June 20, 2018 | Eul Basa

People Share The Last Straw That Made Them Cut Family Members Out Of Their Lives


Dealing with family members can be a tricky proposition. There are countless ways to offend or alienate family members, from a snide remark at Thanksgiving to a rant on Facebook. Maybe someone's new significant other doesn't quite fit in with the family dynamic. Or someone has made the mistake of going into business with a family member who doesn't have the best financial track record, causing monetary stress amongst all involved. Whatever the case may be, it's never easy dealing with family when there are tensions involved. Most people stay involved with their families through thick and thin.

But for some people it's easier to cut certain family members out of their lives completely. Read on for what drove these people of Reddit to leave their families behind.

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Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!

25. The Letter

Reading the letter my father wrote referencing me as "that mistake that never should have happened".

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24. Last Words

The last words I heard from my mother before I hung up were, “I never should have had you"!

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23. Vicious Rumours

My aunt resented my father because he didn't cheat on my mother like her husband did to her.

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She started spreading vicious rumors about him at my great grandfather's funeral.

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22. Unforgivable

Cut my older brother out of my life after he beat me and sexually abused me for over 10 years. I told my parents two different times during my childhood, but they did nothing about it.

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He lives in a different state now, but I'll never forgive my parents for not protecting me.

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21. Lockdown

My mother tried to take my newborn son from the hospital, causing an entire lockdown of that part of the hospital. When I came home with my baby five days later, she started trouble again and I told her to get out of my house.

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She refused so I called the police, who came with guns drawn. It was the last time I ever spoke to her.

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20. Addicted

My mother is an addict and has been for close to three decades now. She was moderately clean for a few years, but then just started manipulating people, lying, stealing and pitting family members against each other.

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Her worst crime in my eyes was convincing me that I was helpless and was in desperate need of help. She got me involved in her world of endless doctor and psych appointments. I was on so many meds because I genuinely believed I was sick like my mother.

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Complete garbage and it seriously hurt my health.

Maybe in a decade I'll be willing to talk to her, but she's so far from my mind right now.

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19. Non-Relationship

Years of emotional and physical abuse from my mother, bottled up, that for some reason I thought I had worked past.

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My mother broke me. She broke my father. She's nasty, entitled, and selfish. She loved her job more than her only daughter. All of the artwork I gave her as a child she would write part numbers all over work like it was scrap paper. She once told me to go commit myself while I was having a panic attack and then hung up on me.

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I worked my entire life to be the perfect kid. Perfect grades, perfect manners, and I never got in trouble. She spent my 25th birthday party screaming that I was a horrible daughter, and a drama queen, and that I bring it all on myself. She hadn't even had a drop to drink.

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A few days later I told her how hurt I was by everything she had said to me, and she exclaimed that she would not apologize for the way she felt. We haven't spoken since. I realized you can't save a relationship that was never there.

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18. No More Drama

I decided to stop the cycle.

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Every few years my brother and I would stop talking, usually for some perceived slight on his part and I would be the mature one and try to reconcile. After about 40 years of this pattern, I decided I didn't want to waste my life with that negativity.

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We now live separate lives, much like a couple that admitted we were not right for each other. I have no regrets. Life is much better without the drama.

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17. Never Come Back

The final straw was one morning as I was about to take a shower and I heard my dad screaming at my mom.

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I ignored it and started to brush my teeth, then I heard punches. I came out and saw him with his hand up and I got in the way and screamed my lungs out and kicked him out. He was shocked and started to walk to the front door.

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He got into his car and apologized to my mom, but I screamed again, "Leave and never come back"! And that's exactly what happened.

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16. Grandmother Dearest

My grandmother on my dad's side was always so vindictive. When I was in middle school and high school, she'd make fun of my acne and say I was getting fat.

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Made me feel really self conscious and liked to say who her "favorite grandchildren" were. If I disagreed with anything she said, she'd say she liked me less. She would get my cousins expensive gifts and send me socks or underwear. When my parents got divorced due to my dad's numerous affairs, I was angry and sided with my mom.

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My grandmother stopped talking to me.

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15. Bipolar

My dad was always a bad father. He missed school events, stayed late at work to have affairs with his coworkers, and did drugs. He was diagnosed with as bipolar after my parents got divorced. He never called his children until he was having a manic episode and was feeling lonely in the hospital.

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We were always really supportive, even my mom. We tried to get him help and really wanted him to get better, but he didn't want to get better. He didn't talk to me for two years and then texted me on my birthday saying he loved me.

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I didn't immediately reply and an hour or so later there was a follow-up text asking me to come to court with him because he had been charged with driving under the influence and assaulting an officer. I had just finished law school when he sent this text.

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I wasn't worth talking to for years until I was able to help him. I haven't talked to him since.

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14. New Beginning

My father was physically and verbally abusive to my mother. When the divorce went through, the abuse shifted to us. My mom tried desperately to get sole custody, but the courts only saw the show my father put on.

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I learned quickly to just submit and it would be over with faster, but my sister never could bring herself to do that. Now I admire her bravery, but at the time I just saw her tactics as prolonging the torture.

At first, it was just verbal and emotional abuse, but after a couple of years, it became physical.

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One day, my sister stood up for herself and he kicked her down the stairs. That was it. We were 14 at the time and knew that things had just crossed a line. We fled to a family member's house and he drove us back to my mother's house across town (she had primary custody, but this was summer break when he was granted more time).

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Finally, we were allowed to speak to a judge and pled to be released from having to visit my father. After the courts ignoring six years of child abuse, my mother and stepfather were granted sole custody.

Heavy story, but it ends well. My stepfather adopted us as adults and the world knows him as our dad.

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He is a good man that makes my mother happy and has been the father we deserved. I have no idea what my biological father is doing and I do not plan on ever inviting him back into my life.

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13. Grandparents

To put it mildly, my paternal grandparents were not fond of my biracial niece.

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I'm not fond of adults who dislike my adorable lil pumpkin because of her skin tone. They were jerks before my niece was born, but their attitude towards her was the final straw.

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12. Get Out

When I was 17, I told my mom I was suicidal and she offered to help me do it.

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This was after many years of her threatening my life and saying she wished she'd never had me. That night, instead of killing myself, I decided to get out as soon as I turned 18. Life's been much better without her in it.

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11. Mother's Day Call

After 34 years of not being the favorite child and enduring all sorts of abuse from my mother (dad just ignored what was going on), I called to wish her a happy Mother's day.

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She was drunk which was not unusual. I mentioned something my brother-in-law had said to me the previous week and she flew off the handle for who knows what reason. She started calling me all sorts of foul names, accusing me of heinous crimes, and just generally screaming at me for existing, which was not unusual for her.

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I stopped listening, pulled the phone away from my face, and slowly settled the receiver into the cradle. I have not talked to her, or my family, for 15 years and, for all I know, she's still screaming into that phone. I have no regrets.

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10. Brother Where Art Thou?

My brother came for my husband's funeral and after the viewing took me aside and told me:

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"You were a terrible hostess because you did not introduce me to everyone who came to the viewing". This was the final straw for me. He and his daughters had insisted on coming and staying at my house even after being told that I was spending all of my time at the hospital with my husband (he was injured two months before Christmas, which left him as a quadriplegic).

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My family and I were dealing with a lot and a house guest was not something we needed or wanted. Once here they trashed my house, filled my fridge with garbage beer (for someone in AA no less), used one of my sons as a driver for them at their whim, damaged an antique wood chair that had been our mother's, and took my sons and me away from my husband on Christmas Eve, then could not get off the ski slope in time for Christmas dinner.

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He's never accepted personal responsibility for himself. He is a self-entitled, self-serving, mean jerk who has been this way his entire life. I told him I was finished with him and he was never welcome in my home or my life again. At this point, any letters or cards go directly to the shredder, unopened.

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Done means done.

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9. Moving On

My parents split when I was 3 years old and my dad later re-married the worst woman ever. I had to move in with my dad when I was 5 because my mom had become depressed since the split and essentially became an unfit mother. I moved in with my dad and was not allowed any contact with my mom because my stepmother hated her.

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I lived with my dad for five years and was physically abused by my stepmother the entire time. She was vile, abusive and just scum of the earth. Now that I'm older, I've done a pretty good job at forgetting all the ugly memories I have of her but I'm almost positive he knew the things she did to me.

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I never once spoke up about it to him or at school because this woman put pure fear in me. After gaining contact with my mother again after five years, I moved out. My dad later got divorced and moved to California. The day he came to say "goodbye" to me, he thanked me for ending his marriage. Fast forward 14 years later and my dad finds me on Facebook.

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The second I accepted his request, he sent me photos of his "new" family and wrote me a message about how much he missed me. I was finally given the opportunity to tell him how much I loathed him for everything I was put through and how he was meaningless to me and that was the end of it.

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8. College-Bound

My father said that he wouldn't help pay for college when he makes at least three times as much as my mom, who raised me after he left to be with the woman he cheated on my mom with. I'd found out the previous month about the cheating and other less-than-morally-fantastic stuff he'd done.

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Life is better now and I just finished my first semester at Yale despite all this.

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7. Charity

I cut off my well-off, reverend aunt. She told me she'd never support my nonprofit and volunteer work because I'm an atheist.

So they decided to not use the funds they raised for my third-world rural preschool's tables and chairs.

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Instead, she took her kids and their significant others and kids on a private-island vacation.

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6. Sister

I cut my youngest sister out of my life. She essentially used her two children as trophies to get attention and fulfill her need to feel important. After her incompetence to nurture and raise them led to neglect and a host of issues, my mother stepped in and single-handedly raised both.

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One is 26 now. The other is 10 and autistic. My mother is 74. Despite all that she's done my sister continues to cause my mother problems and my mother spends every day looking over her shoulder. My sister has also swindled at least $100,000 out of my father by lying and making up stories.

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She calls his phone 20-25 times a day badgering him for more. It's disgusting. She is selfish, conniving, manipulative and not to be trusted. She has exercised these behaviours with other family members, friends, co-workers, businesses, law enforcement and the list goes on. She is a sociopath that leaves a wake of destruction every where she goes.

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We have all united and taken a stand to disown her. Our priorities are her children who deserve our attention, love and care.

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5. Stepping Up

My mom and dad divorced when I was in the 4th grade. Shortly thereafter, my dad remarried a woman with a son from a previous marriage and eventually, my mom married a work colleague that she had known for years.

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After a few years of joint custody, my stepdad wanted to adopt me, and I agreed as I had stopped going to my biological dad's house months before. My biological dad just gave up on me and wanted me to leave, and he said that he was glad that someone else was there to take me instead of having the responsibility of two kids.

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4. Trust

The last time we saw each other in person to discuss why I was pulling away, my mother said my sister was lying about being sexually abused and had proof. When I told her I saw it happen she said, "Why didn't you ever say anything"? She tried to blame some of her issues with my sister on me.

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I was five years old when I saw what I saw and didn't even realize what was going on until a few years ago. Then my stepfather got in my face yelling and telling me to leave and that I wasn't welcome. The last straw was a few months later when I thought about how I'd be hopefully be having kids in a few years and realized I would not trust these people alone with my children.

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I haven't spoken to my mother since that day.

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3. A Fall

After my grandma's funeral, we cut my uncle and his wife out for good. My parents weren't exactly on speaking terms for other reasons, but my sister and I still talked with them. He told us that he could have taken my grandma to the hospital after her fall, but instead just gave her a bandaid and didn't do anything.

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She had some brain injuries from the fall that likely couldn't have been fixed in the long run, but the fact that he didn't take her to the hospital or anything was just the last straw, along with the fact that he started complaining she didn't leave him enough money and left most of it to me and my sister.

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2. Payments

After a lifetime of my brothers making me feel like bad, they outdid themselves by refusing to help pay for our father's funeral. One "couldn't" because his wife suddenly needed an international holiday and the other just kept dodging calls.

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1. Thieves

My grandparents stole my savings account. They had been listed as co-signers for my entire childhood and I never removed them.

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They got into gambling and stole it all. They were always abusive to my mother, so I was on the way to cutting them out anyway. Stealing my savings was the final straw.

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