How has your opinion of your family changed over the years?

9 comments

1. The saying “at one stage of your life you realise your parents are only human and they don’t know everything” is my life.

2. I realized my family members are all human. It was a very difficult adjustment, but ultimately it made it so I could have a more equal relationship with them as I get older.

3. I realized that the good people were called bad, the bad people were called good, and not one damned person knew our actual family history. It’s like someone went “I like pirates” and suddenly we’re descended from pirates. If they’d said “colonizing dickheads” they would have been more correct.

4. I have come to realize I hate most of my family and now have them blocked on social media. They have my phone number, they can call.

5. The ones I still talk too are the ones that matter. My opinion is I’m done dealing with the lies and hypocrisy in the family

6. I cut off my whole maternal biological family when I hit my early forties. The very last straw was when my oldest grandchild was born. I had a broken arm, my bonus daughter had had a C-section and had just come home from the hospital and my “mother” demanded that I go down a steep spiral staircase and demand that either my son brought the baby to her or that I did. She was a **guest** in my in-laws home and it was Christmas! I had also set the condition that she *not* talk about her family, just say ” they’re fine” and change the subject. She couldn’t even manage 5 fucking minutes!

7. I’m certainly a lot more compassionate toward many of my family members that I don’t like very much compared to when I was younger. From pissed off they weren’t who I needed them to be, to understanding they’re just themselves and a lot of it is incompatible with me but also morally neutral. I felt a lot of external pressure from friends etc in my early 20s to fully cut off the ones I’m not on the best terms with and ultimately that was not good for me, and I am much happier and better off with them in my life, just sparingly.

8. I started holding them accountable and saw how little they do care. E.g. I moved to my mum round 650 km away from the rest of my family when I was 9. Until we moved back 3 years later, I had barely any contact to them and even after I wasn’t fully back intergrated into the family. Most of them have told me that it was my fault because I also didn’t contact them. I believed it for a long time until I realised they were the adults.

   Or how much oif an AH my dad is, how bad it was for me that my stemom and mom used me as an emotional crutch etc.

   I don’t cut them out of my life completely but I’m not going to go out of my way and beyond my boundaries to play pretend with people who couldn’t care less about me

9. That I don’t have to tolerate my father and his poor decisions. I’ve also had to understand I am not at fault for his mistakes, those are on him.