To distance myself from my family

[swinglow776]

Grateful for any honest opinions here.

After a difficult Christmas I have realised that our wider family dynamics are making me really unhappy and I think I need to invest less emotional energy in maintaining the status quo.

For context, DH and I are happily married but no plans to conceive (I am early 40s, and due to my childhood never felt I wanted my own children).

I have a younger sister who has a partner and two children. I really like and admire her partner and I work hard to keep in touch for my two nieces who are 6 and 4.

After a lot of therapy in my 20s I would identify my family as very enmeshed and my childhood as very chaotic. My mother can be very emotionally unpredictable and manipulative and my father can be very aggressive. He has never hurt me physically but has screamed in my face on two occasions after I disagreed with him quite recently.

I am definitely no saint - I can be quite introverted and uncommunicative as I prefer to focus my energy on catching up with them in person, so I don't call or text very often, and I live rurally and have a full-on job so it'd difficult to 'pop' in to my parents in the way my sister does. I also would identify myself as earning less than them so have a different lifestyle and find it hard to talk about the topics they usually stick to. My sister lives very near them and 'plays their game' for want of a better phrase, so she doesn't have the friction that I have with them.

I love my parents and I want a good relationship, but I feel so deeply unhappy when I'm around them. They show no interest in my life, seem constantly disappointed that I'm not 'parenting' them like I used to, and I come away from every family gathering feeling small and worthless.

I have tried organising meet ups, paying for group events and meeting with my sister and my parents in different ways, but feel I am trying so hard to create a family life that no one else wants.

AIBU to stop trying to fix this? I am so devastated that my two nieces would think of me as the uninterested auntie, but all my attempts to build a relationship with them just don't seem to work.

The enmeshed bit stood out to me from your post. There is absolutely no reason you can't build your own kind of relationship with your nieces. Do you try to arrange to meet with you sister and her family separately? It's very easy to get caught up in guilt about seeing one part of the family but not the other. If you have tried that and it hasn't worked either, then it's no shame in separating yourself off a bit.

Focus on yourself.

I have tried everything over the years, nothing is ever good enough and I’m not good enough. I know what it’s like as I’m estranged from my family I live with my DP pets and adult DC and a phone call once a week with one parent. That’s it.

if you focus on yourself at least they can’t negatively comment x

Thank you - yes I have tried to see them separately, but I know my sister feels torn, and with two small children I don't want her to feel like she has two separate families to see what with juggling everything else. Her partner has a huge family so I know she already feels exhausted trying to 'get round' everyone!