Ask The Flytrap: How Do I Stop Resenting My Parents?

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Dear Chaos Collective,

I've been estranged from my sister for fourteen years. I know exactly how long it's been because my wedding was the last straw (she and her husband tried to convince my then-fiancé to leave me the night before we got married). I don't miss my sister at all, and, as I feel is the case in many estrangements, I only feel a kind of relief at not having to deal with her.

My problem is that the rest of my family is not estranged from her, and despite knowing the situation intimately, they blame me for no longer putting up with her shit. I love them deeply but they are incapable or unwilling to see her as anything but a victim who needs constant coddling, and this has always been and will always be the family dynamic, Amen. How in the hell do I stop resenting them for not just overlooking her bullshit, but blaming me for disrupting the sacred family harmony by relinquishing my doormat duties?

Please fix my brain.

— Adi

Hey there, Adi!

As someone with a lot of experience with family estrangement, including navigating situations where you want to stay in contact with some family members while still holding boundaries, I really feel you on this one. I am also very proud of you for standing up for yourself. That last straw was a wild thing to do, and clearly indicative of a much deeper pattern of behavior that your family really should have been able to see as well. It sucks that you're feeling comfortable about cutting her out of your life, but your family can't let the topic go. You said what you said! End of!

HOWEVER, I also know how golden children work, and it sounds like you have one of those on your hands. And I ALSO know what it feels like to be around people who thought that someone's behavior was totally acceptable or that you're the mean one for being fed up.

I am a person who gets really frustrated and upset when people are doing something that's unfair like this, so I understand how much these things tend to eat at a person, especially when they involve people you may love, care about, and want to keep in your life.

So, if they're picking at you about this, one thing I think might be helpful is: "I understand that your experience with Sister is very different than mine, but I've repeatedly explained how harmful her behavior is, including her attempt at derailing my marriage. It doesn't sound like we can have a productive conversation about this, so I think it's best that we just drop it."

See also: "As I've said before, Sister has been really horrible to me, and I have no interest in hearing about her victim complex/am not interested in details about her life/have made it very clear that I no longer wish to have contact with her."

There's also: "Sister is in this position because of her longstanding pattern of poor behavior. I'm sorry that you don't understand why her behavior was unacceptable, but I am not the one at fault in this situation, nor should I be required to be silent in the interest of family harmony."

You can also be more blunt: "Knowing that you are aware of what Sister did to me and choosing to overlook it while telling me to go along to get along is really hurtful."

I suspect they're of the mind that you should just let bygones be bygones, but Pepperidge Farm remembers and there's no statute of limitations on fuckery.

As for how you are feeling about this, and struggling with the perfectly understandable and reasonable resentment you're feeling, perhaps unsurprisingly my number one recommendation is therapy, because it's incredibly helpful to have a third party to talk with about this stuff, especially on an ongoing basis. A pro can help you sift through these feelings and navigate times when they bubble up especially intensely, or when events in the family bring this once again to the forefront of your mind.

This sounds like a really deep-seated family dynamic and I suspect members of your family would be indifferent at best and possibly hostile to any suggestion of family therapy, though it can be helpful if people are actually willing to put in the work. Since they're not going to be willing to work on themselves, something else to think about is other areas where they DO show up for you, and trying to find a sense of balance there, not in a "well, he thinks it's fine that my sister acts this way, but at least he waters the plants when I'm gone!" kind of way, but in a "humans can contain multitudes and it's really hard sometimes" kind of way. Maybe that could also, in the long term, be an avenue to push on a little harder re: the Sister conversation, telling your family how much you care for them and how much it means when they're there for you, and therefore how it feels like a betrayal for them to discard your feelings in this situation. Just knowing in the back of your head that this doesn't have to be forever, that family dynamics can shift, and yours might, even if it takes a long time, can be a thing to cling to.

I also want to ask you a genuine and trickier question that may already be on your mind, but is worth saying out loud: If you had a group of friends who blamed you for conflict caused by someone else, repeatedly excused someone else's bad behavior, and told you to suck it up for the good of the group chat...would you decide maybe those people aren't your friends? Or think that perhaps you want to be more selective about which ones you want to socialize with? If a friend came to you to say they were being treated this way, what advice would you give them?

Because I'm gonna be real candid with you: Genetic relationships are not a requirement to tolerate bad behavior, as you already know, and they're not an excuse for telling someone to shut up about someone else's bad behavior. People who disrespect you, expect you to make yourself small for their convenience, or refuse to hear you when you're talking about the way someone harmed you don't sound like friends or family to me. Or, at best, they sound like friends and family that I wouldn't want to be very close with. That might be a scary thought since you clearly really love your family, so it's definitely something to nibble at, not try to make a dramatic decision all at once.

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If you decide you do want to take a step back from the family or limit time with them, even temporarily, it sounds like that would be painful. It's not magically going to fix your resentment, but putting your foot down could give you some perspective that might be really helpful. Maybe this just looks like a temporary low-contact break, and something you don't even have to make a big production about; you can simply be really busy all the time, miss calls, and forget to respond to texts to see if that feels like relief, or like it's making you feel even more frustrated. It's also really important to have your support people, like your husband and friends, to be there for you in this, so you don't have to feel like you're going it alone. Doing this quietly and without making any announcements also makes it easier to roll it back ("sorry I was so busy in September!") and adjust boundaries without contributing to the family lore that you're the Difficult One.

Sometimes, unfortunately, even people we have long histories and good memories with are just incompatible with who we are and the way we deserve to be treated, and their rationalizing keeps old wounds open, rather than helping us heal. That is a really hard thing to come to terms with, and in the midst of this, I want you to remember that staying true to yourself allows you to feel good about who you see in the mirror, and compromising yourself for these people would only make you more resentful.

— s.e.

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