Oh, I’m that aunt. My family sucks. But my niece contacted me yesterday since I’m moving to where I grew up. I know my fam is a bunch of asshats and she asked me if I could take her to a concert. My idiot sister would not allow her to go. I asked my niece which bands she would you like to see and immediately booked 4 tickets for those and another 2 for Moon Hooch. Fuck people who don’t allow you listening to music.
I’m having that problem with my niece now, she thinks Pokemon are cool. She’s not allowed to play the games or watch the show because my brother thinks they’re satanic.
I’m that uncle. I hope one day my nephews reach out to me without their mother/my sister’s toxic involvement, but so far, she’s just to be involved in every relationship she can to sabotage it.
“Is my sister literally watching you have this phone call with me?” — me to myself on the phone with nephlings in the past. Gross. Especially since my sister complained about our own parents having pulled that kinda bs
I am that uncle. Both my close and extended family are really nice, like better than any other I’ve ever met, but I just can’t handle all the social stuff. Most of them understand and we all like each other, but I still feel bad about it and it kinda sucks being the one that’s mostly outside of the “bubble”.
It was the inverse in my family. The uncle who extricated himself from most of the family was actually a huge piece of garbage and did everyone a favor by cutting us off. I don’t think he expected that nobody would make an effort to re-establish contact.
My wife’s aunt is in the process of doing this at the moment. Seems to be systematically working her way through each branch of the family tree causing drama, slinging insults, trying to pit people against each other, and just generally being awful until people get fed up with her nonsense and disengage - at which point she’ll find some other branch to go all “woe is me/people are so mean/everyone is against me”, then rinse and repeat.
Depression, alcoholism and narcissism are pretty powerful, and anyone trying to help gets themselves a first class ticket on the drama llama express
That’s me! I love my little nephews but the siblings are so toxic. All they do is tear people down and I stopped caring around the time my brother made a pass at my girlfriend and my sister started cheating on her husband.
That could have been me but my nephews don’t know about me existing, I guess, because I’ve distanced not over being in discord, but just over moving far away and not being willing enough to keep the connection. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but mostly not
My whole family is this way. For the most part we all recognize that you can live your life and not communicate every day, week, or month and still be okay with a person. We are great at picking up where we left off we just all have our own lives and that’s okay.
It still feels strange to me when friends contact their parents daily or weekly and say their parents etc. Get upset for not contacting them frequently enough. I understand that’s the way their relationship works but maybe my family is the odd duck Lmao
That’s great you can have that dynamic with your family and that it’s healthy for all of you. I feel like it’s healthy for me, but my own fam is in the category of “getting upset for not contacting them frequently enough”. It’s like they take it personally that I can live my life but not need to be up to date on every moment of theirs.
That said, I’ve found that the only progress I’ve made is by beginning to draw boundaries and trying to be consistent at keeping them. It’s not a wonderful dynamic, but more distance has certainly made it healthier for me.
There’s a balance, and it’ll be different for every family. Mine has gone years with no contact, while my partner is in the weekly camp. As time has gone on I’ve become jealous of her and her relationship to family, and wish I had something at least a little bit closer to that with mine.
But we were all so busy with our own lives that we drifted apart, only more recently coming together now that all the kids are middle aged.
It’s kind of surreal getting to know someone you grew up with, and seeing how we’re all so different.
for me, it’s seeing how similar we are. I went low contact and moved away almost 20 years ago. getting to know my now-transmasc brother when we’re both adults is wild. he’s dealt with things differently, but despite 8 years age gap and 18 years not talking, we have a lot in common still.
Auntie Dawn, I realise you’re probably more like me than I realised. Especially because my family probably call me a bitch who’s ashamed of her working class background now too.
My parents made the choice to live farther from the rest of the clan 20 years ago and it was a good decision. Today, everyone over there is at each other’s throats or not on speaking terms. Us on the otherhand, they all love us. Not because we’re great or anything, but because we have zero drama with anyone.
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