Anybody ever cut all ties with a family member?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am looking for some advice. Without getting into too much of the story, I have a family member that I have not got along with for years. We tolerate each other for the sake of our other relatives. Every couple months, there is some new problem. I can honestly say that I am not the cause of these problems. This other family member has way too much drama, and is constantly looking for someone else to blame for their problems.

So I am getting to the point where I want to cut all ties. Has anyone else been in a situation like this? How do you handle it? I used to be close to this family member, but now I can honestly say I would be happier if I never saw them or their family again. I am sick of the gossip, and talking to this person results in them apologizing, and then more gossip.

What do you do for family gatherings? How do you explain it to other people?
Its been a bad week :frowning:

2

My aunt simply cut ties with the entire family, so there was never a problem with who she did or didn’t speak to. My father used to use a fine, old-country saying: “She’s dead to me.”

The only advice I have is to completely ignore this other person. No phone calls, no letters, and if you see them at a family gathering, just stay on the opposite side of the room. If you hear of gossip, simply ignore it.

High drama family member probably won’t ever get the message, but the rest of the family will.

3

Just discteetly avoid the person.

4

My so-called father was a really piss-poor excuse for a human being, and I cut ties with him in 1976. I needed a lot of years away from him to recover from the years I had no choice but to be around him. He died last year, and none of his other family attended the funeral, save for one of my brothers, and my sister, and that was mainly out of guilt. I’m so much better off now for having written him off, I consider it a triumph over adversity.

Upon reflection, my whole family is estranged from each other. I’ve had several relatives move hundreds or thousands of miles away, just to be rid of them. The last time I saw any of my relatives was 1996 at my mother’s funeral. Now I live 1200 miles away, and I don’t expect to see a single one of them ever again. I’ve got cousins I haven’t seen in 30 years, who have children who have had their own children, none of whom I’ve ever met.

I think my sister has written me off. I’ve been away for almost 6 years, and she hasn’t called or written once. If I call her, she won’t answer the phone. I don’t know what the problem is, and now I am sad to admit that at this point, I don’t care. She has a son I’ve never seen. There’s no point in being despondent over it. The only person who’d feel like crap is me, and I don’t have any desire to do that!

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t make your family be the way you wish they were. You have to deal with how they are. And if how they are causes you a great deal of misery, why continue to punish yourself? I don’t go for catchphrases, but you’ve heard of Toxic Parents? Well, whoever it applies to - friends, relatives, anybody in your life - if they make you miserable, the best thing you can do for yourself is to stay away from them, and let them go on being the screwed-up way they are. You’ll never change them, and you’ll never make them get a conscience or a clue.

My family now is my in-laws and their relatives. Most of them are very nice people, and I much prefer to be related to nice people. All that other drama is a giant pain, and I don’t have any room for that in my life anymore.

So if you have to write off a relative who gives you nothing but grief, it’ll be hard for awhile, and you’ll feel bad and have a lot of questions that go unanswered. But then one day you’ll notice that it’s been years since they made you feel bad. And that’s a good thing!

5

My advice is ALWAYS to tell the truth. Tell this person what’s going wrong and that you’d like to sort it out. If they don’t want any part of it, reclassify them as “Complete stranger with whom I would have nothing in common”. You can say hello to them or talk to them but it never gets deeper than joining in someone else’s conversation in an elevator.

6

Yep. I have one cousin with whom I will not associate.
She’s, quite simply, a selfish, amoral, predatory drama queen. She’s systematically maimed everyone close to her, including her children, in her relentless belief that the entire world should be as obsessed as she is with her wants. It helps that the rest of the family can’t stand her either. I’m just the one who’s finally decided not to lend her countenance. Fortunately we live thousands of miles apart and would rarely intersect anyway.
There’s a sad/funny family game of betting how fast she’ll manufacture a fancied injury, throw a tantrum and storm out of family gatherings. This woman is well educated–D.D.S–and so seriously rich she has her own stables. Should be enough, no?
No.
I won the pool for this past Christmas. Seven hours, folks. A new record! (The rest of us get along like a house afire and I’m allowed to bet even though I don’t attend.)
Her sisters took her along to early evening (Baptist) church services and party following. The pastor was recently and painfully divorced, his wife having left him for a parishioner. The gross offense that caused this year’s tantrum? The pastor was seen smiling! Yes! Right over the punch and cookies! He was (and I quote), “making a mockery of marriage.” He should have been much sadder. She couldn’t possibly condone that sort of thing and was highly offended that the family exposed her to it.
As Dave Barry would say, I am NOT making this up.
I’m generally quiet, polite and I love my other cousins, their husbands and kids. However I also know I’d pull her aside and give her the tongue lashing of a lifetime.
But it isn’t my place, and it probably wouldn’t make a dent in her monumental ego anyway. Her own sisters are still willing and able to bear it, laugh about it and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t know if they’re enabling or just loving her anyway, and they don’t have to choose between us.
My family calls it the separate peace, and we laugh ourselves into stitches about it. Weird, okay, but it works.
Families.
sigh

7

I haven’t spoken to my father in almost fifteen years.

It’s a long story, but basically, I just decided I’d be healthier with him out of my life than in it. So I made no further effort to contact him. Interestingly, I heard nothing further from him either. That made it a lot easier.

I don’t know if he’s still married to his third wife. I don’t know if he’s in the same house. I don’t know if he knows I’m married.

It’s better this way. However, I say that only in reference to my particular situation. It can work, but I make no warranty that it will work or that it’s the best approach for all people in all circumstances.

8

I know several people who have nothing to do with members of their family

  • A woman who has no contact with the Alcoholic father who sexually abused her as a child. She even changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name.
  • A man who chose not to speak to his mother for several years and even now will have little to do with her.
  • A man who chose to write off his mother when she threatened to disown him over his marrying the woman he loved. This same man has no contact with a mentally ill drug addict sister who has had EIGHT children, all taken away from her by the state.

My own family had a lot of contact with my dad’s sister and her children while we were kids, but have had little to no contact with them in the last 20 years.

I’m in the process of lessening my contact with my parents, who live less than 5 miles away, because I’m getting damned tired of being lectured about how I should be doing this or that. I’m 41 years old and quite capable of managing my own life. My mother just won’t take the hints. She keeps saying “but I’m your mother, so of course I’m going to do X”. So very soon, my answer is going to be “I told you to knock it off and you refuse to do so. Goodbye, Mom.”

9

I cut ties with my mother some years ago. I will not go into the reasons for doing so at the moment. It took a little thought but having done so I cannot see why I did not do it years earlier. Family gatherings are not much of a deal in my family, I avoid things like Christmas with them anyway for the very reasons that causd this split. Good luck in doing what you do, just ensure you have given it plenty of thought and are aware that it could cause problems with other family members

10

After more mature consideration (after I typed all that out), my post was technically on topic but peripheral in spirit. Questions of degree and all, doncha know. It’s one thing to cut off someone who’s remote family but quite another when for someone who should be close emotionally. Everything ripples out in families but my example it’s comparing arterial bleeding to a cut finger.
Ooops. Sorry.

11

I don’t talk to my father or his side of the family at all. How do I do it? Simple, I don’t seek them out, I don’t call them, and I ignore them if I ever run into them in public, which doesn’t happen at all sinced I moved to Florida. Its not hard to ignore someone.

My mother doesn’t have contact with them so there is no family gatherings to worry about and no one ever asks me whats up because they think my stepfather is my real father, which he is.

12

For me it has been more important to cut emotional ties than physical ones. My mother is 90 and I am 60. We live about two hours apart. I call her once a week for a nice long chat and that seems to work well for us. But I have cut my visits to her down to twice a year for a few hours. Only within the last two years have I reached the point where I am out of reach of her cruelty. (That is the word my shrink uses to describe her words and actions.)

It is strange to be this old before realizing what an illusion her power was.

It’s best not to involve other family members or to indulge in unpleasantness. Learn how to set boundaries for yourself.

Or if you have a doozie in your life such as the one in TVeblen’s, make her a character in your next book.