Odd one out in family

[XFPW]

Is anyone else the odd one out in their family? Just never quite belonging, never quite fitting in? Different views/opinions/priorities/parenting/whatever?

I have felt like this my whole life. I spent my teenage years in the shadow of older siblings and just could never quite forge my own independent identity that was accepted by others in the family. Constant putting down, being the butt of the jokes, always being the one who was different in some way. It was never big things either - just always little ways of thinking or doing things.

I left home at 18 to go to university in another part of the U.K. and only returned to my home town/country for holidays after that. It took a very long time (10+ years) but finally, I felt confident in who I was and didn’t feel the need to apologise for who I was.

My relationships with family were better because we only saw each other a couple of times a year and we all got on fine.

For the first time in 25 years we are now all back living in the same home country - all within 70/80 miles of where we grew up - and I am becoming so aware all over again, of how I just don’t fit. It’s painful.

Anyone else?

I don’t personally have experience of this OP, but my DH does.

He’s the middle child and has always had a difficult relationship with his family. It has gotten worse recently as, similar to you we recently moved, and are now more local to them. The differences are now much more apparent and are causing more problems.

His views and his family’s views are very, very different. I won’t go into detail but we have opposing views on a lot of very important things, to the point where DH discussed going no-contact with them a while ago. But he doesn’t actually want to, I think it would just make life ‘easier’.

I sympathise OP. It’s so fucking difficult. I hear genuine pain in DH’s voice when he talks about it. His brother and sister and their partners are both very similar to their parents too, so they do a lot of family activities together, which makes things worse.

It IS painful. Thank you for understanding your DH’s pain. It helps. My DH is great, but it took him a long time to really see how I felt and once he did, it helped.

What also really made a huge difference was other people seeing things as they really were and calling it out to me. They obviously would never have called out my parents/siblings because in all honesty that wouldn’t have been appropriate or helpful, but just validating my feelings and saying clearly that the way my family is and the way I’m treated isn’t normal.

An example would be how my parents never came to visit me/my family when we lived in another part of the U.K. for 15+ years - even when we had our DC - they didn’t meet any of my DC until they were at least 3 months old. A sibling moved to the same city as me and lived there for 5 years. My parents visited 3/4 times a year. Our time in the same city overlapped by 3 years and in those 3 years my parents would come and stay with my sibling for 3/4 days at a time. They would see me/my family once each visit max for an afternoon.

We then lived overseas for 2 years and my parents never came to visit us. A sibling lived overseas for 3 years and our parents visited 4 times in the 3 years - very similar locations too so really no reason for their disinterest in me and my family.

When friends called out their actions to me and told me it wasn’t normal and wasn’t kind it helped. For a long time I had normalised their behaviour.

I genuinely don’t think there is malice in it - not on my parents’ part or on some siblings. One sibling I’m les sure about, but the others I genuinely don’t think are being intentionally unkind - we just don’t factor into their thoughts - we just aren’t a priority for them.

I completely recognise a lot of your experiences!

I think it is since being with me that DH has noticed how dysfunctional his relationship with his family is. The only way I can describe it easily, is it’s as if they treat us like second class citizens in comparison to the rest of the family.

We are always an afterthought and they only seem to contact us if they want something. It’s as if there is no ‘loving’ family relationship left! They rarely visit us either (despite us living a 5 minute drive away) which sounds very similar to the situation you’re in.

It is so hard. We do try. DH tries very hard to take an interest, he contacts them often to check they’re ok. Nobody seems bothered.