Our writer’s family has a history of going “no contact,” but she didn’t think it would happen with her and her own brother.
“Your brother is flying in on Friday for a conference,” my mom cheerily tells me on the phone.
“That’s nice,” I say, trying not to give away any emotion, though the anger that I actively suppress for her sake is bubbling under the surface. My controlled reply is followed with icy silence, hoping she won’t go on.
What I really want to say to her is that I don’t care that he’s flying in. But he’s her son, her first-born, her favorite, and I don’t want the current state of our relationship to cause her any more pain than it probably already does. When she tries to push further or ask if we’ve talked, I remind her of the things he said to me and my kids, and that unless he genuinely apologizes, he’s not welcome in my life.
I haven’t spoken to my brother in five years. According to the internet, I have gone “no contact.”
The root of going no contact is simple: You cut off all contact with a person in a self-protective move, because having them out of your life is better than having them in it.
The term has been trending on social media and there are hundreds of subreddits full of people talking about going “NC,” as it’s often referred to online. In a study from 2020, it was found that roughly 27 percent of Americans over the age of 18 have cut off contact with someone in their family. For 67 million of us, our loved ones can be a huge source of pain—and the internet can be a place where we find kinship with others in similar situations, a place where we can talk about it. A lot.
“Social media platforms have given people the language to describe their experiences, inspiring sympathy and others to do the same,” says Charles Sweet MD, MPH, medical advisor at Linear Health. It makes sense: Knowing you’re not alone in your imperfect family can be so validating.
Of course, I wasn’t trying to be part of a trend when I cut ties with my brother. He took a fight too far and brought my kids into it, which for me, meant we’d no longer have a relationship with him. I don’t take this decision lightly. When it comes to something as consequential as breaking up a family, the last thing I’d want to do is to be participating in a fad. But the truth is, estrangement is not totally new to me. People in my family have been going no contact for longer than the internet has been alive, we just didn’t have a catchy name for it.
As it turns out, my brother and I are just like our father and his two sisters. My Ameh Shirin—my dad’s younger sister—would spend months visiting with my family from Iran when I was a little kid. She’d fill our kitchen with tantalizing smells of saffron, rice, and eggplant. I loved being in the kitchen when she made dinner, a process that could take all day. She’d give me assignments—like shelling all the fava beans for baghali polo—and joke with me while she tended to steaming pots, even though she didn’t speak much English and I didn’t speak much Farsi. We were family, and that came with a natural bond and an undercurrent of love that superseded language.
Her teenage son, my cousin, had been sent to live with us to escape being conscripted into the Iranian army when he turned 18. So her visits were long and joyous for both of us. My dad wasn’t talking to their other sister, Lila, at the time and I didn’t get it. I was a little kid and not privy to family politics. Ameh Lila didn’t come for long visits even though her son had lived with us at one point as well. Eventually the dynamics switched and we met—for the first time in my recollection—in my early teens. I’m not sure why they started talking again, but it wasn’t something that we discussed. Clearly, communication wasn’t their strong suit.
Years later in 1995, my older brother—the one who I’d eventually be on the outs with myself—and my dad had a blowout fight and stopped talking to each other, too. I assumed eventually someone would relent and apologize; after a period of uncomfortable peacemaking, they’d be talking again like my dad and his sister. But it’s been 30 years and they still don’t speak. If this situation happened now, we might say that one of them was going no contact and be glad that they ended what was often an unhealthy relationship of intense adoration and major fights interspersed with feelings of disappointment on both sides.
But their estrangement didn’t happen with the clean-cut definition we have now, nor with the specific intention that is supposed to come with the practice. Going no contact is an active choice with inherent self-preservation baked into its existence. This was just a massive fight and both of them acted poorly.
Over the past few decades, I’ve waffled about who I thought was right and who was wrong. One family member or another would bring up their estrangement and depending on who I was talking to or how long I’d been stewing on the issue, I’d think one of them was at fault. Then the next time it came up with a different family member I’d flip-flop my view. These family estrangements affect more than just those directly involved. They ripple over every gathering. Have they talked yet? Will they talk? How long has it been? Did they see each other at the wedding? It’s insidious.
People used to say things to my brother like, “you’ll regret it if the next time you see him is at his funeral,” and I’m sure my dad has heard similar from his closest friends. It’s a dramatic thing to say; something meant to evoke action and resolution. But maybe the least painful outcome is actually not having the person who causes you pain in your life?
When someone is in a toxic relationship, the interactions within that relationship are often the source of negative feelings that they may not even realize. “Recognizing patterns of problematic behavior is a long process. Many people excuse or minimize harmful behaviors for years, particularly in families, before seeing abuse for what it is,” says Gayle Clark, LCSW. Something as simple as texting or having a phone call with someone keeps the unhealthy dynamics fresh, so the suggested solution is not to do it. Full stop.
That’s exactly what I did with my brother after our own heinous fight. Just after Christmas five years ago, our relationship came to a screeching halt on a phone call. There had been years of boundary crossing and self-centered behavior, but once he began to direct ire at my kids, that was the end for me. He had flown in for two weeks over the Christmas holidays and I’d asked if he could stay somewhere else to minimize the stress on my kids. Their father and I had just separated that fall. When he showed up, bags in hand, I was livid about being my request ignored, and told him so. He begrudgingly headed to our mother’s house a few hours away.
Our fight continued to snowball over the course of his visit, my anger building as it picked up steam. I’d just ended a marriage, which, while painful, felt good. It reinforced the fact that I was in control of who I allowed to hurt me or even just make me feel bad. So when I recognized this pattern of behavior happening again with my brother, I was more than primed to put an end to it. When he picked a fight with my 12-year-old daughter about her dad when we were all at my mom’s house, I grabbed her by the hand and drove us all the way back home without so much as a goodbye.
Later that week, my brother called from our mom’s and my 12-year-old son answered the phone making a harmless, “is your refrigerator running?” joke, to which he took offense. When he responded with a threat to my kid, I was ready to permanently end things in no uncertain terms. I hung up the phone, went to his contact, and blocked his number; I unfollowed all his social accounts and blocked him from mine. I was done. I didn’t want to see him or hear from him anymore. I wanted, more than anything, to preserve my newfound peace.
My brother lives across the country—and sometimes even farther—which has made not seeing him easy for me. In the years since our D-Day, I have planned my family visits for times when I knew our trips wouldn’t overlap, politely providing scheduling reasons if asked. During video calls at Christmas with my mom, I keep it light and pleasant, avoiding direct communication with him, but delicately trying not to make it obvious to those in the room; maintaining peace for everyone else.
On two occasions we have been forced together, both family weddings that were more important to me to be at than avoiding my brother. At the first, I was very willing to be gracious so that the occasion didn’t become about us. I wanted to dodge a “will they/won’t they talk” undercurrent. I politely hugged him hello in front of our mother and he couldn’t resist throwing a barb that only I could hear.
I hadn’t expected an apology or any sort of come-to-Jesus, just civility. Despite all the things that happened leading up to this first encounter
—the threats, the insults, the disrespect—this tiny choice of his to poke the wound was the nail in the coffin. It confirmed that I had made the right decision to keep him at a safe distance. The rest of the day I strategically maneuvered to keep others between us. There are family photos from the wedding with all of the siblings and our mom. I’m at one end, aggressively ignoring the other end where he smiles uncomfortably.
A few years later at the next wedding, I made no attempts at being the bigger person. I was an impenetrable rock. Even with this steely resolve, it sucked. We were close from the time I was a teenager until my 40s. He helped me out of a tough spot when my husband and I separated the first time, and I always provided the family for him to take part in that he didn’t have as a single person. The peace I feel for not having to deal with the difficult parts is tinged with pain for all that was good. Cutting off a family member feels like severing a damaged limb. There’s relief, but its memory turns up as a phantom of what was.
The way going no contact is often talked about online is empowering and cathartic. The injured or abused party gets to live a more peaceful existence. While I feel relief, I also feel a giant hole in my life. I am certain that the unspoken emotion in no-contact situations like mine is grief. Dr. Sweet concurs: “Stepping away from family is hard. It comes with many emotional challenges, like grief and guilt… Full estrangement is a really hard decision, but for some, it’s the healthiest option.”
Even in writing this story, I question whether our relationship was in fact that bad, and if I did the right thing. Was it just a terrible fight? Were the years when our relationship dynamic felt like I was giving more than I wanted to while not being respected real? Or am I just making more out of it than it was? He was very generous, should that count for something? I hear all the imaginary judgments coming from strangers that think we’re bad at being a family. It feels like failure. Our family feels irreparably broken, and that is our fault.
Occasionally, I try to imagine my way to forgiveness because he’s my brother. I don’t know if he’s ever imagined the same. I don’t doubt that, like with my father, he’s concocted a story in which he is blameless and I am the only guilty party. When I talk to myself about it, I end up relieved we’re not in touch again if this is what he believes. But my brain swirls round and round like this—mad at him, missing him, hating him, wishing he were different, loving him, wishing he hadn’t said what he’d said, and back again.
This past summer, Ameh Shirin, the aunt who would laugh and cook with me in the kitchen, died. I only found out after she was gone that she’d been quite sick for a while. I hadn’t seen her in years because my dad and her had stopped speaking. He was sad about his younger sister dying, of course, but I don’t know that he had regrets about being estranged from her when she passed. She was buried in Iran without her brother there. Whether he didn’t go due to his age, the cost, or because they had gone no contact, he didn’t say. In the end, these siblings didn’t meet at last over a grave—and I think both of them are at peace.
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Lili Zarghami lives with her teenagers in Brooklyn. She’s been writing for and providing editorial direction at women’s websites like Redbook, HGTV, Better Homes & Gardens and more since the turn of the century. She can remember the addresses of all the places she was a latchkey kid but has no idea what her email password is.
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