To think that 'you don't have to like them, you just have to love them' is nonsense...

[ImInStealthMode]

.....when it comes to family?

I've known so many people who take anything from low-level just actively disliking each other to full scale awful abuse from their families but just allow it to repeatedly happen while claiming 'if we weren't related I'd just walk away'. I see it on here often too.

You can walk away anyway! It's allowed. Nobody has to have a constant negative impact on your life even if you are blood related. Nor do you need to inflict them on to your own children and perpetuate the cycle.

I appreciate that there are all sorts of different situations and thousands of complicated reasons that people remain in contact to their own detriment and I don't judge them for the choices, but I think it would help so many people if it were more widely accepted that you don't have to love anyone, if the relationship is damaging you.

YABU : Everyone has a loyalty to their family come what may.
YANBU : Everyone is allowed to set their own boundaries no matter who with.

I agree to an extent.
I think it’s normal to extend more grace to our close family. Obviously that doesn’t mean anything goes.

This year, like most, we've barely spoken to my extended family for various reasons. However after the death of an uncle (who really wasn't a very nice person anyway and his kids were low contact) people seem to be wanting to meet up and suggesting we're a close family who's drifted (we've not been near close in about 20 years). Anyone who doesn't want to meet up on their command is being childish and selfish and should be shunned. They've even been so petty as to send Xmas card with misspelled first names and a surname I haven't used in over 20 years which they are all aware of because I changed to their maiden names!! Then they wonder why my close family don't want to meet up.

It's lead to some cousins (ok just 1) posting vague petty quotes on Facebook as though we've suddenly ghosted them after years of close contact. I just think unless you are a close family, they don't really know who you are and that's ok (I don't know them either) but suddenly Christmas rolls around and you're expected to act like you're year round friends. Also there is a huge backstory to this, it revolves around the death of the person keeping the family together and the actions of some family afterwards. It's just easier not to see them then feeling I have to keep my mouth shut so I don't offend anyone with my real feelings. My sister would definitely not hold back.

I agree that you can have boundaries. However I definitely give my close family more leeway than I would my in laws, for example. I think that's natural. I have bonds with my family that I don't have with my in laws so I'm a bit more tolerant.

Just to clarify, I'm talking about general annoying, eye roll-y type things and not abusive behaviour. I don't think that's ever ok.

YANBU and I am learning this in relation to my drug addict, manipulative, cheating, liar of a brother. Admittedly, it's a hard lesson.

I don't like them and they neither like nor love me.

My feelings came about as a result of theirs. Took some years to get to that point of realisation, but once I did realise what their true feelings (or absence of) were, it was sad and lonely but ultimately freeing.

YANBU.

That sounds like a saying about your own children, not family generally! I love my parents and siblings but I wouldn't if they were so unpleasant I couldn't like them as well.

I am in the extraordinarily lucky position of having a crowd of unicorns for extended family - we genuinely like each other and enjoy spending time together (all 14 of us will be together for Christmas for the first time since 2018 and I genuinely CAN'T WAIT).

However, as we are all human, sometimes somebody can be a bit dickish (including me) and I am aware that we probably give each other far more leeway than we would to an unrelated friend.

I don't think you HAVE to do anything, really, and family is included in that, but if you get on with them, your level of tolerance is probably a bit higher.

YANBU.

I had two brothers. It wasn't that we quarrelled; it was just that we had nothing to say to each other.

For about twenty years one of them didn't speak to any of us if he could avoid it, and then when my father got ill he and I shared all the visiting and looking after (each from a hundred miles away in different directions) and we became friends for the first time and have remained friends, ringing each other up every week and visiting when we can.

My other brother died while he still wasn't really bothering to keep in touch with any of his family except my mother.

Does this also apply to your DC? Today I do not like DS2. I love him but I don't like him. Have felt like this on and off about all 3 DC this year. I do wonder if I am failing them. I can't connect with them, no matter how hard I try. I used to be a lovely Mum. Now I hate parenting. Every aspect of it.

@SafeMove I do think it's different for DC, certainly from the parent towards the child anyway. for you. Don't be so hard on yourself.

To others, thanks for responses. Interesting to see that I'm not being totally unreasonable. I'm not particularly close to my own very small family (although we do largely like each other) so I find the dynamics of other different families interesting and was sort of expecting to be shot down.

I don't know if I'm a bit weird, but I don't think I love many of my family at all. I like them well enough, and i like their company, but I don't feel anything else for them. Do people confuse love with familiarity sometimes, I wonder?

YANBU.

YANBU.

It's different when it is your child because you aren't allowed to think it or say it. However, I think it's better if we at least admit it to ourselves. That way we can have at least some kind of sovernity in the privacy of our own minds.

Sovernity

You choose your friends but you cannot choose your family. That means they could be people that you wouldn’t normally like or want to be with. So do the absolute minimum.

YANBU
Both my parents were the ones to break the cycle of abuse in their respective families. As a result, I had very little to do with my extended family as a child.
I always thought this was very unusual and wondered if perhaps something was wrong with us.
I was quite far into adulthood when I noticed that an awful lot of people have abusive extended family that they just sort of put up with.
There's quiet a large margin between happy relationships and relationships do bad they merit non contact. A lot of people live their whole lives there.