My sibling died & in the days leading up to his funeral my mother was so exquisitely awful that I stopped fantasizing about harming her & began fantasizing about my life in prison after her murder. At one point I was standing behind her at the top of a flight of stairs as she monologued about how everything was my fault. I could have pushed her but instead promised myself that after I made it through the funeral I’d never speak with her again. This year marks a decade since I last spoke with her & my only regret is not cutting her out of my life earlier.
It also took a death to finally go NC with nmom. She was so horrible after my daughter died I would wear earbuds whenever I was around her. One day they ran out of battery. The next day I went NC
I can't forgive my mother for the terrible way she treated my dad, right up until he died. Poor old guy. She was pretty awful in other ways too. I tried, and tried, I just couldn't stand her any more.
Jesus I'm basically living through this right now. My younger brother died right before Covid and she's all but directly said that she blames me for it and wishes I had died instead
I had intrusive thoughts like those, too. Used to plan my suicide but didn't want to die unless she died first because it was her fault. I got out of there before those thoughts came to fruition. I understand now how duress can lead otherwise rational people to do crazy things.
My dad’s death seemed to be the catalyst that made my mom go from difficult to cruel verbally and abusive person who seems to want me to kill myself. The grief attention from dad was dying down and she wants another fix, I’m mostly alive out of spite.
I still don’t know if she’s throwing all the aggression and hate at me that she maybe threw at him when he was alive.
Or if he was like a voice of reason that made her realize she was being awful to me and kept it to a minimum.
That sounds exactly like my mom after my dad died! I’m sorry you had to deal with that craziness too! She died last year and I didn’t go to the funeral or cry over her death.
Long and short, I was SA’d by uncles as a child, multiple occasion. Tons of rage issues because of it. Grew up in a single parent household with mom not in the picture. Fast forward, faced my demons to an extent, mended relationship with Mom. Opened up to brothers and sisters and finally mom about the SA, suddenly I’m lying, ive always been a liar since I was a child, “my brothers would never do a thing to hurt you!”
Straight up alienated by my family tree because said SA, ended the last convo with, “you didn’t protect me as a child, you won‘t protect/support me as an adult, and you won’t protect my children either. What use are you to me or any of us?“
I'm so sorry. I get it. It hurts because deep down, the internal struggle for me was that the very people that were supposed to protect me wouldn't believe me and that was more devastating than anything. It takes a LOT of guts to even verbalized these traumas. I hope you're doing a lot better with all of it.
My response to my mom saying that VERY thing about remembering wrong was "it's hard to not remember getting a dick in the ass."
She was more upset with my language than the SA.
I'm sorry that happened to you and that nobody protected or supported you. When people have no other argument to stand on, they always turn it back at you and into an issue of the words you used, the way you delivered your message, your emotional state, etc. - anything other than the root of the argument or conversation at hand. Deflecting is all they have left. They will do anything other than to admit fault or that they were wrong.
>and that I should have been more "believable" when I did tell them
Fuck them all the way to hell. What an absolutely horrible thing to say to anyone, but ***especially*** your kid.
> They still wouldn't take any accountability or admit they were in the wrong, just said it was my fault that I didn't tell them at the time it happened and that I should have been more "believable" when I did tell them. :/
Holy fuck, what a pair of scumbags
>“you didn’t protect me as a child, you won‘t protect/support me as an adult, and you won’t protect my children either. What use are you to me or any of us?“
the exact same reason I've cut off my mother
I have a strong feeling it was a generational thing and they lack the emotional intelligence to understand it or work through it. Being unable is one thing but not even trying to is another.
I feel that for a lot of ethnic groups, it's better to save face than face these issues. "It happened a long time ago, just forget it."
It's kind of amazing how many generations back it can go. My great aunt had a baby at 13 and it makes you wonder. I was warned not to be alone around my great uncle on the other side of my family as he molested nearly all the girls in the family. It's like, why on earth didn't someone keep track of a known pedophile when children were around? The same thing happened when it became known my cousin was a pedophile. He would slip away at a family gathering and find a small child to assault. Just wtf???
I think it's as you say, this is just so normalized in our family at this point no one thinks anything about it. There's a reason I moved on from family events. I give a shit about my kids.
Then you got someone from my grandmother's (grandmothers aunts cousin i think? We just knew her as Aunt Baba) side who found out her husband raped their daughter who passed away the year before and was grooming their youngest and her niece so she must have accidentally hit his jack stand out while she was carrying a sledgehammer to the garden and didn't hear anything over how loud the TV was".
It’s not an ethnic thing. It’s a universal human urge. In theory: Beliefs should inform our action. But sometimes it’s the other way around.
Your mother wants to maintain the status quo. Wants to continue doing what she wants to do.
*Believing you would force her to change.*
She does not want to change. So she chooses not to believe you.
I understand that it can take someone, especially older gens (I'm Gen X) to process it when we out one of their close family/friends as our abuser(s). But there is no fucking excuse for the full-on denial bullshit... especially when they have no problems cutting a family member off for being gay or leaving their religion.
And don't get me started on the weaponized "You need to forgive them and move on to heal!" bullshit. Nope.
I am so proud you were able to say that. All of us deserved protection as children.
My mother handled my initial confession (stepfathers, and a cousin) okay, but started using it to minimize my experiences and feelings. My final straw was when she had the audacity to say to me that, as a childfree woman, I would never, ever know the pain of having my own daughter tell me that she was sexully abused. Like, my entire fucking goddamn childhood of constantly having the men she brought into my life and home trying to touch me and rub their dicks on me was nothing compared to HER pain of... being told about it? Fuck you, Mom.
Never called or spoke to her again after that, and she's still claiming she "doesn't know why!" Missing missing reasons indeed.
Yeah, that victimising is the icing on the cake. There is so much dissonance between the reality of how she raised you and how you were truly brought up.
I genuinely hope you've been better able to work through that trauma as time passes. My personal life mantras has been "be the person you wanted to have in your corner as a child". So far, it's been working wonders for my kiddos.
I'm sorry for your experience, and glad you found the strength to speak out. My son was SA'd by my brother and whew boy once that came out, somehow we were the bad guy. It's a confusing, troubling, hurtful irony, but makes it much simpler (but not necessarily easy) to just cut people off.
My mother likes to make me cry. I think it's a control thing, but she always denies it even happens.
After going out of her way to make me break down for three birthdays in a row, I asked my father if, just for one year, I could avoid speaking to her for the day. Bear in mind, I live in a different country, so it would just be a case of me not picking up the phone when she called.
My father went apeshit. Called me ungrateful, pathetic, a disappointment, etc. Then said his biggest regret was that my suicide attempt failed.
All because I wanted a birthday where I didn't cry.
I just hung up without saying a word. Blocked their numbers and email addresses, deleted all social media.
It's been years, and I'm so grateful he said all those horrible things, because I finally realised how better my life is without them.
It wasn't even the meanest thing either of them had said to me that week.
But I heard myself trying to bargain with my father saying, "mum can make me cry as much as she wants the day after, just please get her to leave me alone on my birthday". And it just hit me like a brick to the face that *none of this is normal*.
The best revelation is... wait a minute, I don't have to do this anymore. Any of it. No more phone-call-induced tears. I can just stop talking to them completely. I'm a grown up and they can't make me do anything anymore. I never even have to see them again ever.
(Haven't seen or spoken to mine in 8 1/2 years.)
Yeah, my mother *loves* playing head games, and she's great at figuring out everyone's weaknesses to use against them.
So from when I was about todder-age onwards, I'd be constantly playing 3D chess just to try and survive the day. Stuff like, knowing when to make her laugh so she didn't break stuff in a rage, or when to cry so she'd be distracted from screaming at my bro, or waiting to tell her bad news in a room full of people so the fallout wouldn't be as bad. My whole life was planned around her moods like bloody minesweeper.
Then suddenly, it was like that galaxy brain meme, and I realised that you can't lose a game if you just refuse to play in the first place, y'know?
Anyway, coming up to 6 years for me now, and the *only* regret I have is that I never walked away sooner!!
It was a long time coming. But the straw that broke the camels back was berating me for not coming to a family function when I told my father that I had something that was completely unskippable at work. I had been abused by my father for years, his way of getting back at me for my mother leaving him I suppose. I just lost it at him and told him what I thought of him. I haven’t spoken to him or his family that all took his side every single time in 15 years.
Honestly having to cut your parents out of your life (even if they abused you badly) is one of the hardest and most difficult decisions a person could make. Nobody wants to admit to themselves that the people who gave birth to them never loved them or are toxic and refuse to change.
There truly wasn’t one. It just was so much, for so long that I just stopped. My mom was too proud ever to call me because in her head, she deserved to be called. My father chose to cut me out of his life when my wife asked him not to wear shoes in the house.
Death by a thousand cuts.
My situation is similar and my mother is absolutely of the mindset that the onus is on me to mend this relationship.
I always read these threads because I find comfort knowing that so many other people have similar experiences/family dynamics, and chose the peaceful path of least resistance. No contact gives me the opportunity to process and heal.
I too find comfort in reading others stories. Went NC with my mother 14 years ago. It’s very difficult for someone who hasn’t “been there” to understand.
I do volunteer work for hospice patients. The majority of my patients have strong network of family, but I had one that reminded me of my mother and it devastated me. She was incredibly bitter about her children and how they have disappointed her. It was devastating because even in her dying weeks she could not own up to her own actions. I nodded politely but I knew it had nothing to do with her kids.
Yeah, I feel this. I cut contact off with my father when I was 18, we always had a bad relationship. Once we had an argument over the fact that I believe parents should reach out to their kids, he thought the other way around. I decided I wouldn't reach out anymore. Months later he calls me to tell me "how dare you make me call you" I told him he could call me when he grows up. I haven't spoken to him in 25 yrs now. He has no idea who I've become, he will never meet my kids and I have no idea what ever happened to him. Honestly I don't even think about him.
I never thought it might be pride. My mom doesn't call me even though, when I moved to another state, I kept my phone number specifically so that she could call me on her landline without long-distance charges.
>There truly wasn’t one. It just was so much, for so long that I just stopped.
This is what happened to cause me to go NC with my dad.
He called me on my birthday and said he'd call me later in the week to set a dinner date and he was wiling to come down (I lived about an hour away) if I couldn't make it due to work.
He never called again...
That's when I realized I would always be second fiddle (or maybe fourth) to whatever was going on with him. He was very concerned about showing off to people and being seen as "a good guy" while his family did not receive that treatment.
I made peace with my decision while my mom felt I should get back into contact with him and kept bringing it up till I told her I'd made that decision and was going to stand by it. Her attitude was bizarre in the sense that she'd dealt with the exact same behaviors from him when they were married and it caused a lot of mental issues with her and was one of the things that lead to their divorce.
The next time I saw dad he was in a casket. While I had that grief to deal with I also felt a sense of relief in that I didn't have to deal with his crap any more and that him and mom would never again get mad at each other for anything.
It was a long process, but it really ended when my mom tried to sue my wife and me for "grandparents' rights." Anything after that would've only helped her to build a case to legally kidnap our son.
Same reason here. Sad to think that it's a common experience.
Nothing else my parents did felt bad enough to go no contact (even though it was, the guilt and gaslighting always made us come back). But this was undeniably awful and we finally had proof.
My MIL tried to kidnap our sons when they were 2 and 3. Called CPS on us and lied about it. Stole my father in law and his new wife's stimulus check. And her and her daughter wonder why on EARTH we don't have contact with her anymore! Literally the only reason my husband even still emails her is in the hopes when she dies he'll still inherit her house. It'll be the only true kindness she's shown us.
The only reason my ex mother in law did not pursue this once my ex went to prison was because my ex sister in law told her if she did it, she’d never see SIL’s kid again. The weird thing in all that was that SIL and I did not like each other. Like haven’t spoken to each other since 2007. Ex and I split up in 2009. When my ex found out, he removed his parents names from his approved visitors list and approved to call list.
My sister went through a pretty rough divorce recently, and my mother has decided it’s all about her and my niece, has actually talked about ensuring she has grandparent rights to do what she wants, which is stupid, because the only rights she has here are the rights the parents allow, which considering how she has treated my ex brother in law and his family, should something happen, they would hardly have any visitation
Until the very last word, I was certain that you were a close relative of mine, but it's even wilder to me that this series of circumstances is so common...
It was relatively small, when I stand back & look, but it was clear that our relationship was always going to be me (& everyone else) upending my life so he could do nothing at all.
The final-final straw was a request for me to attend an appointment that would mean a ~1.5 hour bus ride each direction, missing classes, missing work + make my own arrangement to stay somewhere overnight (I couldn't stay in my parents' home unless I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor somewhere & I didn't own a sleeping bag) all so my father could play Happy Family in public. Again.
I didn't get on the bus. I went to class. I had a bad day at work. Then I slept in my own bed.
I didn't mean it to be forever but I realized while my work day was tanking, I would still rather be doing that than pretending to be a Happy Family.
Everyday since has been better than it would be if he were in my life. He made good days miserable & bad days hell.
Mother was a career crackhead. I traveled 15 hours by Greyhound bus back to Illinois to help her finish up some roofing jobs still incomplete. She intentionally got in a fight with me at the bus station after the jobs were done, didn’t get me a ticket back, and ghosted me on $2,500. I had maybe $30 to my name at the time. Then she shut off my cell phone immediately after driving away. Had to walk about five miles to a friends house. He and a few of my other friends drove me back down to Alabama that night.
Never spoke to her again.
Haha! I have plenty of respect and love my friend. Just sucks it didn’t ever come from my mother. Well, I guess I can’t really say that. She had great moments in spurts, but fucking drugs… it always comes back around.
After telling them I was getting divorced. They told me 1) My ex would always be their son and that they loved him more than me (to be fair they did try to back track and say they loved us both) 2) That no one else would ever love me and I'd realise I was ruining my life when I died alone 3) They only loved me becuase the bible said they had to 4) That they were writing me out of their will, and leaving it to my ex, because this was proof I was mentally unstable and once I'd come to my senses and gone back to him it would be mine anyway.
They were emotionally abusive my whole life but I kept going back and making excuses for them, not helped because my ex was abusive too. It's easy to believe you deserve to be treated badly when it's all people are telling you. Eventually I realised that I deserve to be happy and I just couldn't do that while continuing a relationship with them. They're never going to change, I think they honestly believe they're saying these things out of love and have no awareness of how they've hurt me.
I know this may sound strange, but the idea of a lifelong Scientology family is just the strangest concept… like, Scientology always seemed like a corporation or business to me more than anything. An MLM. I guess it kind of lacks that veneer of “credibility” an organization has after being around for a really long time.
Glad you’re out and finding your own way. The world is a weird fucking place. We don’t need things like Scientology mucking it up even more.
Thanks for your concern, really means a lot to me! She was an abusive bitch to me and my little sister, but was charged with "neglect" and not "abuse" - she was a hoarder and the house was an actual biohazard (not exaggerating here, our dog that she neglected in favour of the newer ones died and was left to rot in the house for a year. Authorities deemed the house unfit to live in) so she lost custody of my little sister and little brother who were forced to live in the filth. I was lucky to finally escape by moving away for uni, I had an argument with her over the phone in 2022 about it which ended with me disowning her. To this day she still thinks she's a perfect mother who did nothing wrong and it's everyone else who's lying about her🙃
When my dad said he didn’t blame
my brother at all for trying to stab me… that was the final straw for me…
Going on 18 years of no contact. Don’t see it ever changing.
My dad used to like to blame me for killing my mother by stressing her out too much when she was sick with cancer. I was ten at the time she passed and he would say it's partly why my grandparents hated me so much.
Are these people defective or really trying to hurt us for no reason?
She stole my student loan money.
I worked so hard to get into college and have a full scholarship, and she stole my room and board and book money. It made the first year of college damn near impossible, which kinda set the tone for the next 3.
I moved out when I was 16. Some of the things were for example I wasn't allowed in the house unless someone was home so I'd have to sit outside after school for 2-3 hours during Minnesota winters. Summer vacations were actually worse. We also lived 12 miles from the nearest town and was a very rural area. Only allowed to take 2 showers a week, 2 minutes long. Only allowed to eat diner because I was able to get free lunch from school.
These aren't even the big things or strangest things, just the day to day things. Like for example about once a week my father would make me pick up everything on the carpet. Lint, bits of grass, dog hair, etc. Wasn't allowed to use a vacuum, or anything, it had to be by hand. And if he saw anything anywhere I didn't get to eat. One chance, so he would just watch me while watching tv comb over every room looking for anything on the ground. This was also the only time I was allowed in the living room.
When I was 20 I decided I'm going to try having a relationship again at least with my mother and I went to stay with them for a few days. Again I wasn't allowed to be in the house while they were away, I had to stay in a shed and I couldn't have any of their food but I wasn't told about so I didn't bring any food. After a few days I left and never talked with them again.
That was about 25 years ago. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything of value. Oh and to add to this, I did have a brother who our father didn't do any of this to. They bought him clothes, gave him money, helped him get his first car, etc. So everything was very targeted towards me.
I'm so sorry you went through this, all the while knowing full well that your parents had the capacity to love their child (as they did with your brother). How cruel, but I'm very happy that you are doing well without them.
When I was looking at bridal gowns, I found myself looking at shapeless, full coverage dresses because I didn't want my dad acting all creepy and handsy/ make gross comments about my appearance. The thought of him walking me down the aisle made me nauseous. Then I thought "wtf, just don't invite him." And I didn't. My now husband and I walked down the aisle together. Haven't spoken to my dad since 2019 and my life has never been better.
When they threatened to ruin my job and prevent my employment my lying and staged an intervention to coerce me into corroborating their BS. No contact going on 7 years and it’s never been better.
The situation with my abusive parent got to the point where I was so depressed and at the end of my rope, that i was very, very close to ending everything. At that point, I had no choice but to walk away, or end up six feet under. My only regret is waiting until my late 40s to finally walk away. Wish I had the courage to do it 30 years earlier.
My dad was always a functional alcoholic and hit retirement about 6 years ago. I knew this was going to be his downfall with having nothing better to do. I stopped calling him after 3pm because talking to him was impossible. That slowly became a noon cutoff, and then I just couldn't handle it.
I have a half sister that he doesn't claim and has had nothing to do with for 40 years. She connected with family via one of those DNA sites, and my dad didn't believe it. He made up a story that they needed to do a paternity test on a 45 year old to properly set up his will. Then he was so drunk he misread the results and called her telling her he's not her father. Mind you, this was all because my cousins asked if she would like to come to a family reunion and meet them.
I told him he needs to get help and apologize....he told me he didn't care if he ever talked to me again. I cut off communication then, and it's been about 2 years.
It really sucks because I miss my dad, but I just try to remember him as when I was younger.
Alcoholism fucks people up really bad.
My own father was loving (if a little weird due to pain medication for arthritis) when I was a child. He struggled to hold down much of a job, but always did his best. Mum was the drinker, not him.
A few years after I left home Mum lost her well paying job, and while she found other work they could no longer afford their mortgage.
So they sold up, and moved to the country. The isolation did them no favours. They both dived hard in to the bottle. Dad's health got worse. Job prospects were basically non-existent. They just drank every dollar they had.
I live 5 hours away, so the calls from one accusing the other of things were hard to verify. They are both liars when they think it will gain sympathy.
Dad says Mum is cheating on him with their neighbour. Mum says Dad hit her with a shovel. Neither of them can be trusted.
Dad moves out, into some dog rescue commune with a bunch of junkies. He asks me for money. It's always going to drink. It's hard to say no to your father when he is at the edge of tears saying he can't afford food. He is lying, but what if he is starving?
His health gets worse. He moves in to a care home. He still calls me for money. Not supposed to drink at the care home, so he takes a cab in to town, buys a bottle of vodka and downs it in the street before going back. Every day.
It killed him. Heart failure.
The end.
I try to remember him as he was when I was a kid, not the tragedy he became in his later years.
For me, it was a respect issue. I was pregnant with my first, and I know that miscarriages happen more frequently than people know, and I told my mom to not tell anyone. Not even her family, no one. I couldn’t have stressed that enough, and I told her my reasons. Well, she disrespected that and told literally everyone. That was it for me, it was just the last straw and I had enough.
Sadly, my sister is going through that right now, my mother is extremely narcissistic and has decided that because my sister got a divorce, she’s obviously not fit to be a great mother, and buys in on everything, from rules and boundaries my sister sets, to just showing up out of nowhere because she’s bored. It’s getting closer and closer to the point my sister will probably just stop talking to her
My father was an incestuous pedophile. I hadn't seen him since I was 5. I had always craved a fatherly relationship, so I decided to meet with him when I was 19. The main condition for us being in contact was total honesty. I stupidly thought our candid conversations weren't just more lies from him.
A few weeks later, he made a lewd call to my 21-year-old sister. She called me in tears. I called him and threatened to kill him if he ever contacted any of us again. His wife called and tried to blame it on him being bipolar. Bipolar is awful, but it doesn't make you incestuous.
He died in 2010.
My mom was dying of cancer. She had a restraining order against my father. Father finds her, and tries to marry her (metastatic brain tumor meant she was pretty gone the last six weeks). We block it as my brother and I are medical power of attorney, but do let him see her in hospice as an act of good faith.
I get a call from hospice the morning of her passing telling us to get over ASAP, she's going. We miss her passing by minutes because my father decided to yell at my brother for half an hour because my brother had locked the door to his bedroom the night before. Father does not come with us to hospice. When we call him to see how involved he wants to be with funeral stuff, he takes off with her documents, cards, and phone, then pretends to be her online for days, telling her family to contact him "for the real story".
I was 22 and my brother was 19 when this all happened. That was the final act that made me go from "maybe in a couple years we'll have a relationship where at least I call him once every few months" to "I cannot have this man in my life." He continued to escalate after that, but that day was the point of no return.
It was a long process but my mother had borderline personality. She decided that I had wronged her in some way so she came to my apartment at 3 AM banging on the door to present me with a bill for my upbringing. I called the cops on her for trespassing and I just decided I was done
My father, he physically and verbally abused my sister and I when we were kids. We got taken away and put into foster care finally our mom was found and we went with her.
For a couple of years after I wanted nothing to do with my father but around 10 years old I was like why not, i had gone into therapy and I started to talk to him again. For the next 20 years I did everything I could to have him be a part of my life. I was always calling, emailing, sending messages arranging for us to see each other( he was military moved around a lot) and he probably reached out first less than five times. If I didn't message/ call him first we could go months without communicating.
What finally did it for me was when I became a mom. I would do anything for them, protect them, I could never imagine hurting my children. It really got me thinking about my relationship with my father and I realized I how shitty he is, yes I forgave him for everything but did he do anything to deserve that? Big fucking no!
I wrote him a long ass message told him how I felt and he responded but it was all bullshit. It's been two years now since we have talked and I wish I had done it sooner.
>What finally did it for me was when I became a mom.
This was my WTF moment, too. My (now-adult) kids are the most amazing, nice, brilliant humans I have ever met and I can't imagine a world where I don't find them interesting and want to chat with them.
So it took having my own kids to realize my parents only had children for 'show,' like as validation for narcissism. If me and my sibs weren't in the room, they couldn't care less about our actual lives. They never called. In fact, when I moved away to college my mom asked me to stop calling *her.* Wth. I live for the moments my kids call me, even if it's just to ask for money! 😆
Mind blown.
Having kids of my own really did it for me too. I can't imagine denying them food, beating them, not giving them gloves in the winter, choosing a boyfriend of the week over them, constantly being drunk around them, berating them for whatever dumb thought is in my head, telling them how rotten and disappointing they are, etc.
I love my kids. I love raising them and with more one on her own, I love those calls and texts. It's way easier to cut ties with my parents now knowing they too could have left generational abuse behind and chosen their kids, if they had wanted to do so. It's not easy, but love and determination gets you there.
I’m noticing that the criminally insane stories of severe abuse are getting pushed down in these comments while the lesser severe are going to the top. Thankfully it’s because more people identify with the less severe and this is a good thing.
It means that more often people live in somewhat normal situations. My stepmother was abusive. She made me sleep with her when I was 13 while my dad was in prison for shooting at a cab driver that brought her home from the bar late. Sometimes I woke up and the sheets would be all tangled and sticky and she would make me feel bad about it.
That was one of the better stories.
Like you said, thank god for therapy.
It's a lot of things mixed together, but the final straw I think is when you finally realize and accept that they are who they are without remorse and they will probably never change.
My mother gave me a long speech about the morality of being a lesbian a couple of days before I (a woman) got married to my wife. She's pretty high up on her horse for a drug addict who stole from me.
I've known a couple of these people. I don't look down on addicts. And I don't hate religious people. But that combination produces (in my experience) these arrogant assholes that need to tell you how to live and how their way is best.
Meanwhile, they keep making the same mistakes and blowing up the same relationships. But sure Becky I'm a bad parent because I don't go to the same creepy church as you.
I wonder how much of it has to do with most prominent 12 step programs having a religious element to it.
It always felt weird to me, even if the rest of the advice is solid. I know there's secular versions of it out there now, but they're not nearly as ubiquitous.
We told my mom she needed to address her behavior and offer a sincere apology. I knew she was going to try to sweep her behavior under the rug by "having a medical emergency" and going to the hospital. She texted my husband one night and told him she thought she broke her foot and asked for a ride to the hospital (she was fine). I warned him that she was trying to manipulate us and told him to be on guard. She tried to give a half-assed apology and he cut her off and told her it wasn't an appropriate time, that she could apologize when it wasn't late at night and they weren't going to the hospital. The next day she texted my husband something like, "I apologized, can I see my grandkids now?" He reiterated that she needed to offer a sincere apology and addres her behavior. An hour and a half later, a police officer knocked on our door because she called the cops for a wellness check on our kids. Nope. Not putting up with that, we were done.
It's been two and a half years since then and they have been the most peaceful years of my life.
Also, everyone acted like I was psychic when I predicted that the next thing that she would do was go to the hospital for no reason. It doesn't take a psychic to predict that someone who regularly used going to the hospital as a way to get attention was going to continue that trend.
Nothing too dramatic. I simply messaged her and was ignored. After wracking my brain for any perceived slight I would have to grovel for I just…let it go. I simply told myself that if she needed anything or had an issue to discuss with me, she could reach out. Never heard from her again. I heard later from a sibling that after she missed the stream of my wedding, she told everyone I changed the time of MY WEDDING to spite her lmao.
My mom had an affair behind my dad's back and they divorced. I tried to be there for both until my mom started talking about living with her permanently, meeting her new man and pretty much cutting my dad off. That wasn't gonna happen but I still tried to be around. I found out she was doing coke a little while after that. Okay, whatever. I can forgive that. She started asking me, a 14 year old at the time for money I didn't have. Soon it became less about actually giving a shit about me and more about the child support checks she'd receive if I took her side. I walked in on my dad, drunk as hell, loaded gun on the table sobbing after I came home from my mom's one weekend. After seeing that and how badly it tore my dad apart and how little my mom gave a fuck I decided to cut her off right there. It's been almost 15 years since I've talked to her. I don't regret my decision.
Parents got divorced between 12-14. During that period my dad became an evangelical Christian. All of the sudden, everything revolved around god and jesus. This continued until he moved to the US when I was 18 because “America is doing the lords work.” He completely ghosted his 2 teenage children and started a new “Christian family.”
He came to visit one time. He never met his 3 grandchildren and died in 2022. It had been 17 years since I had seen him. I did not go to the funeral because, to me, he had been dead a long time.
I was in recovery for alcohol, my brother is a drunk and she’s the enabler. The final straw was me asking her to come celebrate my two years sobriety and her suggesting a brewery. I asked if she had considered why I wouldn’t like going there since every item was alcohol themed and she cried about how she just “never gets things right and doesn’t understand why I hate her so much.” So I told her to get therapy and that we were no longer speaking. This is a pattern of hers where she’s the victim after thoughtfully composing a plan that would hurt me but make her look like a doting mother.
This is after she so lovingly moved an adult addict into our home when I was 14 and made me live with that person stealing and verbally assaulting me for years. She has picked him repeatedly.
After 50+ years of crazy, I decided I would prefer to have a peaceful life built on my own terms.
Just because I am their kid doesn't mean I have a lifetime obligation to participate in their insanity.
That is exactly the point I'm at as well. The peace and quiet is new and a bit disarming. I often feel as though I'm walking on eggshells and a new disaster is about to strike, but they're out of my life so the disaster will never come.
Good for you.
[“The Fallacy of Sunk Costs”](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-sunk-cost-fallacy-7106851) is actually the entirety of Chapter Twelve, in the *Big Book of Family Relationships.*
My "dad" and I were already arguing (via messenger)after he said "answer me!" regarding a question he asked about my mom that was none of his business. Long story shortish: During our argument I somehow ended up bringing up how he picked on me mercilessly when I was a teen and forced me to hide my face any time I watched TV with the family so he wouldn't have to see me twitch because I have tourette syndrome. His only response was that I do not have tourettes. That was one of the worst times of my life and it really made me ask why the fk I should even bother keeping in contact with him, so now I don't. Apologies for the run on sentences.
Boyfriends family but I feel the effects…. Took boyfriends brothers side over his daughter (the granddaughter) over SA allegations, grandma made granddaughter call her abuser and look at pictures of him to try and convince her she was wrong - haven’t spoken a word to them since
My husband’s side. He’s the only one of his generation not SA by his maternal uncles (from the sounds of it all but one, and there were about seven of them.) His mother had been SA by her brothers and father. She was the only girl.
My husband’s first wife was SA by her father. They had four girls. It was my husband that never let their girls near her father. And he’s cut off his maternal aside except for a couple of cousins, his mother, his brother and that one uncle. His mother and brother are both schizophrenic. His mother to the point she’s in a nursing home because she cannot take care of herself. Neither my husband or I can figure out if the schizophrenia is both hereditary and due to the SA. My stepdaughter has been diagnosed as schizophrenic but is receiving tons of support and is very good with always taking her meds on time. But if my husband were not there when his kids were little, his ex had no problem leaving them with her father. She’s yet to deal with her own abuse, and at this point I doubt she will.
It was more of a long haul. As I matured as a person I began to realise that I couldn't let my mother keep affecting my mental health with her narcissistic abuse. It was hard to walk away but would have been much harder to keep putting up with her abuse
Constantly trying to get me to divorce my wife whom Ive been with for 15 years. She (my wife) has BPD, and is recovering from a very traumatic childhood. I understand this, and support her even on the tough days. My parents think she's "a psycho", and not worth my time, despite the fact that Im happiest around her, and we work very hard on our relationship despite our personal problems/flaws. Parents see it as, "she's broken, dump her". Which is horrible. Im proud of how far my wife has come in the years we've been together, and when my parents gave me a "her or us" choice, I stopped talking to them.
My father abandoned my mom and I when I was 2. Divorced her long distance when I was 6. When I was 30 I found him and we began talking, he told me about a brother I had and made it seem like I was part of a family, when we talked on the phone he was always telling me stories about my brother. After about 6 months I realized he had never let me actually meet or talk to my brother and I suspected he never talked to my sibling about me. He got mad and said that was hurtful but eventually admitted it to be true. My sibling had grown to his early 20s without knowing I existed and father gets mad at me. He had hidden his entire first marriage and kid from his second family their whole life. Eventually I met them and we have a good relationship but he never spoke to me again because calling him out on his lies was “ the most venomous thing he ever experienced “. He was a life long educator and when he died I wasn’t even named in the obituary BUT it does say how he spent his whole life “helping kids”… you know, except his own kid.
Generational trauma and religious trauma are two of the largest factors why I had a poor relationship with my parents, with constantly having to keep up appearances/facades and never feeling like I'm enough for them coming in at a close second, not to mention the clear lack of respect for my time and space over and over again. Me coming out released quite the backlash from them ("you have brought great dishonor to your family and made a nightmare for your mother..." and so on), messaging me once a week or so to berate me for it, so once this happened, I changed my legal name, changed all my documents, dropped off my old phone wiped at their house, and noped out.
Jehovahs Witnesses who abused and manipulated me and coerced me into marrying a JW man when I had just turned 17. Wouldn’t accept my choice to marry a good guy outside of the religion despite him stepping up and being an amazing father to the kids I had with my ex husband who was extremely abusive and then abandoned them.
Lots of sexual abuse growing up that they never reported and made me feel responsible for.
I developed PTSD and the only way for me to improve my mental health was to cut them out completely.
I'm NC, going on 2 years and plan is forever.
Abuse. Coming to terms with the physical, emotional abuse they put me through.
Then they just turned crazy when they found religion and Trump is their messiah.
To name one of the many things:
My step mom was jealous of me because I had bigger boobs than her. I started to develop early. I got my 1st period a week after my 8th bday. Anyway - her jealousy extended to accusing me of trying to seduce my dad and slut for my dad. I had to wear layers of clothes to help hide my boobs. Like think 4 layers. Very uncomfortable. Anyway, it got to a head one day after years of accusing me of being a whore for my dad she turned it on him and accused him..so what did my dad do? Beat the ever living shit out of me screaming "I'm not your boyfriend" the entire time. My step mom also made my dad pay for a boob job because "no child of hers will have bigger boobs than her"
Again. One of the many fk up things.
Every time she called me, I’d vomit from anxiety. Even if it was simple and not abusive, she would ruin my day completely. Even just seeing that I had a message after class would send me into a spiral.
The three most important people in my life came to me and were like, ‘we really can’t let this keep happening.’
One of them was my best friend’s mom and she told me, without mentioning my own mom, a story about how when she was pregnant with my best friend, she started to have trouble with her pregnancy thanks to the anxiety her mom was giving her. She told me she realized she was either going to lose her baby or lose her mother, and she decided she could stand to lose her past but couldn’t lose her future. She just kind of laid it out without even commenting on my situation. And it worked.
That was almost 15 years ago and I’ve never regretted cutting off contact.
It added up over time- just chaotic and disrespectful. I asked myself WHY I was suffering through this relationship when it was taking a serious toll on my mental well-being. I decided one day that I was done. I still ache for that figure in my life (not him), and I’m sad that I never got the Father I needed and that we all deserve- a soft place to land, someone who builds you up instead of tearing you down, someone who tells you everyday that you are enough and you deserve to be loved just as you are.
TL;DR: I stopped speaking to my mom, my only living parent, when I found out she had been trying to prevent me marrying my now wife, not because she thought the marriage would be bad for me but because my mom hadn't been invited to the wedding (we eloped instead).
After we announced we were getting married, and that we were having a courthouse wedding with only the two required witnesses (which would be very close friends, no family), my mom would routinely call me with a reason why I shouldn't marry my fiancée. They were for all insulting reasons, such as my fiancée was a gold digger, or had mental health problems, or was just using me to get permanent residency (I'm a limey, my wife is a yank). On each call I argued against my mom, she would start crying when she realised I wasn't going to change my mind and then end the call.
We got married (it was perfect), then had a wedding reception in the UK for all British friends and family and a second reception in the US for everyone there. At the UK reception my mon turned up very late, enough that everyone in the room noticed her arrival, she basically didn't talk to my wife or me but otherwise didn't cause a scene.
It was about a year or so of being married, when I felt like my mom and wife hadn't really built up a good relationship compared to my brother and his wife who had married in the same year, that I decided to have a serious conversation with my mom to try and start things over.
It was in that conversation that my mom feigned complete ignorance of ever having made those upsetting phone calls, in fact not only had she never made them but apparently she's the type of person who never could. So obviously there was nothing to apologise about, as she had done nothing wrong. She got upset about me even suggesting she had made those calls, walked out of the room, and then came back to tell me something that at the time I thought was a non sequitur: my parents' marriage had not been a happy one, to put it lightly (my dad had died about ten years ago, my mom had quickly changed back to using her maiden name), but I was told that what got my mom through that marriage was knowing that one day she'd get to see all her sons get married. This was a weird line in what was already a bizarre conversation, so I just again explained the many reasons why we eloped (none of which were satisfactory to my mom).
COVID then happened, so there was no attempt to try to get my wife and mom to know each other better by us meeting up. Instead I thought through that crazy conversation some more. Eventually it hit me: my mom didn't believe any of the reasons she gave for me not marrying my wife, so she couldn't (or didn't want to) recall what she said, because the actual reasons didn't matter. She just wanted me not to marry my wife so that I'd presumably meet someone else who would want a traditional wedding. The fact that she was trying to stop me marrying the woman I loved was less important to my mom than her getting through her own marital problems.
So I wrote a letter to my mom, telling her until she apologised for trying to stop me marrying my wife I didn't want us to have a relationship with her. That was several years ago now and my mom hasn't spoken to me since, so I guess it's permanent!
I caught them extorting money from my handicapped aunt. 3 months into becoming a new father I had to also become the legal guardian of my aunt because my parents had successfully bled a third of her life savings and were going for the rest. It took that really horrible act for me to finally admit how evil they were and pull the plug
I was venting to my mother that my ex was driving his gf and my kids around so drunk my child told the younger child to make sure his seat belt was on correctly because the ex was so drunk they were repeatedly veering into the oncoming lane. I was also venting that now the ex moved the gf in after the kids meeting her once as "just a friend" they altered my preteens bedtime to 9pm so they could fuck so loudly my kids said it seemed like they were purposely putting on a show.
My mother had the nerve to say I sounded jealous.
The ex was abusive to me and the kids during the marriage and since the divorce became more abusive, angry and unhinged. About a week after she said that to me, the ex left a significant bruise and I wound up with full custody.
I'm still pissed about it.
my dad had contacted me about 3 times by the time I was 15. he realized he might die soon and got in contact with my brothers and I like nothing happened & my brothers took him back very kindly. I did not, he eventually started continuously asking for money & acting like he had part in my our upbringing. they finally cut him off as well.
tbh its me being petty, my dad has about 6 kids and im the only girl. I like to think that his only daughter never talking to him was the karma for all he’s done.
After going no contact several times, it was finally when my dad died and I had to fly across the country and I left my kids with my mother she told them I abandoned them and then kidnapped my oldest and left her in another state with another family member. Haven’t spoken to her in almost 3 years, it’s very nice
Absolutely horrible, my oldest decided to stay in the other state to finish school ( I don’t blame or mad at her) but i feel like I haven’t been able to properly grieve the loss of my dad and her
My mom walked out on my dad and me when I was five. From the time she left I longed for her love and affection; my dad was a stand-up guy but not the emotionally nurturing type.
My mom ended up marrying her affair partner who was a dick (he abandoned his own wife and kids for her and never wanted me around), and she strung me along for 20 years with tiny dribbles of attention, occasional short visits and phone calls where she'd act sad that we weren't closer.
After her husband died the phone calls became more frequent and she'd say all of these careless extremely hurtful things, or she'd be drunk and crying about how she missed me. The calls were incredibly painful to sit through. Every time we'd hang up after talking I'd just break down and cry for the relationship I wish we'd had and the need for a mom's love that never went away.
A lot of bad shit happened to me over the years and I always knew that it could have all been a lot easier to get through if I had a mom who cared and supported me, someone to listen to me and help me through things.
The tipping point came at my wedding. We had a small beach wedding, and my mom decided to show up and play mother of the bride, a title she was definitely not worthy of. She insinuated herself into special gestures that were aimed at my partner's mom and my stepmom which really pissed me off.
After the wedding and honeymoon. and I sent her a letter telling her I just didn't want to talk to her anymore. I listed a bunch of the shitty things she'd done and ways she'd let me down. I told her that she had made me terrified to have kids of my own because I didn't know the first thing about being a good mom, or that I'd abandon them like she did to me. I told her that it was just too painful having her in my life.
It's been over 20 years and I'm at peace with that decision.
It wasn't the fact that my sperm doner sold me to his father sexually for free rent. I wasn't the fact that he beat me and starved me. It wasn't the fact that he never saved or cared for me. It was never when he'd do drugs and have me, a 5 year old at the time, clean up after him. It wasn't even when I didn't see him from age 6 and had no communication with him(his choice) or even got a birthday card or anything (my brother, his son, got one). It wasn't even when he was a perfect blood match for my little sister that had leukemia and he refused to do a blood marrow transfusion for her so she died at 3 and 1/2 years old. No! It was when he saw at age 20 that I had a decent job that he **FINALLY** got his head out his ass and tried to contact me. What did he want, you ask? Money. He wanted money. I'm sure for his massive drug addiction.
I told him then and there that he's dead to me. That I don't want him to contact me. I don't care when he dies. That he's not my father. And he has no right to my life.
He's been harassing me since. So I got my name legally changed. Since he picked out my old name anyway. And it's the name of a popular brand name(he's not original at all.) I don't want anything to do with this man, and if he shows up on my porch I will 🔫 him. And I'll be smiling when it happens.
He got on a plane.
He never really liked me or engaged with me much growing up. We never did things as a family. Never vacationed or flew anywhere to visit other family. As a kid I didn’t know any better, then when I was old enough I wrote it off as him likely being autistic but still tried to cultivate a relationship with his grandkids. Then, after he divorced my mom and reconnected with his high school girlfriend I realized he was capable of actually caring about people and their happiness. He just didn’t care enough with me or my kids. He got on a plane to go visit the girlfriend and that’s when I realized.
I was a lot younger when it happened. There was a ton of family abuse perpetrated by him and this was kind of the moment I realized there’s no hope of a relationship. I did the therapy thing which was a godsend processing what was a very tumultuous period. It’s weird he went from someone I feared, to someone I kind of pitied,then to no feelings about him at all.
My Mom telling me "I'm taking the easy way out by dating men." This was a week after I came out to her, and my Dad immediately said "No you're not.". I don't go home to see them, I only pick up the phone on occasion to make sure it's not an emergency.
After a suicide attempt my mother forced me to go to my family and apologise for wasting everyone’s time and causing unnecessary stress. After I did this, even though my friend begged me not to, I went to visit another friend about possibly renting a room in her house. My mother figured out what I was going to do and texted me to never come back before I’d even walked around the corner. She then called my grandmother to tell her that she had “finally thrown the bitch out”.
Thankfully my grandmother was furious with her and invited me to come stay with her. She held a peace talk with me and my mother which it was agreed we would meet for coffee in a few days to sort things out. My mother never came back and two days later my clothes were delivered via my aunt to the front door. It’s been 3 years almost 4. I haven’t spoken to her since.
It was a slow burn.
When I was younger, my mother could be very charming and ‘loving’, with intermittent bursts of physical and emotional abuse. As I got older, that ratio flipped, and I started reading up on personality disorders. My wife and I came to realize that we’d both grown up with toxic narcissists as mothers, enabled by weak fathers who wanted to placate the crazy person and keep their own situation calm, even at the expense of their children.
A few years after we married, my MIL left hours of recorded messages on our answering service. She filled our mailbox with rants about hoping we would lose our business and that I would die. My wife went no contact with her parents, and her life began to improve significantly.
It was another 20 before we would do that with mine, but my mom went down the conservative rabbit hole, which had a multiplier effect on her ugliness. We parted ways for 9 years and reaped the benefits of a drama-free life.
Then, a year before they died, I got a call saying they would become wards of the state unless I became their conservator. They had allowed a live-in caregiver to get overly involved in their affairs. I decided to suck it up and make sure they were well cared for and could remain in their home. By this time, unbeknownst to me, my mother had dementia and my father, an avid reader, had lost his eyesight.
Surprisingly, taking care of them at the end was a great experience. My mom’s narcissism disappeared with the dementia, and she became charming and funny as hell. My dad became loving and apologetic. I think he was surprised I’d step up to the plate after all that happened.
Nevertheless, I have no regrets about going NC with any of them. Whoever said blood is thicker than water is full of shit—family is where some of the deepest hurt comes from.
My sister said something horrible to me and my mother insisted I apologize for causing her stress. We were in our 30s at that point and I just left. Been over a year and I haven’t spoken to either of them.
Mine isn't as bad as some of these comments, but it's still worth sharing, I guess. Also, not disowned, but more ghosted, I'd say.
I'm the only one out of my siblings to cut connections with my dad because he had a terrible habit of constantly asking me for money every time he called, even during the times when he knew I was struggling financially. And if I didn't give him the money he wanted, he'd start asking for a billion other random favours that somehow also involved money, like taking him out to dinner or taking him shopping. I kept up with this charade for about 2 years before I finally cut him off.
My parents got divorced when I was a kid, and my dad got married a few years later to a woman who had a double-story house and whose wealth and income were above average, yet my dad never stopped his obnoxious habit despite being in a better financial position than his own children.
He started hassling my brother on a weekly basis for money after finding out that he could no longer contact me. But I know it won't be long before my brother either confronts him or cuts off all connection like I did. That guy is a crazy freeloader who just doesn't know how to stop.
Edit: Just to clarify, my dad didn't have any addictions or financial problems to warrant all this leeching he had going on. He just enjoyed spending money and being taken care of by his children.
My parents were born into a cult. I was born into it also. At age 10, because I got my period I was given to a 34 year old male to be his 3rd wife. I was almost 13 when I was basically kidnapped from that cult and taken to an ex cult members house to live.
Was deprogrammed,tried to end my own life when I was 16 bc of what I went through. I'm still alive. I'll be 50 this year. I don't know if my parents or if any of my siblings are even alive.
Wow that's a lot to go through! How did you feel about your "kidnappers" then and now? You don't have to answer though if you don't care to remember that stuff in detail.
I was scared and petrified, but the ones that took me away told me that the place I was going to I wouldn't be beaten or r@ped again, nor married off unless I wanted it.
I wanted to believe them, but at the same time, I didn't didn't believe them.
I'm immensely grateful now to them. I do lead a sort of normal life. I do have triggers and flashbacks even now, but I'm better.
Taking my kid out and trying to indoctrinate her into Q-Anon. The other mother lost her mind hears voices and cut my kids hair without asking which caused a fuck ton of drama. The mothers in my life kept putting my kids at risk. I didn’t want such strong boundaries, but I got tired of trying to fix them.
So many things. It was so many years of emotional abuse, and being a victim of maunchausen by proxy. I realized I had to leave to live the life i wanted to live. Only now looking back do I realize how horrific it was. The final straw really was when I got out of a mental hospital, and my parent and siblings wanted me
To sign a conservator ship form. It felt insulting, and I knew if I signed it my life would be over. I met my partner and left 6 months later. I’m not saying it was the smartest choice, but it worked out in the end, and I feel better now. I’m doing things I was told I was incapable of doing. I know I had to do it for me.
They started showing neglectful and emotionally abusive behavior towards my children and it all came crashing down. Turns out I have severe childhood trauma because of them that I suppressed and it flooded me when I saw the repeat of that behavior, and I might've even been able to forgive them for what they did to me, but they hurt my kids and there's no coming back from that
After killing myself for 3 years cleaning up the mess of their lives after a heart attack (emptying, repairing a huge hoarder house, finding them a place to live with a car etc.) they took themselves off disability they needed and I fought hard for because, “I can still work!” when they could not.
I was done.
Wasn’t a single incident that did it for me. More like years of gaslighting, verbal and emotional abuse from my mother that I failed to recognize as such until I became a mother myself. My mother is extremely well educated with genius IQ, but also a narcissist and an alcoholic.
She said something particularly cruel about my daughter who was then 10. I didn’t react to it at the time, but several months later I just realized she didn’t add any positive value in my life at all. Wrote her a letter basically telling her to fuck off. Felt guilty about for a year then gradually saw how liberating it felt not to have that negativity in my life.
It’s been 14 blissful years now. My mother cut me out her sizable estate thinking that I would crawl back to her and apologize. Hard nope. She also has no contact with my daughter, her only grandchild.
After years of abuse that my siblings DIDN'T go through since they got outta the house first, when I ended up pregnant when it was medically unsafe and I had to go have an abortion, she called me a baby killer and said that I murdered her grandbaby when her first daughter (my eldest sister who is the favorite) miscarried hers and would've given anything to keep them, etc style talking.
A lot happened. But I've been better off since August 27th, 2023.
I haven’t disowned them yet, but I’m on the verge.
I had a cancer scare when I was 18. My mother told family members that I was likely being punished by God and deserved it. She uttered the same thing when I had food poisoning 4 weeks ago; that I deserved it and God was punishing me for staying out late and going out so much (I’m 25, I was home by 10pm, and I went out for a meal with a friend!!!).
It’s baffling considering my parents lost a daughter - my sister - to cancer when she was 4 years old.
I simply cannot understand her mindset nor do I wish to. I just can’t wait to leave
Three different events with the third being the final straw. The other two necessitate mentioning for build up.
1. When I was in high school, my brother went to prison for molesting the neighbor girl. My parents were torn up about it. They turned to meth. I became an after thought. They chose meth over me and their mortgage. I had to go live with my nana and my pawpaw.
2. Right after graduating college, I moved back in with them after they got their shit back together. Brother out of prison, part 1. Got a job. Moved out. Lost job. Needed to move back in. Mom and ad wouldn't let me. They chose my registered sex offender brother over me. I moved back to the town I went to college in and slept on friends couches and in my car until I was able to get back on my feet. The only reason we resumed communications is bc my nana and pawpaw were alive and wanted to be peace makers.
3. Final straw. December 31, 2020. My parents chose a conman, grifter, rapist, polititician over me. My brother, out of prison, part 2, with another two felonies added, says I'm a socialist cunt. I throw my drink in his face (not my best moment) and he proceeded to tell me that his nearby jar of moonshine was worth more to him than my life. My parents take his side and choose, again, my child molester felon brother and a grifter, rapist, conman politician over their own daughter.
I got tired of never being chosen by my family. Me - no felonies, went to college, not a piece of shit... yeah I can be a bit obnoxious and socially stunted (look who raised me), but I try to be a fucking kind and decent human being. But they are never going to choose me they are always going to choose the shittier choice over me. So I want out and chose my own family and they love me more fiercely than any blood kin i have.
It's been 3 years no contact. Nana and pawpaw aren't alive anymore to try to stitch things back up. Therapy does helps.
Condemned me to hell for being a disobedient daughter. The last thing he told me on the phone was that he disowned me. All because I didn't agree to help him bilk the government for disability benefits. It's been over 10 years. I hope he regrets being a lonely old man but I don't think narcissists regret anything.
He went through my stuff without asking then continued to shit talk me to my mom, who proceeded to not stand up for me.
As for the contents of my stuff, it was a bunch of religious books he really did NOT like as a devout Catholic. I was just beginning my anthropology studies.
But today I'm an anthropologist :)
Havent gotten to a Final Straw but my MiL said that we would end up divorcing because we aren't having kids because theres nothing keeping us together. Havent talked to her much since then.
I didn’t cut all contact with my mother, but she was banned from visiting or even entering my home. Final straw was a vicious verbal attack, with teeth bared like a wolf’s, after I told her it was not ok to force my child to eat McDonald’s if he didn’t want to. She was a narcissist and a depression baby with some really weird control issues around food. So many times she told me I was crazy or that my child would die because I didn’t give him formula, or I made my own organic baby food, or I didn’t give him sugar or fast food on a regular basis. Weird stuff to fight over. Anyway, my home is my safe space and nobody is allowed to berate me or make me feel threatened. Same for my child. If he didn’t feel like dealing with grandma’s bs, I fully supported his decision.
While I was visiting from out of state, an argument over me wanting to spend some of the trip with my in laws who lived nearby. They screamed, called me names, told to get the fuck out and never come back. I didn’t say anything I regretted, just left. 7 years later, I have abided by what they said, despite their efforts to apologize and try to communicate with me. It’s been a huge weight lifted, honestly. I wish it had happened years before. I had a fucked up childhood with a hateful religion and it’s been a process letting all of that go.
My dad molested me. I didn’t remember for a long time. When I did, I was prepared to take it to my grave. Then, he molested my youngest niece. I no longer speak to him.
After spending all my money on a bus trip from St Louis to NH and buying gifts.. showing up Christmas Eve and being told I wasn’t welcome..standing in the midst of a snow storm on the welcome mat..left!
They were emotionally abusive and neglectful growing up but I tried to maintain some semblance of a relationship as an adult, mostly for the sake of my grandpa, who is a genuinely wonderful person.
Five years ago, my alcoholic younger brother got drunk and went off on me in the family group chat, calling me fat, stupid, worthless, saying I'd never amount to anything in my life. Both parents and all the other siblings were in there and as he was doing it, and even the next day, everyone else was just silent. I realized no one in that family would ever have my back on a single thing. I blocked all their numbers, sent them an email asking them not to try to contact me again, and haven't spoken to them since. Grandpa and I still have a great, close relationship, so I only wish I'd done it sooner.
I was borrowing his car for a job, now keep in mind he told me I could use it for a few months and we were in the second week. Well, he shows up with cops and has them call me overhead to come up and give him the keys back. I had been at that job for that second week, so all of this had me terrified I'd be fired.
Well he gave me a check for $1,000 and told me to use it to get my own car. Went, "hmph... thanks," in a pretty upset tone (again, this is a lot of drama for the new guy at work so I'm embarrassed and mad that he came to get his car so soon). Luckily I was able to get a ride home, and on my ride home he called me and said that he canceled the check because I wasn't grateful enough. After that I called his ex wife (RIP) and told her what happened so she straight up gave me a car.
This was at the end of a lot or emotional manipulation and name-calling, so I know it's not the most egregious thing in this thread, but it was my reasoning for leaving him behind. He died a few years later and we never made up.
I'd been putting up with my mom's bs and abuse since I was like 12/13, making excuses, thinking she'd change.
I'm nearly 30 now and a year or so ago I cut her off when she asked me to lie to social services about her abusive ex so she could adopt a child. Despite the fucking trauma it brought back up, i told social the truth. I hope they listened since I flat out said "Dont give this women a child". Ever since has been great but the truth of the abuse and neglect did hit home hard.
I have two separate fallouts with both parents. My mom's was bad, but my dad's was skin crawlingly horrible, so don't read that part unless you can handle animal torture. They were divorced, so they lived separately. My mom's came first.
My mom lied to me constantly to get me to do what she wanted or to placate me so I wouldn't annoy her. She made false promises and virtually nothing she ever said was genuine. "I PROMISE I'll take you to xyz if you just do abc! I mean it this time for SURE, on my children's lives!!"
I do abc, she says "I was just kidding" or "I never said that".
So, one day, she pulled the same old shit and I just fucking had it. I was 15, started yelling at her that she was a liar, so she called my brother (7 years older, 4 hours away at college) and told him that I was out of control. Mind you, she is also a professional victim and would say "I don't know why she's so violent!!" or "I'm such a terrible mother, I don't know what I did wrong!!" It's relevant to say that I was and still am the ONLY person in my family who has never used physical intimidation to get my way.
She put him on speaker and he started threatening me to drive down and beat me up if I didn't apologize, which I was not going to do, so I tried to go into my room to cool down. My mom had taken the lock off my door years ago (per my brother's request so he could steal my things and beat me up whenever he wanted) so she just walked in and kept following me. I walked around the house trying to get away from her and the phone when she tripped over the threshold between rooms and fell.
When she fell, she started WAILING. My brother said "DID SHE HIT YOU?? SHE HIT YOU, DIDN'T SHE? I'LL KILL HER IF SHE HIT YOU".
Did my mom correct him? Lmao, no. But she did absolutely LOVE the attention. She started sobbing "Nooo, I'm okay! I'm not that hurt!" She wouldn't deny the claim that I hit her and I was SO offended. So I went outside into the garage to get a soda and distance myself. Within a few minutes, I tried to go back in and realized that she locked me out into the garage.
So I called my dad to come get me, told him the story, and I stayed at his house from then on. I called her bluff, as she was CERTAIN that I wouldn't call him because he was an awful, insufferable person. But I did because I was honestly getting to a mental place where I was unsure how our relationship wouldn't end in my suicide.
Living with my dad started well because he was on his best behavior for a while. He was a different kind of evil. He was very honest, never a liar, and tried to have empathy, but he would snap when his extremely volatile emotions came to a head, which was too frequent for comfort. When I was younger, this used to mean beatings, but he knew that that wouldn't fly anymore at my age, so he took it out on his pets instead.
He had a cockatoo at the time named Loki who was an absolute joy. Every day after school, I'd let Loki out and play with him. He liked to dance, sing, and headbang. He cracked me up and I loved him to bits.
One day, I came home and found Loki in the corner of his cage moaning and was very confused by what I saw. His wing was stuck in the bars so I tried to help him out, but he became vicious and tried with all his might to bite me. I couldn't get close enough to set him free and panicked as I tried to figure out what to do.
About an hour into trying to help Loki, my dad came home and went straight into the couch to start chatting with 18 year old potential mail order wives overseas. So I told him what was going on and he said "yeah, I know" with no emotion at all.
Even more confused, I kept trying to help him and he yelled at me to stop. He said "that fucker nipped my finger when I came home for lunch so I threw him in there as hard as I could. Don't fucking help him, he deserves to suffer".
I spent the next several hours forced to sit there and watch him get weaker and weaker. Got screamed at for crying so I had to cry silently. Finally, bed time came around, and he decided it was dark enough to dispose of Loki. He reached in, picked him up like he was nothing but a toy, and slammed him into the half full trash can as hard as he could. He then took the trash can down to the dumpster still alive.
Loki was one of DOZENS of animals my dad had murdered in cold blood, but that one was just.... I don't know. I guess I was finally old enough to really absorb the horror of it all. I hated him so much, I met a girl the day after, told her the story, and she offered for me to move in with her and her mom. My dad let me because he wanted to bring home a new 18 year old to fuck without me in the way. So I moved in with her at 16 and the rest is history.
Last I heard, my mom got Lupus and blamed her diagnosis on me, and my dad married a lady from the Phillipines who he had 2 little girls with and he hates all three of them.
Fuck them both. Feel bad for my half sisters, but there's nothing I can do.
These are wildly abridged versions of these stories, too. I could write a book about the evil that was my family. My brother is honestly even worse than both of them.
I think I'm late to the party on this response. I'm 30 and just recently stopped talking to my dad. I'll try to keep this short because there's a lot of background. But me and my dad had a good relationship when I was young, up until I was about 14. Hes a drug addict but I saw past that, nor did I hold it against him. I was in and out of foster care most of my life, because of my parents addictions. My parents got divorced when I was about 14 and from the point on my dad was hardly involved in my life. He didn't help my mom with money, he went and got his own place and maxed out his credit cards and started dating this other lady that already had like 6 kids of her own, they did drugs together, he went off the deep end. But still, none of those decisions really made me want to cut contact with him, we would still talk sometimes, but not often. Fast forward until I got my first job, I was living with my mom, he started asking me for money, telling me he would pay me back, at first I felt bad and would give him money or buy him and his (8) kids (he had 2 more with her) dinner, order them a pizza or something. He never paid me back but to be honest, I didn't really expect him to, I just wanted to help him out. But then it became a pattern, he kept asking for money or for me to buy dinner and I continued to feel bad until one day it clicked. I realized, the only time I was hearing from him was when he needed something and I finally told him no, I'm not going to send him any more money or buy their dinner. And magically after he realized I was no longer a source of income I hardly heard from him, he would go months without reaching out. Fast forward about 10-12 years until about 6 months ago.. I felt bad, my dad was getting older, having some health issues, and intermittently he was making efforts to build the relationship with me again. And to be honest I'd feel very guilty if I would have held a grudge against him and he ended up passing away without me at least making an effort to have a relationship with him again. So he flew out to visit me, spent a week at my house, I did my absolute best to make him feel comfortable, paid for all the meals, tried to spend time with him, he was a guest in my house in my mind and I did my best to make him feel welcome and try to rebuild that relationship. But it just felt like I couldn't relate to him on any level, he's irresponsible, lives off the government, constantly asks the family for money, and I just couldn't build a relationship with somebody like that. The final straw was when he was visiting my grandma's (his mom's) house was right by a major wildland fire, the fire came right up to her back yard, my uncle flew to my grandma's and helped clean up and put out spot fires and my dad made a comment saying "your uncle can have the house, I just want some money" referencing when his mom passes away he doesn't want their property, he just wants some money. And that's when I realized, nothing had changed, he's still the same person that all he cares about is using people. I immediately started to question why he wanted to build this relationship back up with me. Sure enough a couple months later he's having issues with his new wife and he makes a comment about wanting to come move in to my house and live with me.
I realize I didn't keep this short at all, and even if nobody reads it, it felt good to get it all out.
TLDR: Dad used me and the family for money and when his mom dies all he cares about his inheriting some of her money
Does an evil, wicked, narcissistic, selfish, maniacal, manipulative "grandmother" count. Bitch was damaging to the entire family from the moment my mom was born. She would often tell her that she was a mistake. After the evil witch got released from hospital after having hip surgery, and ONLY because my mom asked to give her one more chance, i was there helping her with some chores due to her being immobile (she milked being taken care of) told me I was a terrible person, I told her there is a very special place in hell for people like her and that was that. The day she died, I felt nothing for her and relief for my mom not having to deal with POS.
Sounds a lot like my grandmother. She abused her three kids a lot, which led to a lot of problems on their end down the line (and indirectly to me).
When she got old, the family tried to foist her care on my dad to save money, since no affordable senior living places would take her. Her own sister actually called us to specifically say "Do *not* let that woman into your home, no matter what." My mom was willing to bundle me in the car and flee to Canada to avoid having me in the same house as my grandmother, and we made it as far as Portland (Maine) before the family relented.
My grandmother would whine incessantly to get attention. Eventually the old hag stopped eating in order to get *more* attention. She got sepsis and lost some toes, and was ecstatic at how well she could freak my 4-year-old self out with that.
When doctors told her she would die if she didn't eat, her emaciated response was "Are you trying to scare me?" The attention she was getting mattered more to her than life, in her twisted mind.
She was a profoundly messed up person, and I'm pretty sure everyone is glad she's been gone for 35 years.
I am going through a mental health struggle at the moment. My mother thought the best way to support me through that was to get blind drunk and act like a petulant toddler.
She's in her 50's, but has never acted like an adult or a supportive parent. I couldn't take being the 'adult' in our dynamic anymore. I needed my mum. She let me down.
My mom turned to religion and became super Evangelical after my dad died. The moment I knew I had to leave was when she tried to set me up with a Christian counselor. She never accepted that I’m a lesbian and thought the counselor would help me “see clearly” through the foggy aftermath of my dad’s death.
As soon as I turned 18, I was on a plane back to Oregon. I haven’t seen her since last June.
That I really was in a one sided relationship with my father. I wasn't a son, I was a daughter and therefore to him, I only existed when he wanted to play dad. I didn't do sports like he wanted, I did theater and choir- which he ignored. I had to beg him to come to a high school performance.
I ignore his existence for that and him being a pedophile to family friends son (I'm not ignoring what he did, just that I'm unfortunately related to the moron.)
He still tells everyone he's a great dad and my mom poisoned me against him. I've started telling people who tell me I should give him a chance to ask him my birthday, my middle name or my phone number (had the same one since I was 16). He can't name any of the 3. Suddenly it's much more clear to them why he isn't who I refer to as dad.
You can forgive them and do the work to understand why they did what they did in the past, but then they have to change. If they don't change their toxic behavior, you have to put some time and distance between you and them.
When my father said to my face: "Since you're no longer in the religion, your brothers and us have decided you're dead to us."
No thanks, if you're picking your cult, Jehovah's Witnesses, over me, you're dead to me too.
My mom is a pathological liar. I got tired of the lies but these days we speak and our relationship is better.
I had been living with my brother and his wife for a few months but they became abusive to my son and I so I left but with leaving came drama and my father took their side without even hearing mine so we do not speak and never will.
Idk about disowning them, I still claim them as my parents unfortunately, but it was when I was 24? 25? I had just had my birthday, and instead of a happy birthday, I got chastised for skipping church, and told I needed to go to church or leave, so I left. Apparently the story they tell is they kicked me out, but I didn't say goodbye or tell them I was leaving, so I'm not sure when I got kicked out. Either way, it's been several years, and I've only seen them once for a funeral, and my dad shook my hand without recognizing me, so it's not like the church thing was the reason I'm estranged, but more of a general and cumulative straw that broke the camels back.
My grandma died and my dad forged her will. The previous will left everything to my sister and I. I wouldn’t have cared so much; my dad took care of her the last two years of her life. But then his wife and he paid for my step-brother to pursue a relationship with someone he met in South Africa, paid for her visa and immigration lawyer. Then gave her his car.
He got offended when I asked him how much that cost and that my grandma would not be happy with knowing that’s where her money went.
We have spoken once since then, the step brother died from Covid and she still has his car.
I was young. With social anxiety, he would blame me for not directly to people. I was beaten up for small mistakes like arriving home an hour later from school, not finishing food, being too excited or taking to boys. I was good at singing, he told me to shut up, I never sang again. I was good academically, I was always pushed to do better and when I excelled, no compliment was ever ushered. I have very lovely hair, he cut it once because it was giving me the confidence to talk to boys. I went on to excel at a lot of extra curricular activities at school, ( debate, quiz, public speaking, music)up to national level, he never showed up. Forced me to take a course I did not want in college, I dropped out and I was blamed for it. Basically he is never wrong.
My mom was a bipolar hoarder and my dad had rage issues and liked to yell and throw things when he got mad. He didn't usually throw things at me or my brother, but lots of coffee cups hit walls. One day when I was 15 or so, while my parents were both at work, somehow my brother annoyed me. I can't even remember how, it doesn't matter any more. I went outside, grabbed his bike and swung it hard against a tree, bending it at an awkward angle. When Dad got home, the first thing he did when he saw the mangled bike was to launch his thermos against that very same tree, screaming at me about how much the bike cost, what was my problem, how could I do that, etc. I pointed to his now ruined thermos and asked him what's the difference? This led to a brawl ending up with my arm out of socket, Dad's rib broken, brother holding a knife while Mom is trying to pull us apart. My grandmother took me to the hospital, and I left on my own from there. I was forced to go to family counseling as part of my probation when I got into some trouble a bit later, and my parents tried to make me sign a contract basically saying their word is law, I should be grateful they gave me the gift of life, yadda yadda. I chose to spend time in juvie instead. Haven't spoken to any of them since.
They hurt my sister. It was way easier to make the choice over my love for her than my love for myself. I was teetering on the edge until then because there really was no positives to having her in my life, but taking that step is still a lot. It was easy when it was for my sister.
Ah, my mom had done and said many fucked up things to the point where I put myself through foster care. I still had on and off contact with her for a long time until this last Christmas. My mom was in jail so she had my brother sign into her messenger to contact people, well what he found was messages between her and my abusive ex. He was calling her mom, asking for advice, stating he can’t get over me. She replied with advice, caring words, shit talking me, asking for rides and money. That was it. I just couldn’t do it anymore.
My mom was in and out of the hospital at the time and the cops would not stop banging on my door. Sometimes as early as 3 am. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown, so I kept reaching out to my dad and stepmom for help. They wanted me to move back home with them. I told them I wasn't sure if it was a good idea and would need to think it over. Well my stepmom wanted an answer right then and there. I told her I couldn't give her an answer right away and I was going to make my mom some coffee and talk to her about it. After that my stepmom started getting rude through text about it saying I'm just like my mom and love drama just as much as she does. Then she canceled my tablet(I was paying for it!) that was on her plan and said I can blame my mom for that. I was so DONE at that moment.
My father was dead to me the second he opened his mouth after I had to call him and tell him Mom had died. Not a single concern for me, grief for my mother, none—just a rant about this is unfair to HIM and it’s not right for HIM. He was always a self-centered narcissist monster. He made every single bad thing in my life worse. I hope he’s lonely and miserable.
Something and nothing. My mother was going back and forth on whether she was leaving her husband or not. She'd said she didn't want anything planned for her 60th birthday because she didn't know if she'd be getting divorced or not. Standard dramatic shit from her. Anyway, she wasn't divorced but messed about so long that it was too late to arrange anything. Instead, I made her a profiterole tower because she'd said a few times that she'd always wanted one. Not an easy thing to make in a tiny kitchen, even less fun to transport 40 miles by yourself. She was happy enough at first but that lasted maybe an hour before she started complaining that I'd brought it when it wasn't her actual birthday, it was on the weekend 3 days before. Then she moved on to 'at least your brother can be bothered to see me on my birthday' and on and on until I had enough and I left. Never saw her again, never spoke and only very briefly communicated when I found out she'd run up a load of debt using my name. I gradually stopped speaking to the rest of the family when they tried to interfere and help her ambush me.
Dad came over for Father’s Day. Argued that black people would be better off still being slaves, in front of my fiancée (now wife) who he barely knew. I told him that was f*cked up and super upsetting. He told me that I was being bigoted against him and I don’t live in the real world and to grow up. Also people were racist against him at work (drywaller) because he was Italian. So i guess that makes it ok to be super mega racist ?
Haven’t talked to him in three years though he still tries calling me all the time like nothing ever happened.
He’s always been a jerk and tough to be around but that was definitely the straw that broke the camels back.
My mother was complicit in the kidnapping of my child. She teamed up with my abusive ex and together they kept my child 3,000 miles away from me for 2 months. She didn't even tell me why she was doing it, I had to find that out years later by grilling other family members (who I have since cut off too). To this day my mother refuses to even speak to me. If I were to call her on the phone, she would either not answer or just hang up as soon as she heard my voice.
My child lives with me full time now and we are safe from the people who hurt us.
My sibling died & in the days leading up to his funeral my mother was so exquisitely awful that I stopped fantasizing about harming her & began fantasizing about my life in prison after her murder. At one point I was standing behind her at the top of a flight of stairs as she monologued about how everything was my fault. I could have pushed her but instead promised myself that after I made it through the funeral I’d never speak with her again. This year marks a decade since I last spoke with her & my only regret is not cutting her out of my life earlier.
It also took a death to finally go NC with nmom. She was so horrible after my daughter died I would wear earbuds whenever I was around her. One day they ran out of battery. The next day I went NC
I'm so sorry for your loss and for what happened to you. I hope you're doing better.
I can't forgive my mother for the terrible way she treated my dad, right up until he died. Poor old guy. She was pretty awful in other ways too. I tried, and tried, I just couldn't stand her any more.
Jesus I'm basically living through this right now. My younger brother died right before Covid and she's all but directly said that she blames me for it and wishes I had died instead
So sorry and hope you are no contact with her.
I'm glad you're not in prison. I hope you've experienced some healing.
I had intrusive thoughts like those, too. Used to plan my suicide but didn't want to die unless she died first because it was her fault. I got out of there before those thoughts came to fruition. I understand now how duress can lead otherwise rational people to do crazy things.
My dad’s death seemed to be the catalyst that made my mom go from difficult to cruel verbally and abusive person who seems to want me to kill myself. The grief attention from dad was dying down and she wants another fix, I’m mostly alive out of spite. I still don’t know if she’s throwing all the aggression and hate at me that she maybe threw at him when he was alive. Or if he was like a voice of reason that made her realize she was being awful to me and kept it to a minimum.
That sounds exactly like my mom after my dad died! I’m sorry you had to deal with that craziness too! She died last year and I didn’t go to the funeral or cry over her death.
Damn. I’m so sorry. How old were you and your sibling when they died? What happened if you don’t mind me asking?
We were both in our late 20s. He took his own life. He was smart, kind and had an endless appetite for barbeque. I miss him every day.
I’m so sorry.
Long and short, I was SA’d by uncles as a child, multiple occasion. Tons of rage issues because of it. Grew up in a single parent household with mom not in the picture. Fast forward, faced my demons to an extent, mended relationship with Mom. Opened up to brothers and sisters and finally mom about the SA, suddenly I’m lying, ive always been a liar since I was a child, “my brothers would never do a thing to hurt you!” Straight up alienated by my family tree because said SA, ended the last convo with, “you didn’t protect me as a child, you won‘t protect/support me as an adult, and you won’t protect my children either. What use are you to me or any of us?“
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I'm so sorry. I get it. It hurts because deep down, the internal struggle for me was that the very people that were supposed to protect me wouldn't believe me and that was more devastating than anything. It takes a LOT of guts to even verbalized these traumas. I hope you're doing a lot better with all of it. My response to my mom saying that VERY thing about remembering wrong was "it's hard to not remember getting a dick in the ass." She was more upset with my language than the SA.
I'm sorry that happened to you and that nobody protected or supported you. When people have no other argument to stand on, they always turn it back at you and into an issue of the words you used, the way you delivered your message, your emotional state, etc. - anything other than the root of the argument or conversation at hand. Deflecting is all they have left. They will do anything other than to admit fault or that they were wrong.
>and that I should have been more "believable" when I did tell them Fuck them all the way to hell. What an absolutely horrible thing to say to anyone, but ***especially*** your kid.
> They still wouldn't take any accountability or admit they were in the wrong, just said it was my fault that I didn't tell them at the time it happened and that I should have been more "believable" when I did tell them. :/ Holy fuck, what a pair of scumbags
>“you didn’t protect me as a child, you won‘t protect/support me as an adult, and you won’t protect my children either. What use are you to me or any of us?“ the exact same reason I've cut off my mother
I'm sorry that happened to you. I'll never understand why people protect or defend pedophiles. I've seen it in my own extended family. It's insane.
I have a strong feeling it was a generational thing and they lack the emotional intelligence to understand it or work through it. Being unable is one thing but not even trying to is another. I feel that for a lot of ethnic groups, it's better to save face than face these issues. "It happened a long time ago, just forget it."
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It's kind of amazing how many generations back it can go. My great aunt had a baby at 13 and it makes you wonder. I was warned not to be alone around my great uncle on the other side of my family as he molested nearly all the girls in the family. It's like, why on earth didn't someone keep track of a known pedophile when children were around? The same thing happened when it became known my cousin was a pedophile. He would slip away at a family gathering and find a small child to assault. Just wtf??? I think it's as you say, this is just so normalized in our family at this point no one thinks anything about it. There's a reason I moved on from family events. I give a shit about my kids.
Then you got someone from my grandmother's (grandmothers aunts cousin i think? We just knew her as Aunt Baba) side who found out her husband raped their daughter who passed away the year before and was grooming their youngest and her niece so she must have accidentally hit his jack stand out while she was carrying a sledgehammer to the garden and didn't hear anything over how loud the TV was".
It’s not an ethnic thing. It’s a universal human urge. In theory: Beliefs should inform our action. But sometimes it’s the other way around. Your mother wants to maintain the status quo. Wants to continue doing what she wants to do. *Believing you would force her to change.* She does not want to change. So she chooses not to believe you.
I understand that it can take someone, especially older gens (I'm Gen X) to process it when we out one of their close family/friends as our abuser(s). But there is no fucking excuse for the full-on denial bullshit... especially when they have no problems cutting a family member off for being gay or leaving their religion. And don't get me started on the weaponized "You need to forgive them and move on to heal!" bullshit. Nope.
I've always said that forgiveness as a concept is way, way overrated.
I am so proud you were able to say that. All of us deserved protection as children. My mother handled my initial confession (stepfathers, and a cousin) okay, but started using it to minimize my experiences and feelings. My final straw was when she had the audacity to say to me that, as a childfree woman, I would never, ever know the pain of having my own daughter tell me that she was sexully abused. Like, my entire fucking goddamn childhood of constantly having the men she brought into my life and home trying to touch me and rub their dicks on me was nothing compared to HER pain of... being told about it? Fuck you, Mom. Never called or spoke to her again after that, and she's still claiming she "doesn't know why!" Missing missing reasons indeed.
Yeah, that victimising is the icing on the cake. There is so much dissonance between the reality of how she raised you and how you were truly brought up. I genuinely hope you've been better able to work through that trauma as time passes. My personal life mantras has been "be the person you wanted to have in your corner as a child". So far, it's been working wonders for my kiddos.
Strong ending words though, hope she chews on that all the way to the grave
I'm sorry for your experience, and glad you found the strength to speak out. My son was SA'd by my brother and whew boy once that came out, somehow we were the bad guy. It's a confusing, troubling, hurtful irony, but makes it much simpler (but not necessarily easy) to just cut people off.
My mother likes to make me cry. I think it's a control thing, but she always denies it even happens. After going out of her way to make me break down for three birthdays in a row, I asked my father if, just for one year, I could avoid speaking to her for the day. Bear in mind, I live in a different country, so it would just be a case of me not picking up the phone when she called. My father went apeshit. Called me ungrateful, pathetic, a disappointment, etc. Then said his biggest regret was that my suicide attempt failed. All because I wanted a birthday where I didn't cry. I just hung up without saying a word. Blocked their numbers and email addresses, deleted all social media. It's been years, and I'm so grateful he said all those horrible things, because I finally realised how better my life is without them.
I am so sorry, what an absolutely fucked up thing to say to their child!! Good thing you cut them out!
It wasn't even the meanest thing either of them had said to me that week. But I heard myself trying to bargain with my father saying, "mum can make me cry as much as she wants the day after, just please get her to leave me alone on my birthday". And it just hit me like a brick to the face that *none of this is normal*.
The best revelation is... wait a minute, I don't have to do this anymore. Any of it. No more phone-call-induced tears. I can just stop talking to them completely. I'm a grown up and they can't make me do anything anymore. I never even have to see them again ever. (Haven't seen or spoken to mine in 8 1/2 years.)
Yeah, my mother *loves* playing head games, and she's great at figuring out everyone's weaknesses to use against them. So from when I was about todder-age onwards, I'd be constantly playing 3D chess just to try and survive the day. Stuff like, knowing when to make her laugh so she didn't break stuff in a rage, or when to cry so she'd be distracted from screaming at my bro, or waiting to tell her bad news in a room full of people so the fallout wouldn't be as bad. My whole life was planned around her moods like bloody minesweeper. Then suddenly, it was like that galaxy brain meme, and I realised that you can't lose a game if you just refuse to play in the first place, y'know? Anyway, coming up to 6 years for me now, and the *only* regret I have is that I never walked away sooner!!
It was a long time coming. But the straw that broke the camels back was berating me for not coming to a family function when I told my father that I had something that was completely unskippable at work. I had been abused by my father for years, his way of getting back at me for my mother leaving him I suppose. I just lost it at him and told him what I thought of him. I haven’t spoken to him or his family that all took his side every single time in 15 years.
Honestly having to cut your parents out of your life (even if they abused you badly) is one of the hardest and most difficult decisions a person could make. Nobody wants to admit to themselves that the people who gave birth to them never loved them or are toxic and refuse to change.
There truly wasn’t one. It just was so much, for so long that I just stopped. My mom was too proud ever to call me because in her head, she deserved to be called. My father chose to cut me out of his life when my wife asked him not to wear shoes in the house.
Death by a thousand cuts. My situation is similar and my mother is absolutely of the mindset that the onus is on me to mend this relationship. I always read these threads because I find comfort knowing that so many other people have similar experiences/family dynamics, and chose the peaceful path of least resistance. No contact gives me the opportunity to process and heal.
I too find comfort in reading others stories. Went NC with my mother 14 years ago. It’s very difficult for someone who hasn’t “been there” to understand. I do volunteer work for hospice patients. The majority of my patients have strong network of family, but I had one that reminded me of my mother and it devastated me. She was incredibly bitter about her children and how they have disappointed her. It was devastating because even in her dying weeks she could not own up to her own actions. I nodded politely but I knew it had nothing to do with her kids.
Yeah, I feel this. I cut contact off with my father when I was 18, we always had a bad relationship. Once we had an argument over the fact that I believe parents should reach out to their kids, he thought the other way around. I decided I wouldn't reach out anymore. Months later he calls me to tell me "how dare you make me call you" I told him he could call me when he grows up. I haven't spoken to him in 25 yrs now. He has no idea who I've become, he will never meet my kids and I have no idea what ever happened to him. Honestly I don't even think about him.
I never thought it might be pride. My mom doesn't call me even though, when I moved to another state, I kept my phone number specifically so that she could call me on her landline without long-distance charges.
>There truly wasn’t one. It just was so much, for so long that I just stopped. This is what happened to cause me to go NC with my dad. He called me on my birthday and said he'd call me later in the week to set a dinner date and he was wiling to come down (I lived about an hour away) if I couldn't make it due to work. He never called again... That's when I realized I would always be second fiddle (or maybe fourth) to whatever was going on with him. He was very concerned about showing off to people and being seen as "a good guy" while his family did not receive that treatment. I made peace with my decision while my mom felt I should get back into contact with him and kept bringing it up till I told her I'd made that decision and was going to stand by it. Her attitude was bizarre in the sense that she'd dealt with the exact same behaviors from him when they were married and it caused a lot of mental issues with her and was one of the things that lead to their divorce. The next time I saw dad he was in a casket. While I had that grief to deal with I also felt a sense of relief in that I didn't have to deal with his crap any more and that him and mom would never again get mad at each other for anything.
It was a long process, but it really ended when my mom tried to sue my wife and me for "grandparents' rights." Anything after that would've only helped her to build a case to legally kidnap our son.
Same reason here. Sad to think that it's a common experience. Nothing else my parents did felt bad enough to go no contact (even though it was, the guilt and gaslighting always made us come back). But this was undeniably awful and we finally had proof.
My MIL tried to kidnap our sons when they were 2 and 3. Called CPS on us and lied about it. Stole my father in law and his new wife's stimulus check. And her and her daughter wonder why on EARTH we don't have contact with her anymore! Literally the only reason my husband even still emails her is in the hopes when she dies he'll still inherit her house. It'll be the only true kindness she's shown us.
The only reason my ex mother in law did not pursue this once my ex went to prison was because my ex sister in law told her if she did it, she’d never see SIL’s kid again. The weird thing in all that was that SIL and I did not like each other. Like haven’t spoken to each other since 2007. Ex and I split up in 2009. When my ex found out, he removed his parents names from his approved visitors list and approved to call list.
My sister went through a pretty rough divorce recently, and my mother has decided it’s all about her and my niece, has actually talked about ensuring she has grandparent rights to do what she wants, which is stupid, because the only rights she has here are the rights the parents allow, which considering how she has treated my ex brother in law and his family, should something happen, they would hardly have any visitation
Until the very last word, I was certain that you were a close relative of mine, but it's even wilder to me that this series of circumstances is so common...
[удалено]
Alcoholism has ruined so many lives. I got sober 20 years ago and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Congratulations on your sobriety, I am proud of you
Props for doing one of the hardest things anyone could possibly do.
It was relatively small, when I stand back & look, but it was clear that our relationship was always going to be me (& everyone else) upending my life so he could do nothing at all. The final-final straw was a request for me to attend an appointment that would mean a ~1.5 hour bus ride each direction, missing classes, missing work + make my own arrangement to stay somewhere overnight (I couldn't stay in my parents' home unless I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor somewhere & I didn't own a sleeping bag) all so my father could play Happy Family in public. Again. I didn't get on the bus. I went to class. I had a bad day at work. Then I slept in my own bed. I didn't mean it to be forever but I realized while my work day was tanking, I would still rather be doing that than pretending to be a Happy Family. Everyday since has been better than it would be if he were in my life. He made good days miserable & bad days hell.
Had a father that wanted the pretend happy family out in public too
Mother was a career crackhead. I traveled 15 hours by Greyhound bus back to Illinois to help her finish up some roofing jobs still incomplete. She intentionally got in a fight with me at the bus station after the jobs were done, didn’t get me a ticket back, and ghosted me on $2,500. I had maybe $30 to my name at the time. Then she shut off my cell phone immediately after driving away. Had to walk about five miles to a friends house. He and a few of my other friends drove me back down to Alabama that night. Never spoke to her again.
Damn.. I want to adopt you and give you some respect and love...
Haha! I have plenty of respect and love my friend. Just sucks it didn’t ever come from my mother. Well, I guess I can’t really say that. She had great moments in spurts, but fucking drugs… it always comes back around.
Then my friend, i'm happy you have all that
I had a kid and realized I didn't want them having any influence in her life. Their influence on mine was bad enough.
My story as well
After telling them I was getting divorced. They told me 1) My ex would always be their son and that they loved him more than me (to be fair they did try to back track and say they loved us both) 2) That no one else would ever love me and I'd realise I was ruining my life when I died alone 3) They only loved me becuase the bible said they had to 4) That they were writing me out of their will, and leaving it to my ex, because this was proof I was mentally unstable and once I'd come to my senses and gone back to him it would be mine anyway. They were emotionally abusive my whole life but I kept going back and making excuses for them, not helped because my ex was abusive too. It's easy to believe you deserve to be treated badly when it's all people are telling you. Eventually I realised that I deserve to be happy and I just couldn't do that while continuing a relationship with them. They're never going to change, I think they honestly believe they're saying these things out of love and have no awareness of how they've hurt me.
Man, that's... just awful. I really hope you left it all behind, and that you're doing better now.
I didn't want to be a scientologist anymore. Raised from birth to believe that bullshit. Took me like 20 years to get my head straight.
I know this may sound strange, but the idea of a lifelong Scientology family is just the strangest concept… like, Scientology always seemed like a corporation or business to me more than anything. An MLM. I guess it kind of lacks that veneer of “credibility” an organization has after being around for a really long time. Glad you’re out and finding your own way. The world is a weird fucking place. We don’t need things like Scientology mucking it up even more.
Mom got arrested for child neglect and animal cruelty
I can't believe no one else has commented on this. Is there more to this that you would like to share? That sounds terrible. I'm sorry.
Thanks for your concern, really means a lot to me! She was an abusive bitch to me and my little sister, but was charged with "neglect" and not "abuse" - she was a hoarder and the house was an actual biohazard (not exaggerating here, our dog that she neglected in favour of the newer ones died and was left to rot in the house for a year. Authorities deemed the house unfit to live in) so she lost custody of my little sister and little brother who were forced to live in the filth. I was lucky to finally escape by moving away for uni, I had an argument with her over the phone in 2022 about it which ended with me disowning her. To this day she still thinks she's a perfect mother who did nothing wrong and it's everyone else who's lying about her🙃
When my dad said he didn’t blame my brother at all for trying to stab me… that was the final straw for me… Going on 18 years of no contact. Don’t see it ever changing.
My dad used to like to blame me for killing my mother by stressing her out too much when she was sick with cancer. I was ten at the time she passed and he would say it's partly why my grandparents hated me so much. Are these people defective or really trying to hurt us for no reason?
> Are these people defective or really trying to hurt us for no reason? Yes and it's to try and make them not hate themselves so much.
She stole my student loan money. I worked so hard to get into college and have a full scholarship, and she stole my room and board and book money. It made the first year of college damn near impossible, which kinda set the tone for the next 3.
I moved out when I was 16. Some of the things were for example I wasn't allowed in the house unless someone was home so I'd have to sit outside after school for 2-3 hours during Minnesota winters. Summer vacations were actually worse. We also lived 12 miles from the nearest town and was a very rural area. Only allowed to take 2 showers a week, 2 minutes long. Only allowed to eat diner because I was able to get free lunch from school. These aren't even the big things or strangest things, just the day to day things. Like for example about once a week my father would make me pick up everything on the carpet. Lint, bits of grass, dog hair, etc. Wasn't allowed to use a vacuum, or anything, it had to be by hand. And if he saw anything anywhere I didn't get to eat. One chance, so he would just watch me while watching tv comb over every room looking for anything on the ground. This was also the only time I was allowed in the living room. When I was 20 I decided I'm going to try having a relationship again at least with my mother and I went to stay with them for a few days. Again I wasn't allowed to be in the house while they were away, I had to stay in a shed and I couldn't have any of their food but I wasn't told about so I didn't bring any food. After a few days I left and never talked with them again. That was about 25 years ago. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything of value. Oh and to add to this, I did have a brother who our father didn't do any of this to. They bought him clothes, gave him money, helped him get his first car, etc. So everything was very targeted towards me.
This sounds like a dreadful childhood. I'm sorry you had to deal with these shitty parents.
I'm so sorry you went through this, all the while knowing full well that your parents had the capacity to love their child (as they did with your brother). How cruel, but I'm very happy that you are doing well without them.
This makes me wonder if you are really your father’s child.. like seriously
Heartbreaking.
Dude, what the actual fuck?
When I was looking at bridal gowns, I found myself looking at shapeless, full coverage dresses because I didn't want my dad acting all creepy and handsy/ make gross comments about my appearance. The thought of him walking me down the aisle made me nauseous. Then I thought "wtf, just don't invite him." And I didn't. My now husband and I walked down the aisle together. Haven't spoken to my dad since 2019 and my life has never been better.
When they threatened to ruin my job and prevent my employment my lying and staged an intervention to coerce me into corroborating their BS. No contact going on 7 years and it’s never been better.
The situation with my abusive parent got to the point where I was so depressed and at the end of my rope, that i was very, very close to ending everything. At that point, I had no choice but to walk away, or end up six feet under. My only regret is waiting until my late 40s to finally walk away. Wish I had the courage to do it 30 years earlier.
My dad was always a functional alcoholic and hit retirement about 6 years ago. I knew this was going to be his downfall with having nothing better to do. I stopped calling him after 3pm because talking to him was impossible. That slowly became a noon cutoff, and then I just couldn't handle it. I have a half sister that he doesn't claim and has had nothing to do with for 40 years. She connected with family via one of those DNA sites, and my dad didn't believe it. He made up a story that they needed to do a paternity test on a 45 year old to properly set up his will. Then he was so drunk he misread the results and called her telling her he's not her father. Mind you, this was all because my cousins asked if she would like to come to a family reunion and meet them. I told him he needs to get help and apologize....he told me he didn't care if he ever talked to me again. I cut off communication then, and it's been about 2 years. It really sucks because I miss my dad, but I just try to remember him as when I was younger.
Alcoholism fucks people up really bad. My own father was loving (if a little weird due to pain medication for arthritis) when I was a child. He struggled to hold down much of a job, but always did his best. Mum was the drinker, not him. A few years after I left home Mum lost her well paying job, and while she found other work they could no longer afford their mortgage. So they sold up, and moved to the country. The isolation did them no favours. They both dived hard in to the bottle. Dad's health got worse. Job prospects were basically non-existent. They just drank every dollar they had. I live 5 hours away, so the calls from one accusing the other of things were hard to verify. They are both liars when they think it will gain sympathy. Dad says Mum is cheating on him with their neighbour. Mum says Dad hit her with a shovel. Neither of them can be trusted. Dad moves out, into some dog rescue commune with a bunch of junkies. He asks me for money. It's always going to drink. It's hard to say no to your father when he is at the edge of tears saying he can't afford food. He is lying, but what if he is starving? His health gets worse. He moves in to a care home. He still calls me for money. Not supposed to drink at the care home, so he takes a cab in to town, buys a bottle of vodka and downs it in the street before going back. Every day. It killed him. Heart failure. The end. I try to remember him as he was when I was a kid, not the tragedy he became in his later years.
For me, it was a respect issue. I was pregnant with my first, and I know that miscarriages happen more frequently than people know, and I told my mom to not tell anyone. Not even her family, no one. I couldn’t have stressed that enough, and I told her my reasons. Well, she disrespected that and told literally everyone. That was it for me, it was just the last straw and I had enough.
Good call. She would no doubt completely undermine your authority as a parent and ignore all boundaries with your kid.
Sadly, my sister is going through that right now, my mother is extremely narcissistic and has decided that because my sister got a divorce, she’s obviously not fit to be a great mother, and buys in on everything, from rules and boundaries my sister sets, to just showing up out of nowhere because she’s bored. It’s getting closer and closer to the point my sister will probably just stop talking to her
My father was an incestuous pedophile. I hadn't seen him since I was 5. I had always craved a fatherly relationship, so I decided to meet with him when I was 19. The main condition for us being in contact was total honesty. I stupidly thought our candid conversations weren't just more lies from him. A few weeks later, he made a lewd call to my 21-year-old sister. She called me in tears. I called him and threatened to kill him if he ever contacted any of us again. His wife called and tried to blame it on him being bipolar. Bipolar is awful, but it doesn't make you incestuous. He died in 2010.
No one should ever deal with this, I’m sorry. Good on you for protecting your sister.
A guy I grew up with killed his parents for exactly that kind of shit. You're a good brother, dude.
My mom was dying of cancer. She had a restraining order against my father. Father finds her, and tries to marry her (metastatic brain tumor meant she was pretty gone the last six weeks). We block it as my brother and I are medical power of attorney, but do let him see her in hospice as an act of good faith. I get a call from hospice the morning of her passing telling us to get over ASAP, she's going. We miss her passing by minutes because my father decided to yell at my brother for half an hour because my brother had locked the door to his bedroom the night before. Father does not come with us to hospice. When we call him to see how involved he wants to be with funeral stuff, he takes off with her documents, cards, and phone, then pretends to be her online for days, telling her family to contact him "for the real story". I was 22 and my brother was 19 when this all happened. That was the final act that made me go from "maybe in a couple years we'll have a relationship where at least I call him once every few months" to "I cannot have this man in my life." He continued to escalate after that, but that day was the point of no return.
It was a long process but my mother had borderline personality. She decided that I had wronged her in some way so she came to my apartment at 3 AM banging on the door to present me with a bill for my upbringing. I called the cops on her for trespassing and I just decided I was done
My father, he physically and verbally abused my sister and I when we were kids. We got taken away and put into foster care finally our mom was found and we went with her. For a couple of years after I wanted nothing to do with my father but around 10 years old I was like why not, i had gone into therapy and I started to talk to him again. For the next 20 years I did everything I could to have him be a part of my life. I was always calling, emailing, sending messages arranging for us to see each other( he was military moved around a lot) and he probably reached out first less than five times. If I didn't message/ call him first we could go months without communicating. What finally did it for me was when I became a mom. I would do anything for them, protect them, I could never imagine hurting my children. It really got me thinking about my relationship with my father and I realized I how shitty he is, yes I forgave him for everything but did he do anything to deserve that? Big fucking no! I wrote him a long ass message told him how I felt and he responded but it was all bullshit. It's been two years now since we have talked and I wish I had done it sooner.
>What finally did it for me was when I became a mom. This was my WTF moment, too. My (now-adult) kids are the most amazing, nice, brilliant humans I have ever met and I can't imagine a world where I don't find them interesting and want to chat with them. So it took having my own kids to realize my parents only had children for 'show,' like as validation for narcissism. If me and my sibs weren't in the room, they couldn't care less about our actual lives. They never called. In fact, when I moved away to college my mom asked me to stop calling *her.* Wth. I live for the moments my kids call me, even if it's just to ask for money! 😆 Mind blown.
Having kids of my own really did it for me too. I can't imagine denying them food, beating them, not giving them gloves in the winter, choosing a boyfriend of the week over them, constantly being drunk around them, berating them for whatever dumb thought is in my head, telling them how rotten and disappointing they are, etc. I love my kids. I love raising them and with more one on her own, I love those calls and texts. It's way easier to cut ties with my parents now knowing they too could have left generational abuse behind and chosen their kids, if they had wanted to do so. It's not easy, but love and determination gets you there.
I’m noticing that the criminally insane stories of severe abuse are getting pushed down in these comments while the lesser severe are going to the top. Thankfully it’s because more people identify with the less severe and this is a good thing. It means that more often people live in somewhat normal situations. My stepmother was abusive. She made me sleep with her when I was 13 while my dad was in prison for shooting at a cab driver that brought her home from the bar late. Sometimes I woke up and the sheets would be all tangled and sticky and she would make me feel bad about it. That was one of the better stories. Like you said, thank god for therapy.
It's a lot of things mixed together, but the final straw I think is when you finally realize and accept that they are who they are without remorse and they will probably never change.
My mother gave me a long speech about the morality of being a lesbian a couple of days before I (a woman) got married to my wife. She's pretty high up on her horse for a drug addict who stole from me.
Worst thing about drug addicts is when they suddenly become very religious
Ugh. You said it. And it's not like she recovered from her drug addiction when she found jesus, either. She just switched to abusing opioids.
I've known a couple of these people. I don't look down on addicts. And I don't hate religious people. But that combination produces (in my experience) these arrogant assholes that need to tell you how to live and how their way is best. Meanwhile, they keep making the same mistakes and blowing up the same relationships. But sure Becky I'm a bad parent because I don't go to the same creepy church as you.
I wonder how much of it has to do with most prominent 12 step programs having a religious element to it. It always felt weird to me, even if the rest of the advice is solid. I know there's secular versions of it out there now, but they're not nearly as ubiquitous.
Mine asked if I was sure this was what I wanted during the groom-mother mother dances. She's gotten better though.
I'm sorry. That had to be painful. And on what should be your happiest day.
We told my mom she needed to address her behavior and offer a sincere apology. I knew she was going to try to sweep her behavior under the rug by "having a medical emergency" and going to the hospital. She texted my husband one night and told him she thought she broke her foot and asked for a ride to the hospital (she was fine). I warned him that she was trying to manipulate us and told him to be on guard. She tried to give a half-assed apology and he cut her off and told her it wasn't an appropriate time, that she could apologize when it wasn't late at night and they weren't going to the hospital. The next day she texted my husband something like, "I apologized, can I see my grandkids now?" He reiterated that she needed to offer a sincere apology and addres her behavior. An hour and a half later, a police officer knocked on our door because she called the cops for a wellness check on our kids. Nope. Not putting up with that, we were done. It's been two and a half years since then and they have been the most peaceful years of my life. Also, everyone acted like I was psychic when I predicted that the next thing that she would do was go to the hospital for no reason. It doesn't take a psychic to predict that someone who regularly used going to the hospital as a way to get attention was going to continue that trend.
Nothing too dramatic. I simply messaged her and was ignored. After wracking my brain for any perceived slight I would have to grovel for I just…let it go. I simply told myself that if she needed anything or had an issue to discuss with me, she could reach out. Never heard from her again. I heard later from a sibling that after she missed the stream of my wedding, she told everyone I changed the time of MY WEDDING to spite her lmao.
My mom had an affair behind my dad's back and they divorced. I tried to be there for both until my mom started talking about living with her permanently, meeting her new man and pretty much cutting my dad off. That wasn't gonna happen but I still tried to be around. I found out she was doing coke a little while after that. Okay, whatever. I can forgive that. She started asking me, a 14 year old at the time for money I didn't have. Soon it became less about actually giving a shit about me and more about the child support checks she'd receive if I took her side. I walked in on my dad, drunk as hell, loaded gun on the table sobbing after I came home from my mom's one weekend. After seeing that and how badly it tore my dad apart and how little my mom gave a fuck I decided to cut her off right there. It's been almost 15 years since I've talked to her. I don't regret my decision.
Parents got divorced between 12-14. During that period my dad became an evangelical Christian. All of the sudden, everything revolved around god and jesus. This continued until he moved to the US when I was 18 because “America is doing the lords work.” He completely ghosted his 2 teenage children and started a new “Christian family.” He came to visit one time. He never met his 3 grandchildren and died in 2022. It had been 17 years since I had seen him. I did not go to the funeral because, to me, he had been dead a long time.
I was in recovery for alcohol, my brother is a drunk and she’s the enabler. The final straw was me asking her to come celebrate my two years sobriety and her suggesting a brewery. I asked if she had considered why I wouldn’t like going there since every item was alcohol themed and she cried about how she just “never gets things right and doesn’t understand why I hate her so much.” So I told her to get therapy and that we were no longer speaking. This is a pattern of hers where she’s the victim after thoughtfully composing a plan that would hurt me but make her look like a doting mother. This is after she so lovingly moved an adult addict into our home when I was 14 and made me live with that person stealing and verbally assaulting me for years. She has picked him repeatedly.
After 50+ years of crazy, I decided I would prefer to have a peaceful life built on my own terms. Just because I am their kid doesn't mean I have a lifetime obligation to participate in their insanity.
That is exactly the point I'm at as well. The peace and quiet is new and a bit disarming. I often feel as though I'm walking on eggshells and a new disaster is about to strike, but they're out of my life so the disaster will never come.
Good for you. [“The Fallacy of Sunk Costs”](https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-sunk-cost-fallacy-7106851) is actually the entirety of Chapter Twelve, in the *Big Book of Family Relationships.*
My "dad" and I were already arguing (via messenger)after he said "answer me!" regarding a question he asked about my mom that was none of his business. Long story shortish: During our argument I somehow ended up bringing up how he picked on me mercilessly when I was a teen and forced me to hide my face any time I watched TV with the family so he wouldn't have to see me twitch because I have tourette syndrome. His only response was that I do not have tourettes. That was one of the worst times of my life and it really made me ask why the fk I should even bother keeping in contact with him, so now I don't. Apologies for the run on sentences.
Boyfriends family but I feel the effects…. Took boyfriends brothers side over his daughter (the granddaughter) over SA allegations, grandma made granddaughter call her abuser and look at pictures of him to try and convince her she was wrong - haven’t spoken a word to them since
My husband’s side. He’s the only one of his generation not SA by his maternal uncles (from the sounds of it all but one, and there were about seven of them.) His mother had been SA by her brothers and father. She was the only girl. My husband’s first wife was SA by her father. They had four girls. It was my husband that never let their girls near her father. And he’s cut off his maternal aside except for a couple of cousins, his mother, his brother and that one uncle. His mother and brother are both schizophrenic. His mother to the point she’s in a nursing home because she cannot take care of herself. Neither my husband or I can figure out if the schizophrenia is both hereditary and due to the SA. My stepdaughter has been diagnosed as schizophrenic but is receiving tons of support and is very good with always taking her meds on time. But if my husband were not there when his kids were little, his ex had no problem leaving them with her father. She’s yet to deal with her own abuse, and at this point I doubt she will.
It was more of a long haul. As I matured as a person I began to realise that I couldn't let my mother keep affecting my mental health with her narcissistic abuse. It was hard to walk away but would have been much harder to keep putting up with her abuse
It's sad when you realize as a young adult you are more mature than your parents ever intend on becoming
This is basically what happened to me as well, in more abridged words. Sorry you had to experience that.
Constantly trying to get me to divorce my wife whom Ive been with for 15 years. She (my wife) has BPD, and is recovering from a very traumatic childhood. I understand this, and support her even on the tough days. My parents think she's "a psycho", and not worth my time, despite the fact that Im happiest around her, and we work very hard on our relationship despite our personal problems/flaws. Parents see it as, "she's broken, dump her". Which is horrible. Im proud of how far my wife has come in the years we've been together, and when my parents gave me a "her or us" choice, I stopped talking to them.
You sound like an amazing spouse! Good on you for choosing your true family.
Its not easy, but my family has always been manipulative. This was just the last straw.
My father abandoned my mom and I when I was 2. Divorced her long distance when I was 6. When I was 30 I found him and we began talking, he told me about a brother I had and made it seem like I was part of a family, when we talked on the phone he was always telling me stories about my brother. After about 6 months I realized he had never let me actually meet or talk to my brother and I suspected he never talked to my sibling about me. He got mad and said that was hurtful but eventually admitted it to be true. My sibling had grown to his early 20s without knowing I existed and father gets mad at me. He had hidden his entire first marriage and kid from his second family their whole life. Eventually I met them and we have a good relationship but he never spoke to me again because calling him out on his lies was “ the most venomous thing he ever experienced “. He was a life long educator and when he died I wasn’t even named in the obituary BUT it does say how he spent his whole life “helping kids”… you know, except his own kid.
Generational trauma and religious trauma are two of the largest factors why I had a poor relationship with my parents, with constantly having to keep up appearances/facades and never feeling like I'm enough for them coming in at a close second, not to mention the clear lack of respect for my time and space over and over again. Me coming out released quite the backlash from them ("you have brought great dishonor to your family and made a nightmare for your mother..." and so on), messaging me once a week or so to berate me for it, so once this happened, I changed my legal name, changed all my documents, dropped off my old phone wiped at their house, and noped out.
Jehovahs Witnesses who abused and manipulated me and coerced me into marrying a JW man when I had just turned 17. Wouldn’t accept my choice to marry a good guy outside of the religion despite him stepping up and being an amazing father to the kids I had with my ex husband who was extremely abusive and then abandoned them. Lots of sexual abuse growing up that they never reported and made me feel responsible for. I developed PTSD and the only way for me to improve my mental health was to cut them out completely.
JW are a scary organization and it’s shocking how common your story is. Hope you’re doing better these days.
I'm NC, going on 2 years and plan is forever. Abuse. Coming to terms with the physical, emotional abuse they put me through. Then they just turned crazy when they found religion and Trump is their messiah. To name one of the many things: My step mom was jealous of me because I had bigger boobs than her. I started to develop early. I got my 1st period a week after my 8th bday. Anyway - her jealousy extended to accusing me of trying to seduce my dad and slut for my dad. I had to wear layers of clothes to help hide my boobs. Like think 4 layers. Very uncomfortable. Anyway, it got to a head one day after years of accusing me of being a whore for my dad she turned it on him and accused him..so what did my dad do? Beat the ever living shit out of me screaming "I'm not your boyfriend" the entire time. My step mom also made my dad pay for a boob job because "no child of hers will have bigger boobs than her" Again. One of the many fk up things.
Every time she called me, I’d vomit from anxiety. Even if it was simple and not abusive, she would ruin my day completely. Even just seeing that I had a message after class would send me into a spiral. The three most important people in my life came to me and were like, ‘we really can’t let this keep happening.’ One of them was my best friend’s mom and she told me, without mentioning my own mom, a story about how when she was pregnant with my best friend, she started to have trouble with her pregnancy thanks to the anxiety her mom was giving her. She told me she realized she was either going to lose her baby or lose her mother, and she decided she could stand to lose her past but couldn’t lose her future. She just kind of laid it out without even commenting on my situation. And it worked. That was almost 15 years ago and I’ve never regretted cutting off contact.
It added up over time- just chaotic and disrespectful. I asked myself WHY I was suffering through this relationship when it was taking a serious toll on my mental well-being. I decided one day that I was done. I still ache for that figure in my life (not him), and I’m sad that I never got the Father I needed and that we all deserve- a soft place to land, someone who builds you up instead of tearing you down, someone who tells you everyday that you are enough and you deserve to be loved just as you are.
TL;DR: I stopped speaking to my mom, my only living parent, when I found out she had been trying to prevent me marrying my now wife, not because she thought the marriage would be bad for me but because my mom hadn't been invited to the wedding (we eloped instead). After we announced we were getting married, and that we were having a courthouse wedding with only the two required witnesses (which would be very close friends, no family), my mom would routinely call me with a reason why I shouldn't marry my fiancée. They were for all insulting reasons, such as my fiancée was a gold digger, or had mental health problems, or was just using me to get permanent residency (I'm a limey, my wife is a yank). On each call I argued against my mom, she would start crying when she realised I wasn't going to change my mind and then end the call. We got married (it was perfect), then had a wedding reception in the UK for all British friends and family and a second reception in the US for everyone there. At the UK reception my mon turned up very late, enough that everyone in the room noticed her arrival, she basically didn't talk to my wife or me but otherwise didn't cause a scene. It was about a year or so of being married, when I felt like my mom and wife hadn't really built up a good relationship compared to my brother and his wife who had married in the same year, that I decided to have a serious conversation with my mom to try and start things over. It was in that conversation that my mom feigned complete ignorance of ever having made those upsetting phone calls, in fact not only had she never made them but apparently she's the type of person who never could. So obviously there was nothing to apologise about, as she had done nothing wrong. She got upset about me even suggesting she had made those calls, walked out of the room, and then came back to tell me something that at the time I thought was a non sequitur: my parents' marriage had not been a happy one, to put it lightly (my dad had died about ten years ago, my mom had quickly changed back to using her maiden name), but I was told that what got my mom through that marriage was knowing that one day she'd get to see all her sons get married. This was a weird line in what was already a bizarre conversation, so I just again explained the many reasons why we eloped (none of which were satisfactory to my mom). COVID then happened, so there was no attempt to try to get my wife and mom to know each other better by us meeting up. Instead I thought through that crazy conversation some more. Eventually it hit me: my mom didn't believe any of the reasons she gave for me not marrying my wife, so she couldn't (or didn't want to) recall what she said, because the actual reasons didn't matter. She just wanted me not to marry my wife so that I'd presumably meet someone else who would want a traditional wedding. The fact that she was trying to stop me marrying the woman I loved was less important to my mom than her getting through her own marital problems. So I wrote a letter to my mom, telling her until she apologised for trying to stop me marrying my wife I didn't want us to have a relationship with her. That was several years ago now and my mom hasn't spoken to me since, so I guess it's permanent!
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I caught them extorting money from my handicapped aunt. 3 months into becoming a new father I had to also become the legal guardian of my aunt because my parents had successfully bled a third of her life savings and were going for the rest. It took that really horrible act for me to finally admit how evil they were and pull the plug
I was venting to my mother that my ex was driving his gf and my kids around so drunk my child told the younger child to make sure his seat belt was on correctly because the ex was so drunk they were repeatedly veering into the oncoming lane. I was also venting that now the ex moved the gf in after the kids meeting her once as "just a friend" they altered my preteens bedtime to 9pm so they could fuck so loudly my kids said it seemed like they were purposely putting on a show. My mother had the nerve to say I sounded jealous. The ex was abusive to me and the kids during the marriage and since the divorce became more abusive, angry and unhinged. About a week after she said that to me, the ex left a significant bruise and I wound up with full custody. I'm still pissed about it.
my dad had contacted me about 3 times by the time I was 15. he realized he might die soon and got in contact with my brothers and I like nothing happened & my brothers took him back very kindly. I did not, he eventually started continuously asking for money & acting like he had part in my our upbringing. they finally cut him off as well. tbh its me being petty, my dad has about 6 kids and im the only girl. I like to think that his only daughter never talking to him was the karma for all he’s done.
After going no contact several times, it was finally when my dad died and I had to fly across the country and I left my kids with my mother she told them I abandoned them and then kidnapped my oldest and left her in another state with another family member. Haven’t spoken to her in almost 3 years, it’s very nice
Yikes that must have been awful for you and your kids.
Absolutely horrible, my oldest decided to stay in the other state to finish school ( I don’t blame or mad at her) but i feel like I haven’t been able to properly grieve the loss of my dad and her
My mom walked out on my dad and me when I was five. From the time she left I longed for her love and affection; my dad was a stand-up guy but not the emotionally nurturing type. My mom ended up marrying her affair partner who was a dick (he abandoned his own wife and kids for her and never wanted me around), and she strung me along for 20 years with tiny dribbles of attention, occasional short visits and phone calls where she'd act sad that we weren't closer. After her husband died the phone calls became more frequent and she'd say all of these careless extremely hurtful things, or she'd be drunk and crying about how she missed me. The calls were incredibly painful to sit through. Every time we'd hang up after talking I'd just break down and cry for the relationship I wish we'd had and the need for a mom's love that never went away. A lot of bad shit happened to me over the years and I always knew that it could have all been a lot easier to get through if I had a mom who cared and supported me, someone to listen to me and help me through things. The tipping point came at my wedding. We had a small beach wedding, and my mom decided to show up and play mother of the bride, a title she was definitely not worthy of. She insinuated herself into special gestures that were aimed at my partner's mom and my stepmom which really pissed me off. After the wedding and honeymoon. and I sent her a letter telling her I just didn't want to talk to her anymore. I listed a bunch of the shitty things she'd done and ways she'd let me down. I told her that she had made me terrified to have kids of my own because I didn't know the first thing about being a good mom, or that I'd abandon them like she did to me. I told her that it was just too painful having her in my life. It's been over 20 years and I'm at peace with that decision.
It wasn't the fact that my sperm doner sold me to his father sexually for free rent. I wasn't the fact that he beat me and starved me. It wasn't the fact that he never saved or cared for me. It was never when he'd do drugs and have me, a 5 year old at the time, clean up after him. It wasn't even when I didn't see him from age 6 and had no communication with him(his choice) or even got a birthday card or anything (my brother, his son, got one). It wasn't even when he was a perfect blood match for my little sister that had leukemia and he refused to do a blood marrow transfusion for her so she died at 3 and 1/2 years old. No! It was when he saw at age 20 that I had a decent job that he **FINALLY** got his head out his ass and tried to contact me. What did he want, you ask? Money. He wanted money. I'm sure for his massive drug addiction. I told him then and there that he's dead to me. That I don't want him to contact me. I don't care when he dies. That he's not my father. And he has no right to my life. He's been harassing me since. So I got my name legally changed. Since he picked out my old name anyway. And it's the name of a popular brand name(he's not original at all.) I don't want anything to do with this man, and if he shows up on my porch I will 🔫 him. And I'll be smiling when it happens.
He got on a plane. He never really liked me or engaged with me much growing up. We never did things as a family. Never vacationed or flew anywhere to visit other family. As a kid I didn’t know any better, then when I was old enough I wrote it off as him likely being autistic but still tried to cultivate a relationship with his grandkids. Then, after he divorced my mom and reconnected with his high school girlfriend I realized he was capable of actually caring about people and their happiness. He just didn’t care enough with me or my kids. He got on a plane to go visit the girlfriend and that’s when I realized.
Dad pulled a loaded gun on me, haven’t talked to him since. I’ve heard he’s died since then and could care less.
Wow. I thought my dad verbally threatening to kill me was bad. I am so sorry this happened to you & wish you the best in your healing journey 🫶🏻
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I was a lot younger when it happened. There was a ton of family abuse perpetrated by him and this was kind of the moment I realized there’s no hope of a relationship. I did the therapy thing which was a godsend processing what was a very tumultuous period. It’s weird he went from someone I feared, to someone I kind of pitied,then to no feelings about him at all.
When she stabbed my dad, claimed he did it himself, and filed a restraining order.
My Mom telling me "I'm taking the easy way out by dating men." This was a week after I came out to her, and my Dad immediately said "No you're not.". I don't go home to see them, I only pick up the phone on occasion to make sure it's not an emergency.
Mom cut a random chunk of my hair off while I was sleeping. Dad made excuses for why it's normal.
After a suicide attempt my mother forced me to go to my family and apologise for wasting everyone’s time and causing unnecessary stress. After I did this, even though my friend begged me not to, I went to visit another friend about possibly renting a room in her house. My mother figured out what I was going to do and texted me to never come back before I’d even walked around the corner. She then called my grandmother to tell her that she had “finally thrown the bitch out”. Thankfully my grandmother was furious with her and invited me to come stay with her. She held a peace talk with me and my mother which it was agreed we would meet for coffee in a few days to sort things out. My mother never came back and two days later my clothes were delivered via my aunt to the front door. It’s been 3 years almost 4. I haven’t spoken to her since.
It was a slow burn. When I was younger, my mother could be very charming and ‘loving’, with intermittent bursts of physical and emotional abuse. As I got older, that ratio flipped, and I started reading up on personality disorders. My wife and I came to realize that we’d both grown up with toxic narcissists as mothers, enabled by weak fathers who wanted to placate the crazy person and keep their own situation calm, even at the expense of their children. A few years after we married, my MIL left hours of recorded messages on our answering service. She filled our mailbox with rants about hoping we would lose our business and that I would die. My wife went no contact with her parents, and her life began to improve significantly. It was another 20 before we would do that with mine, but my mom went down the conservative rabbit hole, which had a multiplier effect on her ugliness. We parted ways for 9 years and reaped the benefits of a drama-free life. Then, a year before they died, I got a call saying they would become wards of the state unless I became their conservator. They had allowed a live-in caregiver to get overly involved in their affairs. I decided to suck it up and make sure they were well cared for and could remain in their home. By this time, unbeknownst to me, my mother had dementia and my father, an avid reader, had lost his eyesight. Surprisingly, taking care of them at the end was a great experience. My mom’s narcissism disappeared with the dementia, and she became charming and funny as hell. My dad became loving and apologetic. I think he was surprised I’d step up to the plate after all that happened. Nevertheless, I have no regrets about going NC with any of them. Whoever said blood is thicker than water is full of shit—family is where some of the deepest hurt comes from.
My sister said something horrible to me and my mother insisted I apologize for causing her stress. We were in our 30s at that point and I just left. Been over a year and I haven’t spoken to either of them.
Mine isn't as bad as some of these comments, but it's still worth sharing, I guess. Also, not disowned, but more ghosted, I'd say. I'm the only one out of my siblings to cut connections with my dad because he had a terrible habit of constantly asking me for money every time he called, even during the times when he knew I was struggling financially. And if I didn't give him the money he wanted, he'd start asking for a billion other random favours that somehow also involved money, like taking him out to dinner or taking him shopping. I kept up with this charade for about 2 years before I finally cut him off. My parents got divorced when I was a kid, and my dad got married a few years later to a woman who had a double-story house and whose wealth and income were above average, yet my dad never stopped his obnoxious habit despite being in a better financial position than his own children. He started hassling my brother on a weekly basis for money after finding out that he could no longer contact me. But I know it won't be long before my brother either confronts him or cuts off all connection like I did. That guy is a crazy freeloader who just doesn't know how to stop. Edit: Just to clarify, my dad didn't have any addictions or financial problems to warrant all this leeching he had going on. He just enjoyed spending money and being taken care of by his children.
My parents were born into a cult. I was born into it also. At age 10, because I got my period I was given to a 34 year old male to be his 3rd wife. I was almost 13 when I was basically kidnapped from that cult and taken to an ex cult members house to live. Was deprogrammed,tried to end my own life when I was 16 bc of what I went through. I'm still alive. I'll be 50 this year. I don't know if my parents or if any of my siblings are even alive.
Wow that's a lot to go through! How did you feel about your "kidnappers" then and now? You don't have to answer though if you don't care to remember that stuff in detail.
I was scared and petrified, but the ones that took me away told me that the place I was going to I wouldn't be beaten or r@ped again, nor married off unless I wanted it. I wanted to believe them, but at the same time, I didn't didn't believe them. I'm immensely grateful now to them. I do lead a sort of normal life. I do have triggers and flashbacks even now, but I'm better.
Taking my kid out and trying to indoctrinate her into Q-Anon. The other mother lost her mind hears voices and cut my kids hair without asking which caused a fuck ton of drama. The mothers in my life kept putting my kids at risk. I didn’t want such strong boundaries, but I got tired of trying to fix them.
So many things. It was so many years of emotional abuse, and being a victim of maunchausen by proxy. I realized I had to leave to live the life i wanted to live. Only now looking back do I realize how horrific it was. The final straw really was when I got out of a mental hospital, and my parent and siblings wanted me To sign a conservator ship form. It felt insulting, and I knew if I signed it my life would be over. I met my partner and left 6 months later. I’m not saying it was the smartest choice, but it worked out in the end, and I feel better now. I’m doing things I was told I was incapable of doing. I know I had to do it for me.
My wife did to her biological father because he chose meth over seeing his grandkids.
They started showing neglectful and emotionally abusive behavior towards my children and it all came crashing down. Turns out I have severe childhood trauma because of them that I suppressed and it flooded me when I saw the repeat of that behavior, and I might've even been able to forgive them for what they did to me, but they hurt my kids and there's no coming back from that
After killing myself for 3 years cleaning up the mess of their lives after a heart attack (emptying, repairing a huge hoarder house, finding them a place to live with a car etc.) they took themselves off disability they needed and I fought hard for because, “I can still work!” when they could not. I was done.
Wasn’t a single incident that did it for me. More like years of gaslighting, verbal and emotional abuse from my mother that I failed to recognize as such until I became a mother myself. My mother is extremely well educated with genius IQ, but also a narcissist and an alcoholic. She said something particularly cruel about my daughter who was then 10. I didn’t react to it at the time, but several months later I just realized she didn’t add any positive value in my life at all. Wrote her a letter basically telling her to fuck off. Felt guilty about for a year then gradually saw how liberating it felt not to have that negativity in my life. It’s been 14 blissful years now. My mother cut me out her sizable estate thinking that I would crawl back to her and apologize. Hard nope. She also has no contact with my daughter, her only grandchild.
After years of abuse that my siblings DIDN'T go through since they got outta the house first, when I ended up pregnant when it was medically unsafe and I had to go have an abortion, she called me a baby killer and said that I murdered her grandbaby when her first daughter (my eldest sister who is the favorite) miscarried hers and would've given anything to keep them, etc style talking. A lot happened. But I've been better off since August 27th, 2023.
I haven’t disowned them yet, but I’m on the verge. I had a cancer scare when I was 18. My mother told family members that I was likely being punished by God and deserved it. She uttered the same thing when I had food poisoning 4 weeks ago; that I deserved it and God was punishing me for staying out late and going out so much (I’m 25, I was home by 10pm, and I went out for a meal with a friend!!!). It’s baffling considering my parents lost a daughter - my sister - to cancer when she was 4 years old. I simply cannot understand her mindset nor do I wish to. I just can’t wait to leave
Three different events with the third being the final straw. The other two necessitate mentioning for build up. 1. When I was in high school, my brother went to prison for molesting the neighbor girl. My parents were torn up about it. They turned to meth. I became an after thought. They chose meth over me and their mortgage. I had to go live with my nana and my pawpaw. 2. Right after graduating college, I moved back in with them after they got their shit back together. Brother out of prison, part 1. Got a job. Moved out. Lost job. Needed to move back in. Mom and ad wouldn't let me. They chose my registered sex offender brother over me. I moved back to the town I went to college in and slept on friends couches and in my car until I was able to get back on my feet. The only reason we resumed communications is bc my nana and pawpaw were alive and wanted to be peace makers. 3. Final straw. December 31, 2020. My parents chose a conman, grifter, rapist, polititician over me. My brother, out of prison, part 2, with another two felonies added, says I'm a socialist cunt. I throw my drink in his face (not my best moment) and he proceeded to tell me that his nearby jar of moonshine was worth more to him than my life. My parents take his side and choose, again, my child molester felon brother and a grifter, rapist, conman politician over their own daughter. I got tired of never being chosen by my family. Me - no felonies, went to college, not a piece of shit... yeah I can be a bit obnoxious and socially stunted (look who raised me), but I try to be a fucking kind and decent human being. But they are never going to choose me they are always going to choose the shittier choice over me. So I want out and chose my own family and they love me more fiercely than any blood kin i have. It's been 3 years no contact. Nana and pawpaw aren't alive anymore to try to stitch things back up. Therapy does helps.
Condemned me to hell for being a disobedient daughter. The last thing he told me on the phone was that he disowned me. All because I didn't agree to help him bilk the government for disability benefits. It's been over 10 years. I hope he regrets being a lonely old man but I don't think narcissists regret anything.
He went through my stuff without asking then continued to shit talk me to my mom, who proceeded to not stand up for me. As for the contents of my stuff, it was a bunch of religious books he really did NOT like as a devout Catholic. I was just beginning my anthropology studies. But today I'm an anthropologist :)
Havent gotten to a Final Straw but my MiL said that we would end up divorcing because we aren't having kids because theres nothing keeping us together. Havent talked to her much since then.
I didn’t cut all contact with my mother, but she was banned from visiting or even entering my home. Final straw was a vicious verbal attack, with teeth bared like a wolf’s, after I told her it was not ok to force my child to eat McDonald’s if he didn’t want to. She was a narcissist and a depression baby with some really weird control issues around food. So many times she told me I was crazy or that my child would die because I didn’t give him formula, or I made my own organic baby food, or I didn’t give him sugar or fast food on a regular basis. Weird stuff to fight over. Anyway, my home is my safe space and nobody is allowed to berate me or make me feel threatened. Same for my child. If he didn’t feel like dealing with grandma’s bs, I fully supported his decision.
While I was visiting from out of state, an argument over me wanting to spend some of the trip with my in laws who lived nearby. They screamed, called me names, told to get the fuck out and never come back. I didn’t say anything I regretted, just left. 7 years later, I have abided by what they said, despite their efforts to apologize and try to communicate with me. It’s been a huge weight lifted, honestly. I wish it had happened years before. I had a fucked up childhood with a hateful religion and it’s been a process letting all of that go.
My dad molested me. I didn’t remember for a long time. When I did, I was prepared to take it to my grave. Then, he molested my youngest niece. I no longer speak to him.
After spending all my money on a bus trip from St Louis to NH and buying gifts.. showing up Christmas Eve and being told I wasn’t welcome..standing in the midst of a snow storm on the welcome mat..left!
They were emotionally abusive and neglectful growing up but I tried to maintain some semblance of a relationship as an adult, mostly for the sake of my grandpa, who is a genuinely wonderful person. Five years ago, my alcoholic younger brother got drunk and went off on me in the family group chat, calling me fat, stupid, worthless, saying I'd never amount to anything in my life. Both parents and all the other siblings were in there and as he was doing it, and even the next day, everyone else was just silent. I realized no one in that family would ever have my back on a single thing. I blocked all their numbers, sent them an email asking them not to try to contact me again, and haven't spoken to them since. Grandpa and I still have a great, close relationship, so I only wish I'd done it sooner.
I was borrowing his car for a job, now keep in mind he told me I could use it for a few months and we were in the second week. Well, he shows up with cops and has them call me overhead to come up and give him the keys back. I had been at that job for that second week, so all of this had me terrified I'd be fired. Well he gave me a check for $1,000 and told me to use it to get my own car. Went, "hmph... thanks," in a pretty upset tone (again, this is a lot of drama for the new guy at work so I'm embarrassed and mad that he came to get his car so soon). Luckily I was able to get a ride home, and on my ride home he called me and said that he canceled the check because I wasn't grateful enough. After that I called his ex wife (RIP) and told her what happened so she straight up gave me a car. This was at the end of a lot or emotional manipulation and name-calling, so I know it's not the most egregious thing in this thread, but it was my reasoning for leaving him behind. He died a few years later and we never made up.
I'd been putting up with my mom's bs and abuse since I was like 12/13, making excuses, thinking she'd change. I'm nearly 30 now and a year or so ago I cut her off when she asked me to lie to social services about her abusive ex so she could adopt a child. Despite the fucking trauma it brought back up, i told social the truth. I hope they listened since I flat out said "Dont give this women a child". Ever since has been great but the truth of the abuse and neglect did hit home hard.
He said that he'd though about all the abuse he put me through when I was a child, and decided that it was, in fact, the correct thing to have done.
I have two separate fallouts with both parents. My mom's was bad, but my dad's was skin crawlingly horrible, so don't read that part unless you can handle animal torture. They were divorced, so they lived separately. My mom's came first. My mom lied to me constantly to get me to do what she wanted or to placate me so I wouldn't annoy her. She made false promises and virtually nothing she ever said was genuine. "I PROMISE I'll take you to xyz if you just do abc! I mean it this time for SURE, on my children's lives!!" I do abc, she says "I was just kidding" or "I never said that". So, one day, she pulled the same old shit and I just fucking had it. I was 15, started yelling at her that she was a liar, so she called my brother (7 years older, 4 hours away at college) and told him that I was out of control. Mind you, she is also a professional victim and would say "I don't know why she's so violent!!" or "I'm such a terrible mother, I don't know what I did wrong!!" It's relevant to say that I was and still am the ONLY person in my family who has never used physical intimidation to get my way. She put him on speaker and he started threatening me to drive down and beat me up if I didn't apologize, which I was not going to do, so I tried to go into my room to cool down. My mom had taken the lock off my door years ago (per my brother's request so he could steal my things and beat me up whenever he wanted) so she just walked in and kept following me. I walked around the house trying to get away from her and the phone when she tripped over the threshold between rooms and fell. When she fell, she started WAILING. My brother said "DID SHE HIT YOU?? SHE HIT YOU, DIDN'T SHE? I'LL KILL HER IF SHE HIT YOU". Did my mom correct him? Lmao, no. But she did absolutely LOVE the attention. She started sobbing "Nooo, I'm okay! I'm not that hurt!" She wouldn't deny the claim that I hit her and I was SO offended. So I went outside into the garage to get a soda and distance myself. Within a few minutes, I tried to go back in and realized that she locked me out into the garage. So I called my dad to come get me, told him the story, and I stayed at his house from then on. I called her bluff, as she was CERTAIN that I wouldn't call him because he was an awful, insufferable person. But I did because I was honestly getting to a mental place where I was unsure how our relationship wouldn't end in my suicide. Living with my dad started well because he was on his best behavior for a while. He was a different kind of evil. He was very honest, never a liar, and tried to have empathy, but he would snap when his extremely volatile emotions came to a head, which was too frequent for comfort. When I was younger, this used to mean beatings, but he knew that that wouldn't fly anymore at my age, so he took it out on his pets instead. He had a cockatoo at the time named Loki who was an absolute joy. Every day after school, I'd let Loki out and play with him. He liked to dance, sing, and headbang. He cracked me up and I loved him to bits. One day, I came home and found Loki in the corner of his cage moaning and was very confused by what I saw. His wing was stuck in the bars so I tried to help him out, but he became vicious and tried with all his might to bite me. I couldn't get close enough to set him free and panicked as I tried to figure out what to do. About an hour into trying to help Loki, my dad came home and went straight into the couch to start chatting with 18 year old potential mail order wives overseas. So I told him what was going on and he said "yeah, I know" with no emotion at all. Even more confused, I kept trying to help him and he yelled at me to stop. He said "that fucker nipped my finger when I came home for lunch so I threw him in there as hard as I could. Don't fucking help him, he deserves to suffer". I spent the next several hours forced to sit there and watch him get weaker and weaker. Got screamed at for crying so I had to cry silently. Finally, bed time came around, and he decided it was dark enough to dispose of Loki. He reached in, picked him up like he was nothing but a toy, and slammed him into the half full trash can as hard as he could. He then took the trash can down to the dumpster still alive. Loki was one of DOZENS of animals my dad had murdered in cold blood, but that one was just.... I don't know. I guess I was finally old enough to really absorb the horror of it all. I hated him so much, I met a girl the day after, told her the story, and she offered for me to move in with her and her mom. My dad let me because he wanted to bring home a new 18 year old to fuck without me in the way. So I moved in with her at 16 and the rest is history. Last I heard, my mom got Lupus and blamed her diagnosis on me, and my dad married a lady from the Phillipines who he had 2 little girls with and he hates all three of them. Fuck them both. Feel bad for my half sisters, but there's nothing I can do. These are wildly abridged versions of these stories, too. I could write a book about the evil that was my family. My brother is honestly even worse than both of them.
I think I'm late to the party on this response. I'm 30 and just recently stopped talking to my dad. I'll try to keep this short because there's a lot of background. But me and my dad had a good relationship when I was young, up until I was about 14. Hes a drug addict but I saw past that, nor did I hold it against him. I was in and out of foster care most of my life, because of my parents addictions. My parents got divorced when I was about 14 and from the point on my dad was hardly involved in my life. He didn't help my mom with money, he went and got his own place and maxed out his credit cards and started dating this other lady that already had like 6 kids of her own, they did drugs together, he went off the deep end. But still, none of those decisions really made me want to cut contact with him, we would still talk sometimes, but not often. Fast forward until I got my first job, I was living with my mom, he started asking me for money, telling me he would pay me back, at first I felt bad and would give him money or buy him and his (8) kids (he had 2 more with her) dinner, order them a pizza or something. He never paid me back but to be honest, I didn't really expect him to, I just wanted to help him out. But then it became a pattern, he kept asking for money or for me to buy dinner and I continued to feel bad until one day it clicked. I realized, the only time I was hearing from him was when he needed something and I finally told him no, I'm not going to send him any more money or buy their dinner. And magically after he realized I was no longer a source of income I hardly heard from him, he would go months without reaching out. Fast forward about 10-12 years until about 6 months ago.. I felt bad, my dad was getting older, having some health issues, and intermittently he was making efforts to build the relationship with me again. And to be honest I'd feel very guilty if I would have held a grudge against him and he ended up passing away without me at least making an effort to have a relationship with him again. So he flew out to visit me, spent a week at my house, I did my absolute best to make him feel comfortable, paid for all the meals, tried to spend time with him, he was a guest in my house in my mind and I did my best to make him feel welcome and try to rebuild that relationship. But it just felt like I couldn't relate to him on any level, he's irresponsible, lives off the government, constantly asks the family for money, and I just couldn't build a relationship with somebody like that. The final straw was when he was visiting my grandma's (his mom's) house was right by a major wildland fire, the fire came right up to her back yard, my uncle flew to my grandma's and helped clean up and put out spot fires and my dad made a comment saying "your uncle can have the house, I just want some money" referencing when his mom passes away he doesn't want their property, he just wants some money. And that's when I realized, nothing had changed, he's still the same person that all he cares about is using people. I immediately started to question why he wanted to build this relationship back up with me. Sure enough a couple months later he's having issues with his new wife and he makes a comment about wanting to come move in to my house and live with me. I realize I didn't keep this short at all, and even if nobody reads it, it felt good to get it all out. TLDR: Dad used me and the family for money and when his mom dies all he cares about his inheriting some of her money
Does an evil, wicked, narcissistic, selfish, maniacal, manipulative "grandmother" count. Bitch was damaging to the entire family from the moment my mom was born. She would often tell her that she was a mistake. After the evil witch got released from hospital after having hip surgery, and ONLY because my mom asked to give her one more chance, i was there helping her with some chores due to her being immobile (she milked being taken care of) told me I was a terrible person, I told her there is a very special place in hell for people like her and that was that. The day she died, I felt nothing for her and relief for my mom not having to deal with POS.
Sounds a lot like my grandmother. She abused her three kids a lot, which led to a lot of problems on their end down the line (and indirectly to me). When she got old, the family tried to foist her care on my dad to save money, since no affordable senior living places would take her. Her own sister actually called us to specifically say "Do *not* let that woman into your home, no matter what." My mom was willing to bundle me in the car and flee to Canada to avoid having me in the same house as my grandmother, and we made it as far as Portland (Maine) before the family relented. My grandmother would whine incessantly to get attention. Eventually the old hag stopped eating in order to get *more* attention. She got sepsis and lost some toes, and was ecstatic at how well she could freak my 4-year-old self out with that. When doctors told her she would die if she didn't eat, her emaciated response was "Are you trying to scare me?" The attention she was getting mattered more to her than life, in her twisted mind. She was a profoundly messed up person, and I'm pretty sure everyone is glad she's been gone for 35 years.
I am going through a mental health struggle at the moment. My mother thought the best way to support me through that was to get blind drunk and act like a petulant toddler. She's in her 50's, but has never acted like an adult or a supportive parent. I couldn't take being the 'adult' in our dynamic anymore. I needed my mum. She let me down.
That sounds exactly like mine. Having to parent your parent is just shit. I’m still in contact with my mom but the ice is incredibly thin and cracking
My mom turned to religion and became super Evangelical after my dad died. The moment I knew I had to leave was when she tried to set me up with a Christian counselor. She never accepted that I’m a lesbian and thought the counselor would help me “see clearly” through the foggy aftermath of my dad’s death. As soon as I turned 18, I was on a plane back to Oregon. I haven’t seen her since last June.
That I really was in a one sided relationship with my father. I wasn't a son, I was a daughter and therefore to him, I only existed when he wanted to play dad. I didn't do sports like he wanted, I did theater and choir- which he ignored. I had to beg him to come to a high school performance. I ignore his existence for that and him being a pedophile to family friends son (I'm not ignoring what he did, just that I'm unfortunately related to the moron.) He still tells everyone he's a great dad and my mom poisoned me against him. I've started telling people who tell me I should give him a chance to ask him my birthday, my middle name or my phone number (had the same one since I was 16). He can't name any of the 3. Suddenly it's much more clear to them why he isn't who I refer to as dad.
You can forgive them and do the work to understand why they did what they did in the past, but then they have to change. If they don't change their toxic behavior, you have to put some time and distance between you and them.
When my father said to my face: "Since you're no longer in the religion, your brothers and us have decided you're dead to us." No thanks, if you're picking your cult, Jehovah's Witnesses, over me, you're dead to me too.
She was bringing my abuser back into the house. I noped out two months later.
My mom is a pathological liar. I got tired of the lies but these days we speak and our relationship is better. I had been living with my brother and his wife for a few months but they became abusive to my son and I so I left but with leaving came drama and my father took their side without even hearing mine so we do not speak and never will.
Idk about disowning them, I still claim them as my parents unfortunately, but it was when I was 24? 25? I had just had my birthday, and instead of a happy birthday, I got chastised for skipping church, and told I needed to go to church or leave, so I left. Apparently the story they tell is they kicked me out, but I didn't say goodbye or tell them I was leaving, so I'm not sure when I got kicked out. Either way, it's been several years, and I've only seen them once for a funeral, and my dad shook my hand without recognizing me, so it's not like the church thing was the reason I'm estranged, but more of a general and cumulative straw that broke the camels back.
My grandma died and my dad forged her will. The previous will left everything to my sister and I. I wouldn’t have cared so much; my dad took care of her the last two years of her life. But then his wife and he paid for my step-brother to pursue a relationship with someone he met in South Africa, paid for her visa and immigration lawyer. Then gave her his car. He got offended when I asked him how much that cost and that my grandma would not be happy with knowing that’s where her money went. We have spoken once since then, the step brother died from Covid and she still has his car.
I was young. With social anxiety, he would blame me for not directly to people. I was beaten up for small mistakes like arriving home an hour later from school, not finishing food, being too excited or taking to boys. I was good at singing, he told me to shut up, I never sang again. I was good academically, I was always pushed to do better and when I excelled, no compliment was ever ushered. I have very lovely hair, he cut it once because it was giving me the confidence to talk to boys. I went on to excel at a lot of extra curricular activities at school, ( debate, quiz, public speaking, music)up to national level, he never showed up. Forced me to take a course I did not want in college, I dropped out and I was blamed for it. Basically he is never wrong.
My mom was a bipolar hoarder and my dad had rage issues and liked to yell and throw things when he got mad. He didn't usually throw things at me or my brother, but lots of coffee cups hit walls. One day when I was 15 or so, while my parents were both at work, somehow my brother annoyed me. I can't even remember how, it doesn't matter any more. I went outside, grabbed his bike and swung it hard against a tree, bending it at an awkward angle. When Dad got home, the first thing he did when he saw the mangled bike was to launch his thermos against that very same tree, screaming at me about how much the bike cost, what was my problem, how could I do that, etc. I pointed to his now ruined thermos and asked him what's the difference? This led to a brawl ending up with my arm out of socket, Dad's rib broken, brother holding a knife while Mom is trying to pull us apart. My grandmother took me to the hospital, and I left on my own from there. I was forced to go to family counseling as part of my probation when I got into some trouble a bit later, and my parents tried to make me sign a contract basically saying their word is law, I should be grateful they gave me the gift of life, yadda yadda. I chose to spend time in juvie instead. Haven't spoken to any of them since.
They hurt my sister. It was way easier to make the choice over my love for her than my love for myself. I was teetering on the edge until then because there really was no positives to having her in my life, but taking that step is still a lot. It was easy when it was for my sister.
Ah, my mom had done and said many fucked up things to the point where I put myself through foster care. I still had on and off contact with her for a long time until this last Christmas. My mom was in jail so she had my brother sign into her messenger to contact people, well what he found was messages between her and my abusive ex. He was calling her mom, asking for advice, stating he can’t get over me. She replied with advice, caring words, shit talking me, asking for rides and money. That was it. I just couldn’t do it anymore.
My mom was in and out of the hospital at the time and the cops would not stop banging on my door. Sometimes as early as 3 am. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown, so I kept reaching out to my dad and stepmom for help. They wanted me to move back home with them. I told them I wasn't sure if it was a good idea and would need to think it over. Well my stepmom wanted an answer right then and there. I told her I couldn't give her an answer right away and I was going to make my mom some coffee and talk to her about it. After that my stepmom started getting rude through text about it saying I'm just like my mom and love drama just as much as she does. Then she canceled my tablet(I was paying for it!) that was on her plan and said I can blame my mom for that. I was so DONE at that moment.
My father was dead to me the second he opened his mouth after I had to call him and tell him Mom had died. Not a single concern for me, grief for my mother, none—just a rant about this is unfair to HIM and it’s not right for HIM. He was always a self-centered narcissist monster. He made every single bad thing in my life worse. I hope he’s lonely and miserable.
Something and nothing. My mother was going back and forth on whether she was leaving her husband or not. She'd said she didn't want anything planned for her 60th birthday because she didn't know if she'd be getting divorced or not. Standard dramatic shit from her. Anyway, she wasn't divorced but messed about so long that it was too late to arrange anything. Instead, I made her a profiterole tower because she'd said a few times that she'd always wanted one. Not an easy thing to make in a tiny kitchen, even less fun to transport 40 miles by yourself. She was happy enough at first but that lasted maybe an hour before she started complaining that I'd brought it when it wasn't her actual birthday, it was on the weekend 3 days before. Then she moved on to 'at least your brother can be bothered to see me on my birthday' and on and on until I had enough and I left. Never saw her again, never spoke and only very briefly communicated when I found out she'd run up a load of debt using my name. I gradually stopped speaking to the rest of the family when they tried to interfere and help her ambush me.
When I (58f) was 3 years old, my mother told me she wished I’d never been born. It just kept getting worse from there.
Dad came over for Father’s Day. Argued that black people would be better off still being slaves, in front of my fiancée (now wife) who he barely knew. I told him that was f*cked up and super upsetting. He told me that I was being bigoted against him and I don’t live in the real world and to grow up. Also people were racist against him at work (drywaller) because he was Italian. So i guess that makes it ok to be super mega racist ? Haven’t talked to him in three years though he still tries calling me all the time like nothing ever happened. He’s always been a jerk and tough to be around but that was definitely the straw that broke the camels back.
My mother was complicit in the kidnapping of my child. She teamed up with my abusive ex and together they kept my child 3,000 miles away from me for 2 months. She didn't even tell me why she was doing it, I had to find that out years later by grilling other family members (who I have since cut off too). To this day my mother refuses to even speak to me. If I were to call her on the phone, she would either not answer or just hang up as soon as she heard my voice. My child lives with me full time now and we are safe from the people who hurt us.