I don’t have a relationship with my parents. While that may actually be pretty common, I don’t go on with depressing holidays or angering phone calls pretending there is a real, true relationship there. I have severed from my family of origin. Breaking from the family is an option and it’s okay.
I don’t know for certain what will happen in the future with my parents, but I’m at a point now where I am okay with the prospect of never having a relationship with them. I am living my values and leading a virtuous and blissful life, I don’t see my family fitting into what I’ve had to create and work hard for.
I am enjoying true freedom in my life for the first time, I am allowed to celebrate being me, to live, learn, grow and know true happiness. I’ve kissed the eyelids of personal freedom, I live on the other side of the barricade, able to dig my feet in the warm soft grass and feel the sunlight on my neck…and it is so good.
Whether or not you choose to have a relationship with your family is a personal choice, but I think it’s time we broke down the propaganda and started being honest about our experiences with the institution of the family.
From the time we enter this world we are inundated with propaganda about the institution of the family, with statements like “Family is all that matters in life” or “Your family is really all you have in this world.” I could go on with knick-knack axioms, but you know them all already. I believe in free will and the fact that you had no control over the random clan you were born into. The wooden bric-a-brac of my philosophy would read: “Family is not a virtue, Family is earned.” I think that we as humans do function best with close loving relationships in our lives. The mistake people make is thinking that these relationships must be with the default, your family of origin. Sharing history and genes with someone does not make them (or you) a good person.
Voluntaryism is a philosophy based on principles: relations between humans should be of mutual consent and voluntary cooperation. Self ownership is an innate right of a human being: to be the exclusive controller over your own life. The shocking thing that I am doing here is actually living my values, living my philosophy.
Last Summer I began immersing myself in these ideas. Ned and I built our relationship on personal freedom, virtue and philosophy. Ours is a relationship in which we don’t yell or call one and other names. We talk openly and honestly about what we feel in the moment. Sadness, anger and hurt are met with curiosity, empathy and vulnerability by the opposite partner. As you can imagine, this is not easy and it is something we are always working on, but anyone can do it. As we began to mold our relationship around philosophy and I learned what real love looked like, it became clear what type of relationship I had with my parents; needless to say it was not — nor had it ever been — a healthy one.
I think that part of living a healthy, self-aware life means to cleanse yourself of all the destructive, negative and abusive relationships that you may have accumulated. If your relationship with your parents is negative or destructive it is highly likely that you will have other negative and destructive relationships in your life as well — and vice versa. Why do you keep getting fucked over in relationships? It sounds cliche but a good place to look is your early childhood experiences.
My decision also came through delving into my past, into my psychology with the guidance of a therapist. I think it is so important in life to truly know yourself, to dig into your unconscious. I have said so many times before that what we do not process we will repeat, and this is especially true when it comes to parenting. If you are among the brave souls who choose to access their unconscious, you might find some dark stuff there, some questions about how you were raised. With this knowledge comes the fact that you’ve got to make a decision about your parents in the lives of your possible future-children.
Do you know many really good parents? We always seem to focus on how things are better than they used to be. It was undoubtedly worse for kids 25 years ago, even more 50 years ago and scarily more 100 years ago. Things are getting better, but these ancient notions of how we should treat children continues to drip down through our culture. Unless we take a stand and acknowledge the whole of super-prevalent child abuse (emotional, psychological, physical), process our pasts and work hard to not pass a drop of that on, it will continue seeping through our white picket fences, poisoning the generations we create .
This whole family-is-unquestionably-virtuous propaganda is so entirely outdated and medieval. I do think more and more young people are now realizing this, which means even more people will know this in the future. Can you even begin to imagine a world where we all drop abusive people and work on having real honest relationships, where parents treat their children like human beings with respect because they recognize the relationship is voluntary? A world where everyone processes their unconscious and their abuse, refusing to pass a bit of it on to the next generation? That is freedom, that is true happiness and that is something to actually work on achieving in your lifetime.
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9 Comments
While being a good parent myself, at least better than my own parents, I tended to think that other parents around me were, too. Unfortunately, that’s not the case as much as I had hoped. I agree, things are better, but there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Lately, it seems that a lot of people around me are choosing not to have relationships with their parents/family. I agree that it is a choice, but when I read this I felt like you saw people that do have a relationship with their families as having less free will? I’m probably imagining it. I have a wonderful, loving relationship with both of my parents. They are my best friends and I don’t go a day without speaking to one of them on the phone. I will say that we had some rough times when I was growing up, but ultimately I feel that they were great parents that always did the best they could.
That being said…I’ve seen some terrible parenting! I have so many friends who are currently estranged from their parents that I too wonder if it’s some sort of generational parenting fail. My best friend’s mother would always say to us “I’m your parent not your friend,” and I always felt like she was hiding behind some Biblical bullshit to appear infallible. My parents always emphasized that they were my friends and parents, and I plan to do the same if I ever end up raising a child.
Love reading your posts!
Sada´s last blog ..Inland Hurricane + Workshoppe Update
Gary,
It is sad how we always give parents the benefit of the doubt but abusive behavior is so ubiquitous:( I also agree there is always room for improvement with our relationships. Just keeping in mind that it is voluntary, and asking how the relationship is going for the child are small but key things. Thanks for sharing.
Sada,
You raise great questions. I think that I sometimes feel like people who just go along with the built-in relationships of their families without exploring them or reflecting on their experiences don’t realize that they do have free-will, (but of course they do.) I think it is a beautiful thing to both realize you have free-will in the relationship, explore it AND continue building a healthy family relationship. That is the ultimate and may be the best way to be truly free, however it’s not the answer for everyone, as you mentioned alot of us do have poorer relationships with our parents.
As I said in the post I think things are getting better for kids. I think maybe we have reached a point in time where our generation wasn’t aren’t SO broken down by propaganda and abuse that we are seeing that we do have a choice! To me that is such a beautiful thing. It kinda makes me have more hope for our generation than anything.
Thanks so much for your input! <3
Another great post.
Over the past couple of years I came to the realisation that no matter how much I want a great relationship with my Dad, he will continue treating me and my siblings as less important than his other family and that I no longer have to put the effort in if it’s getting me no where. I love him, and we don’t have an abusive relationship at all, but for a relationship to even be a relationship there has to be give and take from both sides, not just one.
My Mum really gets this though, I love her more than anyone else in the world. When I was 17 and wanted to move to a different city with a guy she “let” me go despite protests from my grandparents. She knew that I was smart enough to look after myself and she let me know she would be there if I needed anything. I could be my own person and she took care of me in all possible ways despite a lack of money.
I’m so happy that I can consider her a friend. She has the same sort of relationship with her Mum, so there might be something in that.
Ms Constantine´s last blog ..It’s OK To Be Psychotic
i have a fantastic relationship with my parents; they are both like best friends to me. but it wasnt always the case…
i think of my best friend as family. i dont think family has to mean blood relatives at all.
sarah hannah´s last blog ..Beauty As The Beast
Thank you for being transparent. Blessings.
This is a great and thought provoking post.
I haven’t had a relationship with my mother for over 5 years. I came to realize that she is against me, not for me, and that I couldn’t have any kind of honest, respectful relationship with her. My life has gotten easier, in many ways, since coming to this decision–though it was painful to make at the time.
As an incest survivor, I didn’t know what a healthy relationship with my parents was supposed to look like. I tried to be normal and happy and pretend that my family was normal.
After years of stuffing my feelings and pretending that I was fine, I found an Adult Children of Alcoholics group and started working on myself. I am so glad that my dad was an alcoholic. That gave me some place to start.
I went for over 10 years with no contact with my dad. I didn’t want to take a chance of him abusing my children. My mom, I bought to live with my family when she and my dad separated and later divorced. She lived with us for 14 years. When I got into counseling, I realized my reasons for doing that. I wanted her in my life in whatever way that I could have her there. I felt like if I took her in and took care of her, then she would finally love me. Yes, I know how sick and co-dependant that is, at the time, I didn’t care. It took me 14 years to let go of that relationship.
Relationships with family of origin can be difficult or impossible. Thanks for your article.
Patricia – Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker´s last blog ..Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse: October 30, 2009 Edition
Right now I am facing a decision to continue my realtionship with my family or cut them out of my life completely. I am a SRA survivor with DID and my family enabled my abusers. I did not realize that my family system was toxic until I talked to a therapist, I thought my family was “normal”. But its so far from that, everyone on the outside thinks that I have perfect parents and perfect silblings.
When I uncovered the secret of my past my family began to dispise me, thats where I’m at right now.I am stuck because they are paying for my therapy that insurence doesnt cover and I’m a student waiting to get accepted to grad school.
Thanks for posting this it helped me to feel not so alone. Take Care. Be Well.
Hope´s last blog ..Evil Lives In My House