Not really one to share my feelings or emotions, nor am I really looking for a solution or advice; this has been many many years. Just reaching out to others who carry the pain of a family issue that will likely never be resolved.

It sucks like no other. In many ways it's like reliving the death of a loved one over and over every-time the feud reignites. You so badly wish you could just snap your fingers and make it like it was when you were a kid. But you know there is too much history for that to ever happen...and it just makes you so sad.

For me it's my mother and I. I love her to death and she has a been a great mother to me. She just will never ever make an attempt to change. She's so judgmental and gossips. I've dealt with it my whole life, but when my wife and children started to get targeted, I immediately went into protection mode and have tried to shield them from it. I don't want them to deal with BS I did.

Our family lake house in Northern Michigan was always one of my favorite places. We spent every Fourth of July up there since I was born.

As the 4th draws closer, I always get filled with anxiety and fear about going there. I've never in my life felt anxiety until this, it's almost paralyzing. I haven't been sleeping for about a week and a half just thinking about going up there.
Nowadays I only go for a couple nights and get out before something happens. If it weren't that my kids love the lake, I'd never go back. Just makes me feel sad and depressed to even think about how much I loved that place and now it's so tainted.

So my friends, I say a prayer for everyone who is struggling with pain of a family feud or squabble that never seems to heal. If you isolate from those you love even though it hurts, I feel for you. May God bring us together in peace in his Kingdom again someday.

Well, esd, I know you’re not asking for advice. I’ll just say that no one wanted to ask my mother how she was doing unless they were prepared for an hour or so of complaints. Her primary physician, a friend of mine, called soon after he started seeing her and said “I think your Mom is depressed.”
Antidepressants changed everything. They can change peoples’ outlook on the world, and that can greatly affect their relationships with others.
I’m pretty sure my father-in-law was depressed, never treated, and although he was in many ways a great and good man—and concerned about what was happening to the country—it got so I hated to have our kids hear him go on about our impending doom.

quote:

Originally posted by esdunbar:

For me it's my mother and I. I love her to death and she has a been a great mother to me. She just will never ever make an attempt to change. She's so judgmental and gossips. I've dealt with it my whole life, but when my wife and children started to get targeted, I immediately went into protection mode and have tried to shield them from it. I don't want them to deal with BS I did.

Mine too. My mother is so filled with vitriol that is makes visits tough. Went there for fathers day and my mother has to belittle him about how he put on his sock and tore off his toenail. I mean WTF? He belittles my grandmother who is 98 about how she is starting to loose her memory, and acts like she has always been dealt a bad hand. She even complained when we played cards yesterday.

For my family, we ended up moving further away about a year and a half ago. When I say move away, we moved from being within 700 yards to being 38 miles away. Her attitude has even turned off her only granddaughter. We were hoping she would see her errors, but have lived to fight fire with atomic bombs.

When we told her we were moving, she said that they would move too because they "gave up their life to be closer to us".. My response, let me know when and I'll hire a few movers to help you. That ended that shit real quick.

My wife an I have agreed that if my mother were to pass first, my dad could live with us, but if he passes first, hell would freeze over before she would live with us.

Funny you say that still. My dad did very well in life. My mother wants for nothing, but all she does is complains. It's crazy. She can buy whatever she wants, she's surrounded by great things, but she is always mad about something.

I personally think she watches waaaaaaay too much Fox News and it gets her going. Their closest house is 4.5 hours away from mine and most of the year they're down in Florida...and when she's at my house, she's complaining about something instead of playing with my kids. makes me shake my head.

I don't know how that woman could possibly be depressed, but what you're saying sounds familiar.

nosler...same man. My Dad is my best friend. We're ridiculously close. We worked together for 12 years with our offices next door. Now that he's retired, I miss him tremendously.

I just want so badly for it to stop and us enjoy our time together.

My ex-wife's family is rife with feuds and squabbles.

Especially her, her sisters, and their Mom. I didn't even try to keep track of who wasn't speaking to whom this month, and who was mad at whom this week, etc. It was exhausting. Blocking each other on their cell phones because someone said something that made someone else mad, and then complaining and gossiping with the others about it. Purposely stirring something up with another person so you have something to talk to the others about. They'd spend hours on the phone with each other, just bitching and gossiping, usually about each other. And then turn around and call someone else to bitch and gossip about what the last person just said.

They're petty, unhappy, immature people. And they revel in it.

But it's not my problem any more. I'm sorry that your situation can't be resolved so (relatively) easily.

Yes. Don't really want to get into details though. I'l just say I'll never be able to really enjoy a holiday or a birthday. I wish I didn't have to celebrate anything. I get along with everyone. Everyone else; not at all.

Tony.

Yes, every day. Found it best to just stay away, period. After 30 years I started speaking to my mother again, it gave her great relief.

Have a fraternal twin brother that I have not seen in 43 years. He is so vindictive that as the attorney for my late mother's estate, he just had to cheat me out of buying my mother's country home with the super low assessed tax value.

They will never change, I imagine, unless dying and realizing how stupid they have been.

I have one toxic (loud, petty, unhappy, immature, self-centered, hypochondriac that seeks to drag others down to her level) family member on Mom's side of the family. We haven't seen or talked to the toxic family member since Mom's funeral and I don't miss the drama for a moment.

My dad solved our family problems when I was a kid. We used to go to a family reunion annually hosted at rich great uncles hotel he owned..... no one ever paid for anything. But rich uncle was controlling in every way.

One year our family showed up and mom and her cousins went out that Friday afternoon to have some fun, because they hadn’t seen each other for a year...Before going to fawn over rich uncle....mind you they all grew up w/I miles of each other and feel that they are more like sisters.....rich uncle wanted to flex a little that evening when the ladies weren’t around and told the men they needed to control their wives. so my dad told rich uncle that his wife could do as she pleased and he (uncle)wasn’t the boss of her...

Rich uncle then says dad will have to pay for his rooms. Dad said fuck that and fuck you. Because he stood up to the bossy rich uncle.Dad packed us up and we never went back.

Mom said all the other cousins parents caved in and rich uncle continued to orchestrate their lives until his death.

I look back and think of all the drama we missed out on my dad cutting us out of rich uncles life. Ha

Yes. My mother is toxic and abusive, physically when we were younger. I let my kids see her a few times, with my direct supervision. I was seriously concerned she would hurt them to hurt me. Fortunately, her sister stepped into that void, and Great Aunt Louie (G'rant Louie) was considered their grandparent by all of us. I gave my mother. 15 year break, and tried again to visit her last year. I spent several thousand dollars traveling to see her, and after three days my, my brother, who had also traveled, pulled me out and took me to the ER, concerned I was having mini-strokes again. I could not go back, and have blocked her number. Very sad.

Spent time in court initiated by siblings over dad's estate. They were advised at mediation their chances of prevailing were nil. Six years later that was proven correct. I don't miss them after 10 years.....

Yes, with a sister and her worthless conniving husband. It has to do with their inheritances from our parents estates. We have not spoken in 20 years.

My other younger sister and her husband took Mom in for two years. Then we took her in for two years. When we asked the selfish asses to take Mom in, they couldn't be bothered. But they couldn't wait to get their inheritance money and other valuables.

They had borrowed money from Mom for years to finance foolish moves all over the country or when the dumb husband was out of work, again. They never paid her back.

a sister,
The pain gets less and less over the years.

You can not let it control you.
Quit
Worrying about crap that you can not control.
After 11 years,
She got added
to the list of those that do not need my concern.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bendable,

A sister-in-law and her (now deceased) husband (my wife's brother). They systematically defrauded my wife's father and mother of their farm and savings, and thus the other siblings of their inheritance, over a period of years.

Fuck 'em.

Families often put the "fun" in dysfunctional. ! was estranged from my entire family for years.
They are all gone now. I wish things could have been different, but in the long run, I was better off without them.

Yes, down to two.

Yes.

About a third of everyone I know has some similar thing going on.

It sucks, to say the least.

I've long since dropped concepts that propose familial ties are stronger than others and bonds not to be broken.

To me, family are just people. At my age, I know there are types of people with whom I don't get along and don't enjoy being in their company. This includes certain family members. Sometimes, I'm forced to be in their proximity, just like I am with people I'd like to avoid at work, just as a part of life. Certain birthday parties. Funerals, and such.

Otherwise, they are just people with whom I just avoid socializing. With my age, I don't dwell on it either way. I optimize my life around those I do care about.

quote:

Originally posted by benny6:
Yes. Don't really want to get into details though. I'l just say I'll never be able to really enjoy a holiday or a birthday. I wish I didn't have to celebrate anything. I get along with everyone. Everyone else; not at all.

Tony.

I'm really sorry to hear that. I had the same misery up until Thanksgiving 2014, which was turning into WorldWarIII between dinner and dessert.

I've been married 30yrs, and the majority of those 30yrs has been filled with the never ending poison of my inlaws (wife has 3 siblings in their 50's, and her parents) nasty gossip and fighting.

In hindsight, I was an asshole for putting up with it for so long, and trying to be the voice of reason to bring everyone together.

So, on that Thanksgiving, I stood up and calmed everyone down in the middle of all the fighting and I made a statement.
Basically I told them the my portion of the family was done with all this crap. They could all battle and kill each other, but having holidays at my home was done and my wife and 2 sons were done with all of them. I cut everyone off.

My wife started to speak and I told her to pick "them" or "us", but I'm done with all of this.

My brother in law started up again, and I escorted him to the front door with his crazy wife and nasty little kids and wished them a good night.

When I got back to the dining room I explained that my wife and I are always ther to help, but the drama is done.

I haven't spoken to 1 brother in law and his family and 1 sister in law and her family since that day. My wife made the decision that she was done with all the gossip, and still talks to them but literally hangs the phone up when they try to drag her into the fights.

I can not express in words what a monumental difference in the quality of our family life that decision made.