HELP —How can we compel my niece to come back to her family?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My niece has cut herself off from her family and I don’t exactly know why.

She’s always struck me as a happy, mature-for-her-age, well-adjusted, Mensa-smart kid. She’s in her mid-twenties now and lives in a town far away from the rest of the family mainly because that’s where she went to school and is now employed.

Trouble first cropped up when her dad (my sister’s husband), who had been living apart from my sister because their marriage was pretty unhappy — was involved in a crazy drug bust (don’t ask) and was revealed to be dating and in love with a woman younger than my neice. And if I recall correctly, he revealed this to his daughter (my niece) than to his own wife (my sister).

This is where the details get sketchy because I’m not privvy to the full story. As far as has been alluded to, there had been some inappropriate conduct by my neice’s father and her. I think(?) she’s seeing a therapist to work through it. Part of this process is an indefinite period of my niece cutting herself off from her family. No visitaion. No phone calls. No emails. Nothing.

This is particularly difficult on my sister, who is one of the sweetest, kindest people I know. Please don’t think that I’m biased just because she’s my sister — I have other family members for which I have to struggle to say anything nice about. My sister has lost her piece-of-shit husband leaving her in a cruelly fucked-up financial position and now she’s essentially lost her daughter too (because she wants to respect her daughter’s wishes, inexplicable as they may seem to me.) Oh, and I have mentioned that my sister lost her other child to cancer about 11 years ago when he was just in his teens?

When I first heard the vague news of my niece’s new incommunicado status, I was like my sister thinking “If this is what she needs, let’s respect that.” But it’s been going on for some time now and seems completely open-ended. As much as I care about the welfare of my niece, I also see how this is ripping my sister’s heart out.

As for me, I feel like an open-ended abandonment of her family is selfish, especially when — to my knowledge — none of us are at fault for anything traumatic that did happen to her.

If you’ve made it this far, you now know as much as I do. Do you have any experience with anything like this? WTF is going on?

2

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

All you can do when a family member decides to turn their back on the family is leave a light on in the window and don’t lock the door.

3

If your niece doesn’t want to have anything to do with her family, and she has firmly set that boundary, there’s really nothing you can do. Any attempts to try and make contact with her are likely to drive her farther away.

You may not also know the whole story between what may have gone down between her and her mother, your sister.

You didn’t say how long this she has been away, but your best bet would be to give it some time, and then send a letter, if you have her mailing address, laying out that you understand that she’s decided to cut ties. Let her know that you miss her and would like to still have contact with her, on her terms, but if she doesn’t want to, that you respect her decision.

4

Winner of the Mark Twain post award.

5

She’s not a minor; you certainly can’t compel her. Why did you pick that particular word?

You can hope she contacts you again.

6

There are three things wrong with your OP that I see: 1) the details are sketchy, 2) you don’t know the full story, and 3) you want to compel your niece to come back to her family? It doesn’t sound to me like you respect her or take her seriously. Whatever happened, whatever the reasons for what she’s doing now, she’s an adult and this is really none of your business.

Now, if you want to talk about how you deal with your hurt or your sister’s hurt, that’s one thing. But to assume that she’s in the wrong and selfish (!!) when you admit you don’t even know what’s going on? I wouldn’t want to share details with you, either.

7

If any family members interact with the father then as a group it stands at “zero degree’s of separation” to your niece.

8

[quote=“B.Serum, post:1, topic:581002”]

…This is where the details get sketchy because I’m not privvy to the full story…/QUOTE]

Until you know the full story it’s really hard to do anything. Since you don’t know you can’t say.

9

It appears there is much more to this story. But based on what little I know, I would guess she did what was most healthy for herself. And yes, “compel” was a very odd word choice.

10

Who is “her”? Your niece, or your brother-in-law’s mistress?

11

Compel was the wrong word. Encourage is more accurate.

I mentioned I supported that she needed some time. It’s the (a) open-ended aspect of it and (b) why any of us who didn’t do anything to her are to be avoided, that seem hinky to me.

12

The father and his daughter. (Shudder)

13

The most that you can do is send a letter or an email that says something like the following:

“I’m not entirely sure why you have made this decision, and you are under no obligation to explain it to me. Although I am completely willing to listen to you if you want to discuss it. I love you very much and I think you are a great person for XYZ reasons. I wanted you to know that I miss you, and I am completely available to you if you need help or support, or just want to talk or visit. Please do not feel like I am trying to guilt or pressure you into doing anything. You can contact me whenever you want, even if it is months or years from now.”

From the small amount of information given, it doesn’t seem like your niece is being selfish. It seems like her father, or possibly some other family member, abused her, and she’s trying to put bad experiences behind her and move on with her life. If you care about this person, for the love of God do not tell her you think she is being selfish. If you want her to resume contact, do not treat it as an action that she can be compelled to take. That’s being selfish of you, and it won’t work anyway.

14

The thing is you really don’t know. That sister you have nominated for sainthood may have done some horrible thing, some thing you would never believe if neice shared it with you. Or she may have felt that the inappropriate acts were so blatant, or her distress so obvious, that you are all complicit in allowing it to happen.

Is that what’s happening here? I really have no idea. I am throwing out scenarios. Could any of them apply?

At the same time, it could just be that dealing with family is just too much entanglement with her abuser right now. In that scenario, you are simply caught in the emotional crossfire.

15

I’m in a somewhat similar situation to your niece. Dad was sexually abusive, and as soon as I graduated high school, I got the hell out of Dodge, and ended up not having much contact with either side of the family for a long time. It’s getting better, but it’s taken a long time. Years and years. Here are some things to consider:

  1. As Omar mentioned, you don’t know what went on, what your sister’s role was in everything, or what your niece thinks your sister’s (her mom’s) role was. Was she complicit? Willfully ignorant? Honestly ignorant? What actions did she take when she learned what happened, and were they effective? Please know that no matter how well you know your sister, you can’t assume you know the answers to these questions. And again, what actually happened, what your sister actually knew, and thought, and felt, and did, may well differ from your niece’s understanding of it.

  2. Your niece doesn’t know how much/what you know about the situation. Let’s say she feels her mom didn’t support her or protect her appropriately. She may think you know of and agree with or condone her mom’s actions, and are basically siding against her. Or she may think you don’t know, and she doesn’t want to force you to choose sides between her and her mom. She may even think you or other family knew about the situation and failed to support or protect her. On the other hand, she may think you know nothing except that “something happened”, and she’s horribly ashamed that you know this about her, and can’t bring herself to face you. And of course, as mentioned above, if anyone in the family is still talking to the father, then obviously, she’d want nothing to do with them.

  3. She may just need a hell of a lot of space, and time. Please don’t underestimate the deep and pervasive effect abuse can have. In fact, when I saw the thread title, the first thing I thought was “I bet she was sexually abused”. For me, it taints every memory of my childhood, even ones that are happy and have nothing to do with my father, because they happened while the abuse was going on. She may be trying to do what I did: build a new life separate from the old one in which she was abused. Later, when she’s ready, she can start adding components of the old life back into the new one.

But seriously, much as it sucks for your sister, it’s really not your niece’s fault; it’s her father’s. And know that it sucks just as much (if not more) for your niece. She’s been betrayed by her father, and has not only lost him and her mother, but the rest of her family.

16

Contrary to your observation that I don’t respect her or take her seriously from a single post on a message board, I can assure you I care very much for her welfare and want only happiness and welfare for her. It’s true that I’m sharing my own feelings, ignorant of all the facts on a message board hoping someone who has experience with something like this could educate me with what might be going on. But if taking me to task for being an uncaring bastard is the best way to help, then let it fly.

Cutting off ties to one’s family is a foreign concept to me as part of any healing process. I am concerned she’s getting bad advice from a shitty therapist who is adding pain to the process rather than alleviating it. I was on board with letting her do this in any way she needed, but I’m wondering if we’re being negligent in anyway for not intervening when something sounds unusual. To me, this sounds unusual.

By the terms that were described to us, we are not ALLOWED to contact her in any way, even to wish her a happy birthday, this upcoming Thursday. It makes me sad.

17

Lots of very helpful insight so far. Thanks to everyone offering advice and insight. It’s very very very helpful.

18

Your own information indicates that your niece’s father had been living apart from his wife (your sister) for a while, had sexually abused his own daughter, and was at least recently involved in a lifestyle that resulted in “a crazy drug bust” (if not involved in that lifestyle for longer).

If this is true, why is your first response to assume that the therapist is a shitty therapist who’s advice is hurting rather than helping? The information you provided is quite enough to see why it might be a good idea for someone to have no contact with family for a while in order to heal damage that has been done.

19

Actually, cutting ties with family members is not uncommon in cases of sexual abuse. The victims sometimes feel that family members either turned a blind eye to their abuse or will pressure them to have more contact than they’re comfortable with. Your niece was powerless to stop the abuse when she was a child. Now she’s an adult and she’s rightly taken the power to remove herself from the people who hurt her.

If you actually respect her, you’ll accept her distance and allow her to be the one to decide what sort of contact and when she wants it. Her family has no right to force things on her at this point. One letter, like Secretary of Evil described might be acceptable. But after that, you need to wait for her to make the next move.

And no, there’s no time line for knowing when she’ll feel up to it.

20

Because he is not a part of our family. The distinctions — at least to us — are as obvious as night and day.

What I call “our” family grew up in the the whitebread, rural midwest, Christian-raised (as far as that went), who were pretty frugal with money. My niece’s father grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with lots of money and servants and spent money like it was water. While married, they split their time between Bangladesh (3/4 of the time) and the U.S (basically the summers). There was little to no interconnectedness between the two families — there was almost no opportunity for that.

Maybe my niece feels differently, but we never felt all that closely associated to her father. But it sounds like that doesn’t matter.

Thanks again for everyone shedding light on the matter.