Do you feel like you're not even a part of your own family?

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That all sounds so familiar! Most of my family lives less than 5 minutes away from me and yet my brother visits less than once per year and whenever I visit him he's usually half asleep and can't be bothered to get up to actually talk or pay attention. My mother stops by every now and then, but just for a few minutes each time and I feel like she's just checking if I'm still alive. My father comes with her only a couple of times per year, for Christmas and my birthday, and always wants to leave soon too. If I visit them they usually do something else most of the time I'm there or talk amongst themselves or avoid talking much at all. My sister lives far away and while I believe she does care, she just doesn't take out any time anymore to spend with me and talk to me. She's always so busy with her own life and her family so we barely talk or spend time together at all anymore.

I feel like I'm losing whatever little contact I used to have with my family.


I feel the same way. I've never really felt like I belonged in any group or was a real part of it. I always felt different or like an outsider. WP is the closest I've come to feeling like I belong. At least I can relate with a lot of people here and find a lot of things we have in common, but I still feel like some kind of an outsider and haven't gotten to know anyone here yet.

sometimes i think this is partially responsible for me moving to the other side of the country. socal to miami.
my brother would invite all my cousins to a bar to hangout and talk and i wouldnt be invited. found out about it later.
my first brother (i am the oldest of four) was always favored by my parents and got away with everything by manipulating them.
i got the brunt of the discipline, physicial beatings and emotional abuse both of which my dad apologizes for now but have left deep emotional scars.
they are strongly hardline republican and i am somewhere inbetween the two parties politically so we dont see eye to eye on that either.
i moved across the country but they seem to be rejecting me as well. i have to call them repeatedly to get ahold of them.
i like my girlfriend's family better as they do not condemn you. they may disagree with you on some stuff but they do not say 'this is the way it is and you are wrong'.
i've almost considered getting married and changing my last name to my girlfriend's last name just to burn them.

think about it. in a way its freeing though. if you can successfully sever your family ties you can go anywhere and do anything and not worry about an expensive plane trip home for christmas. you have thanksgiving and christmas you can be spending on a cruise in the caribbean or a backpacking trip across asia instead of making yourself fat for the holidays.

I moved away when my mother died quite suddenly. Up rooted myself from Ireland to eastern Canada when I was 18 and then onto the west. I did not have anything to stay for and oddly enough I felt totally at home in Canada only from the point of view that it was no longer stiffling, as you said it is a sense of freedom. I have gone back to visit what is left of my family over the years but it has been for a limited time period. They wanted me to move back to Ireland after I had gone through a nasty divorce, no way, I'd rather sit here on my own than try to explain any further who I am.

I did come across a friend's family wo welcomed me as a daughter when I was in my twenties and that was a really nice thing to experience. So you can feel part of another family more so than your own.

Long story and bad history make for a very non-existent relationship on my dad's side of the family. My mom's side of the family is very socially awkward, so relationships there are somewhat difficult as well.

Fortunately, I don't mind having limited attachments to others

I can quite relate to that.
Maybe it has gotten better (or I'm better now at ignoring it).
I suppose I'm not that easy to talk to.

I know I'm going to get hell for this, but are you sure you want them in your life? I tried for years and kept being told you must do whatever necessary to stay in touch with your family, no matter how badly they treat you.

One day they just went too far and to my surprise my life only got better since I don't see them any more.

You could also try to see them less/back off for a while and see if they try to reach to you.

I can't help but feeling you don't deserve this pain.

If you are going to hell for it, I am too

I also tried for years to salvage my relationship with my father because societal cues told me that only bad children do not speak to or have relationships with their parents (completely false, I might add). However, in 2001 I stopped speaking to him because I realized that the relationship was doing me more damage emotionally than good. Since breaking the relationship off, I've been much, much happier and healthier.

I meant "getting hell" from other posters for attacking the sanctity of family values . I don't think I'll go to hell for not speaking to my very abusive father.



I'm very glad you found peace and healing, you deserve to be happy and loved.

I feel that way a lot. I'm not really ignored by my family in general but its apparent i just don't fit in. I'm an only child but my dad remarried, so I have a step sister. But other than that its just me for my parents. I have a pretty good relationship with both so thats not really an issue. When I'm with either side of my family at like some group event, pretty much no one talks to me. Whether it's dinner with my mom's family or my dad's its the same story, i'm pretty much ignored. I don't think this is out of malice, but they just overlook me. No one really asks how i am doing or whats new.

But the bigger problem is that I just do not fit in with my family. A good example would be when I went to my Nana's (my dad's mom) family reunion a few years ago. I made the mistake of saying something I thought. It was about how I never thought about my nana as a sister or an aunt and that she meant different things to these people. And my stepmom and step sister kinda snapped at me. Like I was so self involved to think she was only my nana. It hurt what they said. Like I was just saying my observation and they got on my case for no reason.

There are more examples but that one always stuck in my mind.

I have a pretty good relationship with my family but they are much more religious than I am, hold different political views, live a completely different lifestyle and in a completely different mentality than I do so I feel pretty isolated when I'm among them.

Well I know I'm not part of my family because my mother thinks my symptoms are caused by demons and Satan created me (she is fundamentalist Southern Baptist; a lot of them think like her) and my dad calls me a mistake and then in the next breath praises my NT sister. They would hit me because they think that will make the demons go away, and do things like force me on my knees and yell that god hates me and I should pray for my soul.

I don't talk to them anymore. They never acknowledged my existence anyway unless they wanted to borrow money or something.

Doctor Bashir is a gentically enhanced Aspie super genius doctor. (perhaps they finally found our secrete? Anyways, he was among a group of Super mutants... however for one in their family a girl who was mute the genetic mechanications didn't work. They decided to give their "sister", the gift of speech. But found out that she didn't fit in the group, as they were used to her not talking, and couldn't find ways to interegrate her and her brilliance into their projects.

I feel like this perpetually. So I decided to say screw it and form my own world, my own expresions. My own faction in the universe. My own "imaginary" exisistential country fantasy, which unfortunatly has become so REAL in my mind. I wonder if I can qualify for disability for dementia or something now? But this fantasy has taken on a life of it's own, and I can't dismantle it. So Intergrated it into my shell, my bubble. and no I'm not coming out. To what? Nukes? war? serial killers, Sexual felons, sexual predators of children, pollution of land, air, and water with food? intollerance, and dramatic infant drama? However I am very fond of granting very close people visas and Ambassador regards to my "world", which is even more confusing and backwards than the people's republic of China.

Anyways, I feel that I am a visitor on this planet, a strange strange planet, and I'm an anthropoligist studying these humans. And what I see, quite frankly gives me the freak outs. however what I also observe is humans are capable of beautyful things.But I'm so ready to shed this human skin, to evolve into a new being, a mutant in 2012, ala Shadowrun-Requrium Masqurade, perhaps I am an Alien star seed and I get to be recalled. or perhaps I have to finish this mission on Earth, as a human. but know I know I'm not of this family. That I'm just a visitor a changling, a Cosmic Fullbright student.....Or I'm just doing my Gap year on this primitive 3rd world-world trying to upgrade it to meet the standards of more affluent planets.

Actually, I seriously considered breaking all contact with them a few years ago, when I moved abroad. Things had been a lot worse for a long time before that and I was fed up. The only thing that stopped me was that I had a good relationship with my sister and I know she loves me, but she also loves our whole family. I didn't want to break contact with her, but I also didn't want to hurt her or put her on the spot by refusing to have anything to do with the rest of the family. With all of them being so tight knit, I knew it would be hard to keep contact with her while ignoring the others.

I reduced contact with my family very much though, to the point of just exchanging a few e-mails per year and maybe one phone call per year. At first they kind of panicked and started missing me, because when I was gone they started noticing all the things I had been doing for them. With time they got used to it though and stopped noticing. I moved back to my home country a few years later and at first they showed some interest, but then things got back to the same old exclusion.

Almost a year ago I stepped back and reduced contact with them in a subtle way, to see their reaction and to see if something would change, but they didn't seem to even notice or try to increase contact again.

OMG...I find this all so very sad!! ! I have a 15 year old Aspie and I hope he NEVER feels this way. He likes to seclude himself in his room and we drag him out and make him participate in family things whether it's watching a movie together, family game night or whatever. I know he's a teen and he has 2 little brothers 9 and 6 and the 6 year old is PARTICULARLY annoying and when I was a teen I just wanted to lock myself in my room and all day and be left alone too. But we go out of our way to involve him and talk to him and I always tell him "you're part of this family whether you like it or not. We're not a family of 4, we're a family of 5!" I know he HATES hearing it but I want to drill that into his head. Even when he tries to get up from the dinner table early I tell him to sit down because it's the only chance I get to talk to him. We always ask how school was, did anything interesting happen. He really only likes to talk about the latest book he's reading and that's fine. I'll talk to him about the one I'm reading.

I hope by doing this my son will never feel like you guys do. It's terrible that your families treat you this way. If they have a family member with AS they should educate themselves about it and learn how to engage the person rather than push them away because they don't like to deal with them or find them boring or whatever the case may be. That's AWFUL!! ! Please tell me I'm doing the right thing by my son.

Have any of you ever confronted your families about this? If you're not good at communicating verbally, have you ever thought of writing a letter to them? I mean, if they treat you like crap, that's one thing. But if it's just miscommunication or they don't know HOW to communicate with you, maybe you should write to them and let them know how you feel and that they could make some effort to learn how to better communicate with you. Just a thought.

You sound like a really good mom.

From what you said it sounds like you are doing a good job trying to keep him involved. At the very least your are letting him know how much he means because you want him around for those family times.

But remember that aspies in particular need that "sulky I want to be alone in my room" time so that we can just chill. lol