Cutting people out

[holyrood]

When everyone is equipped to deal with this as in your family - it is fine, as there is no victims, or repeated victimization…

If one of the wrestlers continued to assault the other person each and everytime they saw them after the event without provacation, and the victim was defenseless, this is abuse. And if no other family stepped in to prevent, told the victim to just ignore it and take it-this is why families get cut off.

Your wife has a support system. …
Mental, verbal and emotional abuse makes the victim feel like they alone are the guilty ones. That somehow they deserve the ill treatment.

These two summed it up well.

In my situation, this is exactly what was happening. It’s an alcoholic family, and there are ‘roles’ in such families, including scapegoat. The scapegoat in such a family is just about always the target of outrageous behavior…and then told it’s their fault on top of it., told they deserve it, told if they would just change…by everyone., They are standing alone. They are left constantly jumping through hoops and doing contortions, trying to adjust themselves to what they are told they need to be in order to please everyone, until they finally realize the rages and abuse won’t stop and aren’t actually about anything they did, anyway.

And there very often is no way out, no way to change the patterns, no way to talk it out–because this is a dynamic created for years by the alcoholic dysfunction, and all the siblings and parents in the family are supporting each other in continuing that patter.

The victim is alone and continually victimized and continually blamed for his own victimization, and the only answer eventually is to walk away.

 

[EasterJoy]

My SIL attacked my wife a second time after the wedding, about 5 years later when my brother was in the army. She pushed my sister out of the way and slapped me in the face trying to get at my wife. Once she got her, I pulled her off.

(I just told my wife about this thread, and she said it’s all because I “forced” her to “bury the hatchet”. )

What on earth is wrong with your sister, and why on earth do you as a family even remotely tolerate her behavior? How can an adult go through life with so little self-control?

I know people who have a family member that they loathe to the toenails (usually an in-law), but whom they do not shun because they can keep a distance at family gatherings. They do not physically assault each other. That is beyond the pale.

Maybe it is time for a powwow with your siblings about how you are going to handle this kind of behavior in the future. None of your kids should have to watch this, including hers. Really–twice in 15 years is two times too many to take!!

 

[EasterJoy]

…The victim is alone and continually victimized and continually blamed for his own victimization, and the only answer eventually is to walk away.

Even in those cases where the abuse is mutual, sometimes the situation is best addressed by the two keeping apart until they both mature in their self-control. When you are learning to disconnect from your “red buttons” and mending the spiritual fault of a lack of self-control, it can be the best for everyone if you stay away from those persons who know where all your red buttons are, and how to push several at once. It is no more than avoiding the near occasion of sin. Provided you do not reject the other person as a person, it can be the best thing for everyone.

 

[Luvz2travel]

is it ok to cut people out? i can forgive them but i’m wanting to stop communicating w people who are unpleasant to be around, cause me stress, spread strife, are unrepentant… i feel like i would be happier if i didnt talk to them anymore. sad but i am tired of the negativity… but they are family…

I know what you mean I do the same. I can forgive someone but if they hurt me really bad or do something I feel was uncalled for and they don’t look to change their treatment of you I do the same. I had a friend who really wasn’t my friend she kept making light of me and treating me as a joke. I let it go on for awhile then cut her off when I’d had enough. She wanted me to go to her wedding but I came up with something else to do. I lost mutual friends over it. She was never overt with how she treated me but I didn’t like being treated like a joke so I stopped hanging around her even though I looked the bad guy for doing it. I wasn’t going to let her treat me disrespectfully no matter how bad my self image was at the time.

 

[holyrood]

Even in those cases where the abuse is mutual, sometimes the situation is best addressed by the two keeping apart until they both mature in their self-control. When you are learning to disconnect from your “red buttons” and mending the spiritual fault of a lack of self-control, it can be the best for everyone if you stay away from those persons who know where all your red buttons are, and how to push several at once. It is no more than avoiding the near occasion of sin. Provided you do not reject the other person as a person, it can be the best thing for everyone.

Good point.

 

[7armyrugrats]

I have a very strained relationship with my family, but I have never just cut ties with them. What has happened over the years, and after much prayer and many talks with a good and holy priest, is I no longer contact my siblings. I am available any time someone wants to contact me, but it has never happened and I don’t believe it ever will. This was decided after years, and I do mean YEARS, of me trying to keep in contact. I would call, email, text, and rarely get a response. I was constantly accused of being the cause of every bad thing that happened in our family, reminded that I was a horrible baby/kid/teen/sister, I was a bad mom, bad wife, bad daughter to our parents…every problem from alcoholism to finances was my fault.

I love my siblings and I pray for them. I have tried to build a relationship with them my entire life. After talking to my priest in multiple occasions I began to realize I am teaching my kids to accept abuse and that is never a lesson to be learned. I decided that I was open to communication but I would not initiate it unless some unforeseen tragedy occurred and it became necessary. In the year since I stopped trying to reach out to them, not a single one has contacted me. I talk to my mom, but none of my siblings. I look at it more as accepting that they cut me out a long time ago, or even more accurately, accepting that I was never welcomed among them to begin with.

I also don’t believe in cutting family out of your life completely unless a situation is extreme, but I see no reason why you must initiate contact or even be available round the clock to accept contact. As long as you continue to pray for them and their salvation, you have a right to protect yourself from bad situations with family.

 

[SuperLuigi]

is it ok to cut people out? i can forgive them but i’m wanting to stop communicating w people who are unpleasant to be around, cause me stress, spread strife, are unrepentant… i feel like i would be happier if i didnt talk to them anymore. sad but i am tired of the negativity… but they are family…

Aside from a duty to care for parents and immediate family, I don’t see any obligation to associate with those who poison your life.

 

[Joy2day]

These two summed it up well.

In my situation, this is exactly what was happening. It’s an alcoholic family, and there are ‘roles’ in such families, including scapegoat. The scapegoat in such a family is just about always the target of outrageous behavior…and then told it’s their fault on top of it., told they deserve it, told if they would just change…by everyone., They are standing alone. They are left constantly jumping through hoops and doing contortions, trying to adjust themselves to what they are told they need to be in order to please everyone, until they finally realize the rages and abuse won’t stop and aren’t actually about anything they did, anyway.

And there very often is no way out, no way to change the patterns, no way to talk it out–because this is a dynamic created for years by the alcoholic dysfunction, and all the siblings and parents in the family are supporting each other in continuing that patter.

The victim is alone and continually victimized and continually blamed for his own victimization, and the only answer eventually is to walk away.

hallelujah! This scapegoating can occur in any family/community. Christ was the scapegoat for what was happening with the Romans and the Pharisees. In communities, its often easier to blame the victim; it sorts out the problem easily. the victim is further blamed for walking away - they are blamed for not coping and facing up to things, and ‘dealing with it like they should’. Whatever happens, they’re to blame, there is something inherently wrong with them and that’s why there is the conflict.

 

[holyrood]

I have a very strained relationship with my family, but I have never just cut ties with them. What has happened over the years, and after much prayer and many talks with a good and holy priest, is I no longer contact my siblings. I am available any time someone wants to contact me, but it has never happened and I don’t believe it ever will. This was decided after years, and I do mean YEARS, of me trying to keep in contact. I would call, email, text, and rarely get a response. I was constantly accused of being the cause of every bad thing that happened in our family, reminded that I was a horrible baby/kid/teen/sister, I was a bad mom, bad wife, bad daughter to our parents…every problem from alcoholism to finances was my fault.

This sounds very much like my situation. No doubt my family does see it as me cutting them out. But they’re on my facebook–simply ignore me, but had a fit when I defrienfded them. (Go figure.) I left my parents’ home after one more attempt to do my part to have a better relationship (like I saw she had with my sister), and after two hours of her complaining non stop about other people and telling me once more to my face that I deserved to be treated badly (and she was defending a woman she doesn’t even know over her own daughter no less!), I left and just never called again. She never called me, either. She walks by me in church and pretends I’m not there.

BUT…

the victim is further blamed for walking away - they are blamed for not coping and facing up to things, and ‘dealing with it like they should’. Whatever happens, they’re to blame, there is something inherently wrong with them and that’s why there is the conflict.

Yes, exactly. Even though my mother has never made any attempt to call me, this is me being cruel, in their minds. It’s me refusing to change myself for the better so there are no more family problems. The Rest of the Story being that after jumping through hoops for years, I finally understood this really was about alcoholism and if I could become Christ and Mother Teresa and JP II rolled into one, they’d still find fault. My father in fact laid out what I needed to do, and it was humanly impossible.

Just as an example of how this all works, despite all the ugly words, I continued to invite my family members for the kids’ events. The latest letter from my dad outlines all my faults as a sister/daughter/mother/human being, and includes a comment about how horribly I treated them at these parties. That I invited them at all was not credited. That each and every one of them looked right through me in my own home was not considered part of the problem.

This is how the mindset works in these families.

 

[MickeyM927]

I am not following you. You are telling me that your family was repaired because you went to weddings willing to stand by and laugh while the bride got into a fistfight? That is what brought peace to your family? I highly doubt that.

I can see where you would laugh because if you didn’t, you’d have to cry, but you are describing a seriously toxic family with serious spiritual faults that cannot be admitted into Heaven. Is it good to let your family stack offense upon offense and go ever deeper into their enslavement to sin, as if there were no Purgatory and no Hell to fear? Do you think sin has no temporal effects? Why do you think you are better than others because you are willing to wink at your family’s strife, rather than confront them with what your shared baptism demands of you? Why is it good to act as if no one around you ought to fear the just punishment for what they are doing? Where did the Gospel teach you to go around chiding other people because they didn’t stick around to be a near occasion of sin for their tormentors, just because the tormentors are relatives?

Sometimes, the best you can do for someone is to let them know that what they are doing is gravely unacceptable and that it puts their immortal soul in danger of deserved punishment. Yes, you respect the position ever person has as a son or daughter of God, even the person rightfully in prison for his or her crimes, because we are all subject to condemnation. No, you do not stand around at a wedding and get ready to laugh at the inevitable strife, up to and including physical attacks on and by the bride!!!

A Christian is duty-bound to confront other Christians in serious sin with a Christian admonishment. Those who refuse to accept admonishment may rightly be treated as you would a tax collector or a non-believer. That is from the red letters of the Gospel, and it includes relatives. Being willing to stand around and watch those you call brothers and sisters eat each other up as if nothing is wrong is not a spiritual work of mercy. If you watch them do that to others and say nothing, then you, too, may be shirking what your love for both tormentor and victim demands of you, just as surely as if you had simply decided to be elsewhere when the fighting broke out.

If you have tried to shame victims of abuse and crime into sticking around for more of the same without lifting a finger to protect them from their tormentors or obtain justice for them, you may even be complicit in the crimes yourself. If you have done that to any of your relatives, don’t offer yourself congratulations, as if you were a true protector of peace and love.

I cannot say anything to this … except again,

 

[EasterJoy]

Good point.

TEPO may only be saying that the possibility of reconciliation ought to be kept open. I do agree with that. I only mean that you can’t say you care for someone and at the same time indulge their worst lights. That is, I don’t know, a sort of “co-dependence” that purchases a false peace at too high a price. Real peace is the goal.

 

[holyrood]

TEPO may only be saying that the possibility of reconciliation ought to be kept open. I do agree with that. I only mean that you can’t say you care for someone and at the same time indulge their worst lights. That is, I don’t know, a sort of “co-dependence” that purchases a false peace at too high a price. Real peace is the goal.

And I would agree with him. Never say never. The problem comes with declaring anyone who stays away from their family as selfish, arrogant, and all the rest.

 

[EasterJoy]

And I would agree with him. Never say never. The problem comes with declaring anyone who stays away from their family as selfish, arrogant, and all the rest.

Yes. It simply does not work to bully a victim into “reconciliation,” particularly when the aggressor is not repentant. It is OK to encourage and praise a willingness to pass over an offense. That is fine. Applying pressure to the victim of an attack return their attacker to a position of trust is something else again. Forgiving inexcusable behavior is not the same as excusing it!

Some people do get forgiveness and letting go of ill will confused with excusing the behavior or acting like the offense never happened. Those are not the same thing! An example would be someone who was caught embezzling. Yes, you treat them like a human being, but it is not un-Christian to have them up on charges. Even if they repent and amend or you decide not to hand them over to the police, it is still OK to deny them the position of bank teller! A position of trust is a privilege, not something that everyone worthy of love is entitled to have.

If the family will not let these two alone together–I mean, the bride for having slapped a guest, the guest for having assaulted the bride when she could have walked away, if that is what happened–it would not be over the top.

If the bride’s dress was torn by a guest merely because the guest had no other way of defending herself from physical assault coming from the bride, that is something else again. In that case, she deserves to have her husband stick around and guard her from anyone who has assaulted her in the past, including his sister. He should allow no one to harm his own bride; that much is elementary.