what is your relationship with your family?

[kityoume]

What feelings do you have for your relatives? I feel affection only for my mother, and the rest of the relatives feel almost like strangers to me, but at the same time I feel the fear that if I do not communicate with them, I will be left without potential help from them.

for a long time I thought I had feelings for them, I just didn't analyze those feelings well enough so I can't understand them. Now I feel like I don't feel anything at all. Maximum gratitude for some moments in the past with them.
I also feel annoyed and angry to some memories, but in general, I just don’t care about the existence of these people.

for a long time I felt like a bad person with "wrong" behavior and it seemed to me that I should do something to fix it all, but nothing changed. I also experienced pressure from the family for indifference to them and lack of interest in communicating with them.

Now it seems to me that it's just a given and I can't change it

 

[NB79]

i mean caring and having love for your family ideally is good. For all. Of course it can get hard if your relatives have hurt you/they show no love for you.

 

[Luca]

My relationship with my family is… complicated.
My parents mean well, at least I think they do, and there have been times where they were very supportive and helpful, but my mom has a personality disorder and therefore can be kind of abusive, intentional or not.
I find her more and more infuriating the longer I live on my own away from her.

My extended family (with a few exceptions) generally can’t stand me. They are extremely homophobic and racist but also very ableist. They have never accepted me as part of the family since I am adopted.

My younger cousins (now adults) are very jealous and resentful of the close relationship I had with my grandparents, especially because they left a lot of their belongings (and some financial support) to me and not all of my cousins were included in their will. Sounds like the setup for a soap opera (or a murder mystery.) I would obviously be the one that dies.

There’s a lot to unpack about my family but I don’t always feel comfortable going into detail on here. Like I said, it’s very complex.

 

[Shevek]

I never bonded with any family members. I'm down to one now, and relations are cordial.

 

[Raggamuffin]

Said to my therapist last week, if I were to meet my parents in a general social situation and they weren't my parents - I'd have no interest in wanting to get to know them or spending any time with them.

Ed

 

[Au Naturel]

I have 2 families.

My adopted family is all dead. Mother, father, sister.

My biological parents are both dead. I have 5 siblings who I see maybe once a year. They are in Indiana and Michigan, 2000 miles away. Only discovered them a few years ago because of a 23 and Me test.

I never did have much of a relationship with my adopted family. Mom was angry and paranoid all the time. Dad was pretty passive and often not there. My sister was out of the house by the time I was 10. There was a lot of drama and hostility and I really felt repressed by life in a mid-western small town. I moved to California 45 years ago and only go back to visit occasionally. Mostly to visit a distant cousin I like and the other people are just kind of along the way.

My parents rarely enter my consciousness. My biological siblings are Facebook friends but not a lot more. I do not want to get wrapped up in that bit of family drama either.

 

[Georgia Galaxy]

What feelings do you have for your relatives? I feel affection only for my mother, and the rest of the relatives feel almost like strangers to me, but at the same time I feel the fear that if I do not communicate with them, I will be left without potential help from them.

for a long time I thought I had feelings for them, I just didn't analyze those feelings well enough so I can't understand them. Now I feel like I don't feel anything at all. Maximum gratitude for some moments in the past with them.
I also feel annoyed and angry to some memories, but in general, I just don’t care about the existence of these people.

for a long time I felt like a bad person with "wrong" behavior and it seemed to me that I should do something to fix it all, but nothing changed. I also experienced pressure from the family for indifference to them and lack of interest in communicating with them.

Now it seems to me that it's just a given and I can't change it

I have felt exactly what you have in some points of my life. I can understand the lack of interest, in fact I'm showing signs of that a little bit towards mine, but the only real reason is because I'm molding my own path and also enjoy my solitude (without people intervening) to it's fullest. This is why I've decided to mostly keep to myself, it helps me feel safe <3 You seem to have a complicated relationship with your family, I hope you start to see the brighter side someday. It might take either a gentle nudge or.. You may have to distance yourself from them. Whatever works for you ^^!

 

[SusanLR]

I only bonded with my parents.
There are a lot of cousins and a couple of aunts and uncles still alive that live on the opposite side of USA from me.
Most I've never met and those I have I have no connection or contact with.
Never had siblings. No close relationships and no children.
Both parents are dead now, so I've no family.

 

[kityoume]

My younger cousins (now adults) are very jealous and resentful of the close relationship I had with my grandparents, especially because they left a lot of their belongings (and some financial support) to me and not all of my cousins were included in their will. Sounds like the setup for a soap opera (or a murder mystery.) I would obviously be the one that dies.
There’s a lot to unpack about my family but I don’t always feel comfortable going into detail on here. Like I said, it’s very complex.

I can be extremely frank on the topic of family, especially on an anonymous forum I am interested in talking about my feelings, but I also understand if this is difficult for you. I hope that in this detective you will still get all the property of your cousins, and not vice versa. heh

 

[Knower of nothing]

Someone asked recently to consider if you were age-mates with your parents in school, whether they'd bully you or not and that was a little eye-opening. I think if you feel like they would there's a lacking foundation of trust.

 

[kityoume]

Someone asked recently to consider if you were age-mates with your parents in school, whether they'd bully you or not and that was a little eye-opening. I think if you feel like they would there's a lacking foundation of trust.

if I went to school with my relatives (not with mom and dad, but with the rest), it seems to me that they would hate me lol

 

[Kayla55]

You were the very person entrusted to look after me when I couldnt.! I was reliant on you and you had so much power to influence my life.

When we touch something hot it burns, the nervous system. It is a built in defence, we all have our inside defence but with autistic children the defenses surrounding ones attachment disorder may differ. When you take away the voice of a person already battling to discuss emotions you have mute victim. Limiting the expression (non-verbal) as in not allowing tantrum or melt down or not listening before this is then removing any way of expression.
This is one example of how abuse destroys 'disabled' people more than typical. All sorts of disabled people are abused by old and still current society more often than you think.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

i mean caring and having love for your family ideally is good. For all. Of course it can get hard if your relatives have hurt you/they show no love for you.

This has been a bit of my experience. It's very confusing to look back on my childhood/young adulthood and realize that I'd been physically abused by both parents, but that they were also supportive and would do anything for the creative passions of my older sibling and I. It's very very confusing. But my current relationship has taught me precisely what love is and isn't.

 

[Kayla55]

Abuse is very general word, lately financial abuse accepted amongst emotional. Abuse can be subtle, multilayered.....
So many forms of abuse

Narcisstic abuse with gaslighting can now cost you custody of children.

 

[Kayla55]

This has been a bit of my experience. It's very confusing to look back on my childhood/young adulthood and realize that I'd been physically abused by both parents, but that they were also supportive and would do anything for the creative passions of my older sibling and I. It's very very confusing. But my current relationship has taught me precisely what love is and isn't.

Golden child / scape goat and confusion is subtle indication you're not good enough however it was never said like that. But it's how you feeling, right?

 

[autism-and-autotune]

Golden child / scape goat and confusion is subtle indication you're not good enough however it was never said like that. But it's how you feeling, right?

Yeah, you're right. My older sibling was/is definitely the golden child--but I don't blame them. Our mother both over-loved us and over-criticized us in similar ways; they were praised for being smarter and doing much better in school, and I was praised for my chosen craft. But it's still so darn confusing.

 

[Ken]

What feelings do you have for your relatives? I feel affection only for my mother, and the rest of the relatives feel almost like strangers to me, but at the same time I feel the fear that if I do not communicate with them, I will be left without potential help from them.

for a long time I thought I had feelings for them, I just didn't analyze those feelings well enough so I can't understand them. Now I feel like I don't feel anything at all. Maximum gratitude for some moments in the past with them.
I also feel annoyed and angry to some memories, but in general, I just don’t care about the existence of these people.

for a long time I felt like a bad person with "wrong" behavior and it seemed to me that I should do something to fix it all, but nothing changed. I also experienced pressure from the family for indifference to them and lack of interest in communicating with them.

Now it seems to me that it's just a given and I can't change it

My relationship with family is somewhat similar to yours. I always felt unwelcome with my family and relatives. I was always an outsider. My father hated me. He hated that I was "different". That I was not "normal". I was also convinced that I was a bad person with "wrong" behavior, but try as I might I could not fix it. I could never grasp what "normal" behavior was. I still don't get that. I realize now that is because I am socially blind. Indeed, I can't get it. It has taken several decades, but I'm OK with that now. I now realize that this is how I'm supposed to be. This is me.

I guess this made is easier for me to leave home and live alone. I wasn't used to being cared for so being on my own made life so much more fulfilling. Since early childhood, all my true best friends were non-human.

But, now, I've made peace with all the rejection from my family. Basically, apart from my brother, I'm the only one left. My parents and little sister have passed away and I don't see my brother very often. He is also in very bad health. I am still in good health and retired from a successful career - that, I credit my autism for. It's not all bad!

 

[Magna]

Relationship with my family? I honestly never connected deeply with any of them and that's still the case today. There are multiple reasons for that and some of those reasons are related to them rather than me. In other words there are obviously aspects of relationships that have to go both ways and didn't. That could very well be due to my parents having had challenges of their own in forming deep connections to me.