@ Spencer ... Dude, this sucks so bad, but as you can see from many of us, family members can absolutely suck. Not all of us can have the kind of relationship with parents and siblings that Bill, RJ and Joe have/had. Just because someone is blood doesn't mean they get a pass on bad or horrible behaviours and actions. Your mom... wow. The fact she can call your child "it" signals to me that she is capable of not using male/female pronouns, but chooses not to use "they" for whatever reason (disrespect? cruelty? selfishness?). The fact your father forgives (enables) it and hasn't/doesn't try to help correct her behaviour makes him complicit, imo. "She needs more time"?? If someone hasn't learned something this straight forward in 2 years, it's not because they aren't physically capable of using the word "they", that person is just choosing not to. I just don't know any other way to see it. I MIGHT be able to forgive the odd slip up, but the fact she doesn't even try is just ... well, narcissism - it's all about her. Not your child, not you.
As for my family, I've gone through something with all of my family at some point, as has mrs.jingle. tl;dr - I didn't speak with my dad from about 2014 until he passed in 2020, except for a few months around the death of his wife; same with my brother, except around the death of our father; mrs.jingle's father is 'dead' to her; and her manipulative, self-centred sisters haven't been part of our lives for almost 20 years.
We had to remove my mother from our lives for about 18 months back right after the jingle.kids were born - she would not respect our wishes as parents, and never missed an opportunity to point out how we were parenting wrong. She finally clued into things, and we had a bit of a rocky relationship for a number of years, but once our kids hit 9 or 10 years old, she became a wonderful grandmother, and we have a fairly strong relationship to this day.
My brother ... tumultuous relationship right from my wedding day (when we learned he and my sister-in-law had tried to change the location of where our vows were to be exchanged with our wedding planner <LONG story>), and never apologized for it. Since my parents split when I was 14 and he was 18, he took it upon himself to be my 'father figure' and always fancied himself as better, smarter, more experienced, better parent, more successful etc... than me. It came to a complete head in 2017 when I was let go from my job (one of the best things to ever happen to me), and he felt the need to call me (first he'd called me in years) to give me a pep-talk about how I'll be ok, and how he dealt with that situation in the past. The call escalated when I didn't thank him for his wisdom, and he ended up insulting me, and then somehow got to my kids being rude and ungrateful. Other than the period around my father's passing in 2020 (where he didn't include me in anything, and wasn't even intending to list me on in the obituary) we've not spoken.
Then my father. He could never seem to hold a healthy relationship with all of his family (father, brother, or children) at once; at least one of us was always in his shit-house. After my parents split, he didn't speak with his brother for like a decade; my brother didn't want much of a relationship with him for a VERY long time; and he had many problems with his own father (cutting him out of his life for many many years, only reconciling for a month or so before my grandfather passed). For a long time, I was the one family member that my dad *did* have a good relationship with. Until I wasn't. He was a man who needed to be needed. When jingle.kids were young, he would routinely babysit for us, so he got lots of time as "Grandpa", and he was great at it. Then, gradually as they got older, we didn't need as much time from him, but we didn't cut him out of our lives in any way. Until he started sulking, and pulling shit like accusing us of withholding the kids from him; that my wife was pulling me away from our family, that we were teaching our kids not to want to spend time with him. It came to a head in 2012, and then he really started pulling away. He no-showed jingle.kids' 13th birthday, and just called them on the phone. It had been our tradition to have him and my in-laws over for a birthday dinner for 12 years before that. When the jingle.kids asked why he wasn't coming over, he responded "I didn't think your parents wanted me there". There were many many other examples of him pulling away from us, and eventually I came to the realization that it wasn't my job to make him want to spend time with his son and grandkids. He chose to pull away, all the while telling the rest of the family we pushed him away. When my step-mom passed right around Christmas 2016, we started communicating again, and tried to slowly reconcile - but then he never reached out when he said he would, never returned messages; he expected any reconciliation was going to be on his terms, and when we didn't allow him to dictate how to rebuild our relationships, he pulled back time and time again. When I called him on his 75th birthday, he was in a car on a road-trip with his new girlfriend. I don't think we spoke at all again until he texted me from the hospital just 5 days before he passed away. We ended up having about a 45 minute conversation, and a few texts over the next couple of days before he passed. I guess that was the universe giving us each a bit of closure.
mrs.jingle has had zero relationship with her 2 younger sisters for most of her adult life (them being selfish, manipulative, conniving, cruel, and deceiving cunts), and back in 2014, her verbally abusive father finally pushed things over the edge, and after a bit of therapy, mrs.jingle came to the realization that the father she thought she knew was not the man that he was. For her own health and our kids' health, we had to distance ourselves. Then he had a near death experience that changed him in 2016 ... for about 2 days. When visiting him in the hospital after he'd claimed he was a changed man and wanted to reconcile, he berated her in front of me and her mother. That was literally the end - after that, mrs.jingle treated the situation as though he had died. There was no hope of ever having a relationship after that. We have maintained and kept a healthy relationship with mrs.jingle's mother none-the-less.
So yeah, we've got some experience. It hurts for sure. But the pain of letting such horrible behaviours fester and stay in your life is far worse. Bill nailed it - your child in the future will thank you for being there for them; for defending them; for choosing them and their wellbeing over anyone else. As parents, our job is to take care of OUR direct family. Catering to the emotions of our parents is not my or yours (or anyone's) responsibility imo. It will get harder before it gets easier - as she will go on the offensive, as Snow Dog experienced. But eventually, acceptance that you did all you could, and it was your mother's choice to not be part of your / your family's lives. As RJ said, you set the boundary (ie, talking to your child appropriately), and she chose not to accept it.
Abuse is abuse - physical, mental, emotional ... doesn't matter. If your mother was physically abusing your child, you wouldn't stand for it. Good on you for how you're handling this, Spencer. No matter how hard it is. And I completely understand that this is like the grief of losing a parent.
P.S. Sorry for the length... and this is the condensed version!
Topic: Cutting off a family member (Read 2223 times)
