CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - The Distant Parent

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Some of the hardest parent relationships to name are the ones that look fine from the outside. Whitney breaks down the distant parent-child relationship - what defines it, what it feels like to grow up never quite being seen, and why trying harder to earn closeness often makes the distance widen.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.

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Calling Home Podcast. This is your podcast for any adult children that are navigating difficult, distant, or strange relationships with their parents. I am so glad you're here today. Before we dive in, I want to let you know about the Family Cycle Breakers Club, our membership community at callinghome.co. If you are looking for a community of people who get it and understand what it's like to have a parent who's physically there but emotionally distant or absent, these are your people. We'd love to have you join us at callinghome.co. Today we're going to be talking about something that's incredibly hard to name and even harder to

address, and that is the distant parent-child relationship in adulthood. These are the relationships that often look fine from the outside. There's probably not a lot of screaming, obvious abuse, no dramatic blowups. Your parent shows up to holidays. They might send a card. They're technically in your life, but you feel like something is missing. There's no real closeness, no emotional intimacy, and no sense that they truly see you or know you. And when you try to explain this to others, you might struggle to even put it into words.

Because what do you say? My parent is nice, but, or we're in contact, but they're there, but they're not really there, you know? today we're going to talk about what defines a distant relationship, what it feels like to grow up and live with a distant parent, and why these relationships are so difficult to navigate in adulthood. So let's start by defining what we even mean by a distant relationship between parent and child. These relationships are characterized by low closeness and often more silence than fighting. There's some contact, but very little intimacy or, connection. And these relationships are much more likely to be neglectful than physically abusive or even emotionally abusive sometimes. They're more emotionally neglectful. And here's something really important about these relationships. If you as the adult child attempt to become closer to the parent, the relationship typically becomes more difficult and conflictual and it results in even more distance.

So let that sink in for a moment. What's happening here is that when you try to get closer, things get worse, not better. Things can also appear totally fine in these relationships until a significant life event happens. So this might mean, you know, when you got married, had a baby, got really sick, went through a crisis. That's when the cracks in these relationships start to really show or to be felt by the adult child. it's much easier to like maintain the facade when things are uneventful. But big stressors can bring on new challenges and then really reveal the lack of support or connection in that relationship.

And distant relationships in adulthood, I have found through my research on this topic, as well as my experience working with this population, that emotional immaturity, neglect, especially emotional neglect throughout childhood or adulthood, when a parent abandons the child, divorce, lack of support, or lack of acceptance can all lead to there being a distant relationship between adult and parent in adulthood. And sometimes the parent is actively choosing to maintain a distant relationship with their adult child. And sometimes they've completely abandoned the relationship. They didn't even want to have one to begin with. So let's talk about who the distant parent is and what they look like.

Parents who have a distant relationship with their adult child often really struggle with vulnerability. They literally don't know how to be close to their child. Or closeness feels very threatening to them. These parents may be, like I said, emotionally immature or they lack any model of emotional closeness in their own family. They never learned it. They haven't practiced it or felt it or it feels uncomfortable to them. And so they do not know how to give it back to you. These parents are emotionally and physically unavailable. They may seem even annoyed by their children's needs, they dismiss emotions, and they isolate themselves. They show very little interest in their children, except in moments when that closeness is expected or socially prescribed. So think of like

a holiday or a special event. That might be a moment where they are able to perform that or they kind of like have a framework for it because that's the only time it was done in their family. But something you'll notice about the distant parent if you have one is that even when they show up, their presence feels very hollow. They're there. But it feels like it's just their body in the room. You can feel the absence even when they're standing right next to you. And I think this is such a challenging thing to identify because these parents often don't feel their own absence. They may feel uncomfortable or like sense that something is off, but they don't realize that there's a lack of presence and connection with their child.

They may even cope with this discomfort by overcompensating through money and gifts or drinking, using substances or blaming others for how they feel. And I think that's what makes this so difficult to confront is that these are not like a difficult abusive parent. Like they're often doing nothing or they're doing the bare minimum. Like they're sending a card on holidays, but otherwise they appear very uninterested in your life or they show up when there's a significant achievement but never lend a hand otherwise or be involved in your daily life. And unlike the more difficult, contentious or abusive parent-child relationships, these relationships typically, again, they don't have much visible conflict or yelling or other obvious issues.

The silence really gets interpreted as everything being fine and you don't have anything else to report to this parent other than like it seems like you don't care. And this is a disclosure that is emotionally charged for that parent and they often can't handle it. It comes out to them as like, you're saying, you're saying, saying they're doing something wrong and they perceive their effort, even minimal effort, as good behavior, certainly in comparison to more obvious forms of like abuse or toxicity. And the distant parent often sees themselves in this light of being like easygoing or hands off or is someone who doesn't need very much.

And this is usually a result of the emotional neglect they experienced in their own. own lives and a deep belief that they don't need close relationships or that this relationship that they have with you is close. That's the funny thing is that they might actually feel like there's a lot of closeness between the two of you, even if you don't feel that way. So what does it feel like to have a distant parent? I'm going to paint a picture for you. You might describe your parent as nice or even supportive, but you feel hollow inside the relationship. You're relationship. Everything is surface level. There's no vulnerability, no real connection. And your parent, again, may actually believe the relationship is closer than it feels for you. They think things are fine,

but you are starving for connection. And contact with this parent is often intermittent and superficial. You know, it's like a few texts here and there, holiday visits, maybe, maybe the occasional phone calls, but it doesn't really go deeper than like, how's work? How's the weather? And this is the crazy thing about it. It's like every time you try to share something very personal or try to deepen the connection, you find that the relationship actually becomes more challenging because of this. And this may even cause your parent to like pull back even more.

They get uncomfortable. They want to change the subject or even they get like, defensive or angry by you suggesting that there's even something wrong in your relationship when everything is fine and there are no issues. And you might feel unsure if your parent even wants to have a relationship with you or you blame yourself for the lack of connection or interest and think like if I were more interesting or more successful or more like my siblings or just more of something they would want to be closer to me. And I think a lot of you might, might wish that they wanted to be closer to you. And so you try to change yourself or perform

for their approval. And so maybe you're using like achievement or something like that to make it enough so that they care and it ultimately backfires. And I think a lot of adults get trapped in a distant relationship with their parent because they believe that they can find that thing that if they work harder at or do it differently, they will be able to achieve closeness with their parent. And the parents' love and attention feels like something they can earn through a specific type of performance. So they keep trying. They share more accomplishments. Help them more show up to all the events. Call them even when they're not calling you. Invite them into your life constantly. And maybe you make yourself smaller, easier, less needs.

you try to be the perfect child, but you realize, like, it's just not enough because that's not the problem. Your parents' inability to connect with you is not about your worthiness. It's about their own limitations, their own emotional immaturity, wounds that they've never addressed, and their capacity for what they can have in their life. But when you're the child, even when you're an adult, it's really hard to see that. You're still operating from that. You're still operating from that. childhood place a lot of the time that says, like, if I'm just good enough, you will love me the way that I need you to or that I want you to. Now, distant relationships with a parent in childhood are different than in adulthood. And they don't work in adulthood for different

reasons. So in childhood, your parents' distance or neglect is something you're forced to tolerate. You have no choice. You're dependent. on them. And there's research on this, right? The drive for a secure base in a caregiver in childhood is an adaptive drive for children. It's biological. It's how we're wired. And when that secure base is absent, the drive for it still persists. And you're still like overseeing and ruminating because you're trying to resolve this problem and find a way to attach to this distant person. And childhood abuse and neglect have been linked to these preoccupied attachment states about caregivers, which is like you're yearning for repair.

You're trying to fix what was broken. And in adulthood, you may have more physical distance from your parent or more autonomy and agency, but those emotional wounds remain. So it's important to understand that the distant relationship type is not rooted in choice or empowerment. It's often a response to your parents' absence, their inability to connect, and their emotional shallowness. And adults who have this type of relationship with their parent will continue to feel abandoned

and emotionally neglected a lot of the time much in the same way they did in childhood. And despite these chronic experiences with their parent, they continue often unconsciously, too long for more connection. and they think that it might be possible to capture it under the right condition. So they keep trying and performing and hoping. And you get trapped in this cycle of like faking it, performing closeness and hoping that they might notice the distance for you between you or certainly some of those bids for connection. Now, I need you to hear this, though, because your parents' love is not something you need to earn. And if you have to constantly perform, achieve, shrink yourself, or be someone you're not to get scraps of attention from your parent, that's not love.

And it's not enough. And you deserve to have people in your life that are interested in you that ask about your life who show up when things are hard, not just when like they're easy or socially expected and who can handle like being in a relationship with you. But if your parent can't do that, they can't provide that. It's, again, not because you're not worthy of it. It's because they're not capable of it. And I know that's painful to accept. I think a lot of children, and we see this in a lot of the literature on childhood abuse survivors, you know, it's much easier for them to believe that they're the problem.

Because if you're the problem, then you have control. You can fix it. You can change. You can finally become good. enough. But if I'm not the problem, and my parent is, I can't fix that. I can't fix their emotional unavailability through anything I'm doing. And you can't earn closeness from someone who doesn't know how to be close. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to cut off all contact with your distant parent. That might be the right choice for some of you. And that's valid, but it's not the only option.

And so you can create a different type of relationship with your parent that is rooted in choice, empowerment, and being your adult self. And I think that this first starts with accepting your parent for who they are and what they can offer rather than continuing to hope that they are going to become this like emotionally connected vulnerable person with you. And this includes you learning how to set realistic expectations. If your parent has never been there for you emotionally, they're probably not suddenly going to become your support system. Stop asking them to be that person. You're going to have to find the emotional closeness and support you need elsewhere. And I know that's incredibly difficult and unfair, but you have to step out of that role. And also stop performing for their attention, showing up as yourself, with your boundaries and limits intact and being okay with what they can offer is your only other

option, right? Otherwise, it's more pain or full cutoff, which again, might be right for some of you and not for others. You also have to work through the grieving process here, right? So grieving the parent you needed and didn't get and still aren't getting is very important. And grieving the childhood you deserved or the closeness that you'll never have with this person. Like that is a type of ambiguous loss that once you name it, it can be easier to work through it. And that grief is real. It's valid. I think, you know, when you allow yourself to feel that, though, you can have some freedom. You can finally, like, be free from the performance and the constant hope and disappointment and start actually building a life that you want to live that isn't centered around

you trying to make this thing happen. If this episode resonated with you, I want you to know that you are not alone. So many adults that I work with, especially inside the family cycle breakers club at Calling Home, are navigating these types of distant relationships with their parents, feeling unseen and unimportant while everyone around them says things like, at least your parent is an abusive or like they still show up. But you also deserve real connection in your life. And maybe you're not going to get that from your parent. Right. So if you're looking for a community of people who understand, who won't minimize your experience and who are also doing the work of healing and building better relationships, we would love to have you inside the family cycle breakers

club at www.calihome.com. Thank you for being here. And I will see you in the next next episode. 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.