My sibling died & in the days leading up to his funeral my mother was so exquisitely awful that I stopped fantasizing about harming her & began fantasizing about my life in prison after her m***er. At one point I was standing behind her at the top of a flight of stairs as she monologued about how everything was my fault. I could have pushed her but instead promised myself that after I made it through the funeral I’d never speak with her again. This year marks a decade since I last spoke with her & my only regret is not cutting her out of my life earlier.

ellysay , Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels Report

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Long and short, I was SA’d by uncles as a child, multiple occasion. Tons of rage issues because of it. Grew up in a single parent household with mom not in the picture. Fast forward, faced my demons to an extent, mended relationship with Mom. Opened up to brothers and sisters and finally mom about the SA, suddenly I’m lying, ive always been a liar since I was a child, “my brothers would never do a thing to hurt you!”

Straight up alienated by my family tree because said SA, ended the last convo with, “you didn’t protect me as a child, you won‘t protect/support me as an adult, and you won’t protect my children either. What use are you to me or any of us?“.

Taehcos , Engin Akyurt / Pexels Report

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I moved out when I was 16. Some of the things were for example I wasn't allowed in the house unless someone was home so I'd have to sit outside after school for 2-3 hours during Minnesota winters. Summer vacations were actually worse. We also lived 12 miles from the nearest town and was a very rural area. Only allowed to take 2 showers a week, 2 minutes long. Only allowed to eat diner because I was able to get free lunch from school.

These aren't even the big things or strangest things, just the day to day things. Like for example about once a week my father would make me pick up everything on the carpet. Lint, bits of grass, dog hair, etc. Wasn't allowed to use a vacuum, or anything, it had to be by hand. And if he saw anything anywhere I didn't get to eat. One chance, so he would just watch me while watching tv comb over every room looking for anything on the ground. This was also the only time I was allowed in the living room.

When I was 20 I decided I'm going to try having a relationship again at least with my mother and I went to stay with them for a few days. Again I wasn't allowed to be in the house while they were away, I had to stay in a shed and I couldn't have any of their food but I wasn't told about so I didn't bring any food. After a few days I left and never talked with them again.

That was about 25 years ago. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything of value. Oh and to add to this, I did have a brother who our father didn't do any of this to. They bought him clothes, gave him money, helped him get his first car, etc. So everything was very targeted towards me.

spytez , Ketut Subiyanto / Pexels Report

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Mother was career-oriented. I traveled 15 hours by Greyhound bus back to Illinois to help her finish up some roofing jobs still incomplete. She intentionally got in a fight with me at the bus station after the jobs were done, didn’t get me a ticket back, and ghosted me on $2,500. I had maybe $30 to my name at the time. Then she shut off my cell phone immediately after driving away. Had to walk about five miles to a friends house. He and a few of my other friends drove me back down to Alabama that night. Never spoke to her again.

missuz-featherbottom , Immo Wegmann / Unsplash Report

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Mom got arrested for child neglect and animal cruelty.

spectroliteskies Report

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My mom was dying of cancer. She had a restraining order against my father. Father finds her, and tries to marry her (metastatic brain tumor meant she was pretty gone the last six weeks). We block it as my brother and I are medical power of attorney, but do let him see her in hospice as an act of good faith.

I get a call from hospice the morning of her passing telling us to get over ASAP, she's going. We miss her passing by minutes because my father decided to yell at my brother for half an hour because my brother had locked the door to his bedroom the night before. Father does not come with us to hospice. When we call him to see how involved he wants to be with funeral stuff, he takes off with her documents, cards, and phone, then pretends to be her online for days, telling her family to contact him "for the real story".

I was 22 and my brother was 19 when this all happened. That was the final act that made me go from "maybe in a couple years we'll have a relationship where at least I call him once every few months" to "I cannot have this man in my life." He continued to escalate after that, but that day was the point of no return.

ShinigamiLeaf , Pixabay / Pexels Report

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She stole my student loan money. I worked so hard to get into college and have a full scholarship, and she stole my room and board and book money. It made the first year of college damn near impossible, which kinda set the tone for the next 3.

am_riley , cottonbro studio / Pexels Report

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It was a slow burn.

When I was younger, my mother could be very charming and ‘loving’, with intermittent bursts of physical and emotional abuse. As I got older, that ratio flipped, and I started reading up on personality disorders. My wife and I came to realize that we’d both grown up with toxic narcissists as mothers, enabled by weak fathers who wanted to placate the crazy person and keep their own situation calm, even at the expense of their children.

A few years after we married, my MIL left hours of recorded messages on our answering service. She filled our mailbox with rants about hoping we would lose our business and that I would die. My wife went no contact with her parents, and her life began to improve significantly.

It was another 20 before we would do that with mine, but my mom went down the conservative rabbit hole, which had a multiplier effect on her ugliness. We parted ways for 9 years and reaped the benefits of a drama-free life.

Then, a year before they died, I got a call saying they would become wards of the state unless I became their conservator. They had allowed a live-in caregiver to get overly involved in their affairs. I decided to suck it up and make sure they were well cared for and could remain in their home. By this time, unbeknownst to me, my mother had dementia and my father, an avid reader, had lost his eyesight.

Surprisingly, taking care of them at the end was a great experience. My mom’s narcissism disappeared with the dementia, and she became charming and funny as hell. My dad became loving and apologetic. I think he was surprised I’d step up to the plate after all that happened.

Nevertheless, I have no regrets about going NC with any of them. Whoever said blood is thicker than water is full of s**t—family is where some of the deepest hurt comes from.

spoonman-of-alcatraz Report

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After telling them I was getting divorced. They told me 1) My ex would always be their son and that they loved him more than me (to be fair they did try to back track and say they loved us both) 2) That no one else would ever love me and I'd realise I was ruining my life when I died alone 3) They only loved me becuase the bible said they had to 4) That they were writing me out of their will, and leaving it to my ex, because this was proof I was mentally unstable and once I'd come to my senses and gone back to him it would be mine anyway.

They were emotionally abusive my whole life but I kept going back and making excuses for them, not helped because my ex was abusive too. It's easy to believe you deserve to be treated badly when it's all people are telling you. Eventually I realised that I deserve to be happy and I just couldn't do that while continuing a relationship with them. They're never going to change, I think they honestly believe they're saying these things out of love and have no awareness of how they've hurt me.

Ruannbram , cottonbro studio / Pexels Report

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Jehovahs Witnesses who abused and manipulated me and coerced me into marrying a JW man when I had just turned 17. Wouldn’t accept my choice to marry a good guy outside of the religion despite him stepping up and being an amazing father to the kids I had with my ex husband who was extremely abusive and then abandoned them.

Lots of sexual abuse growing up that they never reported and made me feel responsible for.

I developed PTSD and the only way for me to improve my mental health was to cut them out completely.

1_murms Report

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Every time she called me, I’d vomit from anxiety. Even if it was simple and not abusive, she would ruin my day completely. Even just seeing that I had a message after class would send me into a spiral.

The three most important people in my life came to me and were like, ‘we really can’t let this keep happening.’

One of them was my best friend’s mom and she told me, without mentioning my own mom, a story about how when she was pregnant with my best friend, she started to have trouble with her pregnancy thanks to the anxiety her mom was giving her. She told me she realized she was either going to lose her baby or lose her mother, and she decided she could stand to lose her past but couldn’t lose her future. She just kind of laid it out without even commenting on my situation. And it worked.

That was almost 15 years ago and I’ve never regretted cutting off contact.

samwisesamgee Report

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I had a kid and realized I didn't want them having any influence in her life. Their influence on mine was bad enough.

FixedLoad , Kristina Paukshtite / Pexels Report

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My parents were born into a cult. I was born into it also. At age 10, because I got my period I was given to a 34 year old male to be his 3rd wife. I was almost 13 when I was basically kidnapped from that cult and taken to an ex cult members house to live.

Was deprogrammed,tried to end my own life when I was 16 bc of what I went through. I'm still alive. I'll be 50 this year. I don't know if my parents or if any of my siblings are even alive.

lika-kiki-no Report

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It was relatively small, when I stand back & look, but it was clear that our relationship was always going to be me (& everyone else) upending my life so he could do nothing at all.


The final-final straw was a request for me to attend an appointment that would mean a ~1.5 hour bus ride each direction, missing classes, missing work + make my own arrangement to stay somewhere overnight (I couldn't stay in my parents' home unless I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor somewhere & I didn't own a sleeping bag) all so my father could play Happy Family in public.  Again.


I didn't get on the bus.  I went to class.  I had a bad day at work.  Then I slept in my own bed.


I didn't mean it to be forever but I realized while my work day was tanking, I would still rather be doing that than pretending to be a Happy Family.


Everyday since has been better than it would be if he were in my life.  He made good days miserable & bad days hell.

schnitzeldehuahua , fauxels / Pexels Report

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I wouldn't say disowned, but certainly ghosted.

My mother died when I was in college. It was horrible seeing her in hospital, skin yellow from jaundice, slowly succumbing to alcoholism.

My father was a hard core drinker too. He could hold his liquor better, but every night my parents would get wasted, and it was never a fun thing to be around. Being a kid growing up, you could only communicate with them in the morning when they were sober. In the evenings, I would stay in my room.

As an adult with a full realization of how my father treated me growing up - not really close, not available as a parent, occasional beatings with a belt, no acknowledgement of his faults or lack of initiative in helping my mother, I decided to ghost him.

For the last 20 years of his life, I had no communication with him. He died a sad, pathetic man who had no self awareness of the pain inflicted.

I have no regrets at all.

ItsJustCrabs , Sofia Alejandra / Pexels Report

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After 50+ years of crazy, I decided I would prefer to have a peaceful life built on my own terms.

Just because I am their kid doesn't mean I have a lifetime obligation to participate in their insanity.

sunnyzombie Report

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When my dad said he didn’t blame
my brother at all for trying to stab me… that was the final straw for me…
Going on 18 years of no contact. Don’t see it ever changing.

Thor--A Report

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Parents got divorced between 12-14. During that period my dad became an evangelical Christian. All of the sudden, everything revolved around god and jesus. This continued until he moved to the US when I was 18 because “America is doing the lords work.” He completely ghosted his 2 teenage children and started a new “Christian family.” 

 He came to visit one time. He never met his 3 grandchildren and died in 2022. It had been 17 years since I had seen him. I did not go to the funeral because, to me, he had been dead a long time. .

Musclecar123 , Pixabay / Pexels Report

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It was a long process, but it really ended when my mom tried to sue my wife and me for "grandparents' rights." Anything after that would've only helped her to build a case to legally kidnap our son.

David_Felder , Sora Shimazaki / Pexels Report

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Dad pulled a loaded gun on me, haven’t talked to him since. I’ve heard he’s died since then and could care less.

smallboxofcrayons Report

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It was a long time coming. But the straw that broke the camels back was berating me for not coming to a family function when I told my father that I had something that was completely unskippable at work. I had been abused by my father for years, his way of getting back at me for my mother leaving him I suppose. I just lost it at him and told him what I thought of him. I haven’t spoken to him or his family that all took his side every single time in 15 years.

zelda_slayer , Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels Report

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Constantly trying to get me to divorce my wife whom Ive been with for 15 years.  She (my wife) has BPD, and is recovering from a very traumatic childhood.  I understand this, and support her even on the tough days.  My parents think she's "a psycho", and not worth my time, despite the fact that Im happiest around her, and we work very hard on our relationship despite our personal problems/flaws.  Parents see it as, "she's broken, dump her".  Which is horrible.  Im proud of how far my wife has come in the years we've been together, and when my parents gave me a "her or us" choice, I stopped talking to them.

onionleekdude Report

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For me, it was a respect issue. I was pregnant with my first, and I know that miscarriages happen more frequently than people know, and I told my mom to not tell anyone. Not even her family, no one. I couldn’t have stressed that enough, and I told her my reasons. Well, she disrespected that and told literally everyone. That was it for me, it was just the last straw and I had enough.

sifrult , Leah Newhouse / Pexels Report

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After going no contact several times, it was finally when my dad died and I had to fly across the country and I left my kids with my mother she told them I abandoned them and then kidnapped my oldest and left her in another state with another family member. Haven’t spoken to her in almost 3 years, it’s very nice.

iamfuegomego Report

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Generational trauma and religious trauma are two of the largest factors why I had a poor relationship with my parents, with constantly having to keep up appearances/facades and never feeling like I'm enough for them coming in at a close second, not to mention the clear lack of respect for my time and space over and over again. Me coming out released quite the backlash from them ("you have brought great dishonor to your family and made a nightmare for your mother..." and so on), messaging me once a week or so to berate me for it, so once this happened, I changed my legal name, changed all my documents, dropped off my old phone wiped at their house, and noped out.

calculator32 Report

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I caught them extorting money from my handicapped aunt. 3 months into becoming a new father I had to also become the legal guardian of my aunt because my parents had successfully bled a third of her life savings and were going for the rest. It took that really horrible act for me to finally admit how evil they were and pull the plug.

tinmask Report

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He went through my stuff without asking then continued to s**t talk me to my mom, who proceeded to not stand up for me.

As for the contents of my stuff, it was a bunch of religious books he really did NOT like as a devout Catholic. I was just beginning my anthropology studies.

But today I'm an anthropologist :).

musthavelamp Report

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We told my mom she needed to address her behavior and offer a sincere apology. I knew she was going to try to sweep her behavior under the rug by "having a medical emergency" and going to the hospital. She texted my husband one night and told him she thought she broke her foot and asked for a ride to the hospital (she was fine). I warned him that she was trying to manipulate us and told him to be on guard. She tried to give a half-assed apology and he cut her off and told her it wasn't an appropriate time, that she could apologize when it wasn't late at night and they weren't going to the hospital. The next day she texted my husband something like, "I apologized, can I see my grandkids now?" He reiterated that she needed to offer a sincere apology and addres her behavior. An hour and a half later, a police officer knocked on our door because she called the cops for a wellness check on our kids. Nope. Not putting up with that, we were done.

It's been two and a half years since then and they have been the most peaceful years of my life.

Also, everyone acted like I was psychic when I predicted that the next thing that she would do was go to the hospital for no reason. It doesn't take a psychic to predict that someone who regularly used going to the hospital as a way to get attention was going to continue that trend.

DistractedHouseWitch Report

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There truly wasn’t one. It just was so much, for so long that I just stopped. My mom was too proud ever to call me because in her head, she deserved to be called. My father chose to cut me out of his life when my wife asked him not to wear shoes in the house.

IAmReallyThurston , Engin Akyurt / Pexels Report

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It was more of a long haul. As I matured as a person I began to realise that I couldn't let my mother keep affecting my mental health with her narcissistic abuse. It was hard to walk away but would have been much harder to keep putting up with her abuse.

SadMarzipan7445 Report

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My father abandoned my mom and I when I was 2. Divorced her long distance when I was 6. When I was 30 I found him and we began talking, he told me about a brother I had and made it seem like I was part of a family, when we talked on the phone he was always telling me stories about my brother. After about 6 months I realized he had never let me actually meet or talk to my brother and I suspected he never talked to my sibling about me. He got mad and said that was hurtful but eventually admitted it to be true. My sibling had grown to his early 20s without knowing I existed and father gets mad at me. He had hidden his entire first marriage and kid from his second family their whole life. Eventually I met them and we have a good relationship but he never spoke to me again because calling him out on his lies was “ the most venomous thing he ever experienced “. He was a life long educator and when he died I wasn’t even named in the obituary BUT it does say how he spent his whole life “helping kids”… you know, except his own kid.

Schmed_lap Report

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My "dad" and I were already arguing (via messenger)after he said "answer me!" regarding a question he asked about my mom that was none of his business. Long story shortish: During our argument I somehow ended up bringing up how he picked on me mercilessly when I was a teen and forced me to hide my face any time I watched TV with the family so he wouldn't have to see me twitch because I have tourette syndrome. His only response was that I do not have tourettes. That was one of the worst times of my life and it really made me ask why the fk I should even bother keeping in contact with him, so now I don't. Apologies for the run on sentences.

Flimsy-Sleep3180 Report

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The situation with my abusive parent got to the point where I was so depressed and at the end of my rope, that i was very, very close to ending everything. At that point, I had no choice but to walk away, or end up six feet under. My only regret is waiting until my late 40s to finally walk away. Wish I had the courage to do it 30 years earlier.

bugabooandtwo Report

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My dad had contacted me about 3 times by the time I was 15. he realized he might die soon and got in contact with my brothers and I like nothing happened & my brothers took him back very kindly. I did not, he eventually started continuously asking for money & acting like he had part in my our upbringing. they finally cut him off as well.
tbh its me being petty, my dad has about 6 kids and im the only girl. I like to think that his only daughter never talking to him was the karma for all he’s done.

Existing-System-8536 Report

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Condemned me to hell for being a disobedient daughter. The last thing he told me on the phone was that he disowned me. All because I didn't agree to help him bilk the government for disability benefits. It's been over 10 years. I hope he regrets being a lonely old man but I don't think narcissists regret anything.

salamsfrmsdca Report

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My sister said something horrible to me and my mother insisted I apologize for causing her stress. We were in our 30s at that point and I just left. Been over a year and I haven’t spoken to either of them.

reflectorvest Report

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My dad was always a functional alcoholic and hit retirement about 6 years ago. I knew this was going to be his downfall with having nothing better to do. I stopped calling him after 3pm because talking to him was impossible. That slowly became a noon cutoff, and then I just couldn't handle it.

I have a half sister that he doesn't claim and has had nothing to do with for 40 years. She connected with family via one of those DNA sites, and my dad didn't believe it. He made up a story that they needed to do a paternity test on a 45 year old to properly set up his will. Then he was so drunk he misread the results and called her telling her he's not her father. Mind you, this was all because my cousins asked if she would like to come to a family reunion and meet them.

I told him he needs to get help and apologize....he told me he didn't care if he ever talked to me again. I cut off communication then, and it's been about 2 years.

It really sucks because I miss my dad, but I just try to remember him as when I was younger.

booger_pile , cottonbro studio / Pexels Report

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I am going through a mental health struggle at the moment. My mother thought the best way to support me through that was to get blind drunk and act like a petulant toddler.

She's in her 50's, but has never acted like an adult or a supportive parent. I couldn't take being the 'adult' in our dynamic anymore. I needed my mum. She let me down.

DandeSat Report

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Boyfriends family but I feel the effects…. Took boyfriends brothers side over his daughter (the granddaughter) over SA allegations, grandma made granddaughter call her abuser and look at pictures of him to try and convince her she was wrong - haven’t spoken a word to them since.

Cinder_zella Report

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It added up over time- just chaotic and disrespectful. I asked myself WHY I was suffering through this relationship when it was taking a serious toll on my mental well-being. I decided one day that I was done. I still ache for that figure in my life (not him), and I’m sad that I never got the Father I needed and that we all deserve- a soft place to land, someone who builds you up instead of tearing you down, someone who tells you everyday that you are enough and you deserve to be loved just as you are.

Imtifflish24 Report

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