The age-old concept of family usually suggests that you should stick by your kin through thick and thin... that's just how a family is supposed to work. It's not how it always goes, though. Sometimes, people do unforgivable things, refuse to change, and become completely impossible to love.
That's when you've got to say goodbye, just like the people here.
They Didn’t Protect Her
“Cut my older brother out of my life, he beat me and assaulted me for years (10+). Even when I told my parents about it when I was 8 and again when I was 12 they did nothing about it, basically saying that he ‘didn’t understand what he was doing’ and even convinced them that I WANTED him to do it to me.
He lives in a different state now but I’ll never forgive my parents for not protecting me and frankly, as soon as I have the financial means to move out of their house, I doubt I’ll have much of a relationship with them either.”
She Chose To Have Cancer
“My aunt was butthurt that my dad was not cheating on my mum like her husband was on her, so she started spreading vicious rumours about him at my great grandfather’s funeral.
This is the woman who, when she found a cancerous mole on her skin, decided not to have it removed because she could then play the ‘how could my husband cheat on poor old me when I have cancer’ card. She could have very easily not have cancer and be fine, but she’s is an absolutely awful person.”
Not How Nana Should Act
“My Nana was just always so vindictive. When I was in middle school and high school, she’d make fun of my acne and say I was getting fat. Made me feel really self-conscious and liked to say who her ‘favorite grandchildren’ were. If I disagreed with anything she said, she’d say she liked me less and would get my cousins expensive gifts. When my parents got divorced cause my dad’s numerous affairs, I was furious, sided with my mom and then my nana just stopped talking to me for a period as she thought 19-year-old me should apologize to my dad for not keeping his junk in his pants. What made me realize she was the worst person was when she’d come to town to visit my cousins, she’d take my registered uncle with her – he literally was in prison for years for fondling a toddler girl. She took him to my cousin’s wedding, who has 2 young kids. Apparently, screw the law in her eyes, cause I’m pretty sure he couldn’t leave the city he was in.”
Breaking The Cycle Of Abuse
“I’ve never had a healthy or good relationship with my mom. She’s always been verbally and emotionally abusive, and when I was younger, physically. When I was 18, I got pregnant and I left. I left after an instance of her shoving me up against a window and beating me while I was six months pregnant. I just curled up into a ball, protecting my stomach, thinking, ‘I will never come back here.’ I managed to get away and didn’t come back…for a while.
Throughout the years, I would cut her out and inevitably let her back in again. My mom had a rough upbringing and I have always been an overly compassionate person who definitely has let more than a few people take advantage of me. She grew up poor in Boston with eight brothers and sisters, all with different dads. Her mother didn’t work, cook, or even tell my mom that she loved her. Ever. There was assault and abuse. Half of her siblings are dead from substance abuse. She got out of there and never looked back. Went to college at night. Got a career. She was powerful and successful and I have memories of being very young and falling asleep in her lap while she would stay until midnight or later working. I remember the perfume she wore. I have few, but strong fond memories of her. But I have far more bad ones.
There have been knives thrown at me for putting the butter knives where the steak knives belong, I have been thrown across the living room for not putting a movie back in the case, slapped for not folding a blanket correctly.
As I raised my son on my own, my mother’s lack of control became more obvious. She quit her job and turned to substances even more heavily than she had been. My stepfather left her. One minute, my mother could be telling me on the phone, ‘You are such a good mom, I’m so proud of you,’ which would make the kid in me’s heart soar. But when I would try to gently approach the subject that when she was watching my son for 12 hours, she needed to feed him more than crackers and chocolate milk, he needed real food, she would scream and swear at me, ‘You piece of garbage! You’re an awful mother, your son is scared of you, that’s the only reason he kisses you and tells he loves you, because he’s scared of you. He’s going to grow up to hate you. I wish I had never had you.’
I would forgive her eventually, and then it would happen again when I ask her not to give my son candy after 9 pm.
Eventually, I married my childhood sweetheart and moved to another state. I was no longer interested in a relationship with my mother, but my son did love her, and in her own way, she loved my son. I think she saw him as her second chance, so they FaceTime every weekend, and eventually, she dug her hooks right back into me. She was supposed to visit for Christmas and as we were talking about it, I put the phone down to ask my son to please keep down the noise in his room, as I had asked him to several times already. My mom said, ‘Why don’t you ever just let him be himself?’
I said, ‘Mom, I would really like not to argue with you. I’m raising my son how I see fit and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t constantly attack me about it so we could have a nice conversation.’
‘You ungrateful little brat. He’s afraid of you. You know that, right? Every hug he gives you is just out of fear of making you angry. He’s terrified of you. I’m done with you. You’re nothing and you’ll always be nothing. This is why no man loves you enough to stick around. Your husband will see. They all always see. You have no friends because no one can stand you. I’m ashamed to have you as my only daughter.’
I just hung up. My son heard it all and hugged me while I cried hysterically on my couch. My mom’s words get to me, because she is my mom. They have really messed me up in the past and I continue to let them do so. So I was done. It just clicked. I was done. Still, I think about how it isn’t her fault because she grew up in a terrible environment and didn’t learn how to love people properly, but I grew up with her and chose to take a different path. Everyone has choices. Everyone has paths. You can choose to be a victim of your circumstances, or you can rise up and say ‘Not good enough.’
That’s what I’ve tried to do with my son, and that is why I have cut her out. I am a human being deserving of love and respect and she has refused to acknowledge that for 26 years.
I cannot do this dance forever. I have a life to live.”
When Tragedy Strikes
“My brother was murdered recently under very odd circumstances. His car was found just inside our housing development, still running and in drive, but he was found about 100 yards away in the middle of the road. His wallet and cell phone were still sitting on the passenger seat of his car. It was initially called a hit and run, but it became pretty obvious that it was not as the investigation went on. Obviously, this was absolutely devastating to my immediate family, as we are all very close.
Here enters my addict aunt. As soon as she heard, she was calling us non-stop. I’m not talking two or three phone calls, it was more in the range of 100 per day for the first two days. When I finally got around to calling her back after dealing with the police and the funeral home and victims services and a million other time-sensitive issues, she asked about the services. I told her that she was welcome to come under the condition that she was sober. She was told verbally and in writing that if I got a single whiff of anything her breath or had the slightest indication that she was under the influence of anything that she would be removed immediately. She shows up. She’s absolutely wasted and making a complete spectacle of herself – screaming, crying in the bathroom, the whole shebang. She was removed.
A week after the services when everything has quieted down a bit, I get a message on Facebook from an obviously fake account. The message gave me my aunt’s login information for her Facebook and I am told that I need to read the messages that she is sending.
When I took a look, I saw 34 different messages to different people all about my brother. If it was just her being sad and expressing that, I wouldn’t have been bothered. It was the fact that she was lying about what happened to him that sent me over the edge. She was saying things like he had been dragged into the woods, beaten for nearly three hours with a rock to the face, sodomized, everything you could ever think of. She was telling all of these people that she had been there with my mother to identify the body, which was a complete lie, seeing as I was the one who had to ID my little brother.
Not only was she telling atrocious lies, but she was also possibly hindering an ongoing investigation into his death. The last thing that we needed then, or even now, was false information getting out there and taking away from the facts.
I confronted her about all of this and she denied it all completely. I told her that the messages had been sent to us in screenshots from her messenger so that she wouldn’t change her login information. She told me that if I didn’t care enough to tell her who had sent them to me, that I didn’t care enough about the situation to be mad at her. I sent her the exact screenshots that I had taken and she still had the audacity to tell me that she never said anything like that, then proceeded to turn the entire situation around on me, telling me that I was the reason that this had all happened.
Somehow, in her twisted mind, she decided that my brother was killed because of me. She threatened me, told me that she was going to tell everyone that I was the reason he was dead, all kinds of crazy stuff. In the end, we had to threaten legal action to get her to leave me alone, leave my mother alone, and to get her to just stay out of our lives.
To this day, I still have to monitor her Facebook and delete posts she makes trying to spread whatever false information she claims to get from our investigator who she has never spoken to. All of her actions have really messed us up in an incredibly difficult time. My mother actually told me that if she didn’t have my dad and me, that my aunt’s actions would have caused her to put a bullet through her skull.
I will never forgive this woman for what she has put my mother through.”
The Scheming And Stealing Uncle
“I do not speak to my uncle and hope never to see him again. Honestly, whenever his life is over, I don’t think I’d feel anything but relief. I would feel bad for my mom who is the only person I know of who will mourn for him. He mooched off my grandparents until the day they died.
For years, my grandma and mother would always ask me to keep the peace when he would do something terrible. When he tried to frame me for stealing my grandfather’s tools, he was the one stealing them, but I kept the peace. When he tried to blame any breakdown on a piece of my grandpa’s heavy equipment on me backing them out of the building, I kept the peace. When he broke into my grandpa’s old shop and stole a bunch of my tools and a brand new air compressor, I kept the peace. When he stole and then sold the truck I’d bought after a decade of dreaming, I kept the peace. When he tried to ruin my small business by sabotaging my equipment, I kept the peace.
When my grandma passed away, he showed up to her funeral in sweatpants and a wild shirt, even though she had bought him a suit for the event (she knew she didn’t have long). At the graveside, he cursed at the poor old man dying of cancer who painfully rode hundreds of miles just to fulfill my grandma’s last request of preaching her funeral. Why the cursing? The old guy refused to edit something my grandmother wrote to suit my uncle. I didn’t witness this or I probably would have shoved my dear old uncle in the grave.
While the estate was being settled, he stole everything he could get his hands on. He bullied and threatened my mother and aunt in an attempt to beat them out of their inheritances. Mom talked me into keeping the peace over that, too.
I kept the peace until the day he forced his way into her home. Fortunately, she dialed 911 before he took the phone away from her. Sadly, she didn’t press charges. He repaid her kindness by passing word through a third party that he was going to murder her if he didn’t get his way. That’s when I refused to keep the peace.
My uncle was always a bit scared of my father and didn’t pull his crap on her while dad was alive. I cornered him one day for a little chat and let him know just how much like my old man I can be. I didn’t lay a finger on him and I won’t share the contents of that little chat, but suffice it to say, it worked.
I’m no tough guy, but he is a coward. He’s been very polite to my mother ever since. She’s chided me for holding a grudge, but honestly, I don’t think I am. Honestly, he really means nothing to me now. I’m not even angry anymore. I just got tired of letting him hurt my loved ones and myself.
He tried to play nice with me at my aunt’s funeral last year and I told him quietly to get his hand off me and go find someones else to buddy up to. He did.”
Goodbye Mother
“My mother tried to take my newborn son from the hospital, causing an entire lockdown of that part of the hospital. When I came home with my baby five days later, she started it up again and I told her to get out of my house. She refused, so I called the police, who came with weapons drawn, so that was fun. It was also the very last time I ever spoke to her. Even my grandparents didn’t speak to her for years because of this little stunt, and they were two of the most forgiving people in the world.
Why? Because we were fighting and ‘babies shouldn’t be around all this negativity.’
Why were we fighting? I’m glad you asked. After an extremely high-risk pregnancy, and in the middle of my very difficult, high-risk delivery, she informed my best friend that I didn’t know who my son’s father was, I was only with my boyfriend for his money, and she was going to tell the nurse to test my son for substances. When she visited me after my son was born, I told her how little I appreciated her antics, and she became furious that I brought it up.
In response to her allegations…I know who the father is. We were never married but we have both always been in our son’s life. He lives about a mile away from me. We attended each other’s weddings. It’s been a tough road, but my son is one incredible kid, so it’s worth it. I left that boyfriend for many reasons, including his terrible financial habits. They tested my son because she requested it, and it was negative – for everything.
What on earth did she think…I went through nine months of morning sickness, sky-high blood pressure, bed rest, crappy medications to prevent labor and keep my BP down, and stress tests every other day for four weeks, basically struggling to get my baby to a healthy weight before he’s born early, just to screw it up by taking illicit substances? Seriously? Pre-eclampsia can be fatal.
I was young when I had my son, but I wasn’t stupid.”
When The Family Thrives On Abuse
“I have cut all of my family members off, one by one, over a span of six years. Three sisters and my parents, for reference.
For me, it wasn’t really any last straw, more of just becoming healthier day by day after six years of consistent therapy and EMDR for PTSD. I come from a severely narcissistic family where my mother was the most unhealthy and I was the scapegoat for my family. One of my sisters was the golden child, that’s how classic NPD parents raise their children. She is severely co-dependent, especially with mom, since she’s the golden child and enables mom to no end. My parents are divorced and my father is extremely verbally and emotionally abusive. The two other sisters are emotionally and financially unstable with multiple affairs, lies after lies to manipulate others into giving them money for their addictions, fight after fight with others where it’s clear they’re angry at themselves, and I believe they are both undiagnosed bipolar.
The years of all of them bashing me behind my back, the manipulation, verbal, and emotional abuse have taken its toll, and it was a matter of time until I realized it was completely unfair and unhealthy for both my marriage and my health. I utilized boundaries with each of them since I started therapy, but no matter what, they bulldozed them. I no longer felt safe or happy around them.
In the past six years, I have cultivated healthy friendships and am married to an incredible and supportive man who would go to the ends of the earth to protect me. I guess in a sense, the last straw was finally realizing how unfair, abnormal, unhealthy, toxic and abusive all the relationships were.
No regrets at all. In fact, I wish I had done it sooner. We are now wanting kids soon and I am so glad I no longer have relationships with them, because I would never be comfortable with my children being around them, hearing the negativity and triangulation and the risk of repeating the cycle.
I’m proud I’ve broken the cycle. It’s been around for generations. Some of the most destructive people are often disguised as family.
It’s sad but I will not enable them anymore, and I’m a better person because of it.”
Secrets, Affairs, And Lies
“When my dad left my mom, he made a point to come and talk to me. He swore up and down that he wasn’t having an affair. I didn’t ask and wasn’t suspicious, but, unsurprisingly, he was having an affair. He sought me out just to lie to me about it.
For whatever reason, he was honest with my brother, though. He actually told him in advance that he was seeing someone else and would be leaving our mom. He swore my brother to secrecy. My brother kept it a secret for a few months before telling my mom and I. My mom didn’t keep it secret for long. When he was being particularly idiotic over divorce proceedings, she told him she knew. He was furious and called my brother to tell him he was a traitor. So I get two calls, one from my very upset mom, and one from my angry brother. I hear what my dad told them. I figure, in for a penny in for a pound, and call up my dad to tell him off.
Doesn’t go well. He tells me that I’m being manipulated. My mom is just a crazy addict and my brother is just very upset. My brother broke a promise to him, you see, and he’s acting out. What that promise is he can’t tell me, but certainly not the affair. No sir. He’s making that up, he just broke a totally different promise to him.
So I told my dad to go fly a kite and hung up. Haven’t spoken to him since. It’ll be six years in May. At first, I wasn’t talking to him because I was angry. Then it was because he was making me not talking to him all my fault. I was getting voicemails and emails saying I was emotionally abusive, and not talking to him spoke poorly of me as a man, and blah blah blah. After a few years, he realized insulting me isn’t going to work at all, so it became ‘Families break up, you should get over it.’ Forget that.
Past few years, I’ll get a few calls from him near his birthday, and near Father’s Day.
I don’t talk to him anymore because he is an extremely toxic person. My self-esteem skyrocketed when I cut him out of my life, and I have no desire to feed his narcissism. Unless I actually see a change with him, I have no desire to ever speak to him again. I’m not holding my breath, though.”
Parents Acting Out Their Rage
“I have almost cut my mother completely out of my life. When I was 12, my parents got a divorce and my mother moved my sister and myself from New York to Oklahoma. Shortly after being settled into my new home, my cousins bullied me – badly. They called me names, made fun of the fact that my parents got a divorce, and went as far as to let my pet hamsters loose into the backyard for a laugh. The hamsters died, as well as my cat, all thanks to them.
My grandfather even spouted out ‘Maybe you’re the reason why your parents got a divorce’ after I got into a verbal altercation with a cousin. He also down talked me for things everyone else was doing. For example, if my cousin put a dirty plate in the sink, it was no big deal. If I put a dirty plate in the sink, then it was a huge problem.
I told my mom and she barely took my side. I cut my grandfather and the cousins out of my life at that point. Barely talked to any of them, and if I had to, I only did it for the sake of peace. My mother always argued with me over the littlest things. When I wanted to be alone for a bit, she forced me to hang out with my cousins just to get me out of the house. After an argument, she looked at me and said ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bothered having kids.’ I never felt so miserable.
When I talked to my father on the phone or went to see him when he came down for a visit, my mother would trash talk him in front of me. She talked all kinds of trash about him. My father never once did the same about to her. If he did talk, then it didn’t reach my ears.
When I reached my breaking point about a year later, I called my father and we had a long talk. He fought to take me back to the other side of the country. My mother didn’t want that to happen, but I already made my choice. My father came to pick me up and my mother was furious. She threw my stuff into black bags and threw them outside near a garbage can. In a last-ditch effort to keep me with her, my mother said, ‘If you leave, then your puppy is going to disappear.’ At that point, my father got fed up and called her out on her behavior. He told her that he didn’t plan on leaving the dog with her.
It’s been over ten years, my dog is around 14 years old and recently recovered from a surgery. My grandfather died of kidney failure around five years ago. I don’t talk to the cousins that made my life awful, however, I keep them on Facebook so they can see how much I’ve achieved and how low they’ve sunk.
My mother kicked my sister out of her house the moment she entered her 20s and ‘became a problem.’ We tried to get her to come back to New York, but she fell in love with Oklahoma and wanted to stay. She’s doing great now and has also cut my mother out of her life. My sister does take time to visit with her spouse during the holidays. My mother and I, though, haven’t seen each other since my teens. We mended our relationship to a point. We used to talk on the phone at least once a week. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I get a text message. If I text her, I get one worded replies. If I call her, then it goes to voicemail, or she tells me she can’t talk because the battery is dying.
My father, on the other hand, remains in both mine and my sister’s lives. He never lets us forget how proud he is of us. He has always told us that he’ll support our choices when it comes to the topic of my mother, even if he doesn’t always agree with it.
To this day, I still have a piece of one of the garbage bags she used to throw my stuff on the curb. It’s a reminder as to why I haven’t gone back to my mother.”
After Tragedy, Just Arguments And Insults
“Four years ago, my father got in a really bad car accident which put him in the ICU with a coma. My brother, mom and I were told that he would no longer be able to walk or do much and he’d be paralyzed on his right side in a vegetable state.
As a family, we agreed to unplug him from life support, since we knew he wouldn’t want to live that life. He was a huge outdoorsman and hated being indoors to begin with. My father’s side of the family quickly butted in and told us no, which we did hear them out about. However, even after keeping him plugged in, they called us selfish and stayed away from us, showing our family no support whatsoever.
After countless nights of skipping school and spending many nights and full days at the hospital with my dad, he finally awoke from his coma after two weeks. Fast forward a few months later and he was somehow recovering quickly. He was able to walk and talk and almost live a normal life again with rehab therapy, although his balance was poor and he still wouldn’t be able to do things like ride his bike ever again, which he loved.
When it came time for him to finally get discharged from the hospital, legally he was supposed to come home with us and not the extended family members. Still, we allowed his side of the family to come visit whenever they wanted. He needed 24/7 care at all times, which was hard on us, and his family never volunteered to help us out, they would just come whenever they felt like it and leave.
Countless more months of insults and fighting went on and my father ended up passing away in October 2013. Thinking we’d be done with his family after that, it somehow got worse. My dad had a property in Mexico that he told my brother and I to sell later along the road in case we needed money for college or life.
It turned out that they forged my dad’s signature and got the property from us. We tried taking it to court in Mexico and we lost. It’s been a terrible series of years and I’m just tired.”