My family has finally pushed me to a breaking point. I haven’t ever really gotten along with them and last Thanksgiving I actually left the dinner because the disscussion turned to topics I found so revolting that I couldn’t stay there any longer. Now that I am getting married the wedding has turned the family horrors to 11 and I just can’t take it any longer. Because invitations have already been sent and people have already purchased plane tickets I’m not doing anything right at this moment but I have pretty much decided that I don’t ever want to see most of these people again after that. I have an aunt and uncle and some cousins I like very much and will continue to keep in contact with but everyone else can go suck eggs as far as I am concerned.
My question is to those of you who have walked away from your families without looking back. Do you regret it? Would you have done things differently if you could do it again? If you have kids do you feel like they are missing out on having a full extended family?
If you think you’re better off without your family, you’re probably right.
I’m definitely missing out on having family, and it is apparently a very serious negative in terms of dating, but I can’t imagine I’d be better off it I tried to maintain contact with my family (such as it is). If I did have children, I’d definitely want to be partnered with a woman who does have a strong family so that children would have at least one set of grandparents and extended family but (perhaps understandably) most women with a good family background feel the same way.
I’ve cut 95% of ties with my father (I will be civil if we encounter each other by chance). It is HARD. If there is anyone in your family that you want to stay in touch with, it places those people in a terrible position. They will be upset. They might decide not to talk to you anymore because of it. Even some people who know my dad and know he is an abusive sociopath and who sympathized with me thought that I was worse than him for “disrespecting” my father like that.
Another thing to consider is that weddings bring out the worst in every family, in my experience. My best friend has the nicest family ever, but when she got married, they all turned into unreasonable jerks for the year they were planning the wedding.
I would recommend waiting until after the wedding, and see if things settle down. Then, maybe you could just reduce your contact with the people you don’t like, rather than having a big dramatic break with them. It makes life less troublesome.
In my experience, one of the topics that comes up during the first or second date is about family, which I have to either have to answer to (never good) or evade (I’m a poor equivocator). The fact that I left home at 16 and have had little contact with family since seems to be a serious deal breaker. I can’t say that I blame women for that much, because I’d be suspicious about the result of developing in that environment as well. But, unlike other aspects of my life that I’d be potentially willing to alter in exchange for a healthy long term relationship, there is nothing I can really do about that.
Just answer them and put a positive and passionate spin on it. Raise your voice slightly, use definite hand gestures and just tell them that you strongly believe you are 100% better off now from leaving your family than if you had stayed any longer.
If you show it’s a passionate topic, they’ll be less likely to mock you or make you sound like the bad guy.
I think a lot of my relationships would have gone a lot better if the girl had cut off all contact with her family, i’d see it as a huge positive at this point to be perfectly honest.
I don’t regret it because I haven’t done it yet. But I have a hard time imagining what’s going to keep me in touch with my brother and sister after my mom dies.
By family I mean my mother and her side of the family. My dad and I have a great relationship and if it were possible there are members of my moms family I’d love to keep in touch with, but after my grandparents died there was no one I was willing to put up with her to keep in my life.
She is not directly abusive but she is toxic and I’m much happier, more relaxed and generally a better person without her in my life.
As for the reactions of others - I’ve carefully not mentioned the fact that we’re no longer in contact to my husbands family. They are definitely among those who would never understand.
Whoops, I answered “other” before reading the OP, because I haven’t cut ties with my family. I’m still very close to them, and we get along fine. I apologize if this is considered thread-shitting.
I haven’t walked away from my whole family, but I was estranged from my father when he died, and my oldest sister’s husband is not talking to us at the moment (and hasn’t been since last summer). I never regretted cutting off contact with my father - if he’d been a better father, I wouldn’t have. My brother-in-law has stopped speaking to us because he’s a bully, and I have no intention of smoothing that over to keep peace in the family - we did nothing wrong.
I would suggest just quietly bowing out of their lives if you can, especially if you live far enough away. Don’t let people who have good families tell you that you’re doing a bad thing, either - most people will give family members a million chances to act properly, and don’t cut off contact until they’ve used up all million of their chances. You know when you’ve had enough.
My brother cut ties to the family because my Mother dared to point out the elephant in the room.
My brother discovered internet dating. And dated crack whores and people that associate with murderers. Actually, it was probably not technically, murder.
Assassination is the word. Six people got bullets to the back of the head. My brothers old GF knows this group. And now, as far as I know, hangs with them. It’s an MC club.
This concerned my mother and the rest of our basic middle of the road family. My brother would not have it. And refused to see the elephant that we all saw and he disowned the family.
The previous girls he was with where just as scary. When I visited I would sleep in my clothes so I could run if I needed. I’m 6’4 and 210 pounds. I chase black bears out of my own yard, but slept in my clothes at my brothers place.
I answered, I don’t really feel like I had any other option. I have the family from hell.
I left my parents (Mom and adopted Dad) at 17 and looking back, I should have left sooner. I really had to get the hell out of there. The only person I’ve completely cut out of my life is my adopted father, though I didn’t speak to my mother for about a year. Both of my parents were abusive, but for some reason I can forgive emotional and physical abuse more than I can forgive sexual abuse. My Mom insisted on staying married to the guy, and not only that, she pressured me constantly into forgiving him for what I perceive to have been the most significant betrayal of my life. I was 17 when I confessed that he had molested me, but she didn’t divorce him until I was 22.
He still visits my grandparents (for reasons that are too fucked up to go into here) but I haven’t seen him in 5 years and I have no intention of seeing him ever again. That means I’m probably going to miss my grandfather’s funeral. He wouldn’t even own up to what he did. I loved him and depended on him so much I really just tend to process the loss as a death. It’s just better if I think of him as dead. Because the reality is that my Dad, the person I worshiped as a kid, IS dead. I called him Dad for 10 years and now I just refer to him by his first name. That guy is not my Dad.
I didn’t see my biological father at all between the ages of 12 and 22, but now we do have some semblance of an awkward relationship. The worst thing he ever did to me was be too drunk to care.
The rest of my family, with the exception of my Aunt, who is normal, is just as messed up as my parent situation, so I tend to keep my distance as well. It’s not the same thing as cutting people out though – I still love my grandma and call her on her birthday. I just know better than to get too close. And since nobody in my family gets together for holidays anyway it’s not really perceived as a personal sleight when I ignore them for months.
The hardest thing about distancing yourself from your family is dealing with people who pry into your personal life and spout platitudes about how all families have hardship without having any idea what they’re talking about. I dread holidays because everyone always wants to know what I am doing or did with my family. It’s not their fault, it’s just frustrating. Family is not something to celebrate for everyone, you know?
I’ve basically broken contact with my paternal aunt. I don’t contact her, she doesn’t contact me. It is a bit weird because the reason for my “I’m not talking to you anymore” was not something she did directly to me. She abused a common relative. My aunt angered a lot of people in the family. Strangely, she has tried rebuilding the ties with most of them (including the relative she abused). But not to me or her brother (my uncle). My dad asks me if I’ve ever received any of the mass emails she apparently sends to him, mom, and my sibs. I tell him no, and that gives me even less desire to contact her.
I diminished contact with my maternal aunt and grandpa (RIP both) due to the fact I didn’t want to get involve in their family drama. Now that the’ve passed away, I’ve diminished contact with mom’s extended family even further. I don’t want to deal with 2 out of 3 cousins. It’s a pity because I love love love their kids, and babysat them. Their kids are a joy, their parents not. I only keep semi-contact with the older cousin, who has less drama in his life than the others, and is more level-headed.
In either case, it wasn’t an abrupt “NO MORE FROM ME, YOU HEAR???”, but merely avoidance. Helps that I live so far away…
Real, physical distance is such a wonderful thing in cases like this. You have all sorts of excuses for avoiding people because nobody really knows what you’re up to. And when you do visit, you only have to take people in small doses. And you’ve also got an excuse for the meddlers – ‘‘No, I couldn’t go home this holiday – too much going on here.’’ It’s fantastic.
I cut ties with just PART of my family. It would be much harder to cut ties with ALL of them.
My dad and his whole side of the family is just nasty and unpleasant and hurtful. I haven’t talked with them in years. My children don’t know them at all. I walked away from my father and my life is nothing but better ever since.
But I know my comfort with that decision is only because I am very close with my mother and that side of the family. My step-father is my kids’ grampa in every way. They know he’s not my real father but the kids don’t really care, as long as they have someone who took them to their first Superbowl party, who plays board games with them a lot, and someone loves them all the time. They are quite satisfied and don’t miss their ‘real’ grandfather.
Cutting ties with everyone would be really really hard and I’d recommend it only under drastic circumstances.
