No connection between us

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Ooh I have transcontinental family? Awesome!



I'm pretty sure I've exhausted all 'mature' ways, and every single one about 500 times too. I'm at home with a burnout and have a daughter whom I'd like to be able to do much more for than I can currently manage (energywise). My mom was making me worse every time we were in touch so it was time I chose my daughter (and by extension her mom) over someone who's incapable of decent human interaction.

Funny how children can make you do things you can't do for yourself. I have some fancy inner momma-lion thing going on I guess

Still, there always is that "but she's your mother!" thing nagging at the back of my mind (and people keep reminding me too, what is up with that?!). Loyalty totally sux.

And.. I forgot to say that I'm so sorry to hear you're in the same boat momsparky!

(got a bit cought up in my frustration, sorry!)

LOL, yes, I've been there - it's funny, I had mostly cut off my parents before I had a child - then I thought he should make up his own mind.

Sadly, now he's made up his mind and I feel guilty that NOBODY wants to see my parents! (But he doesn't feel guilty, so I think I did my job there.)

I think society programs people to expect that a functional family is much more prevalent than what it is. People root for the happy ending and think that things will work out if you only just try. Relationships cannot improve unilaterally. If you are the only one willing to try, and your parents act in their usual ways you can only expect more of the same. People just assume if you will just try, the other party will be so happy, and they will change. They only sensible way to relate to people is how they actually are, not what you wish them to be.

People cannot change SO's faults just by loving them; people cannot change their parents if they are toxic. These things do not happen in real life. I do not know why people feel like they need to be Nosy Rosies and tell people otherwise. Maybe dysfunctional family stories make them feel uncomfortable and they think they are helping.

This used to really be an issue for me as an active PTA member: other parents would always ask about "seeing my family" over the holidays, and I'd have to say no - and usually have to explain "we have a rule - no family during holidays" (that is a boundary I set shortly after college - they are significantly worse in situations where there is a social expectation of "family harmony.")

People's faces would drop, or go blank, as though I'd said we set our lawn on fire during the holidays or something equally crazy. I finally realized that it wasn't so much that they were being nosy or mean - my situation was just so far out of their experience that they couldn't resolve the cognitive dissonance of a walking, talking, breathing human being having parents difficult enough to avoid.

It's kind of like how wealthy people are always telling poor people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps;" it isn't because they are just plain mean - they have no real frame of reference for poverty.