10 steps backwards · Parenting Adult Children Today

10 steps backwards

We went a year and a half without talking due to her request that she needed time. We have been reconnecting for the last nine months. I shared with her my wrongdoing and expectations and how she might not feel that I always loved her. We made huge breakthroughs. I received an email today that she has not been honest with me and she has regressed and is falling back into her old cycles of negative self talk and panic attacks and feeling like I’m controlling her life, yet the only thing I can think of is that she committed to meeting our friends who were in town from Arizona and she backed out at the last minute, and I was so disappointed yet I didn’t say that to her, but I’m sure she felt it. I have been following the seven no Essentials and I am just broken. She said she will email me once a month but I’m not to reach out to her. Her birthday is in June and she doesn’t want to see me, but it’s OK for me to give her presence through her grandma. She just learned that I am engaged and she told me she was so happy for me and congratulated me, but now she said that wasn’t true. I am floundering and trying to figure out what I did wrong and what I could’ve changed. I know that I can’t control her, but my mama heart is just breaking. She said she still loves me and appreciates me but she feels obligated to have a relationship with me and she wants to do that out of desire and not obligation. She’s only 23 and I feel like she’s so confused. As I write this, I think that I just need to keep working on myself and be patient with her. The time and distance apart scares me.

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