How to separate from family members?

Post Reply New Topic

Most of the people in my family have hurt me so bad over the years that I have taken drastic steps to remove myself from them. I have moved 3000 miles away from my closest relative. The only person I communicate with is my mom and that's via email and mostly because her dad is dying of cancer. My two sisters and my cousins (fortunately I have a small family) have been so horrible to me that I literally never want to see or talk to them again. But I still fret about them. I want to make a really clear boundary to them: do not ever attempt to contact me again, so that I can stop fretting and get down to healing.

Has anybody else done this with their family? Am I being unrealistic? And please, no forgiveness lectures - I'll forgive them in my own time when I stop being traumatized by the thought of them calling me out of the blue.

i've pretty well cut the ties with my immediate family, other than my sister. i basically have a christmas card relationship with my parents and brother. i have confronted all of them. then with my parents i don't want to have anything to do with them. i did say that i wouldn't stop them from having a relationship with my kids, but they abandoned them. i still get pissed off when i think about how they just gave up on my kids and then pretend to love them soooo much!! ! yeah right!! !!

i talk some to my sister, mainly via e-mail. between my asperger's and her work schedule, it's about the only way. and it's a strained relationship because she has a relationship with my parents (after years of not doing so) and basically excuses everything that happened, and i won't do that.

i am beginning to have some of a relationship with my extended family. because of the abuse, we were isolated and i always thought everybody thought the same as my parents. come to find out i was wrong. on my mom's side, i have a letter/phone relationship with my aunt. she knows i have asperger's so understands that sometimes the phone is difficult, but she's been really supportive of me. she sent me a beautiful card after i got my diagnosis and shared with her. i keep it on my desk. then on my dad's side, i have a letter relationship with one of my aunts--i think she is an undiagnosised aspie too. then she has a relationship with my other aunts who don't write so much. she's like a go between. but i have had a lot of support from them.

some people are just toxic people and it does you no good to be around them.

april

because of all the abuse in my family-of-origin, i too have distanced myself from them.......i am trying to work on forgiveness, but it's hard to overcome what they did to me. i mean, there are some things i just can't forgive. my folks keep calling and asking us to come and visit....no matter how many times i say that we have no interest in doing so, they just don't seem to get it. they have found God now, and feel that i should forgive them because they are now Christian and have mended their ways..........

Change your address to a P.O. box and don't give them the new addy. Do the same with email, and change your phone number.

The thing is though, they might want to be repairing things with you. I shunned my mom for over a year for the same reason, and I finally realized that enough was enough...but then again, she wasn't trying to actively hurt me, just too many bad memories. I'm still not talking to my sister yet, but she isn't pursuing it either.

It's so hard to set clear boundaries with people. Last week I checked my email and there was a message: "3D sonogram of (sister's) baby" sent by my sister's mother-in-law. One of my problems with my family is that they never paid any attention to my 2 kids and now they're all going crazy over this one in utero. And how this crazy woman got my email address and thought I might want to see this picture ????? I just don't get it. My mother is the one who gives out my addresses/phone numbers even though I've made it clear what my feelings are. Argh.

I just want them all to go away. And I don't know what I'm going to do when my grandpa dies - he's the only one I like and he'll be dead and I'll be at a funeral with 100% of people I can't stand. Help. The only way I got through my sister's wedding was by being drunk throughout and somebody still literally picked a fight with me - a screaming match outside of the venue. I can't handle these people. Maybe I just won't go to the funeral.

Alyssa... I can definately relate. I used to have what I thought to be a great relationship with my mother, then after things occurred, I just couldn't talk to her, It even came down to me making visual supports (hanging up a sign on my cabinet next to the phone that said "don't call your mother"
Now I let her call me (on her bill) she makes small talk for about 5 minutes than hangs up. I have basicly no relationship with my sister. She will call me maybe once a year, and we have only seen each other once in two years.
That all being said, I have been asked why I haven't terminated these toxic relationships (there is way more than I am writing so please don't jump to conclusions), I guess I always have held out the hope that they will become nice people. (not). I have no desire to have relationships with any one but my dad and step mom, I just screen calls, and write letters to whom I want to talk to. In a perfect place, you could tell them you are having a hard time with things and would like some distance, but, ultimately this will end up with hurt feelings and maybe more hurt on your end... just some thoughts, I gues I am saying I don't know how this could be done.

I love caller ID oh and the delete button works wonders.

How could you possibly do that? It seems like always family members are separating from you.

I do not have much of a relationship with my family these days. They have always had issues with me, mainly because I'm the youngest and don't want to be subservient to them. I hear from one of my brothers and my sister once in a while, but the others, nothing beyond Christmas cards.

My mother pretty much doesn't want to talk to me anymore, because I married someone she didn't approve of, or at least stopped approving of when we decided to get married. Not to mention the fact she constantly brings up stuff that happened to me when I was in elementary school and junior high, like this defines who I am. She won't see me for what I am, she wants me to be failure so she can rub my nose in it, but I refuse to do so. She also likes to invent stories about me that make me look like a different person than I am, some stories positive, some negative, but it doesn't matter to me, I'm comfortable with myself and don't need someone to make me look different than I am.

Moving 3000 miles away is a good start. I thought I could do it moving around 60 miles to another city, but it didn't work out. My parents moved here and when they found out I was getting married, moved back to where they came from.

My sister wants to have a relationship with me, but I don't really want one. I don't like the person she always has been, everytime I thought she was improving, she went back to her old ways. I just want to have my own life and not worry about them.

The only advice I can give is to just go on with life and only worry about yourself, and not about them. That's what I've had to do. It isn't easy, but it can be done.

My family relationships have been strained due to the death of my father in 2000 and the resulting difficulties over the settlement of his estate. I am on good terms with my half-brother--in fact, I'm living 30 miles from him and me and my ladyfriend Jennifyr had dinner with him and his wife this past weekend--and my half-sister. I want to have a better relationship with my older brother, but that is difficult as a)he doesn't have a working phone (cell or land) b) he doesn't have a PC so he can't check his e-mail very often and c) the only phone I can reach him on is his (ex-) wife's grandmother's line. He's currently living with his (ex-) wife's family. She's living elsewhere. I have no idea if he's divorced, or if he's drinking, or evenif he got the Xmas present I sent him.

Jennifyr and my friend Steven have had even worse problems with toxic members of their families, to the point where Steve basically disowned himself from his family.

You have the right not to associate with toxic people, or to hold them at arm's length. Whatever you decide to do--caller ID, call block, writing them and telling them "Do not contact me" or scrawling "Return to sender" on their letters--is all right, although I would tell them and give the reasons why.

Good luck to you. Please keep us updated if you wish.

_____________________________________________
"Let us have calm and cheerful friends." --Robert Fripp