Why I Chose a Minimum Viable Relationship Instead of “No Contact”
I have been thinking a lot about emotionally immature parents lately. In the very practical, day-to-day sense of what it means to be an adult with limited time, limited energy, a child to raise, work to do, and ageing parents who cannot meet me where I am.
I recently listened to the Oprah episode about the rising trend of adult children going “no contact” with their families. The core message was clear: if elderly parents want meaningful relationships with their adult children, guilt trips or demands are not a strategy. Emotional maturity is validation, curiosity, accountability and repair. And these are the skills that keep relationships alive across generations.
That is a hopeful message.
It is also, for many families, unrealistic.
The generational ceiling
I often feel that one apple can jump only so far beyond its tree.
My grandparents’ generation did not speak about feelings. In the West and the East, Children were to be seen and not heard. They were either ignored or put to work early. Survival came first; emotional literacy did not exist as a concept.
My parents were raised by those people.
And now, in their seventies-eighties, they are expected to:
- read the books I read
- listen to the podcasts I listen to
- understand validation
- embrace therapy
- apologise for past harms
- collaborate on emotional repair
That is a very large leap.
It is not impossible. But it is rare.
Many elderly parents simply do not have the cognitive, emotional, or cultural tools to do that work. They neither have the motivation. After 30-40 years of long hours, low-paid work, economic crises, little respect, and constant pressure, retirement arrives not as a time for growth but as a collapse into rest. They find themselves free but unequipped to find and live a good active life.
No dreams, no sense of future ahead.
What looks from the outside like apathy or even depression often feels, from the inside, like relief.
They are tired.
And tired people do not start therapy journeys.
The modern parenting squeeze
At the same time, my generation is raising children in a completely different structure.
Many of us grew up surrounded by extended family: grandparents, aunts, cousins, a diffuse web of care. Now we are in nuclear households, with two or single working parents, long commutes, nurseries and schools that open after our workday starts, and salaries that barely stretch.
I see this not only in my own life but in the lives of friends. One couple I know, both teachers, are doing everything “right”. They work, they care deeply about their children, they budget carefully. They are fortunate to have school holidays off, but they still must be in their classrooms before their own children’s school opens. They have no one who can do early drop-offs. They have had to hire a nanny because the logistics just do not work.
What makes this situation quietly painful is that a recently retired grandmother lives in the same town. She drives. She loves her grandchildren.
But the relationship between mother and daughter is fragile. Old wounds, unspoken resentments, mismatched expectations. There is no shared emotional language, no repair. So, the practical help that could transform their weekly stress remains limited.
Love is present. Capacity is not.
Respect versus endurance
One of the most difficult questions for me has been: where is the line between respecting our parents and enduring behaviour that is triggering, invalidating, or even toxic?
We are told to honour our mother and father. But what does honour mean in practice when the relationship is asymmetrical?
For years, I carried an internal script shaped by television. Parenthood, Will & Grace, Friends: all show us imperfect people who have one deep conversation and suddenly understand each other. Apologies are made. Growth happens in 22 minutes. The next episode begins with a repaired bond.
I tried the deep conversations, and I kept waiting for that episode in my own life.
It never came.
And eventually I had to accept that it never will. Because repair requires work on both sides. It requires curiosity, accountability, and the willingness to be honest and to tolerate discomfort.
Many elderly parents do not want to do that work. Not out of malice, but out of exhaustion, fear, and lack of tools.
The impossibility of parenting your parents
There is a phase many adult children go through where they attempt to parent their parents.
I have tried it:
- explaining emotional concepts
- suggesting resources
- asking for small behavioural changes
- hoping for mutual growth
It almost never works.
Children are neurologically wired to trust and absorb from parents. Parents are not wired to reverse that dynamic. Elderly adults, especially, are less malleable. Change requires energy, curiosity, hope for a better future. Many retired people feel they have no future on the horizon, only maintenance.
Without energy and optimism there is no transformation.
And without transformation, the relationship cannot become what we hoped it would be.
Grieving the ideal
The hardest part has been grieving the imaginary version of the relationship.
The parents who would:
- learn new skills
- collaborate on projects
- help with childcare in ways that fit my life
- engage in deep conversations
- repair old hurts
In an ideal world, we would have strong intergenerational bonds:
- grandparents helping with childcare
- adult children supporting ageing parents
- shared language and mutual respect
In reality, many families are navigating:
- different cultures within the same family
- migration and language gaps
- different values and worldviews
- emotional skill mismatches
Accepting that not every family can become an emotionally fluent, mutually supportive unit is painful but freeing. Letting go of the fantasy is not rejection. It is realism. It is also the beginning of a more stable, less painful connection.
The minimum viable relationship
Since full repair is not possible and no contact feels too extreme, I have been experimenting with what I think of as a “minimum viable relationship”.
The goal is not closeness.
The goal is not transformation.
The goal is not mutual emotional growth.
The goal is simple: do not hurt each other.
No contact can be necessary and healthy in some situations, but it is also deeply painful for elderly parents who may not understand why the silence exists. If I can avoid cruelty while still protecting my own capacity, that feels like the ethical middle ground.
So, what does that look like in practice?
For me it means:
- brief, warm messages
- occasional updates about my child
- photos and videos that carry emotional content without requiring complex conversation
- time-limited in-person meetings
- neutral topics
- no attempts at deep repair
- no reopening old wounds
It is, in a sense, a relationship designed around their capacity and my boundaries.
It is not the relationship I wanted.
It is the relationship that is sustainable.
And sustainability matters when you are raising a child, building a life, and trying to do meaningful work in the world.
Why this matters for my energy
One unexpected benefit of defining this minimum structure has been cognitive.
Unanswered emotionally loaded messages, from any unresolved conflict, sit in my mind like open tabs. They drain executive function. They make meaningful work harder. They push me toward distraction and comfort behaviours because my brain is holding social threat in the background.
When I define clear rules for contact: short, scheduled, bounded, those tabs close.
This is not only an emotional boundary. It is a productivity strategy.
A humane boundary
So where does that leave the commandment to honour our parents?
For me, honour now means:
- not humiliating them
- not weaponising silence
- not demanding change they cannot deliver
- not exposing myself to harm
It also means honouring myself:
- protecting my time and energy
- refusing emotional labour that goes nowhere
- building support systems elsewhere
Honour is not endurance.
Honour is not self-erasure.
Honour is not compliance.
It is a boundary that preserves dignity on both sides.
Love without repair
The most confusing part is that love can exist without emotional maturity.
I can love my parents and still not trust them with my vulnerability.
They can love me and still invalidate my experience.
We can care for each other and still be unable to repair.
Love does not automatically produce skill.
Once I understood that, I stopped waiting for behaviour that would prove the love. I started accepting the love in the forms it exists: small gestures, gifts, brief check-ins, without expecting it to meet needs it cannot meet.
"Now what?": do no harm
If I had to reduce all of this to one principle, it would be this:
Start with not hurting them. Continue with not hurting yourself.
Everything else: frequency of contact, depth of conversation, shared activities, can be built on top of that foundation, if and only if capacity exists on both sides.
Sometimes it will. Often it will not.
And accepting that is not failure.
It is maturity.
