I want to ask something practical, because I've been going in circles for a year and the internet is useless on this.

How do you actually go no-contact with a parent who isn't a monster?

My father is not abusive. I need to say that first because every resource I find assumes he is. He never hit me, never drank, never left. He is just relentlessly critical in a way that has never once broken the surface into something I could point to.

Thirty-eight years of small corrections. The way I load a dishwasher, the car I bought, the fact that my kids are in public school, the way I pronounce a word. Never raised voice. Always "I'm just saying."

I've tried the things. I've tried saying "that hurt me," and he apologizes in a way that costs him nothing and does it again in nine days. I've tried gray rocking — he just talks more. I've tried shorter visits; he comments on the length of the visit.

I did six months of therapy specifically about this and my therapist was good and the conclusion was essentially that he's not going to change and I get to decide my exposure.

So now what? Because the actual mechanics are what nobody writes about.

Do you tell them? Do you announce it or just let the calls go? What do you tell your mother, who did nothing and will absorb all of it? What do you tell your kids, who like him, because he's genuinely good with them, which is its own kind of mind-bending?

What happens at Christmas? What happens when he's eighty and sick and I'm the only one nearby?

I'm not asking whether I'm justified. I've spent a year on that question and I'm done with it. I'm asking the people who have actually done it: what did you say, what did it cost, and would you do it again.