Have you ever escaped your family?

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Yes, though I should have gotten away much sooner and suffered a great deal more mental and emotional damage because I didn't. They only needed me always to be there for them, being the oldest of my siblings, and that way have only ever bled me dry, as human consideration, compassion and caring goes. Finally I have made the trasition, putting their needs aside, and have closed the door on all of it entirely. The emotional attachments are real but the cost has been much too high. It's never good to care about people who don't have any real capacity to care in return.

Good decision OP

I did it 6 months ago but not with the whole family. I personally find this thread very supportive, didn't know there were quite a few of you who had the same experience. Should have done it a long time ago but still feels guilty sometimes. It was the right thing to do

I know exactly what you're saying Merle. I used to live in the New England area for more than a decade but got swindled into coming here. Very bad mistake and is the majority of the problems I'm experiencing right now. I'm 'from here' and knew better. I will get back home again, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Distance is key. Thanks

I've tried to escape from them. Funny, but when I need them, they don't ever want to help me. However, when they need help, I jump to help them. Totally crazy after all the pain they caused me. I must be nuts!

I understand how you feel.

It doesn't surprise me when they ask for my help. However, it never ceases to amaze me that they expect it. When I needed their help - nothing much, just a mailing address and a place to sleep - they all turned me away. I suppose it was for the best, since I soon learned what it really means to fend for myself. The thing is, I got so good at it that I don't help from my relatives any more.

Somehow, their efforts to elicit help from me resemble someone trying to draw money from an account that they closed out years ago. The emotional investment just isn't there any more.

I was really close to my parents when I was growing up. My father never had much to do with his siblings, eventhough they all live within a 2 mile radius, I think that happened after he married my mother (she's native, there was a little bit of racism back then). Although I was close to my mother, I was not fond of her siblings (I was my parents only child- although my father had 4 children from his previous marriage), they took advantage of my family and well of the government. My mother was the only of 7 siblings that made a decent life for herself, supported herself financially, on her own, married and remained married, rather happily. When she passed away 10 years ago I cut all ties with her family, in order to save my sanity, so its just me and my father now and although we have our moments (we can't always agree on everything afterall), we get along for the most part.

Someone sent me their story, and with their consent, i am posting it Anonymously:

I went to Los Angeles without telling anyone in my family. That’s from New York to LA. I was about 24 at the time; that’s in 1980; but I had my first wife with me when l left; she was a Space Cadet; but her IQ was very high. I got the first job I applied for. .But it was in exchange for rent, in other words, no money. My mother is a Narcissist by the way, my father, I don’t know what he was; just not normal, also very high IQ. My first wife decided that she was “young and want to live” her life. In other words, she wanted to screw every man she could get her hands on; at least that’s what she said, but, thinking back on it I think, she just wanted to get high, that’s all; I don’t think even she knew that. I hate drugs. I like liquor but I CANNOT handle drugs for some reason. Maybe that was the whole problem. Please do not post this. Too much detail. Or maybe you should; without the detail; might be useful to someone, someday. You decide. Good luck.

Yes! I managed to escape my family though it was rather late in my life at age 28. As stupid as it sounds I ran away from home as I was living with an overprotective father and had a psycho mother in another town to boot. I moved 2000 miles away.

My advice to you is when you get to the new town immediately sign up with every temp agency in town as they can find you work when no one else can and it tends to pay better. A temp agency helped get my foot in the door at a top company & I ended up permanently employed. Be strong and determined that you can do it and then you will!

Mentally

Ever since I was little my parents continuously worked, so I barely saw them.
So it was my older adopted brother and basically a Nanny all the time.

Once I was old enough, the Nanny left and then it was me and my adopted brother.

I now currently live in the same house, but with my girlfriend and my cousin.
My brother left, and my parents live 3 hours away.

I guess that's escaping, in a sense.

I have always had a strange relationship with my family. I'm the weird one and I've always been told that I'm the weird one. I've been introduced as the weird sister by my siblings for always.

I've managed to keep the people in my family that I care about and who are accepting close to me. The others I just did with. We've had a huge moment of rift in my family caused by my ex husband and it's feeling like it might possibly never right itself. However, my mother has managed to come off as extremely supportive in the whole mess. The rest of my family has kinna forced me into seclusion from them, again.

I had lost touch with them for a lot of years because of my ex and put together a lot of things about myself in the course of that path. However, I think that this recent rift has shown a lot of true colours that I wasn't able to see when I was a kid and still had those rose coloured blinders on. I think that I have a better idea of what things are really all about now, and I can guess people's motivations with a lot more accuracy. so, it makes things with family seem a lot clearer.

The problem with families, I think, becomes that we have this preconceived notion of what families are supposed to be, and our families usually don't fit that story. It's a real contradiction that we can't usually reconcile, I think. I notice that it's left a rather bad taste in a lot of our mouths for the whole scenario. I just fall back and my all time favourite saying, "We all believe what makes our world a better place." By the same token, when we become adults, we all make our worlds places where we can live with some degree of comfortableness and without too much conflict and strife.

I realize that I'm bumping a really old thread....but this thread is so worthwhile, and I see a lot of wisdom scattered through these stories. I have cut off contact with most of my family - the main person I am trying to escape is my father. Sadly, I have cut off contact with most other relatives in order to just maintain as much distance as possible from my father, because they are a strongly connected social web and don't respect privacy so much - anything I say can and will get back to my dad. I feel bad on the one hand, because it makes him sad. But my dad has always been very controlling, sneaky, and manipulative - also emotionally and verbally abusive. He broke my mother's mental and physical health. I experience so much added stress and strain with him, and there is no peace in our relationships because he doesn't know how to respect others, even minimally - others are like objects for him to manipulate, not because he's a jerk on purpose, but I think he lacks the ability to be different, or maybe he lost it, or never developed it. I feel I am doing what is necessary for my well-being on so many levels, to be able to get on with and live my own life rather than constantly controlled by him, and I saw what happened to my mother when she didn't do that. Reading this thread helps, because it reinforces my feeling that I am actually doing what I need to as a responsible adult to take care of myself, despite the confusing mixed message I know I would get from my relatives and my father that I am being a very irresponsible and horrible daughter. I am breaking the cycle. When I think of the possibility of having a child and having my father trying to take over her life and filling her head with all of those toxic thoughts and beliefs - I just can't in good conscience do that. When I thought about sending cards on his birthday or father's day, I start having nightmares about him from days before those dates, so I have stopped the idea of even sending them - also, I know full well that he would only use it as an excuse to continue his obsessiveness. He still sends me letters and leaves phone messages trying to get me to call back - it reminds me of an abusive ex-boyfriend I had who used to try saying anything to get me to go back, and then the emotional and verbal abuse and extreme control would begin again. I'm breaking the cycle. I'm doing what's good for me, even if there are those in the world who think that that is selfish, and that what I am doing is bad. I want to be reasonably happy and free.....I don't want to live my whole life under my father's toxic, suffocating, manipulative and controlling, and incredibly dark shadow - I don't want to draw my husband or any future children into it - he can't even cope with himself, he's not happy. He needs to go get help, but he refuses, because he thinks there's nothing wrong with him, only everyone else. The people who tolerate him get used and exploited so much - but I guess those are the "good" people. It is hard to get your parents' voices out of your head, out of your idea of reality. I hope I am doing the right thing - it is definitely my best attempt.