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← Return to Toxic adult children
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Depression & Anxiety | Last Active: 9 hours ago | Replies (13)
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I know it hurts really bad. You are not alone. Something similar happened to me with close extended family I thought I had great relationships with. The worst part is that there are no good reasons at all for them to do that. I can take a guess why they did but even if I'm right there would be absolutely no reason for them to do so. I treated them so well all the previous years, I was always "there for them" and gave up lots of my valuable free time to spend with them.
That was very painful but I realized that their behavior shows who they are. Unless they apologize to me I don't care about them at all now. The saying "You choose your friends, not your family." or something like that, is timeless and true.
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I want to add that when this happened to me I looked into the subject and was surprised to learn that about 25% of people are estranged from at least one family member at some point. Many of those people reconnect though. So there is definitely hope.
When I thought about people I knew, it was also surprising that a fair percentage do not speak with others members of their family. The reasons vary from childish reasons, jealousy, real or perceived abuse, to alcoholism.
In my case one family relationship is irreparable because what they did "went to the heart" and had no value other than try to hurt me. I also realized that this was so good for me as it allowed me to never have to spend (waste) time with them and never take on any of their influence, which would not be good for me.