Latest news with #familyestrangement
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
I sympathise with Brooklyn Beckham... I cut off all contact with my mum and this is why I STILL don't regret it: KATE WILLS
Like many people, I've been gripped by rumours of a feud in the Beckham clan. Did Brooklyn, 26, really snub all four of his father David's 50th birthday celebrations? Do his wife Nicola Peltz and his mother Victoria really hate each other? But unlike most armchair psychologists scrolling social media for clues, I can personally empathise with what Brooklyn is reported to be experiencing – because I too know the pain of family estrangement. But I also know that, given time and the right circumstances, even the deepest of rifts can be healed.
Telegraph
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Brooklyn joined Prince Harry in the fightback against their ‘perfect families'
After Brooklyn Beckham skipped his father's 50th birthday party, the family must have hoped for a swift reconciliation. However, behind the scenes the estrangement between the Beckhams and their eldest son seems to be deepening, a source has told the Telegraph. Far from a petty squabble, the rift stems from Brooklyn's long-felt unhappiness over his treatment within the family, the source close to the 26-year-old said. The source claimed the Beckhams are 'a family that is publicly charming' but can be very different behind the scenes. They claim Brooklyn and his wife, Nicola Peltz-Beckham (the daughter of US billionaire Nelson Peltz), feel that they've not had any meaningful private connection with the family. The Beckhams' eldest son believes he has been made to feel like he is an 'idiot' and 'stupid'. With his wife's 'support', the source said, Brooklyn is 'for the first time standing up against' his parents. They described what he is doing as 'breaking generational trauma'. It's a phrase that will be familiar to Prince Harry – whom Brooklyn had dinner with in California last week. The Beckhams' eldest son and his wife were guests at a Montecito party also attended by the Sussexes. There, Peltz, 30, and Meghan are said to have found 'common ground' over their casting as meddling American wives breaking up Britain's most famous families. The source told the Telegraph the couple had 'found Harry and Meghan to be particularly kind, caring and generous' at the gathering, hosted by Brian Robbins, a neighbour of the Sussexes in Montecito and the CEO of Paramount, a streaming service on which David is currently appearing on a football chat show. 'Empathetic', was the word used by a source in the Sun, which conjures an image of two young couples commiserating over their shared experiences. 'Harry was fully aware of the situation and offered Brooklyn his unwavering support,' the source told the newspaper. Since abandoning life as a working Royal, writing a tell-all book and conducting several interviews about his experiences growing up inside the Firm, Harry has often spoken about the 'generational trauma' he alleges he experienced. In 2021, the prince said he left the UK because he wanted to 'break that cycle' of 'genetic pain'. Much like the Sussexes, the Peltz-Beckhams are said to hold the ultimate goal of a reconciliation. 'After many attempts by Brooklyn to set boundaries with his family and encourage honest and positive change in their relationship, he's become discouraged and disheartened,' the source tells the Telegraph. They add there is 'not a quick fix' for the gulf forming between them. 'Nicola wants nothing more than for Victoria and David to repair the relationship with their son.' Just two weeks ago, when in the UK for the court ruling over his security, Prince Harry said he would 'love a reconciliation' with his family. 'There's no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious,' he told the BBC. There are eerie similarities between the Beckhams' conflict and the division which has long plagued the Royal family. The splits reportedly began, in both instances, around the time of the couples' weddings. In the case of the Peltz-Beckhams, there were said to have been clashes between Nicola and Victoria ahead of their ceremony in 2022. In response to the fracturing in their relationship with their eldest son, the Beckhams appear to have taken the same approach the Royals have adopted over the years – that of a dignified silence in the face of a torrent of allegations. A source told the Sun after the story of the Montecito dinner broke that Victoria and David were 'blindsided by the news – they didn't see it coming'. The couple are said to have been attempting to reconcile with Brooklyn. A source told the Daily Mail that 'as parents David and Victoria are very concerned for their son and they have tried to get in touch but he isn't interested'. Harry and Brooklyn have a number of things in common. They both grew up in the spotlight, the sons of two of the most famous families not just in Britain but in the world. Like the prince, Brooklyn undoubtedly enjoyed enormous amount of privilege (his parents are said to be worth £500 million). As boys became men, both struggled to find their purpose, pursuing one cause or passion before stumbling onto the next. As an adult, Brooklyn has dabbled in photography and later food. And when they met the women they wanted to marry, both seemed to struggle to reconcile their old life and the new. So when Brooklyn and Harry went to dinner last week, 13 years after their last meeting – when Brooklyn was just a teenager and the prince in his twenties – they should have had plenty to talk about. Chief among them, their shared protectiveness over their wives, perhaps. Amid the family conflict, the source told the Telegraph, Brooklyn's decision to side with his wife has ultimately caused 'a major disruption in the Beckham fairytale', for which there is a sense that Nicola has largely shouldered the blame, adding she 'gives him the support and strength he's never had'. If the Sussexes are to be seen as the test case for what happens when a rupture like this one begins to form, it could be a long road to reconciliation.
Daily Mail
12-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
DR MAX PEMBERTON: My four crucial tips to fix a family fall-out that David and Victoria Beckham MUST follow
There will be a good few I am sure, who, hearing about the alleged rift in the Beckham household, will be able to sympathise with David and Victoria. Family fallings out are horrible but also common. In fact, research by charity Stand Alone found that one in five families in the UK will be affected by estrangement at some point.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Prince Harry's estrangement isn't unique: Here's how to negotiate cutting family ties
"I would love reconciliation with my family." It's a poignant statement from anyone dealing with family estrangement, but one that carries particular candor when it's coming from a prince. In a recent interview with the BBC, Prince Harry acknowledged that his father, the king, "won't speak to me," and expressed the belief that "there's no point continuing to fight any more." It was a vulnerable confession from the most rogue royal, whose wife, Meghan, has a similarly volatile relationship with her own father. But while family fractures like Harry's can undoubtedly be a source of deep pain, plenty of us also know that sometimes, having a continent between your relatives and you is just fine. The maxim that blood is thicker than water may hold true in a laboratory viscosity test, but human relationships are far more complicated, and estrangement is commonplace. A 2020 study by Cornell professor Karl Pillemer found that over one-quarter of Americans say they have cut ties with a family member like a parent or sibling. Most of Pillemer's respondents reported feeling "upset" over that state of affairs, and honorary American Harry, who's also on the outs with his brother William, seems to be among them. In his 2023 memoir "Spare," he said that the "door is always open" but that the "ball is in their court." The stakes to Harry now undoubtedly feel higher, with his father's cancer diagnosis and ascension to the throne. "I don't know how much longer my father has," Harry told the BBC of the 76-year-old monarch. I've experienced estrangement in my own family, and in entirely related disclosures, have also obtained a degree in conflict resolution. And what I've learned from my experience and education is that conflict is healthy and that resolution doesn't always mean one big happy family. In negotiation, we talk about best alternatives to negotiated agreements and worst alternatives, BATNAs and WATNAs. The concepts boil down to, if this conflict can't be worked out agreeably — and that may be because one side refuses to engage — what are my other options? Taylor Swift's dispute with Scooter Braun is a good example of a BATNA. When she wanted to buy the masters of her first six albums from her former label, Big Machine, their terms for her to do so were unacceptable to her. So she started rerecording and rereleasing them on her own, creating an outside-the-box plan that didn't involve them. In the case of family estrangement, if all sides involved are open to clearly and honestly articulating what they want from their relationship and why they want those things, there can be a path forward if those positions and interests align. Estrangement doesn't have to be all or nothing, either. Without necessarily formalizing the terms, families regularly work out a spectrum of options and boundaries around how much contact to have with each other. However, as is evidently the case with King Charles and Prince Harry, if one or both sides aren't invested in any reconciliation, it's up to the estranged parties to explore what their best and worst outcomes look like on their own. Back when I was navigating through the years of my mother's disappearing act, wishing that she was the kind of parent who would answer my calls, I had to learn to embrace the wisdom that "sometimes you have to get closure all by yourself." I recognized it the first time I read the passage in Cheryl Strayed's "Wild," in which she tells her therapist, "Imagine my life if I'd been raised by my father," and he counters, "Imagine your life if you'd had a father who loved you as a father should." I can't think of an exchange that better encapsulates the difference between a best-imagined option and a best-attained one. When a parent can't or won't love a child as they should, having them out of the picture may be as good as it gets. There are a multitude of reasons that families crack apart. Sources within the palace have told the press that Charles is avoiding his son because he doesn't want to be drawn into Harry's legal battles with the palace over his security detail. The king has conspicuously found himself "too busy" to see his own son on Harry's periodic recent trips back to the United Kingdom, but the conflict between them and the seemingly conditional nature of their relationship goes back years. Harry didn't call his memoir "Spare" for nothing — in it, he writes, "I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy…. This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life's journey and regularly reinforced thereafter." As Eamon Dolan, the author of the new book "The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement," noted to me recently, "Dysfunctional families are driven into a specific set of roles," which can include abuser, enabler, golden child and scapegoat. So what happens when a spare doesn't want to play the part any longer? "I believe Harry falls very much into that rubric," Dolan said, "because the scapegoat is not only the one who's perceived to be the villain of the family, but their truth-telling is perceived as betrayal." And in the negotiation of family dynamics, demands for compliance, whether spoken or unspoken, are a common bargaining chip. The price of disagreement can be ostracism. Dolan told me that, "This notion is thrust upon us that family is some sort of absolute, that you can only love them in one way, and that way is by putting up with whatever they make you endure. That's not true." It's also just a bad deal. At least for now, Charles and Harry have made what looks like a clear choice to cut ties, while William appears painfully still in the thick of it. And if you've ever worn yourself out talking to a brick wall, you'll have eventually come to the sobering realization that the wall isn't going to answer you. Estrangement, whether it's because a family member has cut ties or you've made the difficult decision to do so yourself, can be heartbreaking. Those primal, instinctive bonds pack a wallop when they're severed. But estrangement can also make space for cultivating more nurturing relationships, breaking cycles of dysfunction and modeling healthier dynamics for our kids. In a case like Prince Harry and his family, sometimes the best available outcome of a difficult problem is only possible when the other party won't even come to the table.
