If one of your parents did something horrible to your sibling, would you cut them off ?

[boomsha]

I don't want to give away the exact details of what happened within my family, because it could be outing.

I will give a general gist. One of my parents has always been pretty unhinged and abusive.

A situation escalated with one of my siblings and threats of violence were made. Physical threats, in person. My sibling was in danger.

Would you be able to continue a relationship with your parent under similar circumstances? What would it take for you to cut your parent out of your life ?

Parent claims they were provoked and would never have carried out the threat fully..

Parent takes zero responsibility and blames sibling. Which is disgusting, because sibling used words, but parent went beyond words. It doesn't matter what sibling said, parent should never have threatened the way they did. Sibling had to fun away or could have been very hurt or worse.

Assuming no concerns about dementia, then yes I would massively reduce contact with a parent if they assaulted my siblings

Yep I’d avoid the parent

I would absolutely dump the parent. Who is - at the end of the day- a dangerous abuser.

I have a very great deal of familial abuse in my background. I believe completely to the core that the abuser must be cut off, no matter what. Maybe there may be redemption if the abuser genuinely tries to make amends. But if the abuser minimises and deflects, then no. They have to be cut off. Otherwise you are setting up for literally generational abuse.

Cut it off.

Honestly, I don't know. I would need to know a lot more about the specifics, the personalities involved, and the background. I don't mean that you should give them here, but to say that from what you have written here, I couldn't say.

I'm from an abusive home. The assaults were mostly when we were living at home. That said some of the emotional and verbal abuse did continue afterwards and abusive parent picked on my sibling for much of two years as didn't like their career choice. They went almost NC on them for those years but I'm touch again with them now. Abusive parent is nicer than they used to be these days but I keep contact with them fairly light. I'm still healing as is my sister.

At the time this was happening our abusive parent suddenly started treating me kindly, I became almost like a golden child and my sister was now the scapegoat. We were both in our 30s by this time, it was weird. I wish I had the courage to tell our parent to sod off. I felt disloyal to my sister but I was afraid of them turning on me again. A weak excuse because although I battle C PTS D from our childhood I wasn't still living there. I think I felt a lot of guilt over the fact that parent was being kind to me, kept spoiling me with holidays and treating my guinea pigs to treats, (I've been unable to work for a long time) and I felt like if I started criticising them I would be hurting their feelings . Because after decades of them treating me like rubbish they were finally being kind, making an effort . Yet a horrid part of my mind kept telling me I was scared of losing the nice stuff . I did enjoy the holidays (I went alone, not with them) but I think it was fear of what they would say . I also feel a huge amount of shame for things that happened in our Childhood, which I'm unpicking in therapy. I did try sometimes to tell him to be kind to my sister and stick up for her but I wasn't loud enough about it . I think I've spent much of my life in fight flight freeze or fawn mode. Freeze or fawn especially in my adult life.

I was the kid who was abused while my siblings weren't. I would never expect them to cut our parents off. We all have our own individual relationships with our parents and that's OK. I grew up without parents really, I haven't had contact throughout adulthood. My siblings know why and agree that my childhood was appalling. They do see my parents, it was/is shit for me not having parents, I don't blame them for not wanting that for themselves.

Families are complex and i don't think that it is fair to expect people to take sides especially to such a radical point of cutting them off.

I know what you mean. It's just tough to know how to behave when you come from such a dysfunctional family anyway.

All I can say is that it would help if my father took responsibility for his actions and at least admitted that he went too far and his anger got the better of him. He's never in his life admitted any wrongdoing and only ever blames others for his behaviour. It's very frustrating but I would feel bad just cutting him out entirely, because he's my dad and he has done some good things for all of us in his life. But I also struggle to look my sibling in the face. I support my sibling and we talk a lot/ see each other lots. I keep my dad at arms length because I just can't stomach it.

Doing 'some good things for all of us' is the very least a parent should do. There should be absolutely no abuse in the parent/child relationship ever.

Has he ever been physically abusive to you or your sibling(s) either as children or adults?

Is your mum still living with him? If so, what does she think of his behaviour?

If you don't cut your dad out for what he has done to your sibling, will this ruin/end your currently close relationship with them? I would put your sibling first, rather than your abusive father.

I think if someone is "unhinged and abusive" I'd be questioning what good they bring to my life and whether I should have cut contact long ago!

It's really not that simple, especially when it's your parent.

Yes it happened with both my parents and my DB. I cut them both off. It would've been my turn next anyway.

@thepariscrimefiles yeah my siblings got hit as children. I didn't really, I was too scared to act up.

My mum also occasionally got hit. Lots of verbal abuse and shouting in the home. Lots of threats of ' leaving her on the street with nothing '.

They're separated in a way, but not really. It's complicated. She's trying to get out of the situation. But she struggles too. She knows we fully support her to get out of the relationship entirely but she's taking her time. It's very frustrating.

I'm there for my sibling and my sibling understands that it's not easy to cut a parent off.

It's not even easy for my sibling to do. But they've done so.

From what you have shared I would make it known to your father what he did was wrong. You support your siblings and go LC with father.

Do you have DC? If so you need to think carefully how they are exposed to this toxic relationship.

Yes I wouldn't want a violent person in my life whoever they are . Just as bad id the lack of remorse and denial .

I went nc with a parent nearly 13 years ago.

There was historical abuse but that wasn't the reason I made the final decision. Due to the nature of the reason, I'm not allowed to discuss it with anyone so didn't tell my sibling my exact reasons.

I said it was a decision not only of my making (SS and police were involved) and i would have been at risk of losing the children if contact had continued (and rightly so). My sibling immediately said they'd go nc too.

No, it's definitely not easy - but it is sometimes necessary.

What I mean is that whatever abuse has been levelled at your sibling has quite likely been levelled at you too at some point, and maybe you've been downplaying it... Sometimes abuse happening to someone we care about is more shocking, when it happens to us we just accept it/sheug it off. You don't have to accept abusive people in your life whoever they are, maybe this is the trigger to examine the benefits of the relationship more generally.

I would probably avoid anyone who went around physically assaulting people tbh.

not necessarily cut them off, but It would upset me a lot and I would be more supportive of my sibling.

I would lose it big time over this with the parent. How dare they?

Yes. I would have my sibling back (and have done several times) at all costs. They are the most important person to me