To be shocked at how many people think having no contact with family is normal?

[dogscatsandbabies]

I'm a lurker. Can't help it, I find AIBU gets me through many a night feed. I'm always totally shocked at how blasé some posters can be when giving advice "she sounds unbearable to me, I'd go NC" and similar phrases.

Really? Just like that you'd advise someone you don't know to break all ties with a relative over a situation you've only heard one side of, creating a family situation that can become unbearable for husbands / wives / siblings who are very literally stuck in the middle?

I know there are some situations when decisions are taken not to see family anymore for various good reasons but I'd seriously hope these were carefully considered and thought through in time given the wider impact it can have. NC just seems so normal to so many. Is it just me that thinks (safety of children etc aside) most problems are at least worth working on?

YABU. I dont think many people cut someone out of their lives lightly. Usually, there is a straw that broke the camel's back, after a long history of shitty behaviour.

I went 'NC' with my poisonous stepdad and entire step family (step sister, aunts, cousins on that side etc) after my stepdad cheated on my mum with a mutual friend and threw my mum out after 25 years together, without a penny or a backwards glance, then basically replaced my mum with this woman at all family functions, meetings etc. Nobody said a word. Nobody even asked after my mum or how she was. She was and is the most loving, kind, placid person who did everything for that family. It was the biggest slap in the face anyone could receive, and she didn't deserve it.

I decided they were gutless, spineless arseholes the lot of them...and would never hear from me again. I cut them out completely and entirely. It was really hard and upsetting, but it ultimately helped bring peace in to our lives again.

I have two friends who have cut out their mothers over cold, emotionally abusive treatment towards them. It has improved their mental health and wellbeing no end.

drudge, at the risk of creating a TAAT, I've hopped over and had a look at that and the range of replies is vast. A full spectrum.

An absolutely negligible number mention going NC, and they are entirely counterbalanced by posters with very conservative views about family loyalty.

I would suspect that this is a pretty common balance. I'm just not sure there's a general trend towards shouting 'NC!' at minor issues.

the thing is that 'NC' is perfectly normal for some families = it is what I grew up with and anyway why should I waste time seeing someone who spent our childhood trying to kill me?
(ref maternal grandparents and brother = NC v healthy

Absolutely redcar! And one of the reasons I don't tend to broadcast it is because if someone does ask outright, and I say "actually I am estranged from my dad and haven't seen him for 20 years", then I'm likely to get the response "But he's your dad!" Which makes me feel horrendous.

YY to this. More than one person has said to me "My dad can be a bit annoying too sometimes but in the end your dad's your dad"

In my experience people either get it or they don't and those that don't can be so, so harsh.

I'm actually more surprised by the people who put up with all manner of crap, verging on abuse, from people just because they're family.

^^
This

to be fair you are right about that thread adam

It is the person on "relationships" that bangs a drum about narcissism and NC that really worries me.
Sadly I know very well that NC is the only way for some people but she takes on board what distressed people are saying uncritically and makes all sorts of assumptions about the other players in the situation- I find her a bit dangerous (and she is so well respected on here).
Just wish she took a bit of time with people before she started telling them what they need to do,

YY to this. More than one person has said to me "My dad can be a bit annoying too sometimes but in the end your dad's your dad" hmm

In my experience people either get it or they don't and those that don't can be so, so harsh.

The only thing I can say is.... after over 20 years experience with these types of harsh and flippant reactions it gets easier to spot who is going to give the flippant/harsh reactions and just spin them a lie instead.

I mentioned earlier about a woman I worked with for 11 years asking me directly how my parents were after I came back from a trip home. I answered honestly with "fine I assume, but I actually didn't see them on my trip home, and haven't seen them for over 20 years as they were abusive and I broke contact with them long ago because of their continued abuse". I answered that way as I knew that woman would react normally and fairly. She might be surprised or even shocked, but wouldn't be harsh or judgmental or flippant. Had another colleague yes that yappy know-it-all-bitch who I try to avoid asked the exact same "and how were your parents" question, I would have looked her straight in the eye and said "great, fine, thanks for asking".

I don't lie for the sake of it, or because I find it a fun thing to do, I lie because so many people would (and have) judged me unfairly and very harshly without even asking for elaboration on why I am NC.

That's why I kind of secretly laughed inside when someone upthread said NC with parents is purely a mumsnet thing as she knows no one in real life who is NC with parents. It made me think of a friend of ours who would say the exact same thing, that no one she knows is NC with toxic parents. Little does she know that three of her friends (me, my husband and another female friend) are all NC with at least one parent, and have been for years on end. She is a bit judgmental, and she is only in our friend group through marriage, so better to just to keep her in the dark than be subjected to her "OMG but she's your mum" comments, complete with look of disgust.

Slow, I think you were justified in being honest with your friend's mum.

She may have been elderly, but every person, regardless of age, is entitled to the same respect and courtesy, and to the same honesty. If anything, it's patronising to treat older people differently, though it's enshrined in our culture.

I remember standing up to a party of (wealthy, well-educated and compos mentis) elderly people who were making appalling racist remarks (really, truly appalling) to each other. I asked them not to use the words they were using, and got myself into a 15-minute argument with no backup from the people who were with me. Afterwards one of my companions who had remained silent told me that I shouldn't have said anything because it was just their generation.

I told this to an older relative of mine who said 'Nonsense. My father never used the N word in his life'.

In not challenging hurtful or repugnant behaviour, we're denying that older people can change, or that they're capable of intelligent debate.

It doesn't sound like you were gratuitously unpleasant to your friend's mother, just clear and truthful. Well said.

I agree that I see it thrown around a lot here and not just in abusive situations, that I would understand but minor annoyances or personality clashes do not require no contact.

I am pretty much nc with my sister. we don't get along, she doesn't like me and although i love her as she is my sister I don't like her behaviour towards me or her choices in life which affect my niece. I put up with years of rubbish treatment before I said you know what you live your life and just leave me out of it. it still hurts now and then but what can you do it's better than it hurting all the time

Drudgetrudy

I think I know who you mean, and although both me and my husband are NC with both sets of our very toxic, very abusive parents, even I cringe at many of that persons posts. Not individually I must add.

More…. Just through the sheer amount of times she recommends it, and the sheer fact that she never questions the poster, always makes armchair diagnoses about the personality disorders the perceived abuser “probably” has, the way she seems incapable of ever thinking a poster could be at fault, or not disclosing relevant information, oh I don’t know, again just purely through the sheer number of posts, and the rational way they are written, but always banging the exact same NC drum, she does send alarm bells ringing with me too.

On the whole though, I still think this kind of discussion is helpful. Even if we do have one or two people who will regularly post in the extreme, most will (and I feel do) post normally.

It reminds me a woman who is a kind of distant friend of ours. She has had two very unhappy and very abusive marriages. I know both of those men were bastards, and I can well understand that due to what she has experienced in life, she has become a man-hater and any time she ever hears of “so and so is going through a rough patch in their marriage” she will ALWAYS take the side of the female, and always advocate vocally divorcing the husband. If she was on MN I know for a fact she would be the poster child waving the LTB flag 10 times every day. And often it would be needlessly and unwarranted calling for LTB. But I also know for every one (unreasonable, biased?) voice like hers, there would be another person along with “wait up a second, maybe you just need a good chat/couples counselling/some time alone to recharge your batteries” … so on the whole I think the extremes are generally balanced out by the more reasonable.

SlowRedCar Thanks for that.

please don't discuss any particular poster in this way. i think it's fine to talk about responses in very general terms, but it's very unfair to discuss one individual in a way that it is very obvious who you are talking about

I think there are some situations in which NC is exactly the right way to go, some parents or gp are just so horrible, destructive and abusive, there is no option for your own sanity.

That said, I was suprised to be told, on a thread in Relationships, that continuing to allow contact between my husband's parents (children's grandparents) and my children was abusive, as they had been emotionally abusive to him as a small child. My choice, indeed my husband's choice, has to been to stay in contact with his mum and dad, with firm boundaries and us as the family unit, and I think we all benefit- he would rather have a flawed but involved relationship with them, the children enjoy a different relationship than was with him, and I am happy to support him. Given he is foreign and from a very conventional culture in relation to deference to parents, going NC with his parents would essentially mean not seeing all of his relatives and the children becoming estranged from that culture/family.

Now, if they were abusive to my OWN children, I wouldn't hesitate. But they are not, they are impotent, slightly annoying IL's who need firm boundaries but who weren't great parents themselves. I was very annoyed to be told it was neglectful on my part to continue contact and felt it was quite naive about the consequences NC would wreak in the wider family.

I do support NC as an option, though, some people are truly awful and contact inappropriate.

You are right Petula. Apologies. No more specifics from me.

I've reported my own post for deletion.

I've just gone NC with DB. Inspired by mumsnet, I think. My kids do not need to be manhandled in the name of "discipline". I do not need to be verbally abused in front of my children. We were just on holiday together and after four days with him I was literally having a breakdown - not sleeping, paranoia, shattered self-esteem, even for one dreadful moment wondering if my life was worth living.

It disturbs me how "easy" it has been to declare NC or that i have somehow been influenced by reading AIBU all the time but his effect on me and DCs was utterly devastating.

YABU to make assumptions about other people's decisions.

Yes-it is that she recommends it every time-gives the parents diagnoses of personality disorders without knowing them and they can't win.
If you go NC and they accept it-they never cared.
If they send gifts for GC they are manipulating -send them back
They are always only interested in you because you are a source of "narcissistic supply"

MIL will always back her son over you even if he is treating you dreadfully

Its the generalisations.
Sometimes someone posts very angry and venting and she goes straight into this-never pausing to think there may be two sides to the story.

I have been concerned about it for a while-she is a powerful voice and people listen to her. She is so sure she knows what is right for everyone.

Again in saying this it does not detract from me feeling sympathy for those who have concluded that NC is right for them

I don't think I'm out of order mentioning it because I think its dangerous - if MN want to delete me that is up to them.
Perhaps I should just post another view on the threads but might get poor response because I am newer. When I posted just now I had not seen the very recent comments and I will now say no more-having made my point.

I don't think anyone is justified in judging what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour in a relationship. Only the person going through it is able to make that judgement call for themselves.

My siblings and I all had the same parent. I was the first to see through the manipulation, control, emotional and psychological abuse. I was told I was being a drama queen. Years later my mother has cut off my 2 brothers and nephew out of her will because they disobeyed her. She's disowned us all bar one brother once again scapegoating. Only now is she being seen what she is. Even now we all have different memories, feelings from the exact same event.

I am NC with my parents, and hence their wider family, after an upbringing I now in my late 30s accept as having been severely psychologically abusive, submitting our of fear to behaviour that if I gave an example (which I will not for privacy reasons) I think everybody would agree was utterly outrageous, trying desperately for reconciliation after having been cut out of the family at what should have been a very happy and proud occasion for me for having chosen my own life partner, accepting more terrible behaviour and under-the-carpet-sweeping for the sake af giving my parents a relationship with my sons, until I could no longer do it. And even then I tried and tried to talk to them and be heard.

(Adult) children who have been brought up as I and, sadly, many on this thread were often have a sense hard-wired into them in their early lives of things being their fault, their responsibility, and a hope that things might, surely must come right if they just tried that little bit harder, were more forgiving, forbearing. And the toxic people they are dealing with display, with seemingly no self-awareness, behaviours they have never been called on, they have always got away with, until now, with other family members colluding out of advantage or fear. Calling time on that is a lonely process. The tenets behind 'it's your mum!' or 'but it's family!' just do not apply.

I continue to live in fear that my parents will do something terrible to ruin my life and that of my family in order to punish me for saying 'no more' and leaving them behind.

I'm actually more surprised by the people who put up with all manner of crap, verging on abuse, from people just because they're family.

This ^^ and

I'm actually more surprised by the people who put up with all manner of crap, verging on abuse, from people just because they're family.

This ^^ again.

Just because they are family doesn't make it right.

Depends though. Some families on here sound like absolute nightmares. Some families sound like they can work things out with a little boundaries and communication.

Really though, it's a lazy piece of advice to a complicated multifaceted problem. Just like "listen to your instincts" is lazy advice to justify writing someone off completely. Just like LTB is lazy advice to a complicated marital issue.

I say it's lazy because a person isn't going to leave or NC until they're ready to, so the advice is pointless. The best you can do is encourage them to think about if this is what they really want and if they truly think a relationship is salvageable.

Not only that, but those type of choices are permanent and often cause an entire new set of problems to deal with. It's not a magic fix.

I think I know which poster you mean in relationships I have cringed but at the end of the day we are all arm chair diagnosers.

No one on MN is going to blindly follow the advice of another poster.

However, on the other hand, what people are dealing with in RL is so extreme and warped...its good to have a stringent, no nonsense poster who is drawing a line in the sand as it were.

BoneyBackJefferson Tue 12-Aug-14 14:04:45

YY this also surprises me.

I agree with Boney

People put up with all sorts of shocking abuse in the name of family. Folk who have loving supportive families really have won the jackpot in life without realising it. So many of us don't, it's just not widely talked about because of the taboo attached. So it's good to have a space where people feel able to talk about it without having their feelings and thoughts dismissed because it's your mum/dad/sister (or whomever) and you mustn't talk about them that way.

Btw it's not on and not ok to talk about another poster in the way that's been done on this thread. They are easily identifiable.