Yeah, that would have been smart. Sr. Olives’ parents are okay (except when it comes to each other–then they are a nightmare) but his extended family is every bit as messed up as mine is–which is really, really hard to do (I note with some smugness they require at least 5x as many family members to pull it off.) The difference is that he had a relatively normal childhood and a good upbringing–he was always outside the crazy looking in. That is, until he was an adult and his parents divorced and they put his kid sister in the middle of their issues. Oh, the drama.
So we basically keep our distance from both sides. Kinda sucks for our future kids, but we can build a loving, healthy family and a solid social support network. We’ll make it work.
I have to clarify, it’s only one family member with whom I’ve cut off all contact - one of my three brothers (I keep in touch with the other two). My only regret in the case of brother #2 is that I wasn’t able to do it a lot sooner (like, age 4 or so). He’s a truly awful human being. Unfortunately, growing up of course we lived under the same roof, and as an adult he’d occasionally be there for holidays and other family events. As soon as my mother’s estate was settled, we were able to completely sever ties.
Cutting ties with family over political views seems petty. Physical abuse and mental cruelty: yes. Illegal activities like drug dealing, prostitution, theft, etc.: yes. They don’t like illegal immigrants–IMO: no.
A simple statement to them that you don’t agree with this particular view and that you don’t want them expressing it in your presence should be enough. If it’s not, then let them know the consequences before you take that drastic step–they may not know how seriously their views are affecting you. In their eyes, you may just be a temperamental child.
I picked ‘other’. It wasn’t my whole family, just my maternal grandparents. I do wish things would have gone differently, but I don’t think they *could * have.
We’re sort of tentatively feeling our way toward peace at the moment, and I think that would never have happened if I hadn’t gone ahead and chosen my “lifestyle” over their “support”.
One of the bravest men I ever met came from an abusive family, and possibly was abused himself. He made the deliberate decision to cut off relations with some people, and forgo any chance of having a family himself, in order to break the pattern. Better no kids at all than to raise them in The Crazy.
I thought of him a lot when reading this thread. Once upon a time, I thought that I had escaped that kind of thing. Our family had no guns, no wild arguments, no physical abuse. But there was a subtler thing, an abscence rather than a presence. My father was very withdrawn emotionally. I now believe that this contributed to his divorce from my mom when I was 15.
I take after my father. It’s frightening how much sometijmes. I’ve never had a stable long-term emotional relationship, and I’m not certain that I can. After my sister and my mother and my aunt and my stepmother died, we all went kind of crazy for a while, and I withdrew from the world. (Dad went hermit for 11 years.) I fought back with counseling, but I haven’t spoken much to my remaining aunt for 5 years, to my remaining sister or stepfather for a year. My family is gone; my mom was the heart of it, and I miss it terribly. I’m just too wracked by fear to reach out any more.
Even if it wasn’t too late for me to have kids, I wouldn’t want them to deal with my withdrawl and craziness and struggle. Best that I break the pattern too.
I agree. For years I got the ever-so-concerned “Have you heard from your sister?” And when I would say no, I got “That’s too bad! It’s sooooo sad! You should --” and I’d stop them and say “No, it is NOT too bad. You don’t know anything about it, and you don’t need to.”
Olives, I totally hear you. I don’t remember being threatened with a bottle, but I was kicked and spat on, as well as some other things I wrote about in another thread. My biggest regret in life is not running away from home.
My closest blood relatives are five cousins; I’m on good terms with them, but they all live far away.
I was never really estranged from my parents. I was simply highly independent and moved out of the house as soon as I could. We stayed in touch and saw each other a couple of times a year unless I was out of the country.
Dad died in 1991. Mom died 2 years ago last January. During the last years of her life, she got very close to SWMBO, to the point where she considered SWMBO a part of the family and her daughter-in-law, even though we aren’t married. That relationship galled my niece no end and she gave SWMBO a world of shit about it. SWMBO finally told me about it when she came home in tears after visiting Mom in the nursing home and catching a huge load of shit from my niece.
I tied into my niece about it and told her that it was Mom’s choice and she needed to honor and respect that choice. I got an earful about the bitch I was living with and then she walked away. I saw her at the funeral and I have not seen her since. Nor will I. She’s my only niece, but if her brain caught on fire, I wouldn’t bother to piss in her ear to put it out.
It is one thing to have a disagreement about policy; quite another to be advocating torture and death (assuming that the previous poster wasn’t being hyperbolic). I grew up in an environment that was full of hateful bigotry, and I wouldn’t want any child to be exposed to that in the guise of family that he or she is otherwise expected to display respect and affection.
I’ve mentioned a girl I used to have to walk to and from school in case her father tracked her down. Because he was a crazy abusive nutcase, she had to move out and became an emancipated minor of sorts (she was on “Student Welfare”). Her father tried to murder her. She lived with some college-age girls who went to the local university.
Another family member told her father where she was living. He tried to smash down their front door while armed with a big-ass knife and a baseball bat, as the girls piled furniture and bicycles in front of the doors and windows. They called 911 and he was arrested (I don’t know the outcome, but as he was free to keep hunting, he clearly didn’t get any jail time).
Then she got totally shit on by her other family members who were gobsmacked that she and her friends would call the cops on her “own father”. I mean, how could she??? So she cut off ties with the whole lot of them, and IMHO, is better off for it.
She left the country for awhile, worked abroad, and about two years after moving back to North America, got an email to her Hotmail account from her former supervisor warning her: a family member (not her father, it was a woman) had been repeatedly calling their offices in France trying to find her and had been threatening their employees.
Yeah, that is a real quote. My grandpa also believes that we should post people on the border with AK-47’s and shoot people as the try to cross over. Normally I would just take that with a grain of salt except that he has now decided that since the “government wants to take his guns” he needs to buy some automatic weapons illegally (despite never owning a gun before last year) and my parents have helped him booby trap his house in case someone breaks in to get his guns. He now has the ability to shoot someone and seems more than a little pleased by the concept of watching someone bleed to death by his hand. My brother spent Thanksgiving talking about how he wants to train his new pit bull to attack black people. My aunt Nikki thought she should let me know it is my fault her mother is dying of cancer and then she got drunk and kissed my cousin’s grandpa. My dad called me the other day to tell me what a selfish bitch I am for not wanting children at my wedding ceremony despite the fact that they are welcome at the reception. I am apparently trying to insult my family and they have decided to boycott my wedding and go to the grand canyon instead.
There is no phyiscal abuse in my family but the rest of it is bad enough that I don’t know if keeping in touch with them is worth it. If every time you talked to your father you hung up the phone and sobbed hysterically for half an hour you might not want to stay in touch with him either.
It isn’t just “politics” when your family member is sadistic and actually gets pleasure out of the idea of hurting or killing someone. It warps the mind to grow up and/or spend time around someone like that, even if it’s just talk.
pbbth, your father sounds incredibly manipulative. And the rest of your family doesn’t sound so hot either. Maybe it’s better to let them go to the Grand Canyon so you don’t have your mind on them and their antics on your wedding day. This could be a blessing in disguise. Although I suspect that if you say, “OK, don’t come,” they will show up to your wedding anyway.
I don’t have a relationship with 98% of my extended family (both sides). But I got such an amazing nuclear family (and my sister married such a lovely person) that it’s hard for me to feel too upset about it. My sister and I have such awful memories of them either attempting to drive wedges between our parents or convince our parents to ship us back to India to become less “Westernized” that neither of us wants much contact with them in the present.
With 95% of my extended family ranging from evil to petty, it’s difficult for me to imagine how my parents turned out so normal.
Yeah, pbbth, your family is useless. I’m sorry, but there it is.
Looking back at your most recent paragraph, I don’t understand how
is even a question for you. Frankly, there’s just nothing in it for you, or your kids. I’m truly sorry if this sounds awful phrased like this, and believe me, I understand how difficult it is to walk away from family … but if the opinions of anonymous strangers on the 'Net means anything to you, please, please, consider at least increasing the amount of distance (physical, mental, emotional, legal, financial, did I miss anything?) between you and them.
There’s no way you won’t be happier and better off not having them at the wedding. There’s no rule that says they have to be there, anyway.
They are going to be at my wedding (well, those who aren’t boycotting it) no matter what at this point. I already sent out invitations and many people have already purchased plane tickets. I refuse to call them now and tell them they can’t come. They will all be seated separately from my fiance’s family to avoid conversations that could cause a problem and we’ve decided to have an alcohol limit instead of an open bar but while they are super douchebags they manage to get through group things without flipping out on people so I think they will be able to reign it in for a day without too much problem. After that I just won’t call or write any longer and I will keep responses to their contact brief at best.
I’ve asked people in the past about cutting ties but the responses always tend to be along the lines that family is the most important thing and you can’t turn your back on them just because you tend to disagree, etc. It is also hard to walk away because they never hit me or anything like that, making it harder to find that line where you say enough is enough and walk away. I did move really far away a few years ago and that has helped a lot but I’ve always gone back to Texas for every big holiday and event like a dutiful child. That won’t be happening any more.
As you go forward, keep in mind your new husband and (potential) children ARE your family and you must do what’s best for them&you.
The needs/wants of your conjugal family must outweigh the needs/wants of your natal family. That’s what the “forsaking all others” line is all about.
