Billygoats

because i am not on speaking terms with someone in my family

Psycho Dad

I can't say I've ever not been on speaking terms, but I've had family members I had no desire to speak to. And I have some in-laws that are only allowed to darken my door to keep peace with family members I do want to speak to.

Who are you not on speaking terms with and why?

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FuglyStick

I spent about 5 years not speaking to my father. We were both pigheaded but got over it.

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SabrinaFair

I don't speak to my grandfather on my mom's side. Only one of my mom's three sisters still talks to him--the rest of the family doesn't. I've seen him two or three times in my life--he has a daughter who is 14 or so, 11 years my junior.

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snowy

I'm currently not on speaking terms with my brother. I wish the case were otherwise, but he has asked that we not speak, and I have honored that request.

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Martian

I'm not on speaking terms with my father. For that matter, I've pretty much completely severed ties with that side of my family. After my grandfather died, there wasn't anyone there that I really respected.

I'm also not on speaking terms with one of my maternal aunts, although to be fair the only member of the family who is is my grandfather. Even then, I just think he feels an obligation to his daughter.

I believe that even though you don't get to pick who you're related to, you have no obligation to associate with them.

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I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
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- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

abaya

I don't speak to my oldest maternal aunt... and neither does anyone else, since the day of her mother's funeral/cremation (my grandmother) in 2005 when she threw a massive and thoroughly unnecessary tantrum in front of all of us, accusing every single person there of conniving against her before demanding to be driven straight to the airport to fly home to Thailand and never see any of us again. It was disgusting, and after decades of putting up with her shit (she's 65+), no one wants to engage with her toxicity anymore. She has come crawling back to some of her sisters, only to be followed by more tantrums and verbal abuse in their faces. She will probably die alone, and that is the consequence of the decisions she has made. I don't cultivate much compassion for poisonous individuals.

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sprintex

I have a cousin that I wouldnt piss on if she was on fire, much less talk to her. I'll dance at her funeral though

biznatch

My father's sister had a fight with my grandmother (her mother) in her mid 20s. I don't really know why. She started out by saying she'd never speak to her parents, which she put to effect immediately, even still to this day, occasionally seeing us, but that didn't last long. My last memories of her was when I was five, I think, and after that she disappeared from my whole family's life, never speaking to any of us again.
My grandmother has searched for ways to get in touch with ever since, and so have my dad and his brothers in the first few years, sometimes several times a year, and they havn't been able to find out where she lives, or even if she still has the same name. She (my grandmother) gets very emotional about it sometimes, and it's always painful to see her talk about it, as she makes more and more mentions of herself not having much time left these days.
I think she'll be afraid until she dies of not having any form of closure, explanation or way to heal this wound. It scares the shit out of me, just the thought of it. I hope this doesn't happen to me and my kid(when I have them), or any relative, because in a few ways it'd feel almost as bad, or worse, than that relative being dead.
None of my family talks about it much, and my dad has never really spoken about how it affected him to lose a sister unexpectedly.

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Psycho Dad

There certainly seems to be a lot of this. For those of you not on speaking terms with these family members, do you ever feel the need to reach out to these people? If so what are you finding gets in the way?

Has anyone ever mended one of these broken relationships? If so, how did you achieve this?

My brother died without us being close and I can't say that it ever bothered me. I can't say we were not on speaking terms, he was just a useless person. For example I took sole care of my father. My brother asked me to let him know when dad dies so he can come to the funeral. He had no interest in seeing our dad before then. BTW, he also said he would like to have dad's car and wanted to know if dad had any savings.

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little_tippler

That's pretty sad Psycho Dad. Your brother's attitude is incomprehensible to me.

I am surprised to see how many of us go through this kind of problem.

I am not one to be totally intransigent generally, but a few years ago I had a falling out with some family.

I am not on speaking terms with my two half-brothers. They are a good deal older than me. When I was little and they visited my house to see my dad, I was always very excited to see them, because I had always wanted siblings. They couldn't give two shits about me. As I got older, I became more indifferent. Why should I care if they didn't? So we'd meet and be polite, but I felt nothing.

When my father passed away they were total assholes and did some nasty things to my mom and I, to get a hold of my dad's supposed assets. In the end it bit them in the ass because all they got was their share of his debts to pay. They offended my mother and I and I have no desire to be in contact with them ever again. They never cared about me when he was alive, so why would I want 'that', whatever it was, back now?

Worst part is, my father's side of the family is in contact with them and treats them as if they were on equal footing as me. They behaved very badly and it makes me angry that my father's family skim over that and try and keep contact with us all. I know it's an irrational anger, but I can't help it. When my father was alive, they wouldn't see him for months, then when they came around, they'd get money out of him. Total shits.

As it is, this rift has caused to me to have little to no contact with my father's family. I doubt this will ever be resolved. But I feel that I have closure. They were nasty and I have no need of them, never have.

My mom's side of the family keeps me sane.

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

tisonlyi

Other than offspring, parents and maybe grandparents, I don't see why any family should have anything more than a grade or two more of leeway than friends, for example...

If you brother fucks with your life once, than fair enough, forgive him after a time. If he consistently fucks with your life, then why the hell put up with it?

Cutting unnecessary agony out of your life should be a prime directive.

Parents get special passes because for some reason, people whose parents die while they're on bad or non-existent terms seem to suffer enormously.

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Psycho Dad

It may seem sad, but I never was sad about it. I have to take care of dad who outlived my brother by the way. When the funeral home called and wanted to know if I wanted my brother's ashes (I think they wanted paid and could get more from a family member than what the state was going to offer) dad was just getting over a surgery and a stay in the hospital followed by physical therapy. I had bigger things to worry about.

That also left it up to me to tell dad that my brother had died and that he had already been cremated. On the one hand I didn't want to stress an old man any more than he was. But on the other he likely did want to know. I opted with telling him and was surprised that he was not much more emotional than I was over it. Apparently my brother and father's relationship was more strained than I had realized.

Another effect from the relationship with my brother was that I never formed relationships with my nephews. Although I think a fair amount of the fault for that is my brother never had good relationships with then either. I never held their father against them, but as they were never around, I never made any connections with them either.

While I can't say I wish I would have done more to help fix these relationship problems, I do suspect that a great many people go to the grave without one or both parties wishing they could have swallowed some pride and made amends.

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abaya

I am almost always the type who "feels bad" first and wants to reach and let the healing begin, etc etc. But with the particular aunt I mention, her toxic nature is such that when anyone reaches out to her, within a short time she is back to biting that hand off and grabbing for more to chew on. As I said, I have stopped allowing myself to cultivate compassion for these kinds of people. She has made these decisions, and she will go to her grave with the consequences of them.

The only thing that might change my approach is if I were to find out that she is truly mentally ill, and is willing to seek out help. I have my suspicions that she has bipolar disorder, but in her pride/ego, she has never been willing to even consider the idea, let alone seek out help. And that also makes the difference for me, in being willing to stick my hand out to the porcupine again.

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Psycho Dad

One of my sister-in-laws is bipolar and has been diagnosed as such. Were it not for her father and my wife, there would be no family members on speaking terms with her. And I'm talking about a huge family. She has alienated every cousin, aunt and uncle she has. Other members of this very large family have fallen on the outs with one another many times over the 25 years I've been married into it, but in the end they all seem to get over it. My sister-in-law has achieved a permanent place as an outsider. She is extremely intelligent, is an LPN working toward her RN, but cannot stay find a place in her own family.

Outside of taking her and putting her in a hospital or other such facility (which my wife's dad and step mother did when she was a teen), she will never get help. One challenge my wife and I face is getting our adult sons who are close in age to her to understand that she truly can't help herself. We need to be tolerant of her and I suspect at some point my sons will be too. But for now for them it is hard.

My brother claims he was diagnosed as bipolar as well, and he may very well may have been. But I think he largely used that as an excuse.

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abaya

This is the weird thing. If my aunt even claimed to be diagnosed as bipolar (and subsequently asked for help with it), I would have a great deal more sympathy for her. But as it is, nobody knows if she is truly bipolar, or it's just her personality that makes her that way. If she can't help it, but is willing to ask for help (or just admits that she might have a problem), I can tolerate that. If she CAN help it and continues to blame all of her ills on us, then that is a choice and I have no desire to put up with that. Several of us have tried to ask if she would see a doctor (including my mother, her own sister who struggles with anxiety disorder and is medicated for it--so she wouldn't be the first in the family to admit mental health issues), but she refuses very heatedly and asserts that there's nothing wrong with her... the problem is always ours, in her mind. It really leaves us very little choice in how to treat her, as I see it.

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Psycho Dad

Just curious... When you have tried to reach out to your aunt, were you trying to mend the fence between her and your mother or other family members, or just between you and her?

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Xazy

Me nor any of my siblings are speaking to my mom. I can talk about why she is how she is, but either way we have decided we can not live with her in our lives. She plays favorites, totally manipulative, narcissistic, plays the martyr role, has down the Jewish guilt. And it is not just with her children she does this with her grandchildren as well, which is sad. On top of it all, she sued us in Jewish court (dealing with Jewish Laws) on a loan my grandfather (my fathers dad) had given as a mortgage on the home. I can talk about that but the truth is she picked $40,000 over her children. Oh and she had the lawsuit form served to my brother the weekend fo his sons bar MItzvah (turning of age, a very important big celebration).

I have no desire to bring her craziness in to my life, especially now that I have a daughter I do not see that she offers anything positive, everything around her is negative. At the same time the hardest saddest thing for me is while I talk about her, at times or gossip, i never cried, i do not seem to feel sad about it (at least on the surface), and that disturbs me the most.

lostgirl

Yes, my aunt who is married to my mothers brother is a sadistic, crazy lazy. Who emotionally abused me. I hope I never see her again.

abaya

At first (in previous explosions), it was to mend the fence between her and others in my family. Then, with the event at my grandmother's funeral, I tried to reach out with some basic moves, and she verbally attacked me in return. I haven't really bothered since then, I guess. My mother and another of her sisters have both tried to reach out to her since then, with only more fire being spat back in their faces after a few weeks of apparent amicability. They stopped bothering, then. If were my grandmother were still alive, I am not even sure if she would be able to talk with her daughter, since my aunt verbally abused my grandmother several times as well. Her adult daughter can't really stand her, either... but of course, her daughter is turning out to be just like her, no surprise there. We just don't talk to that branch of the family any longer. I think she has one brother left who allies with her, but he's rather self-alienating and has never shown interest in the rest of the family, anyway (there are 10 siblings).

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ColonelSpecial

I have a maternal uncle and aunt that I had never met. There is some seriously screwed up history between him and my mom. My sister knows that story but I have chosen not to know. When my partner and I got married last August, I left it up to my mom whether or not to invite him. She decided to invite him so I got to meet him. He seemed normal to me but since I don't know the history, I can judge my mom for not seeing him for over 27 years.

That is the only one in my family.

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Psycho Dad

That was what I was wondering about. In these situations is it best to try to be the peacemaker, or "take one for the team" in hopes that the other parties will follow? While I would never imagine I would have tried to do anything with my brother's relationship, I think something may have to happen with my sister-in-law's as I can see it some day spill over into her daughter's relationship with the rest of the family.

In about eighteen months or so, my wife should have her Marriage and Family Therapy degree. It will be interesting how her take on this will be after training.

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snowy

I'd like to reach out to my brother. I'd like for us to start talking again. But he has said time and time again that he has no wish to speak to me. In the past, I've repeatedly held out the olive branch, but eventually he decides he doesn't want us to speak again. So this time I'm waiting for him to reach out. I'm patient. He just went through a major life change that puts him on more equal footing with me, and I hope that may inspire him to get in touch.

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Grasshopper Green

I have been on non-speaking terms with a family member, but I am not currently. It sucked.

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Billygoats

its my brother that i am not talking to. He was just always trying to run my life. He never got it that he wasnt my Father. He would take issue with things about my life that only my parents had a right to have qualms with me about. My brother kept hurting me emotionally and didnt seem to care. And I frankly just dont need that shit anymore.

abaya

Hey, thanks for coming back and telling us a little more about your situation. It's good to know some more of the details. Is this your only sibling? And what did your parents think of the situation?

I guess I'm the type of person who doesn't necessarily believe that blood is thicker than water. I try to resolve things with people, but if they're family, they don't necessarily get special preference. If they are prickly porcupines who continue to injure me whenever I reach out to them, well... I'll take them at their word and stay away, after a while. I figure then the ball is in their court, and I won't try any harder to reconcile with them than I would with a friend who had pushed me away.

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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

ring

I don't like how it feels to be on non-speaking terms with any one.

If my sister hadn't married that svengali, and then became a Martha Stewart clone,
and then dissed me and my mother as losers,
well...things could be different.

Onwards and upwards.

Good friends are family.
TFP is family to me.

You can find and make family anywhere.

From a dictionary: (3 a: a group of people united by certain convictions or a common affiliation : )

Psycho Dad

Is he older than you? What kind of events in your life did he take issue with? He may have been trying to be protective. I take it you are possibly female? If so that may make the big brother thing (if that is what it is) more important to him. Not that that makes him right taking issues with your life.

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OzOz

I'm not on speaking terms with my parents, after too many years of being told, "You're great! Oh and hey, you suck." Also I've lost touch with my brother (my only sibling) - just tired of making an effort to call and talk when he is renowned for not answering calls and not returning messages. Also he seldom seems interested in talking much when I do manage to get in touch with him.

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Billygoats

i am a man. this may sound stupid but he just hurt me so much that i just dont have it in me to be his brother anymore

alicat

I just have to add first, after I finished my own post I re-read and find this thread extremely touching. All the very personal (albeit anonymous) stories that have been shared.

Minus being Jewish, this is my mother to a T. She met my Dad while 16 and pregnant in a catholic "facility" for unwed mothers where she was forced by my grandparents to go and give up her baby. Dad stood by her through it all and after the baby was adopted out, married her. I came along a couple of months after they married ('71 baby!, I was almost a girl bastard ) My sister came along 5 yrs later.

My Mom was an absolutely loving and affectionate parent, but was an irresponsible free-spirit (hippie, but it wouldn't have mattered with her what era). I think her emotional maturity completely halted when she became pregnant at 16. She never, ever became a responsible parent. Sitting in her lap cuddling while she sang to a Joni Mitchell album? Check. Waking up to breakfast and a packed lunchbox? Not a chance.

She had a "nervous breakdown" when I was 12 but anyone in the know would tell you it was just a stunt for attention. She really does suffer from depression and anxiety, the rest is absolutely calculated. Much more munipulative and bullshit behavior that is Jerry Springer worthy, until my father finally left and divorced her when I was 17 (my Dad's a PhD, he stuck around for us kids, not smart in hindsight). Since then, more of the same early on, it has gotten considerably better over the intervening 20 yrs. BUT, she just refuses to aknowledge that she never was much of a parent to begin with.

She was never abusive as a parent but she was never responsible as one either. She just doesn't understand the disconnect between me, my sister and herself. She lives in her own little land and doesn't understand why we love her but don't LIKE her. Therefore, since we both live across state from her, we are subject to constant guilt-trip phone messages from her crying "I miss you, please call me". If only they were that short, tack on 3 more min. of babble... It really sucks loving someone enough to feel responsible to the relationship but not liking them much.

To complicate my emotions, my only child died almost 16 yrs. ago and I understand her heartache because her children are still alive.

Geez, sorry for the novel. I had so much more to say (I have always said I could write a book about my mother!) but I stopped myself.

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Psycho Dad

It doesn't sound stupid at all. But at least you can recognize that you were hurt by his actions. I'd suppose that could be useful to you were you wanting to restore your relationship with your brother. You have specific reasons for feeling the way you do and can perhaps communicate them to him.

I can not really put a finger on why I disliked my brother so much. Other than the fact that he was a useless human being, I can see nothing. I witnessed years of him causing pain to my parents. My dad after growing up in the depression kept his savings in a trunk at home and my brother stole it for god knows what. He had troubles with the law as a teen (which my parents never really explained to me). By all accounts from his ex-wives and children he was either abusive or just outright deserted his family. But there is no specific reason or act towards me that caused me to not care a damn bit about him.

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Suzz04

I'm surprised like others there are quite a few families with non speaking terms.

I was in this situation with both sets of grandmothers. My parents removed me from that circle for good reasons. Though at that time, I didn't understand and parts of it I still don't. My maternal grandmother was similar to abaya's aunt. She didn't have her explosions is the difference. She did the same as her mother, keeping the siblings mad at each other. In their presence, she talked about how this one or that one didn't like them or they did this, which ended up with them glaring at the others.

Was she bipolar? We think so. The symtoms of previous generations have been quite the same. My mother and I are bipolar, but we are treated for it. So, there was that reason to be kept from them. I did give it a try to try and mend the broken ties. I'll admit maybe I didn't try very hard, but it was hard with her still doing the same thing that made us leave in the beginning. That's difficult to try and fix things when there's no effort made on the other one's side. This went on for alittle just under 20 years.

Now, my paternal grandmother is a different story. She was the little old lady that everyone loved. Why there was this rift, I really have no idea. From what I've been able to find out, it was something said when I was 4 that ticked mother off and that was it. When my daugther was born and about 2 years old, I went to try to fix that one. It went very well and I enjoyed her company up til her passing away. I wish I had gotten a longer time with her.

Do I have regrets for not being able to mend with my maternal grandmother? Not really. The effort was made and I couldn't handle her attitude. *shrug* Maybe that seems a tad harsh but it wasn't with in me to keep trying.

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