My wife and I both have aunts and uncles who, for no obvious reasons, had a hard time of life. Dropping out of school, string of divorces, precarious financial situation, rifts with other family members-- just a general failure to thrive in adult life, even though their siblings did great. I’ve been thinking about this lately because we also have a lot of younger brothers and sisters between the two of us. I’d love for all of them to have rosy futures, but I feel like statistics are against it.
Does anyone have stories to share of relatives who just never amounted to what they could/should have? At what age was it apparent that their life wasn’t going in the right direction? How do you explain it, if you can at all?
One of my cousins got married and had a baby and then has been divorced and drinks most of the time. Our family is depressive anyway, but his younger brother died at 20 and that was quite a blow for him. His sister went through a really crappy time of compulsive spending, too many prescription drugs, car accidents, and finally divorce. She’s doing better now, though, so there’s hope.
Their parents went through a really ugly divorce during the kids’ formative years; I’m sure that didn’t help! But the third cousin is relatively stable with two kids and a good marriage. So who knows.
I’ve posted about her before, but I have an older sister who, despite getting terrific grades in school, wouldn’t go to college and went on to a long, long series of crappy, short jobs and under-employment. I know now that she would just quit as soon as she became bored or unhappy with a job, but she always laid the blame elsewhere.
Mom, being unable to resist helping out her kids if they were in need, always bailed her out and supported her and supplemented her income. This suited sis fine, because all she really wanted to do was to stay home, work on arts and craftsy projects, and watch soap operas. Now mom has Alzheimers and sis has to stay on at a job for the first time in her life, and sis is 57 years old. She’s starting to whine at me about wanting to quit her job, but I’m damned if I’m going to become a surrogate mommy to her.
A bit of a side note: quit enabling your kids to stay dependent and childlike - you may succeed and create lifelong children, like my sister.
I have four children. My daughter got involved with drugs and bad guys early on, and while she’s fine now (she’s 40), it took her a lot longer than it did the three boys to have what you’d call a “stable” life, with good relationships and some financial security.
The women in my extended family who’ve had the hardest time are the ones who had babies in their teens. For the men, it was alcohol or drugs that slowed them down.
Thankfully, they’re all okay now – nobody dead or in jail – but they have regrets and things were harder for them.
My favorite uncle (mother’s brother) was one of six. By all accounts, as a young man he just couldn’t keep himself in school or away from bad trouble, and my grandparents were at a loss as to how to deal with it. It’s strange to me that he would have such a rough adolescence, since he had the same loving and stable (though materially spare) upbringing as the others, who all did fairly well and are decent, educated people. No one knows why he did the things he did; to my knowledge, no one has ever asked.
He eventually joined the Army at 17 or 18 as a way of avoiding jail. Unfortunately, that was during the height of Vietnam, and he came back “spooked.” He drank to deal with the nightmares, then drank to deal with his marriage problems, then with his divorce…and so on and so on. He’s been drunk since he came back from the war and he’s dying of it now. Where I see a lonely man who could never quite get it all together, the world sees a drunk and a lousy human being, and he’s so beaten down at this point he’ll never recover.
I think the majority of families have at least one member who didn’t quite make the transition into peaceful, productive adulthood. My husband and I both have sibs who are struggling, but I was the one struggling years ago. People live their lives the only way they know how to at the time.
Also, you need to define success in your own terms. A person who has little money but who lives a good life is more successful than the rich guy who is morally bankrupt. Each person has their own take on what success means.
Father drank a lot and beat Mother up. When I was in kindergarten, Mother left Father. Their divorce was very, very nasty. Over the years, there were drunken fights, calls from bill collectors, boyfriends/girlfriends coming and going. Things got so bad, my brother and I were taken by Child Protective Services for a while.
Sadly, my brother has a lot of problems. He started doing drugs and drinking in Middle School, became a father at 17. Even though he’s very bright (that’s a whole other story), he barely passed high school and has never considered college. Right now, he has heart problems - probably aggrivated (if not caused) by drug use, smoking, and drinking. He refuses to acknowledge his substance abuse.
Also, all of them have financial problems. I have to monitor my credit reports because Father has used my social security number to get credit cards (he’s done the same to my brother).
There are day when I feel like a white sheep in a herd of black.
I have an aunt, the sweetest and kindest person you ever met, who has 4 kids and is on welfare and can’t get her shit together. Everything she owns gets stolen, ruined or repossessed. She doesn’t deserve it but she never does what she needs to do to get herself out of her situation. It is so frustrating for her sisters because she could do better if she really tried.
I was a rebellious, gothy, drug-taking, promiscuous teen. My sister was straight as an arrow, president of the senior class annd leader of the high school “sorority”. Now I am making good money doing a job I love and am about to get married, with plans to buy a house and have children in the very near future. Since college, she hasn’t held a job more than 2 years at a time at the most, quits her job and then spends all her money travelling, then comes back and mooches off relatives until she finally finds a job and a place to live, rinse repeat. It’s getting real old. My theory is that I sowed my wild oats long ago, in a blaze of glory, so I’m over that stuff and ready to move on with my life. While she followed the rules for so long that now she is having a hard time doing so.
Then there’s my cousin, who has had a lifelong battle with drugs and other kinds of trouble. He is now in his forties and has for the first time in his life a good, steady job, is happy and is about to get married next year. Perhaps my sister will be a late bloomer like he was.
I have another sister who was academically exceptional. She studied anthropology, but was failed on her orals by a professor who sexually harassed her. She moved on and became a lawyer instead. My dad was so proud of her. Within a few years, she was so depressed that she now has no job and lives with her mother.
Who can say what will happen? I think it’s a lot of luck.
My first cousins, “Elaine” and “Barbara” are an example. Elaine went to a good college, established a career and married a man with a successful profession. Together, she and her husband were earning about $600,000 a year - and that was 20 years ago when that was real money.
Elaine’s sister, Barbara, dropped out of junior college when she got pregnant by a high school dropout who worked part time as a janitor. Barbara’s income was under $20,000, plus whatever Elaine and her father gave her. The first marriage ended after two years and two babies and Barbara would have been homeless if not for Elaine and their father. Barbara married twice again in quick sucession.
My cousins’ father was the vice president of a national company. You’d know its name. You probably own its products. Not only did he have a generous salary, he’d also accrued a good stock portfolio and real estate. When he was diagnosed with cancer and had only a few months to live, he asked me, his favorite niece, how to divide up his estate. He loved both daughters equally. What was the right and prudent thing to do? Should he leave his etate 50-50 to them, or should he leave it according to need? Obviously, Barbara had a greater need than Elaine, but it was also obvious that Barbara might squander whatever was left to her. He and I and a couple of other family members discussed this for weeks.
In the end, my uncle left his estate evenly divided between the sisters, but he left Elaine’s outright to her while placing Barbara’s in trust. I’m one of the trustees; so is Elaine. We try to mete out funds to Barbara so that she doesn’t want for anything, but sometimes her demands are unreasonable and extravagant. She is angry at her late father for the way he framed his will and refuses to understand why her share is protected while Elaine’s is unrestricted. It’s hard on her and it’s not easy being her trustee.
Dropped out of high school, got my GED.
Started college, got pregnant and dropped out.
Got married, divorced less than a year later.
Went back to college, dropped out because I couldn’t hack it working and studying and caring for my child.
Worked various dead-end jobs
Got married again…went back to college…dropped out again to care for my grandfather…divorced… lost my house, car repossessed, bank account cleaned out by ex and four months of bills he was supposed to have paid…uggh long story there.
Finally decided construction work was the best paying job I’d find
Got pregnant again and had to quit my job
Constant string of useless junker cars, begging for rides when they gave out
Living in a dumpy one-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend, three payments left until we own that fabulous “good used” car that hasn’t run for the past three months. Living payday to payday, freaking out if even one day of work is missed.
I never got into alcohol or other drugs, I’m just a general fuck-up all on my own. I’ve never stolen though, nor broken any other “major” laws. I’ve only gotten a ticket for no seat belt and I learned my lesson.
Geez listing it all like that has really topped off my birthday celebration.
It’s been a hell of a past 38 years.