CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - When You're Forced to Fix What You Didn't Break

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Whitney answers two listener questions this week: one from a woman who's been cut off by her parents because of her marriage and another from a woman who found her family badmouthing her, her marriage, and her parenting in a separate family group text.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.

Hello and welcome back to the Calling Home Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Goodman. This is the show where we talk about difficult family dynamics and how to work through them. Today is Thursday. It's a Q&A episode and I'm answering two really interesting caller questions. The first caller is someone who got married during COVID and her parents subsequently cut her off because of her choice in husband. She doesn't give a lot of detail about why they don't like the husband, but we're kind of investigating what could be the possibilities here for a relationship in the future and how prevalent this type of cutoff is from parents to their adult children, particularly when they make decisions that they wouldn't like in adulthood. And then the second question is from someone

who found a family group text where her mom and siblings were all speaking poorly about her, her husband, her mothering skills, and why she now feels like she wants to apologize and make peace and figure this out and how she can do that with people who are not wanting to apologize or take accountability for their role in those text messages. Before we get into the questions, I just want to remind you that for the month of October, we are producing a ton of content inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club for the scapegoat. So if you are the person in your family that has always felt like it's your fault, you're the problem, everything gets blamed on you.

This is the month for you and this is the time where you're finally going to learn how to stop taking on that role, step out of it, and change the way you look at your role in the family, whether your family members see you differently or not. You can join the family cycle breakers club at calling home.com. We'll link that in the show notes as well. Hello, Whitney. I recently listened to your episode with Ashley and John. And while I'm not religious, hearing some of Ashley's commentary about her estrangement from her family and how her family blames her husband has made me feel seen. A long story, hopefully short. I had had a normal loving childhood. My parents were and are still married and provided for me and my sister in any way a parent

can and should, both physically and emotionally. I became estranged from my parents in my early 20s, which is now approaching about 10 years ago, as they began a campaign within the family against my relationship with my then-boyfriend now husband. Things escalated quickly and within a year of us getting engaged, my dad cut me off. My mom tried to keep contact, but from then she became the perfect victim. She cut me off two years later with a note which arrived in the mail the day before my wedding. We eloped during COVID with no party and no guests, just us on a beautiful Hawaiian beach. I was obviously not home to get the note that day. Thank God and got it upon my return. At the time, I was devastated, but their campaign against my husband has never ended.

Along the way, I lost most contact with my whole side of my mom's family as she has continued to play the perfect victim to anyone who will listen and believe her. There are people on my dad's side that don't with whom I still have contact. While I don't see any signs in my past and my childhood that could have led to this, I recognize how differently my sister and I are viewed within our family and the difference in how we were treated. I've had several family friends tell me since that they're not surprised that this happened. And beyond that, I can see now the dynamic in my parents' families.

relationship that has led my mom to be so submissive. She is a lifelong housewife and my father has been the breadwinner since they have been together and married. I have almost created a wall after all these years of my life before and after. I can remember my childhood fondly and the parents I had then, but it's almost like the people they are now are not those same parents. My mom has since reached out only a few times, but never to say anything of any value. Not to share any growth or reflection on her part, it only ever feels like she's trying to sweep it all under the rug. I have been clear with her in those exchanges, too, that this cannot be swept under the rug, but that I'm not ready to face it and don't know if I ever will, and to please give me space, basically strengthening the no contact,

which is what has ultimately given me the most peace. I struggle sometimes finding myself in this estranged adult child community because my story is so rare, to have a good loving childhood, and then at some point in young adulthood, things break irreparably. For me, the choice ultimately was all the future happiness I know I can have with my husband versus the resentment I would feel towards my parents for losing that chance at love, family, and happiness. So I guess my question is, in your experience working with this population of estranged adult children, how common is this to happen? For parents to initiate the estrangement and for it to be because of the choice of a life partner the child makes in adulthood. What advice do you

generally give for these types of situations? Have you ever seen a path back to to contact if there is no apparent change or internal reflection from the parents. I should add here that we are a European heterosexual couple, though some have speculated about whether my husband's Eastern European descent could be playing any role, but I've never known my parents to have those kind of prejudices. Thank you for any insight you have. I love listening to your podcast over the last six months since I found it. All right, thank you so much for sending in this question and for trusting me to answer this question. I did a video about this recently about how I do think there is a really robust and substantial population within the estranged adult child's community

of adults who actually have been cut off by their parent. I know we talk a lot about adults who are cutting off their parents and setting boundaries and becoming estranged. But in my experience, there are a lot of people like you out there. A lot of people who feel like they were actually pushed out of the family or cast aside because of a decision that they were making. whether that is a partner, a career choice, their sexuality, their political beliefs, etc., that sometimes these things combine together to make the adult child into someone that the family feels like they cannot accept or have in their family. Now, when we hear about partners, some of the loudest rhetoric is really about parents who feel

that their adult child's partner has turned them against the parents. So almost like this third party has come into the picture and they have seemingly brainwashed or changed their adult child. And that is why they no longer have a relationship. And if they could just get this person out of their life, then things would be better. Now, it seems like your situation is a little bit different here, that you're actually saying that your parents did not like your partner. And so they have excluded you from the family. Now, there's not a lot of detail in this question about why that might be happening. And so I always think it's important to reflect on both sides of this. There are reasons for not liking your adult child's partner that I think are not reasons that we should necessarily give much credence to. Right. So reasons like their race, their ethnic background, the family that they came from, where they're from, their beliefs, et cetera.

And then there are things that parents might flag in their adult child's partner that do matter and that sometimes we are not able to see. I mean, gosh, I remember dating someone when I was younger that my parents hated and they were right about this person, right? And eventually I came around to see that. but I do think that if you are dating someone that is abusive, that treats you poorly, that is isolating you from your family, like these things do happen, even in situations when an adult is close with their parent.

And in those situations, I think that it is wise for a parent to intervene in a respectful and reasonable way. And I do tell parents a lot that the second you try to make it a comprehensive, between you and that partner, no matter how bad that partner is, if we're talking about someone who's truly harmful, you still might lose. And so there's some, like, nuance and finesse to approaching those dynamics. But it sounds like here that you love your husband. You feel like you have a good marriage. You are happy. And because of that, you have felt like you kind of had to decide between remaining in a relationship with your husband or getting a relationship.

the acceptance of your family. And when you decided to maintain your relationship, go for it with the marriage, you were then cut off. So I want to answer your first question that like, yes, this absolutely happens and you're not alone. And I think actually there's a lot of parent-initiated estrangement that we don't talk about because it looks very different. And I talk about this parent type extensively in my upcoming book, The Parent You Have that's coming out in February. about this type of parent that is quite distant and aloof and more neglectful and they slowly pull away from the relationship and they may not really announce an estrangement. Your parents, though, fit into an even smaller group of those parents who are actively saying, like,

no, we are going to be estranged from you because of your decision, right? And when you are in a situation like that. I think the only quote-unquote advice that I can give here is to think about what it is that your parents have said about this situation and what they have communicated to you. Are they telling you, we will not have you in our lives if you are married to this person? And have they objectively put you in this bind where you cannot sustain your marriage and be in a relationship with them. And they're forcing you to choose one or the other. Because in that case, it's sort of like the only advice there is is to help you grieve and accept and understand this and make peace with your choice and what you have as a result of choosing your partner and choosing your

marriage or to help you navigate a decision-making process about like, is your marriage something that you're willing to give up to have a relationship with your parents and what is that going to look like to have been sort of backed into a corner where you had to make that decision? And is that love? Is that a good relationship where it feels like you had to give up a person or a support person? I wouldn't want you to do that if your partner told you to do that or a friend said, hey, you need to cut this person out of your life in order to be with me. If that was a healthy and respectful and good relationship, then I wouldn't advise that you do that. So what does it mean about your relationship with your parents and the future of that

relationship if that is something they are trying to do? They're trying to cut you off from your support system, from someone that loves you. Now, of course, that is still incredibly painful and difficult, even when we look at it from this black and white perspective of like people who love you shouldn't isolate you from your support systems and shouldn't want to cut you off, you know, from a spouse that is treating you well if that is the case, then there's a lot of grief that goes into that process of really saying to yourself, like, I have parents who don't like my partner who don't see my happiness or my, the way that I'm being treated well in this relationship. There's not a lot of detail here, right? Okay. You know, your

Dad cut you off after you got engaged and then subsequently your mother. So I'm really curious as to like the reasons why this happened, what they don't like about this partner. But I do think that if you are going to stay married and that is something that you value and that you want and you want to remain with this partner, this partner treats you well, it is a healthy relationship, then the path back to contact really has to, likely include your parents' acceptance of that reality. Because I don't see a world where you can have a relationship with your parents while remaining married when your parents

hate your partner don't want you to be with this person and are telling you you're not in our lives if you're married to this person. You're unable to maintain both of those really significant, like attachment relationships and bonds in that type of dynamic. Like that, that is not going to work. And so if your parents are not also seeking a path towards acceptance and reflection and trying to say, how can we find a way to make this work? It sounds like maybe you would be interested in that if they accepted your partner and acknowledged your marriage, then maybe you could move forward if they did that. But without that,

the only path forward for you right now that I see is accepting, you know, that this is the decision I've made. I'm prioritizing my marriage. My parents right now cannot find a way to have this connection with me while I am also married to this person. And sometimes it might be helpful for you to reflect on your own with a therapist, with a friend, with someone else. You know, what it is about your marriage that your parents don't like, what it is about your partner, is that something that you feel like you should give any attention to, you know, especially when you feel like you have a good history with your parents, you felt like your relationship was solid. I do just one last thing, though, want to speak to this idea that you said some people are

not surprised that this happened with your parents, but that you don't have any memories like that. And I don't want to say this to like put feelings in people's heads of like, well, if I think my childhood was normal, what if it actually wasn't? And other people think it wasn't. But it is a coping mechanism for children that is pretty well documented. You can look up things like the fantasy bond, the fantasy relationship. It's mentioned in quite a few textbooks and psychological books. I'm thinking of Dr. Firestone's work as well as Dr. Lindsay Gibson. They all talk about this fantasy bond that a child creates with their parent in order to sustain the relationship, to feel good about it, and to feel loved by their parent and connected to them.

And sometimes children do this even in the face of a lot of conflicting evidence. Now, it could be that your parents were quite loving and attentive to you and were great providers and that it wasn't until you started to kind of step outside of the lines here and do things that they didn't approve of, that that's when you felt some of that love and support become quite conditional. And I think a lot of young adults start to feel that as they differentiate from the family. And if you want to learn more about that, we just wrapped up our month on differentiation inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home.

And the article that came out in the final week was about, like, how to become your own person. And there's a lot of other scripts, articles, worksheets in there for people who are trying to individuate and differentiate and become their own person, even in the face of pushback from their family, or trying to do that while remaining close with a family that is quite different from them. So you can definitely check that out inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club as well. I think that would be helpful for anyone going through this. That, I think, is my advice for anybody in this situation. This is a really, really tough one because on the one hand, yes,

your parents have been the ones to initiate this, but I think you're also feeling like, how do I go back to this dynamic if their reasons are still there and viable? And how do you have a relationship with parents and a marriage under these conditions? It's really hard to navigate without some buy-in from both sides. Thank you so much again for calling in and for letting me answer that question. All right. Let's go ahead and play that caller question. Hi, Whitney.

I'm from a pretty low effort family. I'm one or five, and I have four brothers. And for the past year, we've had a huge kind of fallout, basically. We all live within, like, a mile of each other, so we're pretty physically close, but not emotionally close at all. And I saw some text messages about me that were really, really hurtful and also about my husband. And it was basically a group chat of my mom and all my brothers bashing me as a mom and bashing my husband and saying we should get divorced. And we had no idea this was being said. And now I've tried to kind of reconcile and repair.

and apologize for anything, I guess, that I could have done, like, seeing the messages and maybe snooping a bit, but they have no desire to, like, apologize or repair or anything. And I guess I'm scared a little bit to give up because does that mean the second my effort goes away, well, we have no relationship at all? And I guess I'm more sad for, like, my mom, even though she was part of the backing. And for my kids and, like, my nieces and nephews, they haven't really seen each other for a year. And I feel like we're willing to see each other, but nobody else is. And I think it's, they're maybe so embarrassed or just, I'm not really sure what, but I guess I don't know what to do from here because nobody's willing.

to have a conversation or I guess even attempt to repair the relationship when it seems like they were in the wrong from the get-go. Thanks. Bye. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm sorry that this happened. And like, the first thing I want to say is, why are you the one apologizing when people were like talking shit about you in a group chat? I understand. I understand. I understand. stand maybe apologizing for like snooping around or how you found out like I can see why your head is kind of going there but for you to find out how people are speaking about you and then feel like you need to apologize and you also need to broker the repair I think says something about the family dynamics as a whole I without knowing these people I feel like you are very very spot on

with this feeling of they must be ashamed or embarrassed or they got caught. And so now they're kind of hiding and no one wants to be accountable. And sometimes people will just hide and pretend like nothing's wrong or avoid instead of fixing things. But you now clearly are taking on this, like, I need to fix this role even though you were the one that was wronged. And I don't know what their complaints were about how you are as a mother or about your relationship. I don't know if there's any validity to those complaints that you're feeling like, okay, the things they were saying about me, maybe they have a point or like it was hurtful, but I do need to work on those things. Like, that can happen where everyone feels uncomfortable in that regard. But I feel like

you're afraid, you know, anybody that's been in this situation, you're afraid to get upset with them or to really address this because it sounds like the family is so low effort and disconnected that it doesn't feel like it can sustain any type of disagreement without totally crumbling. And you're looking at this family system like, okay, no one's apologizing or taking accountability or trying to fix this. So if I try to push this issue, you're definitely going to run away. And that feels really scary, I think, to imagine that your family's not even going to, like, try. And this doesn't always mean that they don't care or that they don't love you.

But a lot of the time, it can mean that they're certainly quite avoidant and do not want to address this conflict. There is also the idea that sometimes when family members or anybody gets in a group together and speaks poorly about someone, that is a bonding ritual of sorts for them. And they connect over their shared disdain or whatever it is for this other person. And so they can be scared to lose that. That group sort of congregates together of like, oh, well, you know, I don't want to lose that bond with mom or with my other siblings and we always talk about this and that makes us feel close. I'm kind of projecting onto this here. I don't know that that's exactly what's going on, but it's just another thing to think about. I want anybody who feels this way to sort of like

go back to the fear of what you are afraid is going to happen to this relationship if you stand up for yourself, if you address this, if you try to actually repair it, because that is something that already existed before you saw how these people were communicating. The relationship likely already felt, and you're expressing that it already felt quite low effort and disconnected. And like we live close together, but we're not actually emotionally connected. And now I feel like, oh, I really didn't know that this is how you felt about me and the status of our relationships. And so give yourself a beat to sit. With that, because I think it can be kind of freaky and anxiety provoking and overwhelming to find

out, like, people that you are related to or that you are close with and have been speaking poorly about you and we're thinking poorly of you or your husband or your family or your parenting, and to find that out and be like, how long have they been thinking this? Have they been talking about this for a while? What if I never saw this? You know, I didn't know that they felt this way about me. Now from there, I think sometimes when you have people that are highly avoidant around you and don't want to address conflict, the response isn't always to be avoidant back if this is a relationship that you want to preserve and you want to try to repair. And so it seems like maybe your mom might be the easiest one to approach first or that is the relationship that you mentioned like feeling the saddest about or that.

she might be the one worth prioritizing. So do you think that you could go to your mom or to one of your siblings and talk about this and even say, like, I'm hurt by what was said, but I also really want to have a relationship with you. So can we talk about this and see if they will engage with you? I think sometimes when people get caught in these positions, they are so filled with shame or guilt or embarrassment that they're like, oh, I'm going to get in trouble and I'm going to get yelled at and I'm going to feel more bad feelings if I interact with this person. And so I don't want to do that. So I'm just going to avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. And I know that it sucks to have to be the one who was hurt, who then also has to carry the baton of repair and accountability. But sometimes that is what

happens in relationships. And if you want to try that, and and say that you try that and not just be like, okay, they spoke poorly about me and they won't say, sorry, I'm going to wash my hands of this. And you have a lot of history with these people and they live close by to you, then that might be worth doing. And once you do that, you can then assess based on the data that you get back from this interaction, how to move forward. And it's likely even though these conversations were happening in a group that each of these individuals has their own. own approach for how they are going to discuss this and solve it with you, if possible.

I feel like in your question and in your voice, I can hear this feeling of like, I want these relationships. And I don't know if that's necessarily a fantasy, a reality. It's something that you want, but not sure if you're going to get it from these people. But if you have that feeling, you know, I think a lot of times people have. have to try and they have to see what happens. They need to do the work for themselves, even if the other person doesn't reciprocate, and then go from there. What I would resist is like this feeling, like, you need to be the one apologizing here, like for the way that they conducted themselves.

That might be something to work on, you know, as a relic maybe from old family dynamics. Thank you so much for calling in and leaving this voicemail. I think people are going to be really interested in this one. Thank you so much to those two callers who called in and sent me their questions. You can always leave me a voicemail, send me a voice note, or a written question to Whitney atcallinghome.co. I choose two questions to answer every Thursday on the show. I hope to see some of you inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home soon. As a reminder, we have new groups, including our in-law relationships group, our adult siblings group. We added a new time for our family estrangement group. And I run a lot of those groups, including the estranged

adult child's group and B group for adults who have a difficult or distant relationship with a parent. You can join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at callinghome.co. And please share this episode with someone that you think could benefit from it. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a review or a comment on YouTube and Spotify. Thank you so much, and I will see you on Tuesday for another episode of Calling Home. 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 Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.