How to go no contact with family you still love?

[DettyPig]

Does anytime have any experience with this? I don’t want to bore with the details (although if it’s relevant I’m happy to). I still love my dad, he’s my dad but the emotional and mental pain it causes me to spend time with him and his new family is really affecting my life. I spend a lot of time crying about it all. My older child is very close to him and my half siblings though which I know will devastate her but I just don’t want to keep trying to be a part of it all anymore. We’ve gone a year without speaking before but was then tricked into seeing him again by another family member and everything just kind of carried on as normal again. It’s just taking over my life and I don’t know what to do.

Oh you poor thing, that sounds hard. Sorry I don’t have experience or advice from a similar situation but have gone n/c with an ex that I still loved and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Lots of love to you and hope someone else has some relevant advice.

How did you cope going a year without speaking to him? Did it do you good?

I was in a very good place mentally at the time. The only time I felt bad was when other family members brought it up, and the one family member I felt I could talk to about it and be honest about it with was the one who tricked me.

Thankyou ♥️

Do you need to go n/c, or would low contact work just as well? If you were to, say, facilitate him seeing your child once in a blue moon so they still have some contact with their granddad? Or just attend family occasions but not see him in person otherwise?

Can you see him alone, without his new family? Do you even want to see him?

Poor you, this sounds really tough.
Have you ever spoken to your Dad about how you feel ? It seems such a shame when you love him and I’m certain that he loves you too.

Whats the issue? Is he abusive? Rewrites history? Favours his new family?

If he’s not abusive can your child not still have contact whilst you don’t?

I don’t see him very often anyway as he moved away but he FaceTimes a lot to speak to the kids and to me. So I find that quite hard.

I want to see my siblings though which is what I find hard. I kind of do want to see him but also don’t. My step mum I could very happily never see again but they all come a package so have to just put up with it.

He knows how I feel but won’t acknowledge or talk about it.

No abusive no. I’ve tried to have it before where he sees my kids but that was when I was let down by my family member. They were supposed to collect my kids to go to see him but they turned up with my dad so I was forced into contact. Then everything just returned to normal.

That sounds so tough @DettyPig. I’m NC with family I really loved. There was abuse in my family growing up from a family member and when it came out the same dysfunction that was always there really came out on steroids.

Going NC was necessary to as you say save me from significant ongoing emotional pain and while I don’t regret it in any way it was extremely difficult and painful. Essentially you have to break the ties that connect you over time in your mind or else you still stay connected to them. I’m not even sure I love my family anymore iyswim. In my case there a lot of emotional immaturity bordering on narcissism in my parents and some other family members too. I am not allowed any thoughts or feelings of my own that don’t align to their own personal narratives. They also try to tell me constantly how the abuse I have suffered has made them the victims but not having given me any space for what I am dealing with because they take it all up. They were completely affronted with my attempts to take up space on the family with what I was dealing with.

I suspect that is to a certain extent what you are dealing with too. Everyone else is in happy clappy family mode and your understandable difficulties with your own different experiences are not allowed to exist in that narrative. That is extremely painful and damaging.

Step 1 is always try to resolve things. Step 2 try low contact and step 3 is no contact. I’m sure you’ve tried the other because no one goes to no contact first it is just too hard. You must have rock solid support when you go through the process because in my experience even when it was as extreme and obvious as my situation was, people still think you should stick with family.

I have cut my sibling off, blocked phone number, blocked on social media.

my life is much happier, my sibling is an addict and would phone , message at ridiculous times of the day and night for me to bail them out. I had 5 years of holidays spoiled as they would get arrested or kicked out of their home and I would get phoned, they made we very unwell whereby I ended up at the doctor as I thought I was having a stroke due to facial paralysis through stress.

I cut them off and feel a huge weight has been lifted. I say hi at family events if I meet them but no general chit chat.

This is quite outing if anyone knows me but here goes. I've been n/c with my mother for nearly 5 years now.

Before I took the plunge I started reducing the amount of contact I had with her, which made her behaviour much worse tbh. Eventually I sent her a letter explaining how I felt and blocked her.

My Ds stopped asking about her after a while. But the hardest but has been losing my Nan, she's my mothers mum, and she refused to come to my wedding, and no longer picks up the phone to me. Despite how much I miss my Nan, I am immensely better without my mother in my life.
I am not in contact with any of my birth family (from either parent side, my Dad died before I cut off my mother) except for my own siblings, one of whom lives abroad, and the other has also gone n/c with our mother.

It can be really hard, but you have to think of your own wellbeing. Your well-being is the most important factor 💐

It’s hard because everyone in my family would probably think I’m being a massive drama queen about it but it genuinely really hurts me to spend time with them.

Does that make them right though? Just because they think something about you doesn’t make them right. Lots of people think covid is overblown and the Earth is flat. Many more people than are in your family. Doesn’t make them right.

I have long since stopped caring what my family think of me.

I personally think my family’s behaviour as a group is absolutely appalling and utterly cowardly. You too might need to stop giving your family’s opinions of you and how you feel or think about things any respect if they don’t deserve that respect.

I don’t take my self esteem from my family anymore. You might have to consider doing the same.

It just terrifies me a bit to potentially have no family left if you see what I mean. If I split from my husband then I’d literally have no one.

But what’s actually happening to be so painful? Without some actual context it’s hard to say really.

Nothing is happening. It’s just all old stuff from my childhood that I’m never going to get past.

You do sound like a drama queen, though.
You're considering going NC, but can't produce one tangible reason why.

I can produce a million reasons but the point of the thread was to hear from other people who have gone NC and how it was for them.

I’m not looking for a pity party for me and it would turn into a very very long thread if I went into it all.

That was my greatest fear at a time too and it is a very individual choice as to whether staying in or getting out is the better choice. It was incredibly painful and destabilising at the time but I have absolutely no regrets.

@DettyPig ignore posters who are fishing for information. You alone know what you have been through and what you are going through now.

You have no need to justify or defend yourself to other people who are willing to criticise you without any basis or information to hand. It is a good lesson for going through this though, just believe in yourself and do what is right for you. People who don’t understand will sometimes doubt you. That doesn’t mean you are wrong.

Thankyou I’ve been so kind. I think I’m going to start small by cancelling our meet up this week and if he asks why then I’ll see if I’m brave enough to go into why. I’m in quite a low mood today so don’t want to do anything irrational that I will end up regretting.