Not everyone can say they have a loving family and wonderful relatives. And sometimes it gets to the point that we have to cut those toxic people out of our lives. It could be someone's aunt or uncle, step parent, or even their own biological mother or father that some are forced to cut out entirely. People share their how their relative ruined their lives so much so they had to disown them.
Simply Didn’t Want Kids
“My mother simply didn’t want kids but never bothered to prevent having all three of us with different men. She tried to have my dad put in jail for ‘abuse,’ meanwhile he was working two jobs to support us and would come home to a filthy house and my diaper completely loaded. She put all three of us in foster care and luckily my dad got me and my other half sister’s dad got her, but the oldest of us spent 18 years of her life in foster care. I last saw my mother when I was six because she had seen that my dad was successful and wanted to use him for money.
My father he was a truck driver since before I was born and he had the option of working unlimited overtime so he would work insane hours every week, like 60-70 hours a week. Until I was about 6-7, we lived in a one bedroom apartment and he would just give the bedroom and bed to me and sleep on the couch.
He brought me to a park to meet her and she blatantly ignored me and instead was all over my dad. He’s a smart man and realized this and that’s the last time I ever saw her. She never sent one birthday card or ever paid a dime of child support to my dad. Congrats mom, you’re the worlds biggest P.O.S
Sadly my dad passed this June, but I hope to god one day that I can be as amazing as he was.”
Doesn’t Remember
“I grew up in an upper middle class perfect nuclear family. My parents were high school sweethearts. My dad was an operator at an oil refinery, my mom was an accountant turned stay at home mom. I am a middle child- I have a 3 year older brother and a 3 year younger brother.
When my older brother was about 10, my dad’s drinking got out of hand and be became extremely physically abusive. A few years later, my mom divorced him after 23 years of marriage because she was afraid for our lives.
My dad went off the deep end. Started doing bad stuff, illegal substances, stealing, etc. Was involved in a few hit-and-runs. My older brother, who had received the brunt of the physical abuse, was manipulated into a relationship with my dad for a few years. To a lesser extent, so was I. He seemed to take an interest in us for the first time since we were little, but in hindsight it was just more manipulation and gaslighting.
Won’t go into all of the details, but my brothers and I eventually got wind of just what kind of sketchy stuff he was involved in. My little brother and I, who both had aspirations to get into law enforcement, cut him out of our lives completely. My older brother took a while longer- he was a kid who always just wanted his dad to love him and so he was wearing blinders. He did eventually see the light, and cut my dad out as well.
A few years ago, my dad was living with his mom. My grandma had been manipulated by him for years and they had a symbiotic, co- dependent relationship… she was a prescription addict and he was an ‘everything’ addict. My grandma had a reverse mortgage on her home. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and given 6 months to live, and moved into a nursing home. My dad kept squatting at her house, despite the bank coming to (rightfully) claim the home. Cops got involved and he was arrested.
My grandma slipped and fell 2 days after moving to the nursing home. She developed a brain bleed and died a few days later.
My dad had a seizure his first night in jail and was brought to the hospital, where it was determined he had a burst brain aneurysm. The doctors theorized that the aneurysm was the result of his substance abuse, and when he was scuffling with the cops during the arrest, his increased blood pressure and/or jarring caused it to burst.
He’s now in a nursing home and functioning at about a 6 year old’s level. He has some inkling that he’s messed up royally and it is all his fault but he really doesn’t understand the specifics. He can kind of communicate, and hold conversations but they’re bizarre and wander all over and a lot of very strange words make their way in.
I visit him a few times per year. I only do it because the person he became with addiction is dead. I believe that karma caught up to him, and he’s gotten what he deserved. I truly would not shed a tear if he dropped dead tomorrow, he’s been dead to me for a decade. I do have some compassion for a sad, confused 58 year old man who is alone in a depressing nursing home with no visitors. He knows he has kids and a wife (he doesn’t understand they’re divorced) and sometimes he even knows he has grandkids he has never been allowed to meet. So he doesn’t understand why nobody visits him. I’ve started occasional visits not because I have any interest in having a relationship with him, but because unfortunately the doctors saved him when his aneurysm burst and we’re left with a person who is paying for crimes he doesn’t know he committed, in a world he doesn’t understand. He sometimes cries when he asks to see pictures of ‘that little boy’ (my nephew- his grandson) and I have to explain, yet again, why he isn’t allowed to meet him. He asks me questions about ‘that cop’- my little brother, whose name he can’t remember. He looks so proud when I tell him that his son is rising through the ranks and just became a K9 officer. It’s like a shard of the dad he was 25 years ago has surfaced, and everything in between only exists as a convoluted fever dream. It tears my heart open as a human to see his suffering, but in a really twisted, sick way gives me satisfaction that his actions caught up to him, which makes me hate myself even more than I already did.”
“Fell Into A Trap”
“I disowned my mother. I was groomed to be his victim and abused/tortured by her husband for years. When I finally told her, she not only didn’t believe me, but stayed married to him for seven more years. I had to move out at 16 to get away from how I was being treated. Then when I finally began speaking to others, she started to make stuff up to her social circle by telling them that I’d seduced her husband.
I cut her off for years and didn’t ever want to see her again but my family bullied me to just get over it and have a relationship with my mother and that I was hurting her. Even my sister, who knew what happened, knew I stayed for so long to protect her, fell into a trap of my mother, whining to everyone around her and painting me as a liar.
About 4 years ago, my mother was very suddenly diagnosed with advanced cancer and didn’t have much time. I was moving out of my home state and everyone told me I needed to see her before I left, that I needed to be there, but I didn’t want to. In the end, everyone turned their back on me. They were so mad I wouldn’t just forget my trauma just to say goodbye to someone I hadn’t loved for a long time, and rightly so.”
Had To Do What’s Best
“I cut contact from my mother, but from what I hear nowadays she hates me for ruining her life.
First awful thing I did: my mother purchased her first home when I was 12. She had always had this vision of me having a house and playing in the backyard as a child, and I think she felt like I was missing out by living in apartments all my life. Thing was, I had no desire to move out of where we were, and probably more importantly, she couldn’t really afford a house plus this was just around the housing crisis as well so the price was super inflated and dropped significantly a year later. We only lived there a year before moving in with her at-the-time boyfriend and renting it out. I apparently was the sole reason that she purchased that house, she did that for me. So it was my fault that she bought a house she couldn’t afford.
Second awful thing I did: She got pulled over while driving to a nearby city because she was swerving on the freeway. I was 13 at the time and had fallen asleep, but got woken up by the car shaking back and forth and almost hitting a semi, while she was asleep at the wheel. I woke her up and she insisted on pushing through, and not too long after, she was pulled over by an undercover cop. I watched as she failed the sobriety test hard, she fell a couple of times trying to walk in a straight line. I cooperated with police and gave over the prescriptions she had in the car with her. So basically that was an act of betrayal. She was in the medical field and was struggling to find/keep a job that would hire her with a record (charged with child endangerment). So she was driving while heavily medicated, but I took most of the blame because I wasn’t loyal to her and ‘sold her out’ to the police.
So now her finances are in shambles and can’t keep a job in her field because of the awful things I did as a teenager. Her career is ruined because of me.The funny thing is, she could never hold down a job for very long without getting fired, even before the arrest. She can’t handle people telling her what to do and steps out of her place too frequently. A lot more happened to damage our relationship but I think she would identify the two things above as the main reasons having a child ruined her life. But I know it wasn’t my fault. It sucks that destroyed any chance of us having a relationship because she couldn’t move passed that, but I couldn’t deal with her trying to guilt me anymore. She was very fond of playing the victim her whole life, and was a true victim as a child as well, but never got past blaming others as she grew up. I know she’s hurting which is such a shame but I had to do what was best for my mental health in the long run.”
She Feared Losing Her Daughter, So She Pushed Her Away
“I got a serious boyfriend and she lost it. She sensed she was losing me (god forbid her adult child gets a life) and decided lashing out and being controlling was the best way to handle it. She told me she hated me during this and has never apologized for it.
It was up and down until I started planning my wedding. If I didn’t give her the guest list she wanted, ‘I will never forgive you and never let this go until I die.’ On the guest list were relatives she hadn’t spoken to in years and my husband didn’t know existed. This went about as well as expected.
At my actual wedding, she was a rude, mopey, miserable witch. My biggest regret was not telling her to leave. She did not say anything g nice to me or my husband and didn’t even leave a card. But a week later, she emails me all fake nice, pretending nothing was wrong. I told her she needed to get professional help and I didn’t want to hear from her until she did.
That was 2 years ago. As far as I know, she doesn’t know I’m pregnant and I have no intention of telling her. Fortunately, the ultimate sin in her world is going where she’s unwelcome so I have no concerns of her gate crashing anything.”
Mama Plays The Blame Game
“Often my mom used to say that I didn’t love her. Each day it got worse and worse. The affirmations from her saying that started getting to me, and soon enough, I really did stop loving her.
She’s not a drinker, but there have been quite a few nights where she came home very smashed and said horrible things to my brother and me.
She lies often. I’ve caught her stealing my money for her addiction. She wastes $200-300 weekly on lotto tickets. About 80% of the time, she’s not even paying with her money.
She is so irresponsible that she’s been fired from around six jobs in the span of two years.
I get called many horrible names daily by her. One major things she does that bugs me is after her screaming session, she’ll try to ‘make it up to me’ and when I don’t reciprocate her affection, she blames our horrible relationship on me.”
She Wanted “Cute Little Grandkids”
“I have disowned my mother. She did everything from generally invading privacy to starving us; she even went so far as to orchestrate me being forcefully assaulted, and my immediate pregnancy from said assault, because she wanted ‘cute lil grandkids’ and she didn’t want to wait. I was 13. When we moved in with my grandmother, we didn’t know how to use silverware, I didn’t start brushing my teeth until I was 15 because we never knew. She is an incredibly horrible messed up lady.”
“I Feel No Disappointment In Myself Anymore”
“My father disowned me but I’ve realized (though it’s taken too long), good frickin riddance. My dad abused my mom. She left and got remarried; he barred her from our lives. She moved to America after a custody battle (we lived in a 3rd world country and men were preferred to keep the kids because they make the money). I lived in a boarding school most my life as my dad moved to America, too. He then called us from there to here when I was 14 and starting 9th grade. My dad was a sickening, abusive drinker. As I type this out, I definitely think he was bipolar. I remember such great times with my dad but when he got hammered, it was just the worst. He was also towards the end of his 4th marriage by my senior year when my brother left the house because of Dad’s emotional, mental and physical abuse.
So then it started for me. I guess it was too much when the Guatemalan 90 day fiancé he had brought home and gotten married to (only religiously) dipped as soon as she saw the real him. Long story short, he beat the heck outta me one night, I called my brother (which is what I think he wanted anyways), my brother threatened to take me and he threatened to file kidnapping charges on my brother. Anyways the next morning, I decided to stay after he cried his eyes out at 4:30 in the morning on my bedroom floor talking about how he would have no one and would kill himself if he didn’t have me. Anyways, nothing changed. I was 17 then.
June 7th, 2017, I turned 18 and was given a room in my brother’s house (he’s an angel) and left my dad’s home by 7 in the morning. I was heartbroken for a long time back then because he wouldn’t speak to me after I left. He thought I’d done him injustice because I talked to my mom because I finally understood where she was coming from. You just can’t live with that man. But I tried to be in his life still but the rejection I received knocked me down for a little back then.
I’m 20 now, on my 3rd year of college and I guess I realize that I would’ve never been in the right state of mind had he decided to stay, too. He’s on his 6th wife now and though it still hit me when I saw how much he’d aged when I looked him up on Facebook, I can truly say that I feel no disappointment in myself anymore.”
Messed Her Whole Life Up
“Dated a girl for a long time who had been abused by her brother for years growing up. Her parents tried the whole, ‘We need to move on. Forgive him. He’s our son.’ It messed her whole life up having to see him at holidays. She was cutting. Drinking herself to sleep. Almost destroyed a very beautiful and amazing person. It got better only when he went to federal prison for making and distributing child smut videos with sooooo many underage girls.”
“Never Looked Back”
“Alright, so this is a family secret that I revealed and got my mother’s family to disown me. Which honestly is for the better.
When I was a kid, my uncle abused me repeatedly over a summer I was with my grandparents. It really messed with my identity and it took me into my late teens, early 20s and years of therapy to accept that I’m a gay man. Still working on trying to even trust men as whole, in part because of this.
Anyway, when I was about 14, I told my mother because I just needed to get the secret out. I was in a situation I’d have to be alone with him again, and I was scared. Although looking back, I was more scared trying to tell her what her youngest brother did. When I did, I learned that this is a pretty common thing in her family and it happened to her by my grandmother’s second husband. Well, it happened to her and her three other sisters. My mother apologized to me, telling me she was sorry for sending me away that summer and that the family curse caught me as well. Honestly I needed to hear this because I hated her for letting this happen, but she had no way of stopping it or even knowing it’d happen to her son. Always been something that happened to the girls but never the boys. Aren’t family traditions grand (sarcasm)?
We went to the cops and because it had been so long and across state lines, there wasn’t much they could do, it was my word against his. My mother’s family acknowledged that stuff like this happens in their family, and that I should blame the devil for this happening to me, not the person. And really I should feel bad for him because all of this was hard on him as well, he took this time to officially come out of the closet, and they all, minus my mother, let him know how brave he is for admitting his illness. And subsequently blamed me for turning him gay. Keep in mind, I was still trying to process if I was gay at this time. I was then accused of wanting to get touched and abused, that I needed to repent what I had done and for trying to destroy his life. My mother tried to argue back, but at this point it was my mother’s family versus my mother and I. My mother ended up giving slightly and told them we need time to process this. They let off and we got out of there and never looked back.
It’s been about ten years since I saw any of them. They blame my mother for raising a devil-loving son, which didn’t help when I finally came out. The last thing they told us is that they’ll let both my mother and I back in, if and only if, I admit that as a nine year old, I wanted to be abused and of course convert back to being straight.
I think they are still surprised I haven’t taken them up on their offer. I don’t know and I don’t care. My family is super small now, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Totally Cut Off
“My mum is a very strict but massively hypocritical Jehovah’s Witness, plus she is bipolar so it’s one heck of a combination. I was born into the religion, along with two siblings. It took up about 80% of our childhood and it was hard to have friends since kids from school were ‘bad,’ etc. Finally at 16, I couldn’t take it anymore, my mum always had a rule that if we wouldn’t follow the religion, we were not allowed to live at home, so I moved out to live alone. That was 11 years ago and we haven’t spoken since, nor has she ever tried to contact me. My older siblings are still in the religion and at the time, I still had contact with them, but I was slowly excluded from everything, or they would gang up against me/spend hours lecturing me about everything (I was doing nothing wrong, just literally didn’t want to follow the religion) so eventually we drifted apart because I hated hanging out with them. I moved to another country and haven’t seen them for about 6 years. It’s all absolute madness, but family situations relating to Jehovah’s Witnesses normally are.”
Step Witch
“My father had this incredible stupid witch as a wife. She is around 36 and my father is 50. She is just terrible. He did everything for her and she just made him miserable, but he kept going. She also owed me quite a bit of money, cheated on my father, and on and on. She left him after three years of marriage. When she left my father, he became really really depressed and I cared for him, hoping that he would get over the whole situation etc. We even fought the whole divorce together.
Eventually, he got better and everything. I was really happy for him. Then came the day that she had no money left, so she came back to my father. He told me about it and I was so angry that he didn’t learn from the story before. I told him that I don’t want to see her ever again and I won’t do anything with him if she’s there as well. The day came when my father and I wanted to meet for lunch. As I arrived, I saw her sitting there with him. I went to the place and said that she had to leave or I’m gonna leave. He became mad at me for that and I left. He tried to do the same move again. I told him to eff off and never spoke to him again.
I won’t trust her ever again but I can’t help my dad. I told him everything and he is still blind through those love curtains.”