I don’t talk to my mother because she drives me crazy. I have a sister who is in the same boat but she sticks her nose in places it doesn’t belong (ie, she tries to get into your bank account).
My mother: she was overly abusive but luckily I didn’t live with her for very long. I have gone through spouts of not talking to her but typically went back. We would talk periodically on the phone but she decided to only talk about the bad things about people which depresses me. I have told her not to but it hasn’t made a difference. Now, I am not talking to her because she is such a positive energy leech.
The sister I don’t talk to: She is fairly well off (ie, has a huge, 500,000ish dollar house… several luxury cars…etc) but she seems to try to find ways to spend your (meaning anyone who will fall for it) money rather than hers. She is also angry and belligerent most of the time. She also has gotten into the pattern of only talking about nasty things similar to mother above.
Anyone else out there have family members that they just won’t talk to? Why?
Yeah, I know all about this. Well, maybe not all, but I know something about this. My father and his brothers and sister were in an almost constant feud for years. I didn’t care much one way or the other, until my father died. My mother insisted, and I agreed with her, that since they didn’t care for my father when he was alive they should not be allowed into the funeral home. Unfortunately it fell to me to keep them out.
I chickened out, couldn’t do it. When my aunt arrived at the funeral home, I talked to her husband and kids, made sure they knew about my family’s wishes, but I also told them that she was welcome to the funeral, as long as she didn’t put on some show about “how much she loved her little brother.” They agreed. I walked her to the casket, she cried, I walked her out. I did the same for my uncles. All in all it made the most difficult day of my life infinitely more difficult.
Btw, this is not one of those “if only they had known how little time he had left they would’ve let bygones by bygones”. Not a chance. That whole side of the family has hair trigger tempers and nasty dispositions.
I didn’t speak to my father for nearly three years growing up. Today I regret this terribly. While we have reconciled and do get along, the relationship is, IMHO, not nearly as close as it should be. And becoming a father myself made me realize all the more how terrible the situation was, when I tried to envision my own children not speaking to me for three years.
My mother has basically told myself and my older sister to go live our lives, we no longer need a parent. We haven’t spoken to her in years. It’s toughest on my younger sibs though, as they still have contact with all of us.
My father I have never met, and although I now know who he is and where he’s at (we’ve exchanged letters), I will likely never meet him.
One of my little sisters is a religious nutball (as the recent thread so eloquently put it), and we have not been able to find a common ground on which to speak, so we just don’t.
I haven’t spoken to my identical twin brother in about four years. There was a huge overblown fight between him and my parents and he left. There’s more, but eh…
I don’t speak to my younger sister. She’s eighteen years old, and, IMHO has undiagnosed clinical depression. My parents had her in therapy for a while, but I was never let in on the details and it didn’t seem to have any noticeable effect on her unbelievably horrible antisocial behavior. If she can get turned around and eventually go for a full half hour without throwing a screaming fit or physically attacking someone, I’d be happy to reconsider my stance.
I know this may sound brutal, but I have tried so hard, for years, to improve our relationship, to no effect. Until she does her part, I’m very happy not to have any contact with her. It helps that we lives 2500 miles apart.
I’ve often mentioned my PITA brother here. The only time I’ve seen or had any contact with him in the past 14 years was at our family reunion in '93. He’s the family’s biggest a-hole.
OTOH, I’m the only one who has any contact with our eldest brother on a somewhat regular basis. That’s because he lives in this area and sells computer equipment. I also have a sister who has a habit of cutting off all contact with the family for a few years at a time. She suprised everyone by showing up at our parents’ 50th anniversary party in '97, probably the first time any of us had seen her since '83. These two are the second and first born, respectively. Having little to no contact with the rest of the family seems to be their choice. Judging from my stay with the second youngest in the family (me being the youngest), this can be a good thing. We spend the weekend relaxing and watching TV. A three-day weekend isn’t really enough time to reconnect with someone you haven’t seen in five years.
It’s not so much that we’re not on speaking terms, although that happens occasionally. It’s more that we just don’t bother.
Sad thing is we all live in the same house.
Ho hum.
