r/Nocontactfamily

I went low contact from my family a few years ago so i could heal. Recently i bumped into them at a function and they honestly seemed to be doing better than ever- its like they banded together after i left and they seem a lot closer.

It was so weird to see. All this self doubt started flooding in- like was i the issue? Were things as bad as i thought if they seem to be totally fine after i left. It was this weird thing feeling like i left total dysfunction and severe emotional trauma and then just seeing them all seeming like really fine. Especially because i was the “scapegoat “ in a lot of ways.

I also felt this pain because it felt like double loss - like leaving was hard enough, and then also seeing that they are this tight group now, and i am on my own. It just felt really weird. I feel like i am reeling. Like my sense of reality got shaken, and trying to remember my truth.

There is too much context but basically my husband (33M) and I (33F) have been together 11 years, married 6. We have two (1.5/3.5) small children. I have always been pretty extroverted. I like to talk to people and enjoy social situations and often talk to strangers. My in-laws are well-intended, extremely reserved, conservative and quiet. But opposite end of the spectrum from me. They are fine, but they are not people I would be involved with if it weren’t for my husband. They don’t make conversation and like to do the same three activities each time they visit (cornhole, bbq, sit in the backyard). They don’t like to leave the house. They don’t ask my husband or I questions or make conversation and if they do it is extremely surface level. If I ask them a question the answer is almost always “good” or “fine”. They have no interests so it is hard to do anything with them and they never want to do anything but sit at the house even if we invite them out. Both seem to have social anxiety and lots of insecurities. His mom had this way of always drawing attention to herself, for example always complaining of a “tummy ache” or a “head ache” or making some reason people should be worried about her. I don’t really like being around them but have always been more than cordial. I have always sent my mother gifts for Mother’s Day (even though she will not even text me happy Mother’s Day), made special dinners for their birthdays and always tried to make them comfortable when they would visit.

Anyways, my (33F) sister (31F) had a more or less terminal sarcoma she had fought for a year and a half, but ultimately she stopped responding to treatment. As mentioned, I have two kids under 4 and live 4 hours away from my parents and sister (they live together due to her high need of care) which made it hard to see her often. When she went onto hospice, I asked my in-laws to help out with the kids for the week. I dreaded it but I was desperate. They are not great with the kids but they are fine. My husband had missed so much work to care for the kids while I went up to support my family and sister that I asked them so they could help with the kids while he was at work. They would get breaks - Our 3yo does school every day for 3 hours and our 1yo naps. Husband is home by 4. Hard, but manageable. They agreed to help. I had so many crafts and activities lined up for them too.

Well. We got a stomach bug the week before. My daughter and I threw up once or twice and recovered within a day or so. My husband and son threw up several times and were sick for a few days. I let my in-laws know that they would be here before everyone was fully recovered and understood if they had to back out. They said they would come, which I fully expected meant they were going to manage even if they got sick.

Naturally, my MIL is debilitatingly sick within two days. So sick she can’t even get out of bed apparently. My husband left on Friday because it was literally a life or death situation and my FIL wasn’t sick yet. But of course he got sick Saturday and couldn’t get out of bed. I offered to make play dates at friends houses so they could rest, had extra activities prepared in advance, but my MIL said that she was too dizzy to drive or do any of the activities (baking cookies and paper crafts). She literally texted us Saturday morning at 6am “I’m so dizzy I don’t know what to do”. All the while we are with my sister while she is on hospice they are sending texts to my husband complaining: “I haven’t been this sick in 30 years”, “I threw up 17 times”, “we could really use some help”, “I couldn’t even do the craft with (grandson) I felt so terrible”, “it’s probably because my kidneys aren’t functioning well”. My sister was literally dying in front of us. These texts were so distracting and inappropriate. And everyone felt it. My sister even asked why they were doing this now. I was obviously worried about my kids safety so I left Sunday with my husband so I could get my kids and would go back up the following morning. I wouldn’t be able to visit my sister in the hospital with them, but I could at least see her for a little when my parents or her husband came home to shower or eat. I was obviously so mortified and upset, but my last text to my MIL was kind - saying how sorry I was she was so sick and trying to set up the play date she refused. They had no reason to think I was upset.

When we get home my in-laws were acting so weird. Like did not say hi to my husband or I when we walked in. My children immediately jumped on me because it’s the longest I’ve been away from them ( five days) and I sat with them on our living room floor while my in-laws sat and talked on the couch and literally said nothing to me. After five minutes my son wanted a snack so I left the room with my kids to get him one and went to my room to change clothes. My in-laws go outside, and do not come back in until 7:30pm, at which point they say they are going to bed (they normally go to bed around 9:30). When I got out of the shower at 6:30am the next morning they were packed and ready to leave. They normally leave at 10 or 11. My husband was mortified but he had to leave to work. I was fuming. Before I even get the kids up, they tell me they are leaving and I honestly let them have it. I didn’t raise my voice but I was crying telling them how upset I was and struggling with how they are supposed to be my family and did not even ask how I was doing or my sister was doing after she entered hospice. My voice was shaking. I told them they were texting their son they needed help, but my family needed help and their texts were distracting. My mother in law literally interrupted me so many times I had to tell her to stop because it was making me anxious and she said “of course we needed help - I was dying!”. All while knowing I spent the week watching my sister literally die. It was so out of touch. She said I did not make them feel welcome and was not nice enough to them and that her and my FIL noticed I was leaving every room they entered (a blatant lie), again after watching my sister deteriorate towards death for the past week. She said they were almost 70 (they are 66) and too old for this. After she said she was dying, she apologized profusely and said she didn’t mean it and I told her I understood but asked her to please leave. Also, my MIL or FIL never texted or reached out to my parents about my sister passing. Not even an “I’m sorry for your loss”. That was the nail in the coffin for me.

What do I do? My husband gave them some time and called them nearly two months later trying to resolve it. They texted me a passive-aggressive apology and said “Sorry if we hurt your feelings, it wasn’t our intention. We hope we can move forward.” There has been no remorse or understanding. My husband straight up told me they didn’t think they did anything wrong and that it was a “misunderstanding”. Where do we go from here? I called my mother twice to talk about her text and she hasn’t called me back.
Am I wrong for wanting to never see them again? How do I manage my own boundaries and also not make this situation miserable for my husband? They are dead to me. I never want to see them again. But how do I tell my husband this gently?

in short me and my sister grew up with an abusive father and weren’t protected from him by anyone.

im the youngest and my sister turned to abusive, bullying, aggressive and intimisating behaviour towards me probably to make herself feel safer. she also resented me for taking our mum’s attention away, and probably because she received more bruises than I, overall.

that hatred and resentment towards has continued and no matter how hard weve both tried to have a normal relationship, the comments, glares, insinuations, social exclusion and just belittling me at any given opportunity has never stopped and has worn my mental health down so badly.

she now has a daughter, and im expected by the family to be happy and spend time and to want to be an aunty.

our parents “didn’t know” she was abusive towards me, and she is always acting bewildered and confused about why I try to keep a distance from her.

im so fucking angry because my chance of having my own family is passing me by the more and more years go by that I just cannot reclaim my mental well-being. and no one seems to care.

and now I am the bad person because I don’t want to be an aunty to a family who hate me.

don’t know why im posting, it’s helped reading things on here about other peoples experience with sibling abuse. if anyone has any advice or words of encouragement as I am at the point of going 100% no contact with this woman who claims to be my sister.

This is connected to my first post about my childhood/family trauma because I think what happened here finally destroyed whatever relationship me and my brother still had left after years of resentment, fear, and emotional damage in our family.

After everything that happened in our childhood, me and my brother still somehow managed to coexist. Things were awkward sometimes, but I still loved him. I still tried.

Then after high school, I went through my first real heartbreak.

I had just gotten out of a long toxic relationship with my ex-boyfriend. That relationship completely ruined me mentally and emotionally. I felt devastated, embarrassed, desperate, lonely. I didn’t want to be home. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to stop feeling miserable for one night.

At the time, my brother had a girlfriend whose family partied a lot and drank a lot. I remember begging him to get me alcohol because I wanted to drink and forget everything for a little while.
Instead, he took me with him to his girlfriend’s family party.

At first, it was actually fun.

There was music playing. People laughing loudly. Everyone drinking. It felt loud and warm and distracting in a way I needed at the time. I remember finally laughing a little after crying for weeks over my breakup.

Then her younger brother started giving me drinks.

Shots. Mixed drinks. Random things.

I wasn’t blackout drunk or anything, but I was definitely emotional and vulnerable. I remember feeling sad underneath everything. Like I was trying really hard to act okay while still grieving my relationship.

At some point I made the mistake of going back inside the house with him away from the party. We sat on the couch together.
And I kissed him.

Or he kissed me. Honestly I don’t even know anymore. I just know I kissed back.

And I regret that so much because I feel like that one moment changed everything.

Afterwards he started trying to touch me more and do more physically, but I remember immediately becoming uncomfortable. I kept pushing his hands away. Moving away from him. Trying to stop things from going further.
I didn’t want that.

I was literally on my period too, which made me even more uncomfortable with someone touching me like that.

Then my brother came inside with his girlfriend and noticed what was happening.

At first, he got protective.

I remember him getting angry and tense immediately because he could tell I was uncomfortable and trying to push the guy away. Everything became awkward and chaotic after that.

But the moment he found out I had kissed him earlier, everything changed.

It was like the concern disappeared instantly.
Suddenly I wasn’t someone uncomfortable anymore. Suddenly I was just “a slut.”
I remember leaving the party and getting inside the car.

And then he exploded.

Screaming at me. Calling me disgusting. Calling me a slut. Asking me why I would do something like that at his girlfriend’s family’s house.
Then he grabbed my hair and shook me.
I still remember the feeling of sitting there trapped in that car while he screamed at me.
And honestly I think something inside me broke that night.

Not just because of the screaming or the insults, but because it confirmed something I had always quietly felt growing up:

That as a girl, especially in my family, your value disappears the second people think you’ve done something “wrong.”

I think that moment destroyed years of trying to be “the perfect daughter.”

After that, me and my brother stopped speaking almost completely.

It’s been three years now.

And somehow my parents still constantly pressure me to forgive him. To “be the bigger person.” To fix things. To talk to him first.
But I genuinely don’t know how.

Things can’t just “go back to normal” because normal doesn’t exist anymore.

The worst part is that despite everything, I still feel guilty.

Guilty for kissing him back. Guilty for putting myself in that situation. Guilty for still harboring resentment toward my brother after everything our family already survived.

But another part of me is angry because I genuinely believe no matter what mistake I made that night, I still didn’t deserve what happened afterward.

And honestly, I think losing my relationship with my brother affected me more than I admit.
Especially because later on, I started relying heavily on one of my older sisters emotionally after all this happened, and that relationship eventually shattered too for completely different reasons.

I made another post explaining that situation because I think that betrayal affected me deeply too.

Hey,

I am (24F) NC with my parents since August - I have since been cut off by my sisters (who are drinking the Kool aid and claim I am the toxic one despite me opening up about the emotional abuse) and over the weekend I decided to reach out to my grandparents, as someone has been busy feeding information back to my parents that I do not want them to have.

Basically I set down boundaries and reaffirmed that I want a relationship but that information can't get back to my folks (case in point, they have previously rocked up at my place entirely unannounced - while I was lucky enough to not be home it rattled me something serious and sent the anxiety spiraling again). I also want to note here that I have always had a super open relationship with my grandparents and having a closed or restricted relationship feels absolutely awful, and worse than not having them at all.

Last night I received a text basically saying that it was a shame that I wasn't going to get back in contact with my immediate family (which is wild because they were previously onside) and wishing me all the best in the future 😅

So yeah. I'm doing okay, I kind of expected it but it still hurts something fierce. I've seen lots of people able to maintain contact with some and not others, and I want to see if there's anyone else in the same boat as me, and have lost everyone in the process of protecting themselves and their peace.

Happy to accept any kind of response, but mostly looking for shared experiences :)

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.

It's 2am on my mother's birthday, coming off the back of mothers day. So the mind is busy. For context, have been estranged for 12 years. But mother's day and birthdays... well, y'all get it. (Australian spelling, also not her real name)

Heather,

There is an icy, wind-bitten ache that lives in the part of me that was shaped to hold you close. But a place built for warmth and tenderness cannot survive a climate of hostility without cracking. That ache remains, not because I want you back, but because the architecture of my being was formed in my relationship with you. Our stories will always be entwined, but you and I will not meet again in this lifetime. That truth settles over me like a winter frost on a field that once begged for sun-lit warmth.

There are so many things I wish I could place in your hands. I wish I could bring the morning light to thaw the soil of the field we share. But as I sit here, heart stirring and mind restless, the words I want to say scatter like birds startled from a branch. There is a deep longing in me; a longing for the warmth of what should have been. And yet, I have no desire to seek restoration. Longing without desire. Ache without pursuit. You have given me a life shaped by paradox.

Because of this, I cannot call you mother. That word, when paired with who you were to me, twists something deep inside. So, I call you by your first name, though that too sits uncomfortably, because it reminds me of the gap between what I needed and what I received. What I learned in my relationship with you is simple and devastating: I am not safe in your presence. There is no version of us that leads to grounded goodness. I must choose the path that harms me least. Calling you by your name hurts because it reminds me of what I longed for. Calling you mother hurts because of what you did to me. The wounds of your betrayal nearly destroyed me.

Still, there is so much I wish I could show you. The woman I have become. The truths I’ve learned about the human condition. The pathways toward healing and authenticity. The tools I have gained to meet myself in the dark with compassion instead of fear. The work I do to help others heal the wounds they never deserved. The work I do to help build schools that are safer, more trauma-aware, and more humane. The brilliance and goodness of my own children - their hope, their compassion, their authenticity.

But none of this is safe in your hands.

I wish I could tell you that my children love you and miss you. But they don’t. They remember the things you said in their presence that unsettled them. They remember the ways you spoke to me; sharp, belittling, unprovoked. They remember how I cried more often than I laughed after every interaction with you. They remember the aftermath, even if they didn’t understand the cause.

I wish I could tell you that I love you. That I miss you. That I think of you often. But none of that is true. There are moments - like this one, in the early hours of your 76th birthday - when I wonder about your life. But I do not miss the person you were to me. I am a better, healthier, more grounded human because you are not in my life. It is painful to admit that I do not love you, not in the way a daughter should love her mother. I cannot. There are too many memories of you choosing cruelty over compassion when I was already hurting. Too many moments where you distorted truth to maintain control. Too many times you exploited the most tender and vulnerable parts of me. I can still see the flicker of delight in your eyes when my pain - as a little girl, a young woman, a new mother- made you feel powerful. When I sift through my memories, the moments where you felt like a mother are faint and fleeting, confined to early childhood. Everything after that points to contempt.

I do not love you. I do not hate you, either. I simply feel nothing.

But I do have compassion for you. I know you have lived a long life as a wounded child and a wounded woman. I am deeply saddened by the suffering you endured. I understand more about your childhood than you ever imagined I would.

And I wish you could know that it was my love for you, my desperate hope for us, that built my entire career. I became a therapist to mend our relationship. I specialised in childhood trauma to understand how to support you. I write policies for schools and train staff to better support vulnerable children and families. But along the way, I have learned a difficult truth: I cannot help someone who does not want to be helped. I cannot mend a relationship built only for power and control. I cannot heal in a relationship that refuses to allow me to grow.

The legacy you left me is one of pain. But I am transforming that pain into something useful and generative. Into my PhD on adult-child estrangement. Into my work with schools and families. Into the lives of people who need what I once needed. I am taking the affection I once held for you and sowing it into a field untouched by winter winds. My children, and the people who benefit from my work, will harvest something rich, something nourishing, something good.

I will never send you this letter. But these are the things I wish you could know. Perhaps in another life, we can sit long together in a place where love does not wound and truth does not threaten survival.

Location: Dad lived in FL, I live in VA

Hello,

I've had a NC relationship with my dad since 2021. I just found out he has passed away this morning. When his mother passed away in 2021, she left him a little under 500k in an account and he has been living solely on that until literally today. He has had no job since 2017, lived in a hotel since he moved to FL, no job, no insurance policy, literally nothing but what his mom gave him. I have no idea if he even has a FL identification or how much is left of his inheritance. But I am just trying to figure out where to start this whole process of planning on getting his items from his place, funeral home, cremation services, the probate process, etc.

I am working with my brother who I am LC with, its just us since our mom passed away. Neither of us have much money to spend, especially if we have to travel. And I am unsure if my dad's siblings even want anything to do with this. I was just wondering if anyone had any advice to getting me started and what would be the best legal advice to start the probate process of splitting anything (if there's anything to even split). Also, he passed away at the hospital (we are assuming due to a heart attack/heart failure from what the hospital could tell us), went in early in the morning and was pronounced dead a few hours later. Would that mean we have to also deal with any hospital bills?

I can try my best to provide additional information if necessary, I just would really appreciate some guidance on where to start if anyone can help. As you can tell, I am very LC with my family and don't exactly trust them with my best interest either. As heartless as it sounds, my brother and I just want get this process settled as soon and as easily as we can. Any advice is extremely helpful. Thank you.

So my situation with my parents and to some extent my younger sister has grown increasingly more difficult to maintain because in a simple sense my parents refuse to let me have control over my decisions in my life. They do not approve of my girlfriend that I have been happily dating for almost 3 years now and they have made accusations of things that happened at my 30th birthday last year. Because of the situation and wanting to get facts straight I asked other people who were at that party if they had heard or seen the things that my parents were accusing my gf of and none of them said that any of that happened. When I brought that to my mom and dad they said that I can’t believe them because they’re just being nice to me and don’t have the heart to tell me the truth. Extremely manipulative talk and for about a month I didn’t talk to them. Unfortunately part of me really wanted to fix things and the month of no contact was killing me because I had always felt so close to my family (it was also around Christmas so I was in a forgiving mood) so I tried to find ways to resolve the issues. It went okay for a few months though whenever there was mention of my gf they would just ignore it. But as of about a month ago my gf and I are closing on a house, which pissed off my dad because I didn’t include him on stuff. He had known I was looking and wasn’t happy that I was doing it with my gf (he’s a finance guy and thinks with numbers and not happiness). He was outraged why I wouldn’t consult him and I told him I needed to do this on my own because I knew he would micromanage every part of it and would try to get my gf out of it. For context my gf and I have been living together in a rental for almost 2 years and have had 0 issues. At the mention of me saying I intend to propose to my gf my dad immediately flipped on me and called me pussywhipped. My mom also instigated the argument and said I have been avoiding them because she’s been telling me not to, even though she’s been the one telling me to talk to them and try to find middle ground with them by telling them the truth about how I feel. With all this said, what is the best way to handle this all? Therapy is definitely on the horizon but am I wrong in wanting to cut ties to them? I want to find middle ground because in my heart I still love my parents but this is breaking me down.