It's hard to be the black sheep in a family, and these people reveal just hard it is on them and why they are so disliked by the rest of their family
Second Fiddle To His Sister
“My family has an obsession with the oldest child. I realized it was unfair and started talking back to them as a teenager. They treated me worse and acted like their dislike of me was my fault. I have my bachelor’s degree and a house. My sister lives with my mom and my other sister in an apartment, she works at a daycare, had a baby with a loser, yet I’m still despised.”
A Man Finds A Girl And His Family Resents Him
“I lived for years in what I found out to be an abusive household and not a normal family. Anytime I tried to stand up for myself I got shot down. I don’t have any money because we lived 40 minutes from the nearest town, and nobody would drive me in for job interviews. When I got my first girlfriend at 17, my family were nice to her but after a while used her for money when she moved in with us. As soon as I got my driver’s license, we both left and haven’t looked back. Although we are currently living out of a car on loan from my grandparents and live off bread and tinned food, I am happier than I’ve ever been, and my girlfriend proposed to me, so when we sort all this out we are getting married!”
Everything Changes In One Moment
“I was the first person in my family to go to college, go to graduate school, or have a chance to get out of the, well, rut of our normal existence.
My younger cousins were told, ‘You need to be like (me). He’s going places.’ I’d get phone calls and e-mails from them to talk about their problems, help them with homework, and stuff like that. They even applied for the school I went to because ‘I want to be like you,’ nonsense. My older cousins – even one aunt – would call me for advice on their breakups or divorce. One called me for legal advice once when he got caught doing some stupid stuff.
At my graduation, there were probably 50 people who came from all across the country. They were proud, you know? Someone’s finally a success.
Then they found out I was an addict and that I sold substances to pay for school. It’s not like my story is rare. Almost overnight, the phone calls and e-mails stopped. Almost everyone unfriended me on Facebook. The only people who’d still talk to me were my mom, dad, and grandmother.
At my father’s funeral, none of them would talk to me or even really look at me.”
A Mom And A Sister Gang Up
“I’m the black sheep of my immediate family because I am apparently the only sane one. My sister is a carbon copy of my mom, which is not a good thing in the slightest. They are both extreme hypochondriacs, and both have anxiety disorders that they refuse to treat with traditional medicine. And they both claim to have ‘gluten intolerance although neither of them is willing to go to a doctor and actually be tested for celiac.
They also fight constantly. They are both insanely difficult to deal with, and thus, can’t handle each other. They involve me in their fights, and somehow, whatever it is they are fighting about ends up being my fault.
Here is a story of the most recent time:
My parents recently went on a two-week vacation. While they were gone, they asked my sister to take care of their dog and four cats. The condition my mom asked for was that my sister stay at the house with the dog. She agreed to this, but the second they left town, she reneged on that part of the deal. Now, unfortunately, due to some circumstances beyond my control, I also live in this house. So, in the evening, when I was home because I have nowhere better to be, and my mom couldn’t get a hold of my sister on the phone, she would call me and ask to talk to her. Well, sorry, you can’t, because she’s not here. That happened enough times that it became pretty obvious that she wasn’t staying at the house.
My mom gets back from vacation and chews her out. It escalates, and they are both angry at each other, but SOMEHOW they are both angrier at me. I’m getting raging texts from my mom about how I should have done something about it. My sister is now also angrily texting me that I should have covered for her. Neither one of them wants to take responsibility for the situation, so naturally, they’re casting blame on me, even though I had nothing to do with it. To top it all off, I rely on my sister to babysit my daughter two days a week. The fight happened over the weekend, and she decided she was not going to show up to babysit Monday. She informed me of this ON MONDAY MORNING! This happened last week. They have both since made up. They are both still pissed at me. My sister has been fired from her babysitting position, due to thankfully finding a suitable replacement, and I’m glad for my daughter to have a better influence around anyway, so that part worked out just fine.
My dad, the only other sane person, manages to stay out of it somehow.”
A Angry Family Is Bitter At A Woman
“I am the most despised member of my family. I would like to think that it’s them and not me, but I question that line of thinking.
My parents were very abusive but just to me, not my two sisters. My father beat the living crap out of me. He offed himself when I was 12 years old, but my mother still hates me. She more or less abandoned me when my father died, and has devoted her life to my oldest sister, Jennifer.
I won’t go into details, but my mother’s treatment of me has hurt far worse than any of the abuse I suffered from my father. Jennifer despises me in a way that I’ve never seen in anyone else. She is a terrible person. She has put two men away on false assault charges, traded her second child for a computer, is abusive to her children, and her Craigslist hookups have assaulted her children. At one point, they were in foster care, and I tried to adopt them. She got them back and moved, and has hated me since.
My extended relatives on both sides of my family hate me. My mother’s side has hated me my entire life, and I’ve never been sure why. They would take my cousins and my sisters on trips or vacation, and I would be left behind. They were outwardly hostile to me, and I was frequently scapegoated for just about everything. It was always strange to me, as I’ve never seen a reason for it. My father’s family hated me for my religion (my father converted to the LDS faith to marry my mother). When I invited my grandfather to my wedding, he taped a penny to a card and told me to screw off. I have since left that religion, but it’s too late now.
I do happen to have a great relationship with my twin sister. She is the only one.”
An Outcast From The Start
“I truly do not know why I am so despised. When I was born, my parents resented me on impact. I was a mistake, a fact they routinely remind me of to this day. They have treated me poorly my entire life and convinced everyone else in my family that I am a monster, an outcast.
I was confined to the basement from the start. There are certain rooms in the house I am not allowed to enter. I have a list of 10 rules I’ve had to abide by for as long as I can remember, rules as crazy as telling me what I can and cannot talk to my own parents about. There is a rewards system where I am basically given money and privileges if I stay out of their hair enough.
My parents have literally tortured me for stepping out of line too much. I am given meals separate from everyone else. There have been days, weeks, or even months where they cut the power to the basement as punishment. I have pooped in a bucket more times than I am proud to admit. I mean, I sneak out all the time and have had jobs and friends and stuff here and there, I still managed to go to school and all that, but they make me feel worthless and treat my sister like gold.
My life is hard and troublesome and I want to die every day and they have broken me to the point that I cannot hold a job or a friendship because I have no idea how much of their hatred of me is justified. I have no idea how much of myself I can give to others. I go all out or clam up. I lash out online because it is the only place I have power. I am a disaster.”
Not As Religious As The Rest Of Them
“I grew up in a Duggar type family. I ended up fairly normal. I’m the black sheep because my entire family thinks I only make decisions to spite them. According to them, I married an immigrant because I hate America. I went to college because I think I’m smarter than everybody. I own a pit bull because my parents said they were bad. I’m an atheist just to hurt them. I moved away solely because they didn’t want me to. I decided to only have few children than them. My mother called me after we hadn’t spoken for a year, and said she wanted a relationship with me, as long as I could stop being so controversial. It’s now been two years since that conversation.”
Nothing More Than A Possession.
“I’m the only one in my family to go to college and actually finish the course load. I studied media, which my parents didn’t fully approve of because they thought it wasn’t practical or match my interests, which, to this day, still consists of films. I’m bi, but I’m not open about it because of other reasons. However, because of my extremely low self-esteem and previous bad experiences with men and women, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever reproduce, unlike my brother, who gave my parents 4 grandchildren. I’m autistic, to a degree. As a result, my father verbally abuses me over every minor thing, but when faced with logic, will accuse me of starting the argument that he initiated. Basically, he sees me nothing more than a lowly possession that should know it’s placed. I’ve also suffered from depression and suicidal episodes. Because I’m the only family member whose depression has ever been made public, I’m constantly shamed for it. My dad will even go as low as laughing and joking about it, but don’t dare do the same with his sister/my aunt who killed herself because that’s different. I’m not so much anymore, but I was the only remotely religious person in my family. This caused endless amounts of arguments.”
Too Politically Correct For One Family
“Last year I was asked to leave the table during Christmas brunch. After listening to an hour of great conversation in which my family deemed all ‘Indians’ as lazy citizens who abuse the social security net, and made a dozen and five fat jokes about anyone in the community who weighs over 160 pounds, I politely asked that they restrain from making a commentary on peoples lives which they know nothing about, and social issues on which they are uninformed and uneducated. I was subsequently asked to leave the table. I am the black sheep of my family because time and time again I am deemed ‘rude, inconsiderate, immature, angry, hateful, insane, snobby’ because I refuse to support my family in their racist and discriminatory opinions.”
Nothing Is Good Enough
“I’m black sheep. My older sister was always an overachiever in school and always went to church. I realized early on that wasn’t me and didn’t hide it.
I didn’t think college was for me but got forced to go, and got myself into debt before dropping out. Now my parents are friends with my in-laws and whenever the past is brought up, they act like they were always there and willing to help. That wasn’t the case, I had some hard years in my early 20s.
My sister hasn’t worked a day in her life. She got married early like my parents and has a kid. They let her live in their house for four months with her dog and kid while her $300,000 house was being built to ‘save money.’
My sister didn’t want to come to my wedding in Mexico because it was too expensive, but after my parents offered to pay, they came. They didn’t get us a gift, and my parents sided with her saying they just had a kid. Six months later, they broke ground on this house.
They won’t watch my dog or let him in their house because he’s too big (Great Dane) even though he is well behaved doesn’t make a noise and just sleeps. But my sister’s yapping little psycho lived there.
I have a good job and pay for everything, but my sister is still the golden child and I’m the jerk who doesn’t ‘spend time’ with the family.
It took awhile for me to realize the majority of stress in my life was caused by this toxic relationship and I’d rather live a happy life with my wife and her family.
They just see me as the jerk who doesn’t care about anyone. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. They just never accepted the life I chose and don’t see me for who I’ve become; rather they continue to try and mold me into what they wanted me to be.”
The Sheep That Strayed From The Flock
“I come from a family of staunch Roman Catholics. They weren’t always that way, and as a matter of fact, all my childhood memories are of us as a family attending church quite casually. We were the part-time Catholics that went to mass during special occasions.
Then my father’s illness struck. He was 40 when he was first diagnosed with heart disease and diabetes. To be honest, not the worst thing in the world considering how much they could do to control both once it had been identified. Two years and many failed treatments later, he would be diagnosed with Lupus and Thalassemia. It was around this time that he went for his first triple bypass, and came out of it by the skin of his teeth or, by the Grace of God according to everyone else in my family.
As you might have guessed I am not Catholic. I was born and raised Catholic. Baptized, confirmed, the whole nine yards. Around the time of my father’s diagnosis, my entire family swung toward religion. I didn’t. I tried to, honestly, I did. I worked for the church at the front counter as a receptionist on weekends, and I was as engaged and involved with the community as any of the other parishioners. It was due to this job that I began to lose my faith.
I witnessed the behind the scenes lives of priests, and this forever tarnished my view of them as holy men. I could no longer see them as icons of the faith, but more as flawed people. The persona they adopted when they stepped out into the pulpit became a thing I resented; I even hated it.
This is the point at which I should clear up the question some may be wondering. Was I assaulted or touched or anything of that sort: no. Never saw nor heard anything of that in our church. This isn’t that type of ‘I’m not Catholic’ story. The more distant I grew from the faith the closer my family grew with it. My brother went off to the seminary and began studying to become a priest. My youngest brother wanted to follow in his footsteps. My parents praised him and held him aloft as their most sacred child. Me? I literally lived in the basement and kept to myself. I was spoken to when necessary, but for the most part, my growing lack of faith put me on the outside of the family unit.
I attempted to breach the topic on several occasions. Spoke about how I felt, about what I thought. This only ever led to explosive arguments. I ran away from home once or twice because that’s what kids do right? Didn’t get me anywhere. I always came back within 24 hours. Guess that Catholic guilt had been well-rooted in my heart. I couldn’t hurt them regardless of how much they hurt me.Every conversation revolved around the church, the church community, my brothers and how they were going off to do God’s work. I simply disappeared. I had no other choice. I permanently left home at 24. By that time I had scraped together enough money to get a place of my own. How I wasn’t kicked out of the house before then is beyond me.
The really sad thing is that I’ve since been able to sit down and talk to my mother. My father is too far gone, the Lupus having robbed him of most his mental faculties. She talks to me about how we need to be a family in the afterlife, and how sad she is that she won’t see me in paradise. I tell her about how I’ve tried to return to the faith, but every church I look at is just a building, every priest just a person. There was something divine there once, it was warm and comforting. It just isn’t anymore.
I don’t think I will ever return to a structured religion. Instead, I live my life according to a moral code that loosely reflects Catholicism. I try to do good for others when I can, I won’t kill, or steal, or cheat, or lie (when I can avoid it), and I do believe there is a greater power somewhere up there. I don’t believe that I have the capability to understand what that power is and choose to not name it. I have found myself praying once or twice, but they are just words offered to no one in particular.
My religious views maintain my ‘Black Sheep’ status, and though my parents will celebrate and acknowledge aspects of my life, they are always distant. I am always the outsider. It is incredibly strange to return to the home you grew up in and not feel welcome. To hardly recognize the place or the people within.”
A Man Isn’t Like Because Of His Lifestyle
“I’m a 29-year-old, autistic gay guy who stays at home playing house instead of getting a real job. My engineer husband does all the real work, even though if I tried hard enough I could overcome my disability, get my GED, skip off to college and accrue debt instead of wasting all my husbands money on remodeling our house so that we can foster older kids who are just going to stab us in our privates and run off with our Apple products.”
A Family That Expects Trips To Church
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“In my case, it seems to be hereditary.
My family all lives in central Texas. They’re conservative Christians with very traditional ideas about gender roles. My mother became the black sheep when she was still a teenager by doing bad things and partying, and then marrying my dad, who had just gotten out of prison at the time. Most of my other family works in law enforcement, either as police or police dispatchers.
Growing up, we didn’t spend much time with the family because of this. As a kid, I didn’t understand why my relatives didn’t seem to like me, but I think most of it was just because I was my mother’s child. It didn’t help, I’m sure, that I was bookish and asked a lot of questions in a family that prided faith over education.
Now, I’m what most folks would consider successful – I have two college degrees and a good job in my field, and I’m independent financially. I’m the only person in my family to even go to college, and I actually went more with the grain than they expected and decided to work in law enforcement. But I lean liberal in politics and even worse, I don’t go to church anymore.
Now I see my extended family maybe once a year, and when I do all I hear about from them is how I’m going to hell.”
A Crazy Internet Girlfriend Makes Him The Outcast
“My parents always viewed me as having a video game addiction. Everything took a turn for the worse when I met a girl while playing World of Warcraft. After some time of virtual saying nothing, I decided it was time to go get her. Not just to meet her, mind you. Get her.
I told this to my parents, who proceeded to beg me not to; up to this point, they didn’t believe me, to begin with. So my dad caves and decides to drive with me the 750 miles to California to go pick her up. So we get her, bring her back to my home state, and the excrement basically hits the fan. I get kicked out of the house because they don’t want me and her under the same roof. We get married because my family doesn’t believe in intercourse outside of marriage. We get our own apartment the same day we get kicked out and married.
My wife is difficult to deal with on the best days, but we’ve been married now almost 10 years, and have two kids together. My family will never forgive me for ruining their lives with my crazy internet girlfriend. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Nothing Impresses His Family
“For the life of me, I’ll never understand why I’m the black sheep of my family. I think it’s because I’m the youngest, and I’m not really sure if I was planned or not. I was always the odd one out on everything. My dad would take my brother hunting, and my mom would do girly things with my sister, and I was either left out or ended up being the tag along. I ended up being really into music and arts, but that didn’t impress my parents so I let go of that for a while.
In high school, my sister was the Homecoming Queen and my brother was in the top of his graduating class. I was somewhat athletic but was by no means good at sports. My brother was better than me at sports, school, and was getting letters from Harvard and Yale. My sister was pretty and getting calls for modeling classes. So on top of being the odd one out, I was pretty much in everyone’s shadow for about 18 years. I was really good at track and went to state, but decided to play lacrosse and football because, in my parent’s eyes, those were actual sports, unlike track.
In college, I said screw it, I’m never going to impress them, so I stopped trying and decided to do my own thing. I ended up getting a degree in molecular biology. I was really involved in research, but for whatever reason, my parents didn’t understand that and thought I was making narcotics, so they stopped talking to me for a while. I also got really into art and music in college, and basically became a hipster. My sister almost flunked out of college and my brother went back to college to get a second degree, and I got a job doing biomedical research at a top-tier facility.
Next year I’m going to apply to Ph.D. programs, but to this day I’m still the odd one out. My parents are super-conservative, climate change deniers who work in law enforcement and I’m an artsy free spirit type who does scientific research.”
Out Of Step With The Rest Of His Family
“I am the black sheep because I have the type of Pro-Black/We wuz kings/Non-GMO/no vaccines girlfriends in a family that isn’t Pro-black/no vaccines.
Plus a lot of my mother’s views are very skewed, and as a result, my siblings feeding into that nonsense and believing mothers can’t be wrong. Not even a few weeks ago my mom was trying to tell me that maggots grew from the bacteria that occurred in the mold. In 2010, she asked ‘If evolution is real then why are there still monkeys?’ Nonsense.
When I try to correct her all she does is say I’m ‘disrespecting her authority’ and ‘Why do you always have to oppose everything I say?’ BECAUSE YOU’RE WRONG.
One of the main reasons my family doesn’t like me is because of a chain reaction of events;
1) Dad died before I was born
2) Grandad serves as a semi-replacement
3) He’s very wealthy and bought me a lot of stuff when I was younger.
As a result, my siblings will get angry when he buys me something and they don’t get it because they don’t have their own fathers to get them anything. Then every once in a while I catch trouble from them, complaining about how I get everything I want.
I don’t know why they think this either, they think it’s so cool to be ‘ghetto.’ I don’t get it. My mom acts on emotion a lot and recently she almost threw some liquid out the window on some lady’s car for cutting her off, before I said ‘I’ve still got stuff in there.’ Cue me getting cussed out for ‘wanting to avoid conflict.’ What kind of maniac seeks out conflict?
I just don’t know what to do anymore, I’m stuck between staying with my mom and moving to Atlanta, and moving in with my grandad and staying in Ohio.”