I’m glad I could help. Keep putting your energy where it will do the most good, not only for your family but also for you.
Just a couple things that come to mind:
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He took a knife to school, got caught, went through the family court system, manipulated the people in it, started spreading lies about the welfare of my daughters, leading them close to being removed from our home.
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He would become physically violent and attack people including them (as well as destroying our home - fists through walls, etc.)
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His trip through the court system cost my wife & I over $30k - an endangerment by literally removing food from the table & nearly the roof over all of our heads
I should add – all without the least display of remorse (except for when he got caught, of course)
It’s been really informative and touching to read all of the posts so far. I agree withRodgers01 that this is a very sad thread to read. Getting back to my OP I was pretty much stuck trying to figure out why my cousin would shut us out. Reading through all of these stories I’m starting to get some ideas.
I guess the explanations that come from the posts above fall into two categories: 1) The family is a bunch of assholes (in his mind, at least) and 2) the cousin is an asshole. I can see how both of these make sense. Thinking about the family again, we do have our share of arrogant and aggressive and insensitive types. I just went through a Thanksgiving dinner with about 15 of them and no one asked me about work, my kids, my sports interests or anything about me at all. No, that’s not true. In a year that has been marked by lots of good fortune and one colossal screwup, one cousin did ask about the screwup. And she was smiling IIRC. And the mother of my cousin is probably a severe narcissist. From what I gather, the closer you are to people like that the worse it gets. Probably she wasn’t really there for him growing up and who knows what rage lies within his psyche?
As for the idea that he’s the asshole. Yeah, there’s some potential there. I always liked him but I’m sure that he’s capable of all sorts of craaziness too.
The thing that gets me about these stories is the absolute nature of it. I can see someone making the decision to stay away, even to stay away for life, but to refuse to return your siblings’ calls and give a brief explanation. That’s tough.
I can answer your question, from my perspective of course, about why someone who choses to close off contact doesn’t want to take a siblings call.
My brother, the one person in my family that I love and respect the most, called today to find out why we weren’t coming to the Christmas celebration at his house. I was torn beyond belief in my answer to him. What I wanted to say is that our mother has shredded me to ribbons, has said things so vile to me that I’m on the verge of throwing up from the intensity of the pain, has revealed a black, evil side of her that until now I’d only seen glimpes of, but now I’ve seen the devil personified. I just cannot be in the same room with her even if I have to deny myself the pure pleasure of you and your families company.
What I said though, is that mom said some things that hurt me and I can’t come.
And the reason I didn’t share the truth and depth of what she’s said to me, is because even though he’s 40 years old, he’s still my little brother and I love him. He’s the “golden child”, the good child, and I won’t be the one to shatter his world as mine has been. Our mother is nice to him, she’s good to him, she loves and respects him, and even if I told him everything she said to me, it would be too difficult for him to reconsile that with the mother he knows.
So, I’ll keep it to myself, out of my love for him and my wish to preserve the relationship we have. I do not want him caught in the middle.
This is a painful thread for me, too.
I am estranged from my eldest sister (narcissistic to a horrifying degree, In addition to abusive to people who don’t validate her severely skewed world view).
I am also estranged from my youngest brother, another self-absorbed abuser.
My mother, who has been unhappy for as long as I can remember, is very close. Non-stop whining. And abuse when you don’t validate those whines. It’s draining. It feels like the energy is being sucked right out of me. I speak to the sibs I get along with and they tell me it’s the reason they don’t contact her very often, along with her never listening to a word we say, unless it’s to use those words as weapons against us. It affects my mental and emotional health badly.
Not long after my divorce, I moved in with my parents. Dad’s health was bad, and I wanted to help them if I could. I did. Unfortunately, Dad died last April. Since then, it’s been an almost non-stop litany from Mom about what a shit Dad was (He wasn’t. He had his faults, like all of us, and I loved him very much and miss him). I’m sick of it, literally. No amount of standing up to her, reasoning with her, or just plain saying, “You know, I’m not the person you should be telling this to. First, it’s all about 50 years in the past, and second, I’m his son. This is completely unfair.” Nope. She escalates. So it’s gotten to the point where I just get up and walk away from her, and talk to her seldom.
Good news is: a friend of mine has broached the subject of getting an apartment together. He’s kind and cheerful, which is usually my default as well…OK, I’m a little spacey too. I told him I’ll give it some serious thought. Well, if the offer’s still open, I’ll do it. We’re both rather poor. He’s going through a divorce right now, and mine wiped me out financially. If that doesn’t work, I’ll get my own apartment. If I can’t afford that, I’ll live in a van by the river! Seriously, almost anything would be better than living in a place that I look forward to getting away from…to my rather stressful job at a Customer Service desk at Home Depot. I like the job though. Meeting the challenges is very gratifying. They need to pay me more, though. 
Thanks for starting this thread, Plan B. It helps a lot to read what others have said, and to see that I need not feel bad about cutting off abusers. I feel no guilt about my brother and sister, but with Mom I guess I need to remind myself that “the well is poison” as QtM so aptly put it. I don’t want to see her bitter and alone at the end of her life, but she can make choices. Just like everyone else.
Oh my…I’m so sorry for your pain. If it’s not prying too much, what could she have said (as opposed to physically “done”) to you that could hurt you this much? I’ve known people who have said nasty things, but none who could evoke feelings of physical illness. Mind you, I’m not doubting what you say…just curious as to what it could be that she said.
For me, my grandmother called me, at age 12, to my face, a “fucking bitch” and played such manipulative games (once bringing out the suitcases to leave early because I was such a horror to be around, leaving me in tears and begging them to stay) that my stomach churned up in knots. So yes, words can make you physically ill, especially when you are a child. I think those memories carry over to adulthood, so even though you’re grown, with kids and a mortgage and a good job, one nasty word can make you 12 years old again.
My mother did not stand up for me, one of the many many MANY reasons she is no longer in my life.
I’m estranged from my younger sister. Or, as estranged as you can be when your sister lives with your parents, which whom you have a fine relationship. So, we don’t talk, but I do get updates. For instance, just now I read an email from my mom about their Thanksgiving. She noted: “No tantrums this year.”
My sister is 22 years old. We’re celebrating that she managed to avoid throwing a temper tantrum on a major holiday.
And yet my mom doesn’t understand why I don’t want to have anything to do with her. Gee, I dunno. And she’s so *fun * to be around, too!
hajario’s post reminds me that my bubbe (grandmother) and her sister are estranged. My dad has vague recollections of playing with cousins when he was small, but he doesn’t even remember their names now. I have loads of second-cousins, cousins one-removed, etc., on my mom’s side, but zilch on my dad’s. Kind of sad.
I’ve got three older brothers.
The oldest one, I get along with pretty well (we’ve always been close).
The middle one was verbally and physically abusive (hitting) throughout our childhoods, and has always treated the rest of the family as something less pleasant and useful than shit. He had a tantrum once - as an adult - and wrote my parents a letter addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs xxx’ informing them that they’d ruined his life, and he wanted no further contact with them. A few years later he was making nice-nice to them though only when he felt like bothering. When he decided my mother should quit smoking, he threw a tantrum when the other siblings wouldn’t support his desire to have her declared legally incompetent and incarcerated to force her to quit smoking. When she was fighting cancer, he was abusive to all of us. When she was on her deathbed, he threw a tantrum IN HER HOSPITAL ROOM because her will left some specific jewelry to her granddaughters and he felt that meant there’d be less money for him. He also threw a tantrum because he wasn’t the designated person on her medical directive and he wanted her treatment to proceed in a different way (more aggressive, which was counter to her express wishes). He threatened to go to court to force that issue. He also routinely threatened to go to court to have my other brothers set aside as executors of the will (and seemed surprised when I wouldn’t go along with his games).
This is someone who has never held a job for more than a couple of years, is 50+ years old and never been married or held a long-term emotional relationship. I’m pretty sure that at least some of his issues are of his own making, despite our parents’ deliberately destroying his life :: putz ::
Sucks that my mother is dead, but the one small benefit is that I no longer have to put up with this brother even at holidays.
My youngest brother got fed up with the bullshit and cut off the rest of the family as soon as the paperwork from my mother’s estate was settled. Never bothered to tell us his wife turned up pregnant unexpectedly, the first I heard of it was an impersonal Christmas letter announcing the birth of their son a few weeks before. He has his own emotional issues, I guess. But I still maintain contact with his wife.
It started with with how she regrets my existance because I’ve been nothing but a problem and disappointment to her since the moment of my birth and got incredibly worse from there. I’m trying - unsucessfully thus far - to put a mental block on it all, so I really don’t want to outline it in depth online where it will live for eternity. It was bad - very, very bad.
I’m so sorry.
No cases of full estrangement, but my paternal grandmother has been acting towards most of the rest of the family in such a way (nasty, tasteless, insulting towards our accomplishments) that we deliberatly didn’t invite her to Thanksgiving.
Both my parents are dead now. My siblings are still arguing with eachother over who got what when the first of them died 7 years ago. The second parent died in March, and they are unbearable now.
Ex: A recent ‘Happy Birthday’ obligatory call was hijacked into a 10 minute bitchfest over how the sibling executor is handling the estate. To my credit, I picked up a phonebook, slammed it down on the table and said ‘Something happened, gotta go’. Sure, I could have told her to F-off, but I was calling her to wish her a happy birthday. BTW, those calls, to any of the siblings, are now at an end as well as the birthday & holiday cards; we never get any back anyway.
Its not my fault I live frugally and pay my bills like our parents taught us all to do. Life is too short to be bothered with greedy little sh-ts who were still bleeding my parents for handouts after age 50.
Word. My mom left home like a bat out of hell when she was 18 and never went back, I mean never. Her relationship with her mother was problematic but she sustained it; her relationship with her stepfather was nonexistent. AFAIK, she never spoke to him again after she left home. She doesn’t like to talk about her childhood (she was the oldest of seven children in a very poor family, and her mother was uneducated, poor, trapped, and frequently at the end of her rope) and she never talks about her stepdad.
Mom is a very strong and affectionate woman – not the type who would ever just cut someone out of her life. I think most of us who know her intimately and know her history believe that her stepfather abused her, physically for sure, and probably sexually, although we wouldn’t dream of asking. But when he died, she wouldn’t go to his funeral (a huge statement from my Christian mother), and this in turn chilled relations with her brothers and sisters, who are his biological children and possibly (probably) weren’t abused like she was. Though as to that, who knows . . . . Anyway, he died when we kids were teenagers (15 years ago or so) and we had never met him. We’ve seen our aunts or uncles or cousins on that side of the family maybe once a year since then, if that. My mom maintains sporadic contact, but I doubt any of my siblings or I will bother to maintain contact once she’s gone.
It’s just too bad that her siblings wouldn’t allow her to make her choice without judging her for it – they were mad that she cut him off “for no reason” and that she wouldn’t explain; they treat her coolly based on their perception of her “wrong” and “mean” decision; and my sibs and I (if not my mom) in turn get cheesed that my mom gets the cold shoulder from her family, and we largely don’t bother to cultivate a relationship with them because of it. I don’t know how the situation could have turned out differently, other than having stepdad not be a child abuser. I just wish they would have respected her enough to realize that very few, if any, normal not-antisocial people make such a choice “for no reason.” There’s almost always a reason, usually a very good, if painful, one.
For those who are estranged, how do you handle well-meaning questions from co-workers and the like, such as “So, are you going to spend Thanksgiving at your mom’s?” or “Are you traveling home for Christmas this year?”
If I’m asked specifically, I can honestly say that we’re going to my wife’s home in another city. I don’t think anyone has asked about my family, or lack thereof, in Canada. A couple of people I consider to be close friends have heard a couple of details. I don’t talk about it, really. It’s private. If pressed, I could always say that I don’t get any vacation time, and I couldn’t afford to go there anyway. That’s also true.
I just say I’m not doing anything special aside from sleeping in and eating too much. Most of the people I work with know it’s just me and my cat. The others I don’t work closely enough with for them to ask. Sometimes if a person isn’t familiar with my situation they feel compelled to invite me to their place for the various turkey days. That can be uncomfortable but I’ve always managed to decline without offending.
The best thing to say would be, “I’m not close with my family” and leave it at that.
I’ve just said, with a smile, “No, no. So, what are your plans for the holiday?” and act all interested in what their plans are. Usually, it works.
Mom does not know why? :dubious: