Do you ‘fit in’ with your family?

[Moopsie]

I’ve lived away from my family and home town since I left for university 20 years ago. I visit a couple of times a year, but I’m starting to think I might not bother anymore.

I grew up in social housing on a vast, incredibly depressing post-war build council estate. Burned out cars, dog poo, gangs of kids and broken glass in the gullies. Three successive generations live on that exact same estate to this day.

I was the eldest of too many kids and we were dirt poor, raised on tinned meatballs and Smash. Education was not a priority to anyone but me, I was desperate to get out. As kids, my siblings and extended family made fun of me for trying. It was the 90s, so listening/trying and being keen to get on was deeply uncool and got me mockery at home and several bully beatings at school! As soon as I could leave, I did.

My grandparents were the type who said people needed to be taken down a peg, got above their station etc and this passed on to my father. He was a labourer in a factory after leaving school and had no further ambition. Life was up, work, dinner, pub, darts, bag of chips, home by 11 and asleep in front of the TV with his fag still burning.

The whole family was quite affronted when I went to uni, believing I was saying their life wasn’t good enough for me and who did I think I was. My uni boyfriend met my folks on one single (eventful) occasion and called my grandparents Onslow and Daisy.

None of my family really like me. We don’t have much in common, but they’re still my relatives. I’m starting to think it’s not worth visiting anymore, though, because they’re always quite horrible and I end up feeling awful. I have my ‘own’ family, but my DC hate going because it’s so different from our pretty middle class, education-forward home and environment.

Does anyone else feel like they don’t fit in their family? What do you do?

Tricky question; immediate family have died now but I'm close to extended family and friends.

You become more aware of mortality as you get older.

I could have written this myself OP.
I remember my family members laughing at me for having a Saturday job from a young age, because I wanted better. They ended up in factories too, while I ended up working a professional career.
Their own ambitions only went as far as their own council house. To this day they make me cringe a bit, I can’t take them to nice places as simply they are too common and embarrassing with zero social skills. They enjoy a run down pub or even worse bingo. They’re quite happy, but we are so different and I don’t like to shame them about it.
FWIW- I have deep embarrassment about where
i came from and when i do open up about my upbringing people are often very surprised.

Well done, OP, for making your life turn out the way that you wanted!

To answer the question of, "Do you fit in with your family?" the short, quick answer would be, "No".

The long answer is this:
I grew up in a household with one abusive parent, one who smoothed everything over, and a "cool" sibling who put me down for being deeply weird, posh and embarrassing. The rest of my family all lived in the same village, so it was a bit of a pressure cooker situation. We were to maintain a very shiny veneer to the outside world, because otherwise, "What will the neighbours think?" This dominated my upbringing.

I was brought up to do as I was told. Thus, what I wanted to do when I left school was irrelevant, because I was told that I was going to do my A-Levels, get a degree and a Proper Job. I did all of those things. Unfortunately, it all came crashing down when I had a nervous breakdown, which was not really tolerated by my family, because, "Men came back from the war with less than all these mental health problems that people keep complaining about! They're just making it up for attention!"

I don't remember much of that time, apart from lying in bed (and avoiding everyone), thinking, "I did what I was told and it didn't make me very happy, so perhaps if I try to do what I want, then I might be happier". This meant that I rebelled by doing small things, like voicing my opinion, saying "No", driving on the motorway ("It's too dangerous!" and too far out of the village where I grew up"), driving in the dark, going out unaccompanied, doing what I had intended to do when I left school, getting a dog (as an adult) without permission, and getting a job which unfortunately was too far away from where I grew up. Then I did the unthinkable. I left the village and have no intention of going back to live there... ever. They are generally embarrassed about what I do for a living, so sort of lie about my career to anyone who asks, but like to tell everyone where I live because it's a very nice area.

I'm still weird, because I go- by myself- to do things that I am interested in. I don't keep up with trends, and still watch deeply un-cool documentaries. I read books... for fun. I wear unusual clothes sometimes, and decorate my house with things that my family don't usually like (I mean, the scandal when I got a dishwasher was unreal, and it clearly meant that I was lazy). I am cheerfully and permanently single. Sometimes I go to church, despite the atheist upbringing. I still have an odd accent, and dreams that are bigger than a Victorian terraced house in the village, a local man and a cheap runaround car... and that's OK, because I'm happy.

You all sound like phenomenal women.

I come from a similar family background where reverse snobbery in my immediate family was rife. Like you, I saw university as my ticket out of there but I was discouraged and mocked by my DM and SF for even trying. Fortunately, I was encouraged by my teachers and the parents of friends which helped to keep me motivated. I got to uni and escaped!

I was dragged up, as the Northern saying goes. I loved school, it was routine, interesting and had books which I loved too.
My mum wanted me out at work from 11, I had to buy everything apart from school uniform out of my paper round/ shopwork/waitresses 11 to 18. I wasn't allowed to go to college but I did. Then was the only one in my v large family to go to uni.
Much like others here my interests and the way I have focused on my kids education isn't aligned to the rest of my family, I just pick out the bits of family life that suit my family and forget the rest.
My two oldest are more successful than me, I am so happy and proud of them, my two youngest are on their way to success it was worth my struggle.

Most of the time, when people say "you think you're better than us", they're just projecting their own insecurities. It's nothing that you say or do that causes that.

Going to Uni, getting a decent job etc is not only about intelligence and ambition. It also takes confidence and is generally what these people lack. Then they want to keep everyone on their level, so they don't feel shit about themselves. I've seen it in my own family members. It's not even always a conscious action, it's often more instinctive.

The people who encourage their DC to do well, are those who are happy with their own achievements, however great or small. Those who aren't are often more negative and have a greater fear of failure. So they don't want to encourage their DC as that could lead to failure, which is the expected outcome in their eyes. Much better to stay in their own small world that they know and can control to a degree. Someone breaking out of that goes against all their instincts and feels uncomfortable to them. Some parents will unfortunately take it as an insult, that you want a better life than the one they gave you. But it is a them problem and not a you problem.

I'm pretty LC with most of my family. It is a bit sad but we have literally nothing in common. I don't feel I'm better than them at all, just that we're very different. It's just how life pans out sometimes.

My father's family were like yours, although not quite as bad by the sound of it. He ignored them, worked hard, left, accepted they wouldn't change, visited a couple of times a year (we lived three hours away) and developed a good line in sarky remarks to bat away theirs. I liked going when I was small (too small to see how different the adults were, and just had fun playing with the cousins). Liked it less when I was older, but still had to go, and I don't resent that now. I saw how other people live, in a way that other kids in my private school didn't (I used to quite enjoy their wide-eyed horror at the fact that I actually had relatives in council houses), which didn't do me any harm. It illustrated the importance of working hard at school and so on. It gave me more appreciation of what I had - not just materially, but in terms of having parents who see the value of education and giving you cultural experiences etc. Obviously if your relatives are abusive, criminal or dangerous, you need to keep the kids away from them. But if you're going to keep visiting, I'd say keep on taking the kids. We can all benefit from seeing another side of life, whether we actually enjoy it or not.

Don't really fit in. Similar to some on here, I grew up as part of the underclass. I actually didn't manage uni straight out of school because I dropped out due to a chaotic home/parental environment, but always had an interest in learning. Due to this, I did evening classes and went through to getting an MA as a mature student.

I don't fit in at home anymore. But equally, I'm not at home amongst the middle classes either. Fortunately, being a bit of a loner, I'm not worried about not having a societal niche. I'm just me and I'm happy with that.

It did shock me recently however when I was talking about the posh, educated professionals on my street with my next-door-neighbour and she said, 'Like you.' It just hadn't occurred to me really that I'd moved up the social scale.