Anyone ever cut off ties with their family?

[Isabelle VanDo]

sorry..........'any' better than can they...

[brideto]

After a messy divorce, I was 13 and my sister was 9, my mother started a campaign to turn us both against our father (telling us that when she was pregnant with my sister, for instance, my dad spat on her belly and said she had a rat inside her, or telling us that our father forced her to have sex with him at night). After living with her for a year, where her preferential treatment towards my sister became extremely evident (my mother told me when I was 7 years old that she loved my sister more than me), she finally pushed me to live with my father. It was not difficult to vilify my Dad from a very young age - I had watched him physically and emotionally abuse my mother throughout my childhood, actions he would justify by saying that he didn't 'really' physically abuse her because he was quick about it (smashing her head on the table, for instance, or pushing her violently against the wall); on several occasions he had hit me also, but just like with my mother, he was 'quick' about it so it didn't count as abuse. My mother then left to the other side of the world with my sister when I was 14 and I lived with my father, who began to start his own smear campaign against my mum (mostly questioning her mental health and how 'weird' she was). I felt abandoned and missed my sister, who after having an extremely difficult time overseas eventually returned to live with my father and I once more (though she still feels guilty of having abandoned my mother when she was 10-years-old).

 

Though my father provided us with a house, he basically left us to raise ourselves - he did stop drinking and he was emotionally available on the rare occasion (he was never short of a hug). Still, at 18 I moved out of home, at 21 I left the country. I tried to start a relationship with my mother once again but it never worked out - at one point whilst travelling, my wallet stolen and no place to go, I rang her for help and her reply was typical, "You abandoned me when you chose to stay with your father, now I have no responsibility to care for you." After cutting contact for over a year I tried again to start a relationship with her but this cool distance remains. Meanwhile my father has begun a new relationship with a very insecure woman who took an extreme dislike to me for no reason, a fact that she openly acknowledges. My father tried to explain to me that this woman is the best he could get and to finish the relationship would mean that he would live the last years of his life alone (he's 56!).

 

In two weeks I'm getting married - my family live in two different continents and have all arranged to fly out. When my mother found out I was going to get married she took a renewed interest in our relationship, and she even promised that she would help out with the wedding financially. As the wedding day came closer she began to contact me less and the coldness I had become familiar with emerged once more - today, her partner told me that they will not be able to help. My father, meanwhile, was not even going to attend the wedding, which was not surprising considering the lack of interest he's shown in maintaining any type of contact with me for the past couple of years - he was guilt-tripped into attending the wedding by his best friend. After asking my father to make a small contribution to the wedding fund, he demanded I get a real job (he can't get his head around work-at-home freelance writing) and then said the wedding was financially ruining him since he had to buy his own plane ticket and accommodation. My sister, meanwhile, has never had a good relationship with my father (my mother made sure of that), and treats my mother like a saint who I somehow take pleasure in causing misery. Our relationship ever since our parent's divorce has always been rocky.

 

Today, two weeks before my wedding, I have told them all to refund their tickets and their hotel rooms and to let me be. I need a break from them, and quite frankly, having them around my new family would be an unpleasant experience (my new family, you'll be pleased to hear, are extremely supportive and are teaching me that unconditional love is possible). I simply need a break - when I have kids in the future (I'm 25 now), or when it feels right, I'll let them in again, but right now this feels like the right thing to do.

[Bullcrab]

Hi, in answer to your question, a big yes ! I cut off ties with my mum many years ago. It took me during my 20's to contemplate should I then one friend said to me "You know, If someone treats you like this consistently then you don't have to have them in your life" So I gave myself permission to cut-off from a mum (and sisters) I was never close with and who treated me badly if and when they could.

 

I'm happy, I have good friends, I went on to have three children (now teenagers) and my husbands' family became my "surrogate" family. I have to say I learned to choose my friends wisely and since met many women who cut-off from their own families too. I really didn't want my mum around my kids as they were growing up but to be fair I've been honest with my kids and they've always known they have a choice to contact their maternal grand-mother if they want to.

 

When I divorced I really wasn't sure that me, myself and I was enough for my three children (ie no family to offer them), but, funnily enough, I was always enough.

I believe my mum is alive and living in Europe somewhere and she keeps in touch with her other daughters sometimes and when she feels like it.

I have no bad feelings about her or my siblings, I was protecting my own children from her madness, and with no regrets.

Hope this helps you and best wishes.