I'll start off by explaining that I am the youngest of three siblings. My brother is 31 years old, my sister is going to be 28, and I am 24. When we were kids, my siblings and I were close, but as we grew older, my sister and I remained best friends while our brother attempted to distance himself. When I was 14 I was diagnosed with depression, as a result, I tended to neglect huge parts of my life. Eventually I was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder and hospitalized when I was 16. It was during my stay in the hospital that my brother chose to disown me.
When I was 17 he met this great girl who actually wanted to be involved with our family, so her influence had a great effect on our relationship. About two years later, they broke up, but my siblings and I had a healthy, mostly functional relationship. It wasn't until I was 20 that things started to go sour. He had met a woman who is a year older than me, and he started to be vicious and cruel towards my sister and I. Their relationship moved at unrealistic speeds, having them married less than six months after we had met her. When they were living under our parents roof they would constantly eat most of the food in the house, sometimes to the point where it was less effort to just go out to eat so as to avoid having to share food with people who weren't contributing to the household.
His wife and him spent a good 2 weeks getting their boxes packed and leaving them all over my parents house, and anytime I would try to have a word with him he would snap at me and say things in such a tone that I found it easier to be out of the house every night, whether or not there was anything to do, most nights I'd just go to parks and try to waste several hours and go home after eleven at night.
One night, I was out with several friends at a Denny's, and I saw my brother there, next thing I knew the waiter handed me my brother's bill and I had to pay for his food. My brother never thanked me.
In recent years, since my parents and I moved to New Mexico for my father's job when I was 21, my brother and his wife only visited once, my brother has only visited one other time. When the two of them came down, she found an excuse to get attention, so she got it. My brother also yelled at me because that night I had gone out with an aquaintance to a hookah lounge, and he was extremely upset because he thought it was drugs.
For my father's 60th birthday, my brother came down by himself. My sister and her now husband came down as well so that we could throw a birthday party for our father. What started as a great night turned into an all out family blowout which then he explained that his wife had started having terrible anxiety and could not come down to visit and he tried to apologize for his behavior. He was gone before 10:00AM the next day.
His wife seems to always come down with some sort of ailment and has had at least two car accidents since they were married, shortly thereafter they always complain about needing money. At my sister's bridal shower, my brother's wife could not have been more rude, complaining that the gathering and socializing of friends was "boring". As I had planned the party in Colorado Springs from Albuquerque, I felt a socialization type party was more suited to my sister and her friends and coworkers.
When my sister's wedding was coming up, my brother's wife announced that she had a fibroid tumor and that her periods were so bad that she could not make it to the rehersal dinner and felt as though she wouldn't likely be able to make it to the wedding, now I'm not saying that this is not a real medical problem, because it could likely be, but the polite thing to do would have been to call to let us know not to expect them at the rehearsal dinner and then bother to say goodbye at the wedding as opposed to leaving without a word. There's also a pattern to any illness that she has come down with, such as whenever she doesn't want to do anything or wants to keep my brother from our family.
Shortly after the wedding, this woman wrote my parents a nasty letter about money that they believe is owed and told them that they were terrible people, and that she can't have a baby because they don't have said money in their hands. She also went on to insult my brother in this letter.
I guess what bothers me about this whole situation isn't that my brother calls me weak or says that when I was hospitalized was the best time of his life. What upsets me is that he lets his wife act the way she does toward our family, and I am sick of the disrespect. My brother also needs to know that he has been acting inappropriately towards our family as well, I just don't know how to bring it up, any advice would be helpful.
I am happily nine weeks into a much wanted pregnancy and as the second trimester approaches, I am very confused about how to approach announcing this to a sister who I have been involuntarily estranged from for over a year and a half. Our relationship has been up and down, mostly down, for several years though.
I call it the one-sided sibling rivalry. If it were up to me, we would have discussed things, mended issues and remained close a long time ago. Although not perfect, I have never done anything to intentionally hurt her and love her in spite of the pain she has caused me. From the perspective of others, and I would have to agree, she has an unhealthy need to compete against me and clearly does not want others to like me. She has demonstrated this by talking behind my back, making a fool out of me and spreading blatant, defaming lies about me. I have gingerly confronted her with this, told her I want to make things right and she has responded by saying she wants me to accept that she doesn't wish to be close with me. In reflection of how she has treated me, I have to concur that I am better off keeping my distance.
She has said such awful things that I did not tell her of my last pregnancy in fear that if I miscarried, she'd spread false rumours about why I lost the baby. This even deterred me from telling my mother, in case she couldn't help but tell my sister. I was right to make this choice because I did miscarry and thankfully didn't also have to endure the pain of what mean-spirited things might have been said. It's not right though that her unkindness has that much control over me.
Nevertheless, I don't think it would be very nice for her to learn of my pregnancy through the grapevine or via facebook. She lives close by, but has refused to meet with me when I have asked in the past and she never accepts my phone calls. I would like to handle this with as much class and dignity as possible. What is your advice in this situation?
haven't known what to do so I've done nothing. It's too strange to believe anyway so I have given up. He's my only child and through a lot of trying to find out anything about him I know he's been married a few years now, no longer in the Marines, and I don't know when exactly but he had his first child recently. Which makes me a grandmother for all the good that does.
I love him and miss him so much and don't understand how all this could happen to the point that he believes the garbage he's been told, especially by someone who actually kidnapped him from my house (far too many years ago now. The last time I saw him was the 11th of June 2005.) and for whatever reasons of his own told him lie after lie about me.
This guy is now (FINALLY!) a registered sex offender. My son is so angry and hates me yet I also know he loves me. For the people involved in telling my son a bunch of crap, out of anger, another out of jealousy and the fact they are nasty vicious gossips (when does the way I dress-according to my 'alleged' brother's wife it's inappropriate! Who made her the God of what is and isn't appropriate? Oh she did I forgot.) Basically trying to tell me my son wouldn't grow up to be worth anything unless I dressed appropriately. Though all I ever did was wear a summer dress because it was summer and hot and I could wear them. She can't. These people wanted to hurt me with their actions and have been successful but they don't even care what they've done to my son. It hurts him though these days he'll never admit it these days. He will live a lot longer than me.
He hates me and absolutely wants nothing to do with me. He has "facts" either completely distorted to the point they can't be considered true these days as well as he's been told out right lies but no way he wants anything to do with me and I know even if I could get him to read any letter or e-mail from me (if I knew those addresses) he has his mind set to believe what he wants to believe.
I so want him to know I forgive him and love him as much today as the day he was born. Maybe now that he's a dad he understands how much that is.
But it's pointless. I'll never speak with him, communicate with him, or see him again so I guess I'm just typing this to type it to someone. I don't have any friends or family so nobody else. When I have to go the the hospital for surgery or the e.r. (and I go a LOT. Why do I fall all the time? Having Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome shouldn't cause that. Oh well who cares.) I'm the only one I know who puts nobody when asked for an emergency contact. I've had everything stolen from me and do not trust anyone.
Sorry. I know this won't be read but at least I've typed it and only briefly. Suspect I won't feel better but worth a try.
Yep! me vs. mom over and over again. but its hard to fix things when each person has a different version of the issues...Most of them to have stemmed when my daughter was born 13 years ago, but as i have recenetly found out even clearer, my mom won't let go of the past. we tried to fix things by a sit down chat and it turned into a verbal blood bath in which she brought up things from when i was in high school (20+) years ago! The sit down went nowhere, but as you have said..sometimes you have to make the right decision and sometimes you have to make the decision right...thus far the right decision has been leave well enough alone, if we're not talking, we can't fight right? Unfortunately the one really caught in the middle is the kids...especailly and mostly my daughter who just wants everyone to get along =(
I want to cut contact with my Mother and Sister, only thing is, they have kids. I love my nieces and nephews, but I cannot stand being around either of those two. Mom has custody of brothers two children and is doing a piss poor job of raising them, basically, collects the checks for them and treats them cruelly. I don't have kid and I don't want to be a parent, selfish maybe, but that's my choice. Anywho, I'll try to put this short: Mom got with Uncle when I was little. Mom got busted out by my dad, (she answered the phone talking to Uncle, and forgot to turn of record button on answer machine--I have the tape still 23+years later on my desk right now)- Next day after church, me and sister m stuff is packed and mom states were moving away from dad. Brothers stay with Dad. I hated it. I had to be tug-o-war-pulled off my dad because I didn't want to leave. Couple years later, Sister and I are removed for Mom's physically abusiveness. (She still claims we were lying, but um, bruises,etc don't lie and we know the truth, its like she forgets we were there) Mom got prego with Uncles baby, my now cousin-brother. (Who is a great kid, its not his fault who his dad is) Ok,. Brother with the 2 kids, drug addict drunk who is totally self obsessed and does nothing for them but act like a friend that stops by once in a while, their mother was shooting heroin while prego with my neice, who is totally out of the picture now. My mom has custody of those two. Niece needs special care, many issues due to all the drugs and 3 months early. The only care she gets is screaming, name calling and beat on by everyone in the house, her brother, her uncle and my mom. Shes tiny, an easy target. .I have witnessed my mom STOMP on her when she was younger, age 12 now though, that was a while ago. Put it shortly, my mother is a tyrant and I hate her. I don't want to hate her, she is my mother, but I do. She's doing the same thing to my nephew and niece that she did to my sister and me. My sister is just like my mom. She has 3 kids and a paycheck, I mean husband. She only got with him because her kids 'baby daddy's' won't have anything to do with her or their kids and she just see's green. He's a paycheck and I hear her constantly say, in front of her kids, I hope "Paycheck" gets in a wreck on the way home and dies so I get the insurance money'. She's horrible and her kids are spoiled brat monsters. My family is a real life jerry springer show and I want it canceled. I just don't want to leave the kids. But I'm not a kid person. Do I just take off and keep contact with the kids? Or Do i take custody? Or do I make a call and get them put in foster care? I don't want them in foster care, they deserve soo much better than that..I admit, I don't like kids. Never have. I just prefer animals honestly. I love the kids in my family but they are turning out like my mother and sister. I can't stand it. All of them are just negative, fake, horrible rude people. Its sickening. I'm stuck. I'm married, been with my guy for nearly 15 years (since we were kids ourselves), we don't have kids and I don't plan on having them. We've talked about taking the two under my moms 'care' but hes got a point saying he isn't raising someone else kids when he doesn't have any of his own. I have to respect that. Anyway, this is just the top of the bucket, there is so much more but I don't feel like going into that too. What are anyone's thoughts on this? Its a fubar type of situation and I just don't know what to do anymore. These kids are paying for their adults problems. Its not right. I'm the one of the family who somehow escaped with a different attitude then all the others, I don't know how I managed but I did. I don't want anything to do with any of them, except the kids. They are what is important. Not us.
I'VE SENT U MY STORY IN A LETTER ALSO 2 YUVAL DISKIN PLEASE KEEP IT, I KNOW THAT U HELP AMRICAN CITIZEN ONLY, ITS OK, I STILL LEARN FROM U ALOT, THANK U SO MUCH, MABY SOMEDAY WILL MEET :) SHABAT SHALOM- HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND LEAH MAOR ISRAEL :)
All your storys break my heart and yes you can have your heart broken even by someone you dont have romantic feelings for like many of you have demonstrated,they are so painful to read i cant get myself to finish reading any without a lot of tears flowing down my face. I hope all the relationsships can be repaired.
I NEED HELP TRYING TO MEND RELATIONSHIPS WITH MY INLAWS .......the problem is my sons father from a previous relationship is dating my young sister inlaw and the hole family thinks me and my fience( which we have a child together) should be ok with the fact that my ex/son's father is always at my fiences perents house and now we all are fighting because my inlaws thinks its ok that my ex hangs out thier, sleeps there and that they have no problem with it !!!the fact is that i am family so my son is family and his father shouldn't be dating my sister inlaw ...its just wrong !!!!!!!!!!!! they have always called my son there grandchild and my sister in law has always been his aunty from day one ....so now i have aunty / step mom to my child????????????
Thanks for the advise.......my daughter did have her baby on wednesday and I never got a call. Can you imagin not getting a call to tell you your first grandchild is being born? I haven't as of today even seen the baby and attemps to talk to her have gotten me no where. How can I ever get that moment back to hold her the day she was born. Such a shame.
I have a grandmother (my fathers mother) who is somewhat hard to be in the room with. I have an older brother and he was the light in her life when we were just little kids. When our family lived as her neighbor she would invite my brother over but never me. To be frank, I was mostly air to her. As we got older she was begining to pay little by little more attention to me aswell but I could still see the differences in her relationships between me and my brother. It was only when I was in 9th grade that the attention boom began. Since my brother didn't become what she wanted him to be she turned her sights to me. One can say I'm bitter about what she had done to me as a child and my grandmother has been trying to make up for it ever since by possibly the most annoying way possible. My grandmother treats and talks to me as if I was a child and I'm 23 years old. She has tried to brainwash me against my other grandparents (my mothers parents) who have been possibly the perfect grandparents. My grandmother blames my parents devorce and every problem our family had on my mother. She thinks she and her side family are perfect in every way and everyone else is to blame for problems that accure. She calls me every week and makes resonable small talk which I enjoy until the moment she asks about other peoples business. Everytime she does, I have told her over and over that if she wants to know something about my brother for example she needs to call him herself and not ask me. I live some 5 hours away from the rest of my family so naturally I don't know about their business. Yet each week its the same phone call. Hi how are you doing? Is everything okay? How was your day? Oh by the way what is your brother doing? Have you talked to him? How is his son? what's his girlfriend up to? Have they been having money troubles and on and on it goes.
I don't know what to do anymore. It's gone to the point where I simply try to avoid her calls as much as possible. She's still my grandmother but she makes it so hard to like her and she doesn't even realize what she's doing and she doesn't want to realize what she's doing. My brother and I have told her time and time again, stop treating us like we're five. She remembers it for the first 15 minutes and then it starts all over again. Its the most humiliating when we are at a relatives house (from her side) and we are preparing to go to bed and she asks us if we've gone to bathroom, brushed our teeth and do we need a warm glass of milk to sleep. I do not think my grandmother will change the way she sees others at all but she has been a great help when I have been in a tough spot and I am greatful for all her support but I don't want her treating me like a child. I want her to see that I am an adult and I can take care of myself and if I can't then I will ask for help when I need it. I also want her to understand that if she wants to know about my brothers affairs she needs to call HIM and not me.
When I was 17 he met this great girl who actually wanted to be involved with our family, so her influence had a great effect on our relationship. About two years later, they broke up, but my siblings and I had a healthy, mostly functional relationship. It wasn't until I was 20 that things started to go sour. He had met a woman who is a year older than me, and he started to be vicious and cruel towards my sister and I. Their relationship moved at unrealistic speeds, having them married less than six months after we had met her. When they were living under our parents roof they would constantly eat most of the food in the house, sometimes to the point where it was less effort to just go out to eat so as to avoid having to share food with people who weren't contributing to the household.
His wife and him spent a good 2 weeks getting their boxes packed and leaving them all over my parents house, and anytime I would try to have a word with him he would snap at me and say things in such a tone that I found it easier to be out of the house every night, whether or not there was anything to do, most nights I'd just go to parks and try to waste several hours and go home after eleven at night.
One night, I was out with several friends at a Denny's, and I saw my brother there, next thing I knew the waiter handed me my brother's bill and I had to pay for his food. My brother never thanked me.
In recent years, since my parents and I moved to New Mexico for my father's job when I was 21, my brother and his wife only visited once, my brother has only visited one other time. When the two of them came down, she found an excuse to get attention, so she got it. My brother also yelled at me because that night I had gone out with an aquaintance to a hookah lounge, and he was extremely upset because he thought it was drugs.
For my father's 60th birthday, my brother came down by himself. My sister and her now husband came down as well so that we could throw a birthday party for our father. What started as a great night turned into an all out family blowout which then he explained that his wife had started having terrible anxiety and could not come down to visit and he tried to apologize for his behavior. He was gone before 10:00AM the next day.
His wife seems to always come down with some sort of ailment and has had at least two car accidents since they were married, shortly thereafter they always complain about needing money. At my sister's bridal shower, my brother's wife could not have been more rude, complaining that the gathering and socializing of friends was "boring". As I had planned the party in Colorado Springs from Albuquerque, I felt a socialization type party was more suited to my sister and her friends and coworkers.
When my sister's wedding was coming up, my brother's wife announced that she had a fibroid tumor and that her periods were so bad that she could not make it to the rehersal dinner and felt as though she wouldn't likely be able to make it to the wedding, now I'm not saying that this is not a real medical problem, because it could likely be, but the polite thing to do would have been to call to let us know not to expect them at the rehearsal dinner and then bother to say goodbye at the wedding as opposed to leaving without a word. There's also a pattern to any illness that she has come down with, such as whenever she doesn't want to do anything or wants to keep my brother from our family.
Shortly after the wedding, this woman wrote my parents a nasty letter about money that they believe is owed and told them that they were terrible people, and that she can't have a baby because they don't have said money in their hands. She also went on to insult my brother in this letter.
I guess what bothers me about this whole situation isn't that my brother calls me weak or says that when I was hospitalized was the best time of his life. What upsets me is that he lets his wife act the way she does toward our family, and I am sick of the disrespect. My brother also needs to know that he has been acting inappropriately towards our family as well, I just don't know how to bring it up, any advice would be helpful.
I call it the one-sided sibling rivalry. If it were up to me, we would have discussed things, mended issues and remained close a long time ago. Although not perfect, I have never done anything to intentionally hurt her and love her in spite of the pain she has caused me. From the perspective of others, and I would have to agree, she has an unhealthy need to compete against me and clearly does not want others to like me. She has demonstrated this by talking behind my back, making a fool out of me and spreading blatant, defaming lies about me. I have gingerly confronted her with this, told her I want to make things right and she has responded by saying she wants me to accept that she doesn't wish to be close with me. In reflection of how she has treated me, I have to concur that I am better off keeping my distance.
She has said such awful things that I did not tell her of my last pregnancy in fear that if I miscarried, she'd spread false rumours about why I lost the baby. This even deterred me from telling my mother, in case she couldn't help but tell my sister. I was right to make this choice because I did miscarry and thankfully didn't also have to endure the pain of what mean-spirited things might have been said. It's not right though that her unkindness has that much control over me.
Nevertheless, I don't think it would be very nice for her to learn of my pregnancy through the grapevine or via facebook. She lives close by, but has refused to meet with me when I have asked in the past and she never accepts my phone calls. I would like to handle this with as much class and dignity as possible. What is your advice in this situation?
I love him and miss him so much and don't understand how all this could happen to the point that he believes the garbage he's been told, especially by someone who actually kidnapped him from my house (far too many years ago now. The last time I saw him was the 11th of June 2005.) and for whatever reasons of his own told him lie after lie about me.
This guy is now (FINALLY!) a registered sex offender. My son is so angry and hates me yet I also know he loves me. For the people involved in telling my son a bunch of crap, out of anger, another out of jealousy and the fact they are nasty vicious gossips (when does the way I dress-according to my 'alleged' brother's wife it's inappropriate! Who made her the God of what is and isn't appropriate? Oh she did I forgot.) Basically trying to tell me my son wouldn't grow up to be worth anything unless I dressed appropriately. Though all I ever did was wear a summer dress because it was summer and hot and I could wear them. She can't. These people wanted to hurt me with their actions and have been successful but they don't even care what they've done to my son. It hurts him though these days he'll never admit it these days. He will live a lot longer than me.
He hates me and absolutely wants nothing to do with me. He has "facts" either completely distorted to the point they can't be considered true these days as well as he's been told out right lies but no way he wants anything to do with me and I know even if I could get him to read any letter or e-mail from me (if I knew those addresses) he has his mind set to believe what he wants to believe.
I so want him to know I forgive him and love him as much today as the day he was born. Maybe now that he's a dad he understands how much that is.
But it's pointless. I'll never speak with him, communicate with him, or see him again so I guess I'm just typing this to type it to someone. I don't have any friends or family so nobody else. When I have to go the the hospital for surgery or the e.r. (and I go a LOT. Why do I fall all the time? Having Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome shouldn't cause that. Oh well who cares.) I'm the only one I know who puts nobody when asked for an emergency contact. I've had everything stolen from me and do not trust anyone.
Sorry. I know this won't be read but at least I've typed it and only briefly. Suspect I won't feel better but worth a try.
Thanks.
Beccy
The sit down went nowhere, but as you have said..sometimes you have to make the right decision and sometimes you have to make the decision right...thus far the right decision has been leave well enough alone, if we're not talking, we can't fight right? Unfortunately the one really caught in the middle is the kids...especailly and mostly my daughter who just wants everyone to get along =(
I don't know what to do anymore. It's gone to the point where I simply try to avoid her calls as much as possible. She's still my grandmother but she makes it so hard to like her and she doesn't even realize what she's doing and she doesn't want to realize what she's doing. My brother and I have told her time and time again, stop treating us like we're five. She remembers it for the first 15 minutes and then it starts all over again. Its the most humiliating when we are at a relatives house (from her side) and we are preparing to go to bed and she asks us if we've gone to bathroom, brushed our teeth and do we need a warm glass of milk to sleep. I do not think my grandmother will change the way she sees others at all but she has been a great help when I have been in a tough spot and I am greatful for all her support but I don't want her treating me like a child. I want her to see that I am an adult and I can take care of myself and if I can't then I will ask for help when I need it. I also want her to understand that if she wants to know about my brothers affairs she needs to call HIM and not me.