Not having any contact with your family

[UmberTurtle]

It's a long story, so I'll cut it short(ish)

Estranged from father in late teens after parent's divorced. Domestic violence in the marriage (him) and estrangement was my choice, never regretted it. The extended family on that side cut me off at that point and I never heard from any of them again (uncles, grandmother).

Very limited contact with mother. We've lived a considerable distance apart for almost twenty years. Communication limited to messages, usually started by her. Again, this is me resisting contact. Looking back as an adult, I can see that that she parentified me as a way of coping with the marriage, and there was a very unhealthy enmeshed relationship. Once I got married and had my own children, I found myself realising just what a terrible parent she had been (and continues to be). I find all contact with her now incredibly stressful and triggering.

I don't have any contact with extended family on my mother's side. Predictably, due to the nature of the marriage, my father had made sure my mother was cut off from them. My mother picked these relationships up again after the divorce and my younger sibling was included in this, but I was at uni and she seemed to forget that maybe I should be included too (I wasn't even made aware it was happening), so I never got to know any of them. Bit awkward at my grandmother's funeral when they were all there and there was a sudden realisation that I had no idea who any of them were.

Sibling - haven't seen them in close to 20 years. I send stuff for birthday/christmas but get nothing in return. No contact to speak of.

Has anyone else found themselves in the same boat? I'm trying at the moment to figure out how to cope with my mother (with the help of a therapist) but sometimes look at the total lack of family and find it a bit shocking.

Yes, I'm in a similar position. All grandparents dead, DM passed away a few years ago, went NC with DF a long time ago and don't regret it. One sibling lives miles away so see them maybe once a year or so and the rest of the family are all quite estranged.

Before she passed away, DM was really poorly and needed a lot of care. I left my job to care for her full time and barely got any support from family - despite her own brother living just streets away from her. I found my local carers support place amazing though and often popped by for advice or just to let out stress/emotions.

What’s your friendship circle like? I replaced my dysfunctional family (alcoholic mother, abusive father, siblings have all gone NC with them and each other for self protection) with my lovely supportive non judgmental friends.

Not me but my husband had very little contact with family.
He has his parents, but they are controlling, manipulative and very critical of him. But since he only has them, he tries to have short visits with them every few weeks. They are also both in bad health and he feels repsonsible to care for them. His parents also sent him to boarding school since he was 6, so he never really grew up knowing what family life feels like.

His mother has 9 siblings, but most of them don't speak to each other.
His father was an only child and couldn't care less about friends or family. He only cares about himself.
He has two half-sisters from his fathers first marriage who want nothing to do with my husband or his mum, because they blame his mum for their parents' divorce. From what I've heard the ex-wife left my FIL for another man, but 3 years later she came back after being financially drained by her affair partner, but my FIL had already met his new wife, who was pregnant at the time. The half-sisters believe that if my MIL hadn't gotten pregnant, their parents would have reconciled. So they blame my husband for that.

He had always felt very alone. Mostly the sense of not belonging anywhere. That's why he's very focussed on creating his own family, had a very strong drive to have children and be an involved, loving father. I can tell that a lot of 'family things' are new for him, but he loves it. He never had friends over as a child, but he loves it when our children get to have play-dates. He loves having people over and cooking for everyone. He loves spending a lot of time creating traditions and special memories for our children. He loves family outings and holidays.
But he'll rarely take initiative, because he doesn't really think of these things.

Honestly? There isn't really much of one. I've lived in the same town for twenty years and don't know a single person here. I know that's bad but I'm not good at friendships. I've been consistently bad at picking friends and have often attracted people who took advantage and I would find myself doing lots of stuff for them with nothing going the other way so I've let side of things slide really 😑

Sorry OP. That sounds quite isolating and difficult. I'm glad you've found a therapist to work things through. For me that has been game-changing.

I'm not close with my family. There was a lot of emotional neglect and then a deeply traumatic event as a teenager before I left for college at 18. That was 20 years ago and there's been calls, visits home for Christmas etc but my family has played no real part in my life away since I left. My father is a lovely man but emotionally repressed and doesn't know how to be a father, my mother is extremely narcissistic and is indifferent at best, judgemental and critical at worst. She engages in favouritism and is deeply enmeshed with my younger sibling, which makes it difficult for me to maintain a relationship with either of them.

With therapy I've had to start to grieve my reality, which is that I never had and never will have that loving parent figure who raises me up, prioritises me, shows interest in my life. I raised myself emotionally and was set off into the world full of trauma and shame due to their neglect of me. All this despite my mother's "happy families" trope, which always fell flat for me. That grieving brought up a lot of anger for me too, and attempts to connect with my parents and have conversations about this, which was always a hiding to nothing.

The best way forward for me has been processing the painful feelings and focusing on building my life now, which includes building a family of choice to replace what I never had. That includes a loving husband and a lovely set of inlaws. I think I'll always have to work on the trust issues such a family has left me with - friendships have always been hard for me - but it is possible, especially with the right therapy, to believe in the goodness of others again.

Most people aren't like our families OP. Some are, and you're always allowed boundaries to protect yourself from harm. You're allowed boundaries and to assert yourself and hold others accountable to their actions. But so much of my recovery has involved having my eyes open again and again to how much people are willing to care for me, respect me, be interested in me and my life in a way that my family never was.

@wonderingwonderingwondering thank you so much for your post, it really resonated with me. Father was definitely a narcissist and I also think there's a thing no really talks about, which is the type of person who falls into a long term relationship with a narcissist means that you end up with two ineffective parents. The worst of it is that I don't think my mother has a clue and I feel the dislike for her even more strongly now, which is hard to manage.

Feelings of residual shame have come out really clearly through the therapy. I thought I had dealt with it well but just how traumatised I still am has been hard to face.

I have been really lucky to have married well and my kids are decent, nice people.

That's a really good point OP. Processing my father's enabling has been another wound that I don't think I have fully digested yet. Because I do feel love for him and I can see that he loves me and always did in his own limited ways. He doesn't choose one child over the other or pit siblings against each other like my mother does. I got to the point in my healing where the dissociation melted away and my body would have a full physical response to being in the same room as my mother. She is so instable, vindictive, dangerous in the most covert ways. Imagine how dissociated and disconnected from reality you would need to be to marry someone like that, and stay for 40+ years? All the same, what I've had to process is that my empathy for my father cannot overtake the fact that he is my parent, and he failed to protect me from that. That's a huge, life-changing failure on his part. My childhood was never safe for me.

Go easy on yourself OP. There is no possible way you could be "over" a trauma so fundamental as having to flee from your own family for self preservation; families are the foundation to everything. They are how you learned how to be a human, where you learned your identity and your worth and all of that needs (and absolutely can be) rewired. It takes time, patience, working with a professional IMO, distance and a LOT of self love and compassion.

For what it's worth this Internet stranger recognises your strength, your resilience and your bravery for getting away, building a new life and now having a willingness to go back and heal what you never got. You are amazing, strong and boy do you deserve to feel all the love, acceptance, joy and self-confidence in the world now.

Some resources I found helpful:
A podcast called In Sight about narcissistic abuse with two trauma therapists
And a book called "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents"