Family Dynamics

[Anglewannabe]

I have a multitude of questions/thoughts and bear with me if this is a bit jumbled.

There are a lot of statements such as ‘family is family’ and ‘it is important to value family’. I have always felt like an oddball because IMO just because someone is related to you is no reason to let them mistreat you. I admit that is probably why at 44 I am single because I have always been the type to avoid people I can’t stand as opposed to going to a family function and being polite on the outside to keep the peace. No man has even really wanted to support that.

Well… as a kid, I suffer a significant loss. It shocked the whole family and from where I was sitting it just made me mad. This kid always got more attention than me and when she died, she got even more attention than when she was alive. The adults in the family were shocked and decided it was not good to ignore family since you never know when they will no longer be around. All of a sudden everyone wanted to spend time with me. I was angry. All I could think was ‘why does someone have to die for the adults to notice me? Couldn’t they have notice me for my good qualities while this other kid was alive?’. As a young adult I was told to see their point of view and they were trying to make up for ignoring me and I should accept their gestures. I though it was baloney and always resented not being valued for me.

Years later I am much more over it but still see my point or view. Life has gone on. Well… there is this one man in my family that was so abusive I decided to cut contact with him over 10 years ago and never regretted it. In that time, he married and had a daughter. I saw them once at a funeral. He was screaming in a restaurant at the top of his lungs how stupid I was. Needless to say it simply confirmed I made the right decision.

This morning I just found out a month ago he separated from his wife. I must be growing in holiness because my heart ache for him. He married a divorced woman which is a sin in the catholic church but I still did not like to see anyone suffer. I was then asked if I would like to get in touch with this man I suspected he sent a messenger. In the back of my mind, I was thinking I should offer my condolences (or whatever you offer when someone divorces) but I was wise enough not to admit it to the 3rd party who informed of me the divorce. Then later in the conversation, I found out he has been saying ‘Maybe Angie is right I was too hard on her’

I can’t help but think it is the same scenario again. Someone looses someone important and now all of a sudden I am person worth having around. I just don’t like this. I smell a rat. I again feel like ‘Why can’t people value me for me and only think of me when they have no one else’???

Not sure what I am expecting by posting here but just wanted to let this out

Angie

 

[Book_Worm]

I’m very sorry you’ve been so hurt in the past.

You seem to be holding on to a great deal of anger. Sometimes we become so used to it that it’s frightening to let go. But anger is corrosive and it harms the person who is holding it much more than those at whom it’s directed. How many years of loving interaction with your family have you deprived yourself of in order to punish those who hurt you?

Have you ever done anything wrong for which you need God’s forgiveness? How do you want him to respond to your apologies and prayers for mercy? Should you not offer that same mercy to others?

It’s not necessary or healthy to keep someone in your life who deliberately abuses you, but if they repent and ask for forgiveness, giving them another chance could be good for both of you.

Some professional help, from a therapist, priest, or other spiritual director might help you get to a state where you can do that.

 

[Allegra]

If you have been at peace without this fellow in your life, then I see no reason to initiate contact with him due to a conversation with a third party. If he himself offered to speak to you, it would be different. I think it is natural for someone who is going through something like a divorece to reflect on their own social skills and consider where they had erred in their relationships.

 

[chefmomster2]

Someone loses someone important and now all of a sudden I am person worth having around. I just don’t like this. I smell a rat. I again feel like ‘Why can’t people value me for me and only think of me when they have no one else’???

First let me affirm LOUDLY:

You are valued and valuable, loved and lovable, for the person who you are from the very moment of your creation!

The trick is that you have to believe that! I think you’re needing reassurance from others. Your family should have been reinforcing that from the beginning, but they didn’t. They should have treated you better, but they didn’t. Sometimes we continue to be stuck in our anger/depression because of a lack of forgiveness on our part.

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”
-Variously Attributed

Let us imagine that your point of view is 100% accurate. (None of is ever completely objective about our own story. ) We will also agree that it was just as true that your relatives were persuaded to do better because of the deaths of loved ones…So what?
Your family, once it knew better, began to do better. What exactly is wrong with that?

We all have failings, both those we are aware of and those we may not be. We may have faults that we are clueless how to combat. But, then we have an experience which matures us. We “see the light” as they say. Mankind thought the world was flat until we discovered that it was spherical. Since we had been wrong, but now we know better, should we continue to be “flatlanders” or should we grow with our newfound knowledge and transform our lives with our new information?

Maya Angelou writes, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” The deaths of beloved persons caused family to rethink their treatment of you. That is what I like to call “A Hallelujah Moment”! This is a time for gratitude, forgiveness and reconciliation. It is a time for rejoicing!

I truly believe you suffer not from the lack of caring from your family, after all they have tried at least twice to make amends. I believe your pain exists from a lack of forgiveness and acceptance on your part.

Did you have a painful childhood? YES!
Did you deserve to be hurt by your family? NO!
Do you deserve to be freed from this pain you have carried all of this time? YES!

Only you can free yourself from this torment. The key is to accept that the past was what it was and LEAVE IT IN THE PAST! You don’t have to go to your family members and ritually forgive them. You just have to release wrongs done, turn a new page, and stop hurting yourself. This isn’t even about them. God will deal with them with full justice. This is about you.

This acceptance will mean freedom from pain, freedom from the past. It means freedom to move forward and freedom to become all that God asks us to be.

Pray for them daily. It is amazing how praying for your “enemies” can soften your own heart.

 

[GEddie]

“Being blood” to somebody is not a requirement to let them hurt you.

If anything, it is a failure on their part that they have hurt you.

It is good, and commendable, that you want to forgive.

Sadly, it is true that sometimes it takes losing someone to the obscenity that is death for the living to reassess their relationships with each other.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA

 

[Anglewannabe]

. How many years of loving interaction with your family have you deprived yourself of in order to punish those who hurt you?.

I have missed out on family get togethers now and then but I have not missed any ‘LOVING’ interaction at all

. Have you ever done anything wrong for which you need God’s forgiveness? How do you want him to respond to your apologies and prayers for mercy? Should you not offer that same mercy to others?

Unless I am sorry for my sins, priest never give me absolution. I forgive others in my heart and accept that will not change. But I do not want to get back into the cage with the lion

. It’s not necessary or healthy to keep someone in your life who deliberately abuses you, but if they repent and ask for forgiveness, giving them another chance could be good for both of you.

This man has NEVER asked for forgiveness. He has always made it clear I am the one who is wrong for being hurt in the first place

I am not trying to argue with you just trying to answer your questions

 

[Anglewannabe]

First I want to thank you for your very kind post and now I want to respond to one part of it

Let us imagine that your point of view is 100% accurate. (None of is ever completely objective about our own story. ) We will also agree that it was just as true that your relatives were persuaded to do better because of the deaths of loved ones…So what?

If they tried to do better by valuing me as a person it would have been one thing. But they were forever making it about them. How I was supposed to change because they had a realization. It was never about ‘what would Angie like to do’ it was always about 'we use to have so much fun doing xyz with ‘Sally’, now that she is gone let’s do that with Angie. It was all their agenda. 10 days after this kid died I had a birthday and no one bought me a gift. Only my grandmother sent me a card and in it she just wrote about the recent loss. I will never forget that day. I saw the card in the mail from my grandmother and for the first time since the kid died all I could think was ‘yeah I finally get something for me’ and when I opened it, all the was in it was ‘sorry I couldn’t be at the funeral’, I felt slapped in the face. Their attempt was never to value me, it was for their convenience

 

[Anglewannabe]

If you have been at peace without this fellow in your life, then I see no reason to initiate contact with him due to a conversation with a third party. If he himself offered to speak to you, it would be different. I think it is natural for someone who is going through something like a divorece to reflect on their own social skills and consider where they had erred in their relationships.

Thank you for your response.

 

[Book_Worm]

You seem angered by my post. I apologize because I did not want to sound critical of you.

In your initial post you said that after your family suffered the loss of another child, they wanted to spend time with you and you rebuffed them. I took that to mean that they wanted to make amends with you. When you said that your uncle told someone that he thought you might have been right, I took that to mean that he felt he had been wrong about you and regretted it. Evidently, your understanding of his meaning was different from mine, and since you know him so well, likely much more accurate.

I did not want to add to your pain. You sound so unhappy, and I just thought that there might be a possibility of mending fences with your family and gaining some love and support. People do change. I have relatives I thought were cold and uncaring for many years, but in the past few years we have re-established contact and we now have a very close relationship.

 

[michaeldean]

I’m not very strong religiously, and I haven’t had the most stellar family life, so feel free to dismiss this as you like, but the way I see it, the only way I’ve been able to not lose my mind over my own problems, is that you can forgive someone without letting them hurt you again. Forgiveness in my experience has always been much more about letting yourself heal by refusing to hold on to that anger and bitterness any longer. Being angry does not make the pain of the past go away, and it doesn’t make the other person see the error of their ways, which I admit was always the excuse I would use for not letting it go. The only thing is does it hurt you and keep you trapped in that cycle. Forgiving the person lets you out of the trap. That being said, I’ve seen a lot of people think that forgiveness means you have to forget what’s been done to you, and so they either make themselves vulnerable to more hurt, or they refuse to think about forgiveness at all, and neither of those are very healthy or productive. You do not have to contact this man, or let him back into your life. You do not have to stop being angry, no one can make you, but you won’t be able to truly heal until you can. That’s my view. I spent a long time being really bitter about all the wrongs that have been done to me, and I thought that if I wasn’t angry, it was like I was accepting those things. But somewhere, I don’t remember where, I heard that forgiveness is not the same as letting yourself be a door mat, and so I thought maybe it was worth a try, and you know, it’s the one smart thing I’ve done in a long time.

 

[chefmomster2]

Forgiveness in my experience has always been much more about letting yourself heal by refusing to hold on to that anger and bitterness any longer…I heard that forgiveness is not the same as letting yourself be a door mat, and so I thought maybe it was worth a try, and you know, it’s the one smart thing I’ve done in a long time.

Superb post!
:extrahappy:

 

[Bezant]

I can’t help but think it is the same scenario again. Someone looses someone important and now all of a sudden I am person worth having around. I just don’t like this. I smell a rat. I again feel like ‘Why can’t people value me for me and only think of me when they have no one else’???

Because human beings tend to seek the finite before the infinite. Everyone dies and suffers, but unless you are in the midst of suffering and death neither forms much of your everyday consciousness. That’s why God, love, and family, are so easily trumped by relatively minor details.

Don’t fall in the same trap. It would be great if people just did what they should have done all along and not years later, but after the fact it’s a waste of time to ask. I’m not saying you should dismiss whatever offense he caused you or permit him to drag you down. However bear in mind that you only have so many blood relatives, any one of whom you might rely on in the future. Since giving you credit and admitting fault – especially to other people – would make him look bad, maybe he genuinely regrets his actions. There is no information from your post to assume vindictive or ulterior motives. The idea that he wants to resume good terms because he divorced and remarried also sounds bizarre; why does he need your friendship so badly? Reaching out through a neutral third party was probably the least intrusive not to mention easiest approach if you severed contact; it certainly worked.

My advice: maintain distance, but unlock the door. Easter season might be a good time to start, maybe with a card or email exchange; that way you prevent him from interrupting your peace of mind while offering the opportunity to seek forgiveness. If he does, please exercise restraint before you make accusations of disingenuity unless you have a very concrete reason behind it. While some scepticism is to be expected given the circumstances in which you last saw each other, it’s unfair to hold a grudge against someone who otherwise appears to be doing the right thing. Likewise, search your conscience for any offense or misunderstanding to which you may have contributed in the past.

 

[holyrood]

You seem angered by my post. I apologize because I did not want to sound critical of you.

In your initial post you said that after your family suffered the loss of another child, they wanted to spend time with you and you rebuffed them. I took that to mean that they wanted to make amends with you. When you said that your uncle told someone that he thought you might have been right, I took that to mean that he felt he had been wrong about you and regretted it. Evidently, your understanding of his meaning was different from mine, and since you know him so well, likely much more accurate.

I did not want to add to your pain. You sound so unhappy, and **I just thought that there might be a possibility of mending fences **with your family and gaining some love and support. People do change. I have relatives I thought were cold and uncaring for many years, but in the past few years we have re-established contact and we now have a very close relationship.

I thought Angie gave excellent responses to your initial questions. While your second post helps me understand where you’re coming from, I can’t help but think that you’ve never experienced the kind of family Angie is talking about.

I think the comment about mending fences gets at some of what I’ve experienced, that perhaps is how Angie is feeling? I’ve been chastised all my life not to ‘burn bridges.’ After an incident actually similar to what Angie describes (being screamed at, raged at, and publicly condemned (unjustly, I might add) by a relative in front of twenty people), and having that followed up by being told her rages were my fault, and having that followed up by more criticisms of me as a daughter, sister, mother, and all-around general human being…wow, I finally saw, the problem here is NOT that I’m burning bridges! THESE PEOPLE are constantly dousing the bridge with oil and throwing burning torches on it…and then criticizing me for not scrambling for a thousand buckets of water to save the bridge!

I quit running for the water. I’m not running to gather wood to mend the fences. I did not cause all this damage. I pray for them daily. I genuinely wish God’s peace on them and healing in their own lives. But I’ve mended fences repeatedly, saved the bridge from burning over and over. At a certain point, it feels like just another poke in the eye to be told why don’t I consider trying to mend that fence. No…thanks, but I’ve done it repeatedly. If they want it mended, they can start mending.

I don’t want to speak for Angie, and I genuinely believe after your second post that you have the best intentions and a kind heart and have had a good family and perhaps never experienced these things that go on for a lifetime, that never change. But I hope this gives some idea of how it feels to be the person on the other side of that broken fence, and why some people simply are not going to keep mending fences. There’s usually no reason to believe the other person has changed.