Walking away from dysfunctional family

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know there are other threads on this but I haven’t been able to find any so far. I’ve spent the last week in shock and grief about the reality that I have to walk away from my horrible family. People say you’ll feel better when you finally make the decision to walk away but I feel awful. It’s so hard to accept that I will never convince them that I’m actually a good person, or that my mom will never stand up for me. Letting go is somehow harder than hanging in there an hoping things change even though I know they never ever will.

This week sucks, and the immediate future probably will too.

2

There have been several discussions about family estrangement here over the years. You are definitely not alone.

Change can be hard to take, especially when it’s all up to you. I wish you strength and faith in yourself.

3

You have to set boundaries that protect yourself; if once you have set your boundaries your family is outside of them, that’s probably the way it has to be. Some people will tell you that family is family, and you have to put up with each other for life no matter what they do (or what harm they cause); I do not believe that.

That said, does it have to be a clean break, or are there limited interactions you can have with them that won’t do too much damage? Sometimes just setting a boundary closer in than it was can make things tolerable; for example, there might be things that you just never discuss with your family. Once they start going there, it’s time for you to say your good-byes.

4

And… it will continue to suck. But, you will be better off.

My Mom could make Satan cry, but I refuse to let her actions, words, or attitudes continue to control me. So far, this has been one of the best decisions I ever made. Around 20 years now. :smiley:
.

5

I think I’ve tried every sort of limit available. For years I just pretended the awful stuff didn’t really happen, and that was successful in that there was no fighting, except that it was fake and it’s really hard to pretend people aren’t being total dicks right in front of you. Then I tried moving away, which was ok for a while but the sibling who still lives there makes up absolutely horrible things about me and my mom doesn’t bother to refute them or stand up for me.

All of that sounds really stupid when I type it, but she knows me, I spent five years taking care of her when she had cancer and he lived across the country. When I spoke with her recently she agreed that the things he’s saying about me aren’t true, but said that he’s been so nice visiting her in the hospital everyday and she needs him around to do stuff for her so she’s not going to upset him by calling him on any of it. So I’ve been sold down the river just in case she needs someone to make a future pharmacy run.

Realizing that I’m so completely dispensable is pretty hard to take. She wants a local minion and he wants her money when she dies. She thought I was great when I was driving her to chemo and cooking for her and cleaning up her vomit, but I’m less useful from 600 miles away. I’m guessing he thinks she’ll leave everything to him since he’s the last one in good favor at the end of her life, so for him I’m just in the way of the payoff.

I can’t fix it. I can’t manage it. I can’t handle it anymore. Still, it makes me really sad.

6

My ex basically is a dysfunctional family in herself - one of those people who can poison everything they touch, abuses and destroys every good person and thing they acquire, and surrounds themselves with matching, destructive losers. (In case anyone thinks I’m ex-shitting, she’s presently in jail for child endangerment - letting her house fill up with homeless junkies while already on house arrest for several unpleasant things.)

My older daughter with her is a total loss - despite my strenuous attempts to be the rock in her life and keep her on a good path, she’s a clone of her mother, a drug-addled, heavily tattooed wreck. The only connection I have left with her is waiting to hear she’s dead, probably from OD or murder.

But… her slightly younger sister, who was exposed to every same thing on both sides, is pretty much everything a stable, admirable 20yo should be. She isolated herself from her mother at 18 and just joined us here to get away from remaining negative influences. She really had no choice but to abandon that badly dysfunctional half of the family, some younger (and doomed) siblings notwithstanding.

This isn’t my only experience, but I can say from an involved position: sometimes you just have to walk away, permanently, blood or no blood, family or no family. Staying only means heartbreak and the likelihood of being sucked down.

7

Amid all the mindless dreck and endless memes, reddit actually has a pretty good sub-reddit dealing with surviving narcissistic parents. (Not sure if this is your specific problem, but worth a visit.)

8

I was unfortunately estranged from my father for the last year of his life (thankfully, I still get along well with the rest of my family). In my last discussion with him, I made it very clear what he needed to do to resume communication with me (accept the free mental health help the VA was urging for him), and if he had done that, I would have welcomed him back. I had hoped that maybe, such a drastic move might be the impetus he needed, but I wasn’t particularly surprised that it failed.

So I guess I agree with what others have said: Set boundaries, and let your family decide which side of those boundaries they’re going to be on.

9

Instead of ‘walking away’ maybe you need a ‘walking towards’ something mindset. You might want to consider going to a college many miles away; joining the military; or just getting a new job in a distant city. New adventures and opportunities are out there.

10

Have known a fair few number of people IRL who have walked away from some or all of their family. You’re not a ‘bad person’ by setting boundaries and keeping people who are harmful to you outside of those lines. It doesn’t matter if they are ‘family’ or ‘blood’. That only becomes an excuse to allow people to keep harming you, to use ideas of ‘guilt’ as a weapon.

What constantly amazes me is how those people never get the clue to how harmful they are being, how monstrous they can be. I don’t think I have ever heard someone say that their evil kin ‘woke up’ and stopped being an ass. I’ve heard people say that someone claimed as much, but reverted to the bad behavior very quickly. But I don’t recall ever hearing a full blown ‘Come to Jesus’ conversion from Evil to Good.

11

Be aware that there will be plenty of people who will judge you unfairly for doing this. “But she’s your mother!!” Learn how to dodge questions about how your family is doing (“Fine”) if you’d rather not have to justify saving your own sanity to people who have no fucking clue, or any business judging you.

12

Ah, that’s too bad. Well, it sounds like you can say you made a very good effort, but it just didn’t work.

I’m sad for you, too - it sucks to not have a loving, supportive, healthy family of origin. What they don’t give you, you just have to supply for yourself.

13

My in-laws are dysfunctional. My husband has tried for decades (at least for the 36 years I’ve known him) to ‘fix’ things, to pretend that they are better than they are and to just stay in touch because they’re his family. He’s been at the point of writing them off several times but can’t quite bring himself to do it. It’s soul destroying for him and exhausting for me.

Good luck.

14

It’s what you know - misery! Shortly after the immediate future you will slowly start to feel good. :smiley:

15

My family has one who walked away, and every single day the thought of him not being part of our family again brings me to tears.

It’s my youngest son, he’s 25 now, and whilst we had our share of dysfunctionality over the years (hey, what family doesn’t??) we all remain oblivious to the actual why.

The last time anybody saw or spoke to him (apart from an encounter* I will mention below) was Boxing Day 2010…after a pleasant Christmas enjoyed by all at my daughter’s house, he returned home and that was it. When he hadn’t returned any phone calls within four weeks, it was then disconnected, so I sent him a message on FB. A month later, he changed his name…but my sleuth daughter discovered his new FB name and I’ve been messaging him regularly since to no avail.

We all tried contacting his RL friends, but it seems they had been sworn to secrecy too. Three years later, and my heart still bleeds.

Melodramatic? You betcha. When your own kid disappears, it’s like a death you can never really grieve. You are consumed by guilt (but don’t know why), sadness (but we know he’s alive because otherwise I’m sure his friends would contact us) and anger that he doesn’t care enough to at least explain why he doesn’t want to be part of our family anymore. I’d respect his wishes if he could bring himself to do that.

So this is the other side of the coin. Please, if you are considering cutting off your ‘dysfunctional’ family, let them know you are doing so. Just disappearing is a cunt of a thing to do. Maybe even sending them an email once in a blue moon, just to let them know you’re OK and doing fine. You don’t have to engage them if you feel it’s bad for you, but don’t pretend you’re dead, please. :frowning:

*We have a spectacularly unusual surname so my daughter (again) thought to see if he had a LANDLINE somewhere last year. And lo and behold, there was indeed a LL registered in his name in Sydney. So my daughter rang him, and he hung up. So I rang him (from an unfamiliar to him LL), he answered, I said, “Hi John, it’s mum”. "He said, “Sorry??” I said “Hi” again. He hung up again. Even though he only said one word, the relief that washed over me was amazing! But it was short-lived…the sadness, guilt and anger are still a daily experience for me.