to go back when you have these feelings come back to you of like, did I really not explain myself? Do not say, go back to the proof that you have. Go back to those written explanations. Go back to the conversations that you had and be like, no, I was sitting in the living room. You know, there was a witness. So-and-so was there. It was on this day. We were here. I was wearing this.

Like sometimes you really just have to bring yourself back to the reality of what happened to ground yourself in that moment and remind yourself that it did happen. And what your parent is potentially saying is that I have blocked that out because it threatens who I am and how I feel about myself and it makes me feel unsafe. I don't want to remember that that happened. I didn't commit it to memory because it was overwhelming and traumatic in the moment. And I wasn't listening to what you were saying or I completely reject all of those conversations. And that's why I'm saying that I don't know because I'm trying to give you another opportunity to give me another explanation that is acceptable to me. So I hope that that helps because it's not about that like you didn't explain yourself.

It's it's typically something else. Thank you so much for sending in that question. Both of these questions in the end are really asking for permission to stop auditioning for people, to stop showing them, you know, what you are willing to accept. And for you to take really like radical inventory of what you're willing to give, what you've, already done in the relationship and what you want to accept, right? And this doesn't mean that you are wrong to want more from these relationships or to wish that the other person could do something different. It's just that you stop responding and pouring energy into the relationship that you wish

you had and start responding to the one that's actually in front of you. You get to accept what is and then decide from that. place how much you still want to offer in that relationship. And I think for both of these questions, that is going to look very, very different. If either of these questions reminded you of your own life, this is exactly the kind of stuff that we work through inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, our membership community at Calling Home, and we are going to be diving deeper into radical acceptance. That is the topic that got the most votes for next month. So we're going to be covering that for the entire month of August. And this means as a member, you will get four articles, four

worksheets, four scripts to help you in difficult conversations and four videos to walk you through what it means to radically accept your family, how you can use radical acceptance to actually make your family relationships better or to decide when distance or estrangement might be necessary in your specific situation. You can join the family cycle breakers. You can join the family cycle Breakers Club at Callinghome.co. And as a member, you also get access to our unlimited support groups with licensed therapists. I run several groups a month as well as our other therapists at Calling Home. We would love to see you there. And if something came up for you while you're listening and you want to ask your own question, you can always submit a question to me for a Thursday episode to

Whitney at Callinghome.co. I pick two questions to answer every Thursday. Please do not forget to like, subscribe, leave us a review or a comment on the podcast. I read every single one of them that comes in and it really helps us grow the show and keep it free for you, which is what I want to keep doing. If you're watching this on YouTube, thank you so much. I was really excited to see that we just finally crossed the 5,000 subscriber mark on YouTube. And I'm grateful for all of you that watch there. And for those of you that are listening, thank you so much. I will see you again on Tuesday for another deep dive episode. Thank you. Have a good day. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not

a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.