Reply to s/o difficult childhood thread: if you ended your relationship with your parents, how did it end?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I told them I was done with them, told them they'd better have long-term care insurance and explicit funeral instructions for their executor, and that they should leave everything to my brother.

I let my uncle, with whom I remain close, know what was happening and why.  We have an understanding that he'll let me know if my father is at death's door and that he won't judge me if I conclude I can't be there.  Knowing what my parents have done, he gets it. I'm lucky to have a relative who understands.

If you do disengage from parents I recommend you do your best not to let it destroy all of your familial relationships. It takes extra effort to stay in touch with cousins, aunts, and uncles when you're not just showing up at thanksgiving but it can be done and it's worth it. [/quote]

Whoa.
What did he/they do? I'm sure you did not take such action lightly, so it must have been something really awful.[/quote]
[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I told them I was done with them, told them they'd better have long-term care insurance and explicit funeral instructions for their executor, and that they should leave everything to my brother.

Whoa.
What did he/they do? I'm sure you did not take such action lightly, so it must have been something really awful.[/quote]

How much time have you got?

Suffice it to say I managed to maintain a relationship in spite of their lifelong emotional abuse because I wanted my child to have grandparents and because after growing up in such a terrible household I actually didn't understand just how far from acceptable their behavior had been.

After years of therapy I had a perspective on that, and most people were encouraging me to cut them out entirely before they struck again.

Unfortunately I did not. Instead I asked my beautiful husband to help enforce boundaries with them. They went after him in a big way and the lengths to which they went to wage war on both of us were truly astonishing -- even for someone who thought she knew what they were capable of.

I don't like being a de facto orphan but the healthy and normal alternative was never on the table for me. I'm just thankful we managed to get out.

My brother was not so lucky. Their abuse broke him completely and he has nothing-- not even the capacity to accept any kind of help and stop being the abused child he still is (in his late 40s). That was a tougher goodbye but I've been advised that saving him is as unlikely as bringing a corpse back from the dead. 
[/quote]
Were other family members aware of this horrible emotional abuse and did they ever try to intervene???[/quote]

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