Friendships Are Family

[conuly]

Dear Annie: I'm often frustrated when people say that family always comes first. By "family," they mean the people you're related to by blood. My mother was a toxic presence in my life from age 11 to 22. I recently took a big step by asking her not to contact me anymore, instead letting me initiate conversation.

My life has only improved since making this change and since moving out of her home. No longer do I have to deal with her daily gaslighting -- telling me that my memory's incorrect, that her good intentions are more important than the pain she's caused me. No longer do I have to spend hours of the day denying my truth, living a lie.

She may be upset with me for choosing to severely limit our communication, but I have to take care of myself first. I have tried to make amends again and again and again. I have tried method after method. At some point, it became obvious I was talking to a wall. So, I wish more people understood that birth family isn't everything -- at least, not for everyone.

Please stop telling people things like, "But she's your mom!" or "But you're family!" We cannot choose the family we're born into. But we can choose the people we keep in our lives. People who love and respect us -- they come first. -- Better Off With My Chosen Family

Dear Chosen Family: I'm printing your letter to help people be more sensitive to someone in your position. Congratulations on finding friends who love and support you. While I'm not saying you have to interact with your mother on a daily basis, it might benefit you to seek individual counseling for better understanding of why she is like talking to a wall. Or why she does the things that she does. In that understanding, you might have more compassion for her limitations. Sorry, but after all, she is your mom.

Comments

[conuly]

Why does she have to be like that, seriously. "Get counseling" is not bad advice, if only because it can help LW handle having grown up with a shitty mother. (Or not grown up with one - sounds like Mom wasn't even there for most of her childhood, which is probably just as well.) But why be so snarky at the end?

[ashbet]

Ugh. Yes.

As someone with a narcissistic, abusive mother, if I *never* hear that phrase again, it will be too soon.

Being a genetic material contributor does NOT buy filial piety or create a debt relationship.

You have to actually be a decent parent to earn your child’s love and loyalty, and there is no obligation for an adult child to maintain contact with or care for an abusive parent.

[conuly]

Indeed. If you want to die surrounded by your loving children and grandchildren, you should try being a loving mother first. This isn't rocket surgery - don't abuse or neglect your kids, don't let other people do it.

(I've spent so much of my life telling people that, but alas, only the kids - not that the parents would listen if they asked for my advice in the first place.)

[ashbet]

I’m just grateful that I was able to break the cycle, and have a close relationship with my (awesome) adult daughter... but, unlike my mother, I never saw her as either my property, or as an extension of myself.

I wish more parents would listen!!

[rosefox]

You've found the objectively worst advice. Amazing.

[conuly]

If she'd stopped after the word "counseling" it would've been okay. But she just kept on going.

[rosefox]

Annie needs to watch the scene in Good Omens where what saves the world is a child defining a parent as someone who's there for you and loves you.

[conuly]

Honestly, even the bare minimum sounds like more than this woman did for her kid.

[lilysea]

Dear Annie,
If the parent who gave birth to you, and/or the parent who raised you,

consistently puts you down and makes you feel like shit,

you have precisely 0 obligation to spend time with them.

It's a kindness to tell the parent what boundaries they can stick to that WOULD get them some time with you [if there are any]

but you have 0 obligation to spend time with anyone who treats you badly.

[tielan]

As someone with a good relationship with her mum, I would certainly suggest counselling, but more for LW's own peace of mind and possibly maybe to avoid falling into patterns if she has children herself, with absolutely no obligation to interact with her toxic mum.

And I seriously don't understand why people don't get that blood isn't everything just because it's blood, or because they raised you.

[eleanorjane]

Flames on the SIDE OF MY GODDAMN FACE.

This answer should get Annie _fired_.

[conuly]

You assume her job is to give good advice. If her job is, instead, to pull in readers and maximize responses....

[minoanmiss]

Arrrrrgfh I hear you!

[cereta]

Hey, I have an additional request: can we please stop using "blood" and other biological terms as shorthand for "family of origin"? I have a Mom. She is my legal mother, and has been for all of my remembered life. She raised me from the time I was six weeks old. She is not related to me, or my daughter, by DNA, but she is distinctly different in my life from the "found family" honorary grandma daughter has where we live. Not better or worse, but different, and it really frustrates me in letters like this that I have to take like two sentences to explain who she is because my blood-related biological mother was someone else entirely.

[minoanmiss]

Yes indeed. I'm not certain if LW unknowingly furthered the exact attitude she's criticizing or if she means her opening lines as a criticism of this bad phrasing as well. But either way you are totally right.

[cereta]

I suspect the former, just because the whole trope of "by blood" is really, really ingrained in in a LOT of cultures. And I get it. Heck, there are still peerages in England that can't be passed to adopted children; the notion that a child not related by blood could ever be "yours" in the same way as a biological child is still one people argue about. But particularly in the context of someone arguing against that kind of thinking, it makes me cringe a little.

[dragoness_e]

Someone should suggest to Parliament or the next monarch of England that they should fix that. Laws are changeable. By contrast, in ancient Babylon, an adopted child was the same, legally and for inheritance purposes, as a biological child. (Except that adoptions could be revoked if the adoptee violated the terms of their adoption--e.g, the case of a slave freed and adopted as heir on the condition that they care for the adoptive parent in his old age, which responsibility the adopted slave blew off. As did the old man's biological children. I wonder if the old man was one of those toxic parents...).

[cereta]

I honestly have no idea how peerages work. I only noted this when reading about Christopher Guest, whose children with Jamie Lee Curtis cannot inherit his title because they're adopted (apparently, they can use courtesy titles). Then again, he only has the title because his older brother was born before his parents were married, so it's all kinds of dated.

[xenacryst]

Writing a letter to Dear Annie: exactly like talking to a wall.

[beable]

She's occasionally less clueless than Dear Abby?

I often don't like Carolyn Hax or Dear Prudence or Captain Awkward advice. But then I compare them to Dear Annie and Dear Abby OMGWTFBBQ

[untonuggan]

i wish i was surprised

[eva_rosen]

WTF, Annie, she just advised someone to stay in an abusive relationship. Someone the only way is to cut ties, be it a parent, sibling or child (adult, of course). Some people are just unmitigated arseholes, and sharing DNA or a past together doesn't equate a free pass for it (said unmitigated arseholes often aren't on need of therapy to 'realize what they've done or how they've been hurtful', they're well aware and think you have to put up with them because you're related).

[shirou]

This is pretty impressive. I'm not sure I could manage to write a more awful response, especially in so few sentences, if I tried.