Of course, when it comes to major issues like this it's never just one story, eh? FWIW I didn't have an abusive childhood. But you could start with underlying issues or old arguments from when I became an adult. You could look at other major events that left rifts in the structure. You could look at the arguments we had immediately before the last one. Also, my parents have a history of rotating feuds with different branches of family, but as everyone gets older their opportunities for targets are shrinking, and now I'm "it".
But the really short version is that I actually was attempting to go lower contact, not no contact. I set a boundary my parents didn't like, and they chose escalation (again
). And while I never intended to go full no contact, it's been more liberating than I could have expected. So combining everything together, I am much better with how things are now.
