When my niece was in college she became romantically involved with a man close to her mother’s age. He was married and had children. Her mother refused to intervene or even speak to her daughter about it. The relationship continued for over a year, during which she was often gifted with expensive jewelry as well as large sums of money. I had a good relationship with my niece and struggled with what to do about the situation. Finally, I wrote her a letter explaining that I felt she was taking a dangerous path in life by being involved with this man. I also gave her my point of view that this man, despite what he said, would never, ever leave his wife. If he did, indeed, leave his wife and marry her, she should have no expectation that he would be faithful to her.
The result of this letter was that my niece stopped speaking and seeing me. I tried numerous times to reconcile / speak to her. We did eventually reconcile. It took us a long time for things to get back to anything approaching normal. And then were estranged again due to a disagreement between her mother and myself. She had nothing to do with me and then we again were able to mend things. I told her how I never, ever wanted there to be another rift between us because our relationship meant so very much to me.
Since then, I’ve been extremely careful about discussing anything controversial or disagreeing with her. I’m willing to keep my mouth shut in order to maintain our relationship. Yes, I recognize that this isn’t the healthiest of relationships because of this, but I’m not willing to endanger it for any reason. I’ll always feel sadness about our 14-year estrangement. But I don’t regret writing that letter. I strongly feel that if someone in your family is going down a wrong moral path that there needs to be a frank approach to it. I wish her mother had done it. My niece eventually did break things off with the married man (who, incidentally, never did leave his wife) and married a wonderful man and had children. They have a strong marriage and my niece has matured into being a terrific person. And I’m beyond happy that we have put the estrangements behind us.