1. to turn away in feeling or affection; make unfriendly or hostile; alienate the affections of: Their quarrel estranged the two friends.

2. to remove or keep at a distance: The necessity of traveling on business has estranged him from his family.

3. to divert from the original use or possessor.

4. to refrain from all verbal, non-verbal, and physical interactions; to recess another from ones personal/social life: The abuse became such that I had to get away so as to find out if I'm capable of living/relating without abusing or being abused.*

The word estrange is the nearest we can get to removing or keeping at a distance, to not interacting. The word affection in the above definition can be misleading, it's not to be confused with love. The love is always there, it's not dependent upon proximity or even interactions.

One cannot not have a relationship. We are having a relationship with everyone; with some we interact frequently and there are millions we have yet to meet.

We all have mastered estrangement; we've found something wrong with another and simply avoided them [as much as possible] most often for life. Euphemistically, this act of bringing someone into our life and then giving up on them, keeping them at arm's length, is referred to as dumping someone, as in through-with/divorcing. It's also referred to as avoiding, distancing, or shunning. Many children distance themselves geographically from their parents/in-laws, manufacturing a logical, reasonable reason, but unconsciously, so as to interact with them as little as possible—without telling them the truth as to what it feels like to interact with them; such a pattern of withholding creates breakdowns in communication, the behavior follows one and serves as a barrier to sustaining the experience of health, happiness, and prosperity.

Sometimes all it takes is a glance at a stranger in a grocery store, at which time, in less than a second, we create, have, and complete a relationship with them. This way of interacting and relating is referred to as the adversarial communication model. This model is taught to all education majors and is therefore emulated by most all high school graduates (parents and citizens).

It's called adversarial because it supports us/them, win/lose, bigger is better, surviving/getting ahead at the expense of another.  There's something about our leadership-communication skills that produces results that often don't feel good to one or more parties. We honestly believe that there's something wrong with the other person—if only they would change everything would be fine.  We have found something wrong with the other person and we want to change them, yet, we know this is not love. At some level we can't feel good about ourselves knowing we are addicted to shunning.  

Dumping another, even for a safe or sane reason, has undesirable consequences (karma).  What's missing is a way for the dumped to come back into your life.  Shunning serves them temporarily however shunning them indefinitely doesn't serve you. Without providing the Dumped with a way back in you'll both keep repeating the same behaviors that produced the estrangement.

Dumping someone closes your mind to your cause in the matter, to the fact that you (albeit unconsciously) intended them to communicate the way they did.

Dumping communicates non-verbally, "My rock-solid belief is that there is no communication, activity, nothing short of a mind-blowing experience, that could change you or the way I think and feel about you."  In other words, shunning another for life reveals an unacknowledged belief that no amount of therapy or counseling could change me to the extent that it would also change you, that there is no such thing as personal transformation. i.e. "Pedophiles will always be pedophiles."

There is a way to estrange yourself from another responsibly but it requires that you first be willing to acknowledge that you, using your highly developed leadership-communication skills, masterminded (however unconscious you may have been) the result. You must be willing to acknowledge that the genius in you brought that person/family member into your life, for an as yet unknown but brilliant reason, to mirror something about you in support of enlightenment, of communication mastery.

Reasons for estrangement:

There are valid and responsible reasons to estrange yourself from another or from your family.

• Something about the way you communicate, your leadership-communication skills, produces abuse. Perhaps you are addicted to setting it up for another to abuse you and then blame them for starting it.

• Something about your leadership-communication skills inspire mediocrity or ill health. You don't inspire others to excel; instead, despite your best efforts, you seem to cause those you relate with to opt for mediocrity. i.e. Your spouse is an overweight couch potato or your child is failing in school.

• You don't inspire a commitment to honoring agreements; perhaps you have driven your partner into the arms of another and find yourself blaming them for because you didn't insist on a clear verbal fidelity agreement.

• Using your leadership-communication skills you magnetically attracted someone to mirror you and the fact that you need an equal amount of therapy/counseling. The premise being, no conscious, well adjusted, person would choose to socially interact with someone who needs help/therapy.

• You cause friction and arguments instead of harmony. Those around you are addicted to making you/others wrong and to finding fault, they seem to have no choice but to act that way when they are around you.

• You see now that you were unconscious when you chose to repeatedly hang out with someone needing therapy and that you didn't think to check out their integrity or the integrity of their family/friends.

• You have been stuck withholding thoughts and now your integrity is so out as to be seemingly unfixable, you find yourself wanting to blame others for the results you've produced.

Estrangement is a commitment to having abuse-free relationships.

Here's how to estrange yourself responsibly:

Due to the fact that your verbal communication-skills trigger abusive arguments it's best that you write, using your own words, the following, unless of course your addiction to creating abuse is such that you need to engage them verbally so as to trigger arguments.  In a situation where you're intent on estranging yourself from your entire family write separately to each member.

Dear___: There is something about my leadership-communication skills that keeps producing undesirable results in my relationship with you. I need to find out what it is about me that keeps producing these results. I need to know that I'm able to inspire supportive harmony.  I am going to be taking a recess from all interactions with you (to include telephone and messages, letters, gifts, and cards). During this recess I intend to work on myself; I'll let you know when I believe I've had a breakthrough.  If you would like to help shorten the recess time you can let me know when you have completed 25 hours of counseling/therapy or leadership-communication skills coaching. Please honor my request by not trying to contact me.

Note 1: This communication will not work if you can't be trusted to follow through with the estrangement. If you are lying, if you don't mean it, they will intuit it and disrespect your request.  You will in fact set it up for them to call you so that you can get your fix of abuse. To have a better sense of why it's important for them to do an equal amount of healing read the Community Support Group Project.

Note 2: As with an alcoholic, if you threaten to leave an abuse addict will promise to change and not be abusive, however their addiction is such that they cannot keep such an agreement; worse yet, you don't command the respect that will inspire an addict to honor such an agreement. Remember, someone addicted to abuse will not abuse someone whom they respect.

* In the enlightenment game one first masters communicating with family and oneself. Once one is able to be happy, healthy, and prosperous with family and self then one brings in a partner and masters communicating with another and both sets of families. In the process of mastering relationship with self and others one then notices that eventually life begins to not work as expected. This is partly because you didn't share with others less fortunate how to have relationships work.  The way to recreate satisfaction (the experience of life working) is to take your communication skills out into the community and share what works with others; this curriculum is referred to as mastering communication at the level of group/community/organization, usually characterized by enrolling another/others in an endeavor you support. It's also referred to as service/serving others. Put another way, if you get your life/relationships working great and fail to share it with others then you lose it. The way to expand upon the experience of happiness, success, health, and prosperity is to be willing to master communication at the level of society and world. Typically what happens is one is not happy and so they find a partner who is also not happy and together they try to be happy which most always results in both partners succumbing to mediocrity (neither functioning anywhere near the level of excellence) neither making a significant positive difference in their community/world, neither having discovered/created their purpose in life. This ass-backwards curriculum usually results in a divorce so that one can then clean up the messes and begin again.

Last edited 9/1/11

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