It’s that time of year when family is getting together again. One of my cousins and I were talking recently about a mutual cousin who has cut himself off from the family totally, completely, 100%. His siblings have no idea why, his mom has no idea why, his father, recently deceased, had no idea why, the cousins have no idea why. No doubt about it, our family has its share of dysfunctional behavior and I’m sure there was enough to go around in his particular family. But…there’s no reason to think that he had it worse than most of us. No alcoholic parents, no dad with a gambling problem, no physical or sexual abuse, no divorced parents.
FWIW he was a bit more of a black sheep during his adolescence than most. But he seemed to come around. Went to a good college, graduated, got into a great graduate school, got married in a big wedding with 200 guests when he was 27 or so. Then just cut everyone off.
So we are at a total loss about what happened. I’m wondering if anyone on the board is in a similar situation. What does it take - either childhoood abuse or something later - that could make you cut off your entire family? Maybe there are some patterns that will come out.
Oh damn, I’m posting in another one of these threads. My whole family is estranged from one another. My parents are deceased. I escaped from my father’s abuse and alcoholism when I was 15 and never saw him again. My mother escaped from it the next year. My sister is 11 years younger than me, and we never had a relationship to speak of. She hasn’t spoken to me in a lot of years. I don’t even know where she lives. She has a son of whom I’ve never even seen a picture. Whatever problem she has with me has never been articulated, so I have no idea what it is.
Since I moved away from Canada, my next youngest brother has become unfriendly and obnoxious, and I finally had enough of his bullshit attitude a year ago and told him to get stuffed. He has a kid I wouldn’t know from Adam, either. As for the rest of the family, I haven’t seen any of my relatives since ten years ago, at my mother’s funeral. I hardly ever saw any of them before that. Maybe some of them at Christmas at Grandma’s house. After she died, they stopped getting together. I have cousins I don’t know, they have husbands and wives and kids I don’t know, and some of them have grandchildren I don’t know about.
After I lived down here for several years and got to know another kind of people, I realized that not everybody is so judgmental and shallow and acts like they’re king of turd moutain. It became increasingly obvious that I am better off without them and their antisocial ways. Thing is, I’m all happy and contented now, and I can’t share it with anybody but my wife. Well, that’s all right. She doesn’t mind an extra helping of happy.
With the exception of my youngest brother, with whom I have only developed a relationship since I got married, I don’t expect to see anyone else I’m related to ever again.
With the exception of my older sister, the next time I expect to see any of my family is when one of my parents dies. Mostly estranged because there has never been any reason not to be. Benign neglect, a total lack of anything in common, a lot of mild but persistant gnawing away at my early self-esteem, and no feeling that anyone would bother to notice that I left at 16, so I gradually stopped calling or visiting. I really don’t feel anything for them, although I suspect I will feel vaguely guilty when my parents die.
My father abandoned my mother and me when I was born. I’ve never seen him although I do know that I have a half-sister. It funny this came up because I was looking to get in touch with my sister in the near future.
My parents are both deceased, Mom in '73, Dad in '86. I have two brothers and a sister. I’m the eldest, by 10 years. My next older brother, Mike, and I are pretty close. We email weekly and he came up, from Ca., to visit this summer. My other brother I haven’t seen since my nieces wedding, about a dozen years ago. He lives in So. SF and has been a pothead, as well as being pretty irresponsible, his entire life. He has a good job and a nice wife, but we’ll never get along. I haven’t seen my sister in about 40 years, when she was in college at Prescott, Az. I’ve talked to her on the phone 3 or 4 times, the last being about 20 years ago. Neither Mike nor myself have a clue why she wants to remain aloof. She’s apparently had a successful life. She is in the publishing business and she owns a couple of houses in the SF bay area. She visited Mike a couple times in the early 90’s, but then broke off contact again. I once wrote her and told her that I’d really like to get to know her, but she never responded. It has me puzzled.
Sadly, my 50 year old brother has abandoned and disowned our Mother about a year and a half ago. We used to be very very close. All of us.
My Mom criticized my brother for some very bad decisions he was making (had to do with money that he was spending that was really false equity on the house that my Mom quit claimed to him, and the tramps, errrr women he called girlfriends).
That’s all it took. And the chip is still standing firmly on my brother’s shoulder. It’s so damn big I ‘m surprised he can stand. He is being such an asshole that it is all I can do to be civil to him. A year and a half ago, he was my very best friend. Now I want to sock him.
My father was estranged from me for about seven years before his death; I think he was embarrassed because he’d been a cipher throughout my whole childhood (and because he owed me several thousand dollars). I’ve been estranged from my mother for about 20 years. I have no idea if she’s even alive – she’d only be about 67, so it’s plausible that she’s out there somewhere.
Something about repeatedly threatening to leave me at an orphanage throughout my younger years and her just being insane in my early adulthood caused the rift. I honestly don’t know how I’d go about trying to find her, should I someday become insane myself and want to make up.
I disowned by father about 4.5 years ago, after my grandpa’s funeral. Somehow, I made it through the abuse, the assholishness, the shit-talking, and the dumping of my mother for an utter bimbo still talking to him. It took me becoming an adult to finally write him off, after endless guilt trips and the treating of my now-husband like he was a 15 year old kid and not a 30 year old man. My holidays, although spent away from the family I love, are now guilt-free, and once again events of joy (mostly). It makes the genealogy a little harder and expensive, but that’s a setback I’ll take.
The separation between me and my mom and family is geographical only; one of these years I’ll have time and money to go out for the holidays sighs. In the meantime though I’m lucky to have in-laws that I get along with, and my MiL’s family especially have been very loving to me (either that or they just love me for my pie, which is perfectly understandable).
Of my siblings, get along fine with my sister (youngest); prickly, uncomfortable relationship with youngest brother (his being bipolar doesn’t help), haven’t heard from nearest younger brother since 2001 (nor has anyone else in the family) and probaby never will. More than 20 years ago, he got into a violent argument with youngest brother one night at my parents’ house, over an incident involving damage to one of the family cars, took exception to what he saw as my parents taking youngest brother’s side, stormed out and cut off all contact with anyone who shares his last name (except for an uncle who died about a dozen years ago). When my father passed away in '01, we spent a couple days trying to track him down. He drove up from Tennesee to the viewing; seeing all these people who had become strangers to him clearly freaked him out badly, and he took off after less than five minutes, not to be heard from again.
I got sick of the manipulative passive aggressive bullshit and drama about 10 years ago. Until then I had no idea that people could actually be happy. I have a very small and quiet life that I wouldn’t trade for half the tea in China. Offer me all the tea and we’ll talk.
Heh, not a bad line - rather eloquent, I must say.
Kinda-sorta here. I still am in contact with my parents and see them approximately annually (I’m going to their house this Christmas for a week) but I have been trying to distance myself more and more from them. I’ve tried, I really have tried. But my relationship with them is nothing but draining and emotionally abusive, and it does me more harm than good.
More than anything I want to start a family of my own.
Thanks, Rigamarole. Actually, that expression is “king shit of turd mountain” but I censored myself, not wanting to be unnecessarily vulgar. I do like a good turn of phrase. Pithy is good.
My father, who I liked very much, died eight years ago.
Of I and my two brothers, I am the one good with paperwork and generally sorting out problems, so I got the brunt of my mother. Not pleasant.
Two years ago she came out with some real poison about me, which was totally untrue, and had been planted in her mind by my sister in law. My mother is to say the least a bit peculiar, she does not lie, but she seldom tells the truth - she has an ability to believe anything she wants to.
I have not spoken to her for two years, and my relations with one of my brothers (who I like very much) became strained as he would not talk about what his wife had been doing.
My mother is rather wealthy, I suspect that the s-i-l could see a material advantage in stirring things up.
That is an excellent description of my MiL as well. Unfortunately this means that if my SuaveCaveman wants to have a relationship with any member of his family (including his own dad) it will royally piss her off. If everything she says about her childhood is true I can understand why she did all of this, but I’ve seen her warp memories within hours of the event and I don’t trust her at all in this area.
As an example of how she’s lived her life: I have 30+ family members (including aunts and uncles and grandparents). Most of them made it to our wedding despite living 4 states away. Not one of her family members showed up. We only invited the ones she approved (3) and several friends that she considers her new family (6 people, 4 showed). Now she’s bitching about how the wedding was so lop-sided.
Barring my husband everyone who is in her life now has known her for less than 5 years. She has driven everyone else away, and I’m afraid we might be next. I don’t think she’s evil, just lonely and wounded. I’m hoping that we can maintain a (distant) relationship for her sake.
Like most of the respondents, my family is dysfunctional to the point of estrangement. There are several reasons:
I have a step son diagnosed as a sociopath. When he became a danger to my daughters, we let him go on his way and had nothing further to do with him.
My parents and a couple siblings “got to know” the sociopath and decided that my wife & I were the problem with him. Therefore, they decided to force him back into our lives.
Given the choice of parents & sibs determined to make bad choices & daughters who need my protection, I chose the daughters.
Hence, no more interactions with my parents or 2 out of 3 siblings. I am fairly convinced that they will eventually discover (the hard way) what we already knew about the step-son – although charming, he is quite dangerous. Hopefully, no one will end up dead. I do expect that they will end up financially poorer for having bought into his stories, though.
My husband’s mother told him he had a choice. He could either chose me, his beloved wife or he could choose his youngest spoiled brat, arrogant, nasty, mean, stupid, hates everyone, vain, cruel, rude, amoral, called him the most selfish man she’d ever met sister.
He chose me. His parents haven’t spoken to him in three years.
They gave the same choice to his brother. They haven’t spoken to them either.
We had a wierd one growing up. My dad and all of his family were estranged from my dad’s elder brother - John. And I was never given any reason why - just that Uncle John wasn’t interested in any kind of a relationship.
My dad was one of 3 kids. After my dad’s parents died, dad and John lived together in the house. When my dad got married, he bought John’s half of the house (no acrimony II’m aware of) and John moved to an apartment downtown.)
All 3 siblings lived in and around Chicago for their entire lives - 70 + years. I never saw Uncle John. When family members died, he had a habit of going to the wake in the middle of the night when no one would see him other than whoever was sitting up with the body (wierd custom, I know).
When my sister sent him an invite to her wedding, he took it out of the outside envelope, stamped and adressed the inner envelope and sent it back w/o comment.
At some point one of my cousins decided to track Uncle John down. I think he met him twice after initially being put off. Said Uncle John seemed like a normal guy. Intelligent, well read. At least superficially pleasant and polite. Just had absolutely no interest in any relationship with his family.
We had a situation like Dinsdale’s. I had an uncle named Lloyd. He was my father’s brother, but I never met him until his mother’s funeral. I heard of him and his family who lived less than two hours away, but he didn’t wish to have a relationship with anyone in the family…so he never did. I suspect he’s a lot like me in that regard. He saw what he would have to endure for a lifetime, and the other way his life could turn out and chose the latter.
Another of my paternal uncles moved to England when I was a teenager, and he never came back. The odd thing is, when he died over there, the person they notified was my younger brother in Vancouver. When he got home from work one day, there was an RCMP officer waiting for him, to tell him that uncle Ron had died. My brother was the only next of kin they could find among Ron’s personal records, because my brother had sent him mail asking about genealogy information for his family tree.
One paternal aunt and her family moved thousands of miles out west, also when I was a teenager, and they haven’t been back, either. Apparently, people in my father’s family are the kind you want to get away from, permanently.
