Repair After "No Contact"

When we’ve had fractured relationships where someone has gone ‘no contact’ and cut off communication, it’s not impossible to repair the relationship. In this episode, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Cynthia Post discusses how to keep the lines of communication open if a loved one has refused to engage with you. When the person expresses a willingness to reconnect, Cindy discusses how to navigate that delicate relationship and move forward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we're going to talk about repair when someone has decided to go no contact. And specifically, what we're looking at is what is required of anybody who's interested in trying to re-establish contact? What do they need to be thinking about? And in particular, I would say, you know, you really do want to think about am I even ready to reach out to you? That's one thing. And then am I also ready to let something new develop and not need to make any points to this person about my perspective or why they're wrong or kind of continue the argument because there's a lot of need to let go of things to make room for something new. That's what repair after opt-out looks like. Welcome to Couples and Connections, a conversation with me, Dr. Cynthia Post, a licensed clinical psychologist. And me, Teresa Sullivan Barger, a health journalist. We cover all things relationships: conflict, loss, success, betrayal, change. You name it, we'll dive into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

So let's dive in. To start this conversation, how do you determine whether it's appropriate to even try to re-establish contact after there's been a no contact request?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Great question. And what you'll find is that there are, of course, in every situation, vastly different opinions on this. And I'm speaking to a very broad audience. So there are some situations where somebody really feels very, very uncomfortable. They've made that known and they really don't want any contact, and they've said so. And it could be experienced as harassment to contact them again. So in those situations, it would be disrespectful and problematic to continue to reach out to them, especially if they've made it clear that they really don't want you to. And some of these situations might be in abuse situations of different sorts, maybe between it could be between a parent and a child. It could be in an adult abusive relationship of one sort or another. It could be in just some toxic family environments. Then we've got the other end of the continuum. And the other end of the continuum is where nobody said outright, I don't ever want to hear from you again. Something really problematic happened. That person has backed up tremendously. And it appears that there may be some room for contact in the future. And only by lack of anybody giving a strict rule that I never want to hear from you again.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

So maybe that person just said, I'm not really interested in keeping a relationship going, but they didn't say, I don't want anything to do with you ever, ever again.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Well, and it might not have been in words. They might just have stopped contacting the other party. And so the way you learn this is just there's a lack of contact, you know, radio silence, no contact. And so, but they never said, I don't ever want to hear from you again. So based on that, you make your own decision that you don't want to lose contact. So you're trying to maintain some semblance of contact with this person in some way. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

So could you explain if you're the person who sort of initiated the no contact, as well as if you're the person who was the on the receiving end for each of those situations, how what are the first steps to trying to reconnect in some way?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

For the person who wants to reconnect, I would say before you make any contact, you might want to just stop and take a look. You've just been given a big piece of information. Some news has been given to you that this person who you used to have maybe a pretty close relationship with, maybe this was a good friend, maybe this was a partner, maybe this was a family member, that this person is no longer wanting to be connected to you. Big news flash there. So then you might want to stop and think about what happened, so that hopefully you can begin to have some empathy and thoughts about this other person and what might their perspective be that they had to make such a strong statement to you that they wanted nothing to do with you. Something about being in contact with you wasn't working for them. And I suppose that this is the only thing they knew they could do to protect themselves, take care of themselves, something like that. So that would be the responsibility of the person who has been cut off. On the other end of it, the person who has chosen to go no contact is in a position where they're feeling very protective. They may be looking and wondering, is this person going to try to reach out to me? They may not be clear about what they want or whether they want contact unless they've deliberately and clearly said so or intimated that in some way. So this might be more of a situation where they've taken the stand, they've backed up, they're not making making any outreach. And so for that person, they might be kind of wondering what's going on on the other side. Am I going to hear from this person or not? They might just be relieved that the person is leaving them alone. They might even be sad if the person says, okay, then you've decided to leave me alone. Wow. I guess that didn't mean that much to you. If the person just stops trying and doesn't reach back, that could be the message that's sent.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

So if either side wants to take the first step, what is that first step?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

The first step I would say, and it often comes for the from the person who's been cut off, although I suppose it could come from the person who does the cutting off also. But I think more often it's the case, I'm just intuiting this, I don't know this for a fact, but that the person who wants the contact is more likely to be the one to reach out first. And so you could reach out with a card, you could reach out with a text or an email, you could try to connect by way of some something shared that you remember, or at a time of year that reminds you of that person, something like that. I guess what I would want to encourage people not to do as a first beginning step is get into a lot of intense, difficult conflict talk about what went wrong, or asking a lot of questions about why you cut me off, this kind of thing. I would say that the rules would be different for the person who did the cutting off. If they choose to come forward, they might need to say, look, I've been out of touch. Here's why. I actually don't want to be out of touch anymore. Are you available to talk? So they have a lot more room, I would say, than the person who's been cut off. Because the person who's been cut off is being given a very clear boundary that they don't want much to do with you. So you don't want to feel like you're violating that. So something that I that I do want to bring to mind here is that you have to ask yourself the question: do I want to connect or do I want to be right? Because a lot of people, where when they're in one of these really horrible ruptures in a relationship, they really want to get back to the person just to tell them more about why their perspective is right and why the other one is wrong, why you shouldn't have cut me off, why uh you should be letting me talk to you. You should understand my perspective. So you have to ask yourself, do you want to be right or do you want to connect? Because if you want to connect, you may really need to let go of a lot of what your perspective is. And you may need to think a lot more about how the other person experienced you. The quote, do you want to be right or do you want to connect comes from a known couples analyst in New York City by the name of Esther Perel.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

So the first step is reframing your thinking. Could you explain what the second and third steps would be for both the recipient of the no contact and the person who's has initiated the no contact?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

So, you know, you make some initial outreaches, and that step may be your only step for a long time. You might not hear anything for a long time. It could go on for a few years. And at some point, you may need to move to the second point, which is well, what do I want to do here? Do I want to keep reaching out? Or do I want to shift and pivot my perspective and say something more about the fact that I observe that you're not responding? And I just want you to know that I'm still here and I'd really like to be able to reconnect with you. And I understand that there are a lot of things that have happened between us that have made you really uncomfortable. And so I want you to know that if you're ever available to talk about that, I'm available to listen. So there might be a point at which you decide that that's something you feel you need to do. And then some people never do that. They never get into anything heavy without being able to talk to the person, have some contact established first. So it's a little bit of a dicey thing when to do that. Do you do it at all? And if you do, when do you do it? And I suppose there's this moment when a lot of time has gone by, maybe even a few years, and you begin to think, gee, what do I have to lose? Why wouldn't I at least try to reach out to this person? I don't recommend getting into a lot of difficult process talk by text or email or messaging of any kind. I think it would be better just to simply say, I'm aware we haven't been in contact, and I'm really hoping to be able to re-establish a connection at some point in time or something like that. And I'm available to listen if you'd be willing to talk again. So the person on the other end, you know, they could have any number of reactions. And I, you know, hard to understand what that might be. Um they might feel like, oh boy, here comes this person again. I wish they'd just leave me alone. Or they could be sort of mildly curious and looking forward to the contact. And because we have no idea what they're feeling, because they're not saying anything, unless they come forward and say something more declarative, we won't know. And so that's a challenge for the person who does know that they want to be in contact.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Now give the advice for the person who cut off contact, who's now trying to re-establish contact.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Oh, if that person wants to re-establish contact, then I think they can ask direct questions. I know we've been out of touch. I know a lot of things have happened. I'd like to talk to you again. If you're open for that, please let me know. I think their communication can be nice and direct and open and clear. I think the person who's been cut off needs to be a lot more careful about their engagement and how they approach. Approach with a lot of trepidation, very carefully, very respectfully, and not in an overwhelming way. You want to be just careful and deliberate in your efforts over time.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

One of the things I've learned from you, Cindy, is not everybody is comfortable speaking their true feelings. So, what about if they see that someone got a new job or moved or had someone in their family, lost someone in their family? What about using an event in that person's life just to send a card to let you know, hey, I'm thinking of you?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

I think that could be a very nice gesture. I think you do want to be careful though, because it could feel like, gee, I'm not in contact with you anymore, but apparently you're looking at my social media stuff and you're commenting on it. So you do want to be sensitive to the fact that they're trying to send you a message of a boundary. And so if you're responding to something like that, that may not be something that they're wanting. So you won't know is the problem. You won't know how they might feel about that.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

I wanted to tell you about a friend who, through divorce, their oldest child sided with the spouse and disconnect, you know, didn't want contact with my friend. And my friend, of course, was devastated, but respected the child's position. And just over many years sent birthday cards, Christmas gifts, pretty much, you know, once in a blue moon, maybe something else. And then as time went by and things happened in that person's life, that adult child did reach back out. And and the friend was very low-key and didn't put pressure as hard as it was on my friend to keep her distance. Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, my thought on that is that that's exactly it's leaving room for things that can make a difference. It can take a number of years when there's really been a big rupture. It might take people a long time to calm down enough to be able to make room to even consider letting that person back in. They might know the person's well-intentioned, but they just feel too aggrieved, too hurt, something too angry to be able to do that for a while. And so if you really want to connect, then you just say, I'll take as long as it takes. I'll wait as long as it takes. I'm not going to put a timeline on this. I'm not going to make any demands on you. I'm not going to share my perspective on why you're wrong about cutting me off. I'm just going to know that this is not my wish. My wish is to connect with you. And so I'm making room.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

This actually brings me to um a question about expectations. Maybe elaborate on when someone is trying to reconnect. What should their expectations be or should they have no expectations?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I think low expectations is a great idea. I think the relationship has changed. I think that other relationship is dead, and there's a new one that needs to develop in place of it. And if you think of something new, it's fresh, it's new, it's a little vulnerable. I'm thinking of like a seedling. You need to water it, you need to protect it. And so there might be some good things that come back from the past about the old relationship that could still be there. But some of the things that were problematic need to go away. And so expectations aren't very helpful. Like I expect that we're going to be close again or we're going to talk to each other this often or whatever. Uh, that's not helpful. What is helpful is to make room for what's possible and to be open to what's possible and grateful if that opportunity should arise.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Can you give any advice on how people can operate in a new relationship where things, you said building something new, this is like a new relationship. How do people do that?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Well, you know, you might say, gee, I was thinking I'd like to go out for a walk. Would you like to join me on a walk? I see it's going to be nice weather on Saturday. Can we meet up at the park and go for a walk? And when you go for that walk, maybe you just say, Oh, I'm so glad to see you. And maybe you give them a hug. Can I give you a hug? And maybe you just say, Let's just walk and talk. How have you been? You keep it light. You don't have a lot of in-depth questioning or any questioning about why they've been out of touch. It's just more of like a chance to say, maybe you lead off the conversation if they seem to be kind of quiet, or maybe you just let it be a little bit quiet and you just comment that I'm so glad we got to see one another. I hope we can do this again sometime. And not even sometime soon, just sometime. And maybe you follow up even with a note of some kind to say, you know, I was really happy to see you. Thank you so much for meeting me. Even if not a lot of words were exchanged. I wonder how do you know whether that's too much? Like I'm almost thinking You won't know. You won't know. And you just do the best you can to enter the scene gently, carefully, thoughtfully, respectfully.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

We've talked about ways that people can try to make a repair. If people are doing these over many years, they're trying to reach out a little here and a little there. At what point do people give up and accept that they're not going to be able to reconnect with that person?

SPEAKER_00 16:51

As we said a little while ago when we touched on this, we won't know. We won't know. And different people have different tolerances. Some people just always leave the door a crack open, and every Christmas they send a Christmas card, and that's it. That's what they kind of arrive at. And then some people say, I'm giving it two years and that's it. And so there's there isn't one right answer here. I will say that I think the person who is cut off, we shouldn't underestimate that there may be a part of them that also wishes that the person would reach back again. They might. We just don't know. That's a problem. And so if you leave the door a crack open and you continue to demonstrate that you're still there, over time that could really mean something. Like I never went away. I'm always standing here. Because you don't know, over time, you may want to be careful about not reaching out too often. So maybe, you know, you start off more regularly, and if you observe that over time they're just not responding, you may want to very much curtail your contact because if if this is their way of letting you know they really don't want to have contact with you, then you wouldn't want to be flooding them with contact that's unwanted and they're giving you silence as a way to communicate that they don't want to be engaged.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

The thing that I took from this is that if you've had a rift with somebody and you're you're thinking you might want to try to patch things up, you have to decide for yourself, are you going to let go of whatever the conflict was? And if you're still holding on to that, then maybe you need to give it more time. Um, that to me was a big, a big lesson.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yes, I think that's a very important point that in order to move forward, you have to be willing to let go of your narrative about what went wrong in the conflict. This person is clearly not in a place to listen to that, maybe ever. And that you may just need to manage the differences between you. So when you're on the fence about what to do, I would say probably be very judicious and careful and don't go beyond something where you have an uneasy feeling. If you get an uneasy feeling, if you've engaged with someone, then you might want to not continue on asking more questions or making more comments.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

You've been listening to Couples and Connections, conversations with clinical psychologist Dr. Cynthia Post. I'm health journalist Teresa Sullivan Barger. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. New episodes drop every Friday.