Men who have cut off contact with their parents/family entirely, what brought it to that point?

40 comments

  2. My parents both abused me for a number of years, but I tried to keep a strained relationship after I left. Called on holidays, made excuses if they wanted me in person. My Dad got sober years later, turned it around and apologized and now we hang sometimes. My younger brother called me one day and said my Mom hadn’t let him eat in several days and had locked him in his room, and he had stolen her phone to call me. That was the last straw, I drove over, busted the window and got him some food and clothes, got him set up until he could get to our Dad’s. I told her not to talk to me without a sobriety chip, and it’s been about 10 years since.

  3. I’m almost at that point but my wife is insisting it’s good for our kids that they’re still involved. But I blame them for my sister dying. It’s not what they did do. I’m not going to blame them for her drug addiction or refusal to seek help. But in her final months, it’s what they didn’t do despite living 5 minutes from her and both retired while I’m on the other side of the country

  5. I was my father’s favorite punching bag. Of course he used all of us — my sibs and my mother — as his punching bags, but he seemed to particularly like to get after me.

    Now that he’s an old man, I’ve started to lean on him about the reason for all of the Domestic Violence in my childhood. His response is “classic” gaslighting: deny that it ever happened, make it my fault, insist that I am wrong for not getting over it after 50 years.

    So far as I’m concerned now, he can die alone in his nursing home. Until he provides some answers and some apologies, I want nothing more to do with him.

    EDIT: Here’s an afterthought. Men, if you don’t want your children to grow up hating you, for gawdsake, don’t abuse them and do not make them watch as you abuse their sibs and mother.

  6. After recovering from my meth addiction (caused by my mother) I genuinely never wanted to see my parents again. They broke me.

  7. They were emotionally abusive and the last straw for me was them telling me that I’m disgusting for being homosexual. It was either live life in the closet and die a miserable fucking fool, or cut them off and find people who actually support me.

  8. Domestic violence verbal physical and psychological abuse. Homophobic blackmail from knowledge of my sexuality. I ran away at 15

  9. I would love to, and I’ve tried, but I haven’t managed to get it to stick.

    And the reason is simple: My mother is the most unpleasant human being I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting. I don’t have to see her often, fortunately, but if I got to see her *never again for the rest of my life*, that would be ideal.

  10. My parents are going further and further down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit hole, and while I’m not ready to cut them off just yet, we’re getting close. If that’s all we’re going to talk about for the last remaining years of their lives, I’m out.

  12. My Mom asked my sisters and I for drug money. We got on a call and agreed to cut contact with her – It’s the only time I can remember all five of us having a discussion. With a 25 year age spread and…our own personal conflicts, it hasn’t happened before or since.

  13. I quit visiting my grandfather with my mom and brother when I was 12. I just got tired of his drunken bullshit. I’d literally never seen him sober.

    I told him that the next time I saw him, he’d be in a casket.

    I told my mom I was never going to his place again.

    I kept my word on both.

  14. Sustained discounting of my wishes, an inability to take into my need for an apology of the gential mutilation they inflicted on me against their own religion’s wishes. Them forcing their religion down my throat…

    When I started my own family, their distance from my wife, their always being late to grandkids events and leaving early. The final straw was they complained about wanting to do Christmas with the grandkids for years, each year we tried months in advance but they already had plans. Final year when we tried to pin them down 6 months in advance they announced they are spending Christmas with my Sister in Ohio and then stay permanently.

    After the move I was bombarded by all sides from everyone in our everyday asking about my parents. Each one had a different reason as told by my mom why they left. I exploded when my aunt was telling me how much it kills my parents to be away from the grandkids…

    I realized how much my parents wanted to be PERCEIVED as the loving involved grandparents but didn’t actually want to put in the work…I was done with them. It pisses me off so much because I tried to work through all my issues so my kids could enjoy paternal grandparents…I was so wrong.

    I have gone extremely low contact and would completely cut them off if it wasn’t for my siblings.

  15. My wife and I were over cleaning their yard and house, as we always have done.
    My wife was putting away stuff in a drawer where she found a sealed envelope dated 6 months prior. It had an attorney’s name on the back and on the front “ in the event of my death”.

    She brought me the envelope and asked me if I wanted to open it. Out of noseyness I opened it. It was last will and testament leaving almost everything to my brother who is a financier in Asia.

    He has had not contact with any of us since he married 9 years ago. I was willed 500 dollars.

  16. There are 30 years worth of reasons but the final straw was my nephew exposing himself repeatedly to my daughter’s and my mom and sister taking his side while actively trying to get my daughter’s to lie about what happened. Once the truth came out I was done. I cut off every single family member I have. I have my own family to look out for. I don’t have time for that shit.

  18. Father and his side are either chronical liars, at least partially narcissistic (mostly in my eyes), selfish at bet and have no empathy or a shred of helpfulness in them.

    Or a combination of the above. Or all in case of my grandmother and largely my father.

    So, bit over a year ago he called me to go help him move with his 3rd wife. I told him nope I had plans already. He got mad, condescending and all, so I just practically told him I will not make myself free on a whim. He took it back, tried to make say yes still, I said goodbye.

    He did not call me for nearly half a year then, despite living about 10 minutes away with car and going to his parents, who live 200 meters away from me.

    Since then he called 4-5 times but I learned from my brother why: father called him after me to ask for a favour. Now my brother stopped talking to him too.

    In short, father is a selfish asshat and I fucking hate selfish asshats. I need exactly none in my life, family or not.

    Edit: this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, there’s about 20 years of “hindsight” history to this.

  19. Years of emotional abuse and manipulation. They divorced before I even turned 1 year old. Mother had custody, and when I was 14, she attempted suicide. Felt unloved, moved in with my father. Sadly, he started drinking again around the same time.

    When I was 15, my father tried to beat me one night while he was drunk, but I didn’t let it happen. I visited my mother when I was 16, and one night, she tried to attack me with a knife. After I defended myself, she called the cops trying to get me arrested. Thankfully, the cops saw through the lie and let me hang out at the station until my dad could pick me up.

    Earlier this year, I moved states and blocked their numbers. It took me too long to get to the point I am at now. But it was worth it.

  20. My two brothers are woman beaters. Want nothing to do with them. Older brother about 10yrs ago. Younger brother almost 5 yrs ago.

  21. Not my whole family but a portion of it. I have 4 brothers and a sister. My oldest is 17 years older than me and took it upon himself to act more like a dad than a brother, especially when I was a teen. He was always kind of a jerk to people but I tolerated him. My mom had listed a few items in her will for each of us. When she passed, my sister was in charge of divvying things out. She said she was done and I went by mom’s house and a painting that I remembered from childhood was still in the wall. It was supposed to go to that brother. I asked him if he was going to take it because he lives in another state and we were selling the house. If he didn’t want it I would take it since we moved when I was little and it’s one of the only things I remember. He didn’t answer the first couple of times and then told me I could hold it for him. I told him I wasn’t going to play that game and he either wanted it or didn’t. He then told my sister to just give it to charity which she did. I don’t speak to either of them now.

  22. Not much really, I’m just not that social, and don’t feel strongly about family/family obligations. My brother is actually a pretty cool dude, I’m just lazy.

  23. Growing up, my parents were pretty abusive. Post college they never really made any effort to come to visit. So I simply just stopped communicating with them. Can’t say I miss them since I really couldn’t tell you much about them. I never really did much with them when I was still living at home before I went away to college.

  24. My brother called me a faggot for 20 years.

    He’s not a bigot or homophobic, we both run in queer circles. We’re both straight men. He wouldn’t talk to anyone else like that.

    I showed up to work with a scarf on once, it was cold. He showed up uninvited, unannounced and told me I didn’t need a scarf. It’s for faggots.

    Finally, we hadn’t spoken much the past 5 years. Then our mother died. Trying to talk to him the next week, he called me a faggot for about 30 minutes and then another 20 minutes of texts while I put my phone down and took a shower. There really isn’t 2 sides to this either. It’s unprompted. We’re not arguing or anything, he just likes to say that to me I guess.

    After our mom died, I’d had enough.

  25. My parents are abusive and self absorbed. They cannot admit their faults and still verbally and emotionally abuse their family and each other. It’s not uncommon for dad to make fun of my and my brother’s childhood speech impediments. . . he is too self centered to realize that his and mom’s abuse are what led to those impediments.

    They’re just sad and pathetic people that cannot express love in any meaningful way. I feel sorry for them more than anything else.

  26. Father was an abusive piece of shit with BPD, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to decide how I would let myself be treated, and understand that while “yes it’s (probably) the disease” it doesn’t matter “.

  27. I was at my dad’s house for Christmas vacation several years ago. I was also going to stay in town for my step-sister’s wedding on New Year’s day. So the extended family was all together. My girlfriend at the time mentioned that we had helped decorate my step-sister’s house for her bachelorette party. My dad then said to me, “That’s your problem, you waste your time on a bunch of girly shit.” And this is opening up a lot of stuff for me because he’s never approved of me doing things like art, theatre, reading books, cooking, stuff like that. So I’m on edge. Then he tells my girlfriend she’s wasting all her time on girly shit too. As I’m trying to smooth things over, he starts yelling at my niece (the step-sister’s daughter) that she’s too fat and if she eats another piece of cake she won’t fit on the chair anymore. Then a little later he starts going on about how weddings are stupid and a waste of time. And his wife is in the room this whole time. Then he finally says the step-sister is a gold-digging whore who’s only getting married for money (not true, but it’s a long story why he thinks that.) That’s when I left. A few days later, I saw him at the wedding, looking a bit sheepish. But I haven’t talked to him since. That night was just the cap on decades of narcissism, bigotry, anger issues, and his need to insult children to feel better about himself.

  28. My whole family is responsible for my.. damaged brain. sorry my english is bad.. don’t know any better words. I reduced any contact to them to barely minimum it’s possible. Sadly I’m dependent on my parents. Someday I will set a fire and will see how everyone blame each other….

  29. I got tired of my dad behaving like absolute dog shit all the time. Excessively handsy, creepy, weird, demanding the attention from everyone at all times and expecting you to be delighted to see him, emotional abuser, bum, neglectful, totally self-absorbed, physical abuser, snide, rude, offensive, etc.

    He’s was given one last chance, I told him if he didn’t shape up, he’d be disowned. He never took me, or anyone else seriously. I disowned him years ago. Best decision I ever made.

  31. I haven’t spoken to my father outside of mutual family members’ funerals, including my mother’s, in over ten years now.

    The why is that my step-mother emotionally abused me as a teenager, and while it would have been bad enough had he just remained a bystander, he got actively involved in it when she misunderstood why I was using one of her son’s bedrooms for my late-night phone calls with my high school girlfriend. She asked him to put locks on every door inside the house, and he just did it. No conversation about it, no attempts to understand. Things just kept escalating from there, suddenly I was checking and bringing in the mail because I was trying to steal a check that was being sent to her. They rented movies I wanted to watch from Blockbuster (yes, I’m that old), and I grabbed one and put it on top of my television so I’d remember to watch it later (they had already watched it) – but no, I was “stealing” it, and probably other things.

    It took me nearly 20 years to come to terms with what happened to me being abuse.

    At my last (mom’s side) family reunion, I finally opened up to my siblings (3 sisters, I am male), they responded very negatively. I’ve always gotten casually sexist vibes from them, so I just asked outright whether they would believe me if I was a woman and they all hesitated before answering, that was enough for me.

    Now I am considering cutting contact with them as well. I already have with my youngest sibling, for reasons unrelated to this issue, that I won’t go into here.

    I’m not sure that I will ever reconcile with my father, and frankly, time to do so is running out. He’s approaching his 80’s, but at this point I have been absent from all family functions involving him for over a decade, and I’m not sure I care enough to get involved again. My nieces and nephews have already grown up with a rift between their uncle and grandfather, they’re all rapidly approaching adulthood.

  32. I cut off contact with my mother because of the fact that she is both a narcissist and a misandrist. She never did anything but degrade me, so there was no good reason to keep her in my life. My only regret is that I didn’t do it 20 years earlier.

  34. I am considering cutting off both my parents. They say everything they do is for me. But somehow I never learn any life skills. I am just a pet to them. They get jealous of me having friends. They actively discourage my making friends. Their greatest aspiration for me is to wipe their bums when they are senile.

    They don’t tell me things I need to know, like when someone is spreading rumours about me behind my back. They let it spread and even helped spread it. Now it’s out of control. Now I am dependent on them.

    I hate them. I know they’re lying to me. But if I cut ties with them, I will have no one else to lean on. I feel like their slave.

  35. I grew up poor af. My dad left when I was a baby, my mom was a teenager and remained one mentally. My mom stole money that my great grandma saved for me to buy her boyfriends takeout.

    Got together with a guy who encouraged her to beat me. Eventually CPS put me in my great grandmother’s care.

    Great grandma died, back to my mom’s care. Mom lost her apartment, moved in with my dad. Dad kicked me out because I stood up to him after he spent hours talking shit about me where he didn’t think I could hear.

    Moved in with my senile grandma (daughter of the great grandma I lived with before) who thought I was the devil and so many other wild things. She kicked me out because of her paranoid delusions. Homeless… Friend I met on Xbox convinced his parents to take me in. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family in 5 years.

    Probably not as bad as some people here but it sucks losing your home 4 times back to back.

  36. My mother crossed a line with me. I hadn’t liked her since I was about 14. My dad was a good man and was always good to us. I stopped talking with her for 4 years and only restarted because my dad was dying. It was the only way to see him. I kiss him greatly. I rarely talk with her.

  37. Lies, deceit, more lies. Trash talking me to all his friends and family (they told me what he said), and then blaming me for everything that was wrong in his life.

  38. My mother was an incorrigible adulteress and embezzler. She lied to me for thirty years and blamed my father for the divorce.

    In my twenties she stole thousands of dollars from me at a time when I was working but living in a car.

    On my 34th birthday she asked me if my father had chemical stocks. I said I didn’t know and asked her why. She said he had chemical stocks when they were married but she didn’t get them in the settlement. I said, you’ve been divorced for thirty years and you now want to sue? I told her, “I’m not going to go through my father’s papers to find out if he has “chemical stocks” so you can sue him.”

    Bear in mind this is a woman who didn’t want her own children because she was living with her lover and yet was never ordered to pay a dime in child support.

    I told her I didn’t want a relationship with her. “I love you, but I don’t like you. If you need my help you can call me. But other than that I want no contact_

    That was 20 years ago. Haven’t missed her at all. Have no idea if she’s even still alive.

  39. I am on the precipice of finally becoming completely independent and severely limiting my contact with them.

    My parents really tried to make good people out of us, but the fact of the matter is that most of the stuff they did to me and my siblings was just wrong. My father is basically the Hollywood-type military dad, with some nice sprinkles of mood swings and bouts of rage. Here are some examples:

    1) Shit diet when we were growing up. We weren’t always well off economically, but out of principle, because of my dad’s obsession with cholesterol, we would eat very little animal products, which are absolutely essential to children growing up. Think something like red meat once a week, poultry once a week, fish once a week, very few eggs (maybe once a week), all fats were replaced with that garbage margarine…you get the picture. I don’t hold this too much against them, they just didn’t know any better. Moving on

    2) When I was being bullied , constantly, throughout all of my school years (it only stopped at 11th and 12th grade), they did absolutely nothing to help. They talked to the teachers (we all know how that goes), and that was it. My father refused to allow me to take self-defense or martial arts lessons lest I turn “violent”. To me, the subconscious reason behind this,together with a lot of stuff, was because my father wanted to keep me on a short leash, so to speak. He wanted to always make sure he has control, be it physical or emotional. They basically did everything in their power to raise me as a pushover.

    3) More on the last point, my father was absolutely dismissive and aggressive against me over my liking of video games. Think , even to this day, I get demeaned and scoffed at if I am caught playing videogames , when I am visiting them for example (I am 27). I naturally didn’t have any friends, being bullied, a pushover etc., but I wasn’t even allowed to do the 1 thing I could and liked.

    4) When shit hit the fan and I developed a severe health problem which basically destroyed my day-to-day life, they “did their due”, took me to a few doctors here and there, no one figured it out and that was it. Long story short, I have had sleep apnea since I was 21 (probably before that but that’s when it took an absolutely massive toll on me) , diagnosed with a sleep study and everything, only after I managed to scrape myself together and find appropriate care. Zero help from them, and to this day I get told I am “lazy” or that if I work out it will get better (did crossfit for a year, didn’t do shit since the problem is my recessed jaw and not my weight, which is at 80kg and normal for my height, 183cm).

    That’s all, I need 2-3 years of contact once a month or less and therapy to figure a way to forgive them. Maybe even that won’t help…

  40. You know how when your appendix becomes toxic so you cut that shit out and don’t think about it ever again?

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like