Is Going No Contact Selfish?

The word selfish is doing a lot of work in this question, and it's worth noticing who usually says it. The charge of selfishness is one of the most reliable tools used to keep a person inside a relationship that harms them, because it turns self-protection into a moral failing. A great many people were raised to believe that any act that prioritises their own wellbeing over the family's comfort is a betrayal. So when they finally step back to survive, the old training fires, and they ask whether they're being selfish, which is exactly the question the harm wants them asking.

Protecting yourself from real damage isn't selfishness, it's survival, and confusing the two is often part of how the damage was done in the first place. A child trained to always put the family first will experience every boundary as a crime. But a boundary that stops harm isn't taking something from the other person. It's declining to keep giving something you were never obliged to give, which is your own wellbeing as fuel for someone else's. There's a difference between denying someone a right and declining to keep sacrificing yourself, and that difference is precisely the one the accusation of selfishness blurs.

That said, honesty cuts both ways, and it's worth being able to look at the harder version of the question without flinching. There is such a thing as cutting someone off carelessly, using distance as a weapon, discarding a person who's flawed but not harmful because staying would require effort you'd rather not spend. That exists, and it's worth being honest with yourself about which you're doing. But notice the difference: genuine self-protection is usually reluctant, grieved, arrived at after other things failed. The careless version is quicker and colder. If yours came slowly and with grief, the word selfish almost certainly doesn't fit it.

So the answer is that no contact to protect yourself from harm is not selfish, whatever the people who benefit from your staying might call it. The question worth carrying isn't whether you're being selfish. It's whether the distance is protecting a life or avoiding a responsibility, and those two can be told apart by their weight and their honesty, not by whether someone accused you.

This is not therapy and it's not for crisis. If you want to look at which one you're actually in, the free book Before Approaching the Threshold is a quiet place to start.