Should I cut ties with my parents?
I’m considering cutting off my relationship with my parents while still allowing them to have whatever relationship they want with my children.
My mother is deeply toxic and manipulative, especially financially. She plays the victim constantly, uses people around her, and then paints herself as the injured party when confronted.
Growing up, I thought my parents were great. My mom was heavily involved in my and my sister’s lives, especially with sports, and despite not having much money, we always had what we needed. I later realized almost everything came from my grandparents, not my parents.
Looking back, there were warning signs. After my great-grandfather died, my mother quickly moved my great-grandmother into our home, then shortly after moved us into a much larger house financed largely by my great-grandmother’s money.
The real problems surfaced during college. I believed my parents and grandparents were helping pay for school, and my mother had me sign “overpayment” checks from the university over to her. Years later, I discovered those were actually student loan refund checks tied to loans she had taken out in my name without my knowledge. She pocketed the money while I unknowingly accumulated massive debt.
Around the same time, I learned she had also forged my name on a loan against my car, which was nearly repossessed due to missed payments. When confronted, she accused me and my grandmother of “plotting against her.”
Meanwhile, my parents eventually lost the house they had effectively financed with my great-grandmother’s money. She ended up in public housing and died with almost nothing.
Despite all this, I forgave my mother because I wanted to preserve the family. She promised to repay the loans.
Years later, after I’d built a successful career and family, I found out she had simply kept my student loans deferred as long as possible while missing payments and letting interest explode. My wife and I discovered this while applying for a mortgage and learning my credit score had dropped into the 400s.
That was the first time I truly snapped. Her actions were no longer just hurting me — they were hurting my wife and child too.
We stopped speaking for about a year, during which she spread rumors around town claiming I was angry because she’d helped my sister more financially than me. Eventually, I reconciled again for the sake of family and my kids.
But the pattern never changed.
My parents are low-effort grandparents who only seem interested when attention is directed at them. They constantly criticize how much time we spend with my in-laws, despite the fact that my in-laws consistently show up for our kids while my parents rarely do. Every attempt to include them in trips or family activities becomes exhausting because my mother finds ways to derail plans or manufacture obstacles.
The final straw was Mother’s Day.
We spent over $150 on gifts and dinner for my mother, despite the fact that she skipped my daughters’ soccer games earlier that day for flimsy reasons. During dinner, she passive-aggressively complained about a family trip we’d mentioned but never finalized. The truth is she never wanted to go — she has a long history of sabotaging trips by creating impossible demands and then acting disappointed when plans fall apart.
When I finally told her, “You didn’t want to go,” she shut down and ignored me for the rest of dinner. And once again, she consumed emotional energy that should have gone toward my wife and kids.
I’m exhausted.
This is only scratching the surface, but at this point I genuinely want to sever ties for my own peace. I would never stop my daughters from having a relationship with their grandparents, but honestly, my parents already seem to be drifting away from them anyway.