ever feel like your torturing yurself

by trying to maintain some kind of relationship with your family?

Yep, very similar situation for me.

Its getting that way.

Only with my ex. But yeah fambly can really try your patience.

I'm tortured severely every day at work... why bring family into it...

Just remember you do have a choice.

Blood is thicker than water, but it will still sluice off the driveway with a steady flow of water and the neighbors will never know what happened. (sorry, just watched Dexter)

BTW it's not as sticky as jelly.

BTDT. Lucky for me, I was already a Neil Young fan. Shoving a quarter into the GRM jukebox for ya.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgjK2ITm_eM

For what it's worth, the only ones of us left are my mom, my aunt, my sister (and her seriously cool husband), and me & my sister's kids (one for each of us--my niece rocks, and my daughter just screens out her mom's family..except for one cousin who is pretty rockin' as well).

We've all learned to just keep walking. Treating a weird family member like some shiny happy person you have to be polite to at work is not a crime. Fist bump, bro.

In reply to BARNCA:

Yes.

My dad and step-mom have had an issue with my wife from day 1. My dad more or less channeling my step-moms issues. My wife is a strong willed individual that won't allow people to walk all over her and my step-mom didn't like that.

I love my dad, but my relationship is dwindling no matter what I do.

Also my leech of a brother decided that after his dad died, he all of a sudden got friendly with my dad and step-beast. He then became the perfect ass-kissing child my step-beast always wanted. I never had a great relationship with him, but my dad always takes his side, which makes me feel like I'm the E36 M3 head.

I drive myself nuts day to day trying to decide how I want to tell my dad I can't keep having a relationship with him and move on with my life.

BARNCA wrote: by trying to maintain some kind of relationship with your family?

How old are you? I just turned 50 and my dad, mother-in-law, and father-in-law are all around 72-77 years old and are challenging us a lot. We love them and are blessed to still have them but they act like little kids. The roles have changed and we are now in charge.

Some days I laugh, some I cry. Family........

Love my inlaws, but my own side of the family is sliding into an insanity that I'm choosing to avoid as much as I can. God did I marry well.

Instead of torturing ourselves we decided the only family that mattered was the one we created. Much less drama. Much less expense. And a whole lot more time for us since we didn't have to travel all over.

That's worked well for us for over 20 years.

Nobody says you have to have anything to do with anyone you don't want to, even if they are family. Life is too short and there's too much misery in it without adding more on purpose.

Nope.

A few years ago I realised that when I turned 12 I became emotionally older than my father. Things went much better once I understood that.

The family I get along with lives about 1200 miles away. I see them about once every 10 years.

My MIL is batE36 M3 crazy and she doesn't like me because I'm the only person in the family who won't simply drop everything and run when she starts acting up. My wife has also finally had enough of her passive-agressive crap and simply hangs up the phone when she starts being childish.

Like Chris Titus said: "64% of families are dysfunctional, that's great, that means we're the majority. That means WE'RE the ones who are normal and all the other people are the ones who are screwed up".

Shawn

I grew up without much of a family, so I've learned to cherish what little I have now.

I'll just chime in with an "Amen" and let it go at that. Just too much to dwell on sometimes.

carguy123 wrote: Nobody says you have to have anything to do with anyone you don't want to, even if they are family. Life is too short and there's too much misery in it without adding more on purpose.

A-berkeleying-men.

I just (against my will for the most part) had to pick up some luggage for my dead-beat drug addict uncle today. He's been on the straight and narrow for about 6 months now. Amazing cook, so he can basically pick up a job as a chef at anytime, then he starts saving money, a big bender happens, lives on the streets, rinse and repeat.

My mother (his sister) guilt trips me into doing stuff for him. I did this because it wasn't too much work on my part as I was driving by the hotel he left it at, and mum stays happy. I made sure to let her know I was quite irritated by the request though.

So yea. I am basically happy away from family. Any of my close friends know that I'll tell them to go right to hell if they think they can try and abuse my friendship in anyway. Life is much too short to be emotionally drained/abused by people who may or may not "love" you because you share DNA. A worthless human being is a worthless human being, family or otherwise.

You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. The friends I chose have been my family for many years and much closer than my blood relations.

My mother... I drive a 6 hour round trip at least once a month to look after her. She is only 59 and is just about shutting down... She has been kind of dependant on me for the last 12 years and I fear that it is setting to get worse. I just got engaged a little over a week ago and need to figure a way out of that situation.

I do my best to not speak to my brother. The best way to describe him is toxic. He has been hospitalized for his instability a few times. No longer talking to him is me just plain getting off that merry-go-round. (still recovering from seeing him over the weekend for my grandmothers funeral)

My inlaws drive me nuts, if I ask them not to do something with our boy, they go out of their way to do it. I try to distance myself (self preservation) my wife gets angry with me, and if I do spend time with them, I get angry at myself. Its a no win situation with them,

I've got one sister who has been the outsider all her life, and who has worked to make herself the outsider. Although some of her current issues are not her fault in any way, since her teenage years (she's about 10 years older than I am) she has consistently made bad choices in her life. Now she makes a lot of snide digs about how she has to make do with so little while we have so much yadda yadda. Guess what? We've made better choices and played our hands better. We were all raised by the same parents, so I don't want to hear it.

She still drives my wife nuts sometimes, but fortunately my wife has really started taking my approach, which is to just tune her out when my sister starts talking about herself... which is most of the time.

We're also having issues with my father-in-law, who remarried about 6 years ago under extremely odd circumstances. That was about 12 years after the death of my wife's mother. The new wife is strange, and inflicts her strangeness on him. All in all that situation has cost my wife most of her remaining relationship with her father, which kind of sucks.

Nope. My folks have always been real supportive of anything I do. It was Dad's idea, not mine, to haul my unfinished datsun replica up to gainesville last week to show to people. [Which was a lot of fun.] Here's a youtube clip of us fabricating a hood together....both english wheel and bead roller stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x-bGx_Ccd8&list=UUUb_f3wErXYHStC5Xi9qgLQ&index=11&feature=plcp

He helped me with all the beads on the body except the little ones on the cowl.

I guess I'm lucky in that for the most part my blood relations seem to have their heads out of their asses and we get along well. I have a cousin who got strung out on prescription drugs but she's pretty well got that handled now. It was a rough several years for those closest to her, though. My brothers and I all went through rough patches for various reasons but now we all seem to be maintaining and improving as we go. That's a big relief.

My mom is 78, still pretty sharp mentally but her health is deterioating. She had pneumonia a short while back and took forever to get over it, but she's well enough now that she and my stepdad (who I think the absolute world of, even if he is a damn New York City Yankee Democrat! ) are going to Israel and Jordan this Friday for 10 days.

OTOH, the non-blood relations...

My dad died in 2010, I miss him a lot. He kept things together pretty well while he was alive, but once he died his wife (I do not consider her my stepmother) immediately went batE36 M3 in contesting his will, she sued my brother and I both in our capacity as PRs and all 4 of us brothers as beneficiaries of the estate, trying to take over control of the day to day operations. She's not blood so as far as I am concerned the bitch doesn't count as family. It also seems that, as we get closer to putting things to bed, her son has been a big force in some of the idiocy. When the final door is slammed on that (hopefully very soon), man will I heave a sigh of relief.

My ex is completely batE36 M3 crazy. She was diagnosed as Type II bipolar but I disagree; I saw and experienced some things which tell me she is schizophrenic and she doesn't let the docs see that side of her. That meant I finally had to do some things I really didn't want to do to in order to get custody of my daughter, the best part is the kid's doing very well. I guess that means from her side of the family's perspective I am the evil one. Oh, well. Such is life. I always got along well with my m-i-l, the whole divorce thing strained relations for a while (understandably) but we still get along pretty good despite that.

Nope. I refuse to do it. My Mother-in-law has been nothing but a complete...well let's just say that she is an issue. She goes out of her way to cause problems for me, for my wife, and our entire family. I refuse to see her and she is not allowed in my home.

My wife spent years trying and trying to maintain or build some sort of connection with her, only to be disappointed again and again. Finally, she gave up as well. When our son was born last year, we gave her opportunities to see him, but she played her usual games. She has never seen her only grandchild, and probably never will. Good riddance.

Why suffer just because someone is "family". That's a genetic coincidence, nothing more. People who are there for you and love you and support you...they are your family.

Don't get me started. I recently gave them up cold turkey and I'm not goin' back!

That sucks. I love my family and would be nowhere near as far along in my life without them. Yeah we've had troubles but no complex relationship is easy.

I "walked away" when I was younger then realized that was dumb. I have dinner with my parents every week now and cherish that they're still around. I've lost all my grandparents at this point and know what it's like to say goodbye - my father in law passed away a few years ago and I miss him dearly. I would love to have him back to talk to him and show him the cool stuff I've been doing.

If someone is toxic then sure distance yourself from them. But if you can get along with them by setting aside some of your ego then do it. Discuss your problems with them - maybe they'll meet you half way. You'll be glad of it some day.

dculberson wrote: That sucks. I love my family and would be nowhere near as far along in my life without them. Yeah we've had troubles but no complex relationship is easy.

I should clarify that my immediate family (except for my mom being a bit bi-polar, crazy seems to run in her side of the family) is perfectly adequate to deal with, especially in moderation.

I appreciated the opening column for the October issue. I do lots with my dad. He's driven across the country twice to tow the rally car to events, and he's one of the few people I'd know that after a 12 hour day shift would drive two hours to change a CV axle in a pouring rain parking lot @ the headquarter hotel while I was inside during the driver's meeting. Then again, I've busted ass building/renovating houses with him for almost the past decade, so there is a bit of give and take there.

Even my friend's think he is a machine though. I keep telling him that one day, he's going to hurt himself, realize he's 55, and not be able to spring back from it