Yes.

Yes, I can’t sleep because of this. My brother whom I was once close to has terrible mental illness and lives with my elderly father. My brother and dad won’t acknowledge the problem. The family money is in my brothers hands. He is bipolar manic for sure but with strong delusions too and possibly schizophrenic. He graduated from top universities. It was all downhill from there. He has never gotten help. I am sick to my stomach over it and my mom died of heartache. I smsshanednut slso hurry. An intervention won’t help.

I didn’t until I had kids. Now I don’t understand how they could treat their own children so horribly at all.

Yes

I am bitter too, and with time it seems to be getting worse instead of better. It is difficult to see happy extended families enjoying a vacation or a meal together, and I wish that my kids could have grown up with close cousins. I don't remember feeling this so much when the kids were little but I do now that they are all in MS/HS. I should go to therapy but I haven't for this yet. Sorry that there are others in the same boat. I definitely wish I could just focus on enjoying my life with my husband and kids...PP, it's not like we don't want to do this!

OP and others ~ none of you are entitled to 2 happy families. You have one. The one you make yourself.

It is so incredibly sad when energy is wasting on what you don't have

Anonymous wrote:Totally. Most of the time I accept it, but I have moments of deep resentment and rage at how dysfunctional my family is. I put in so much work via therapy to break the cycle and am proud of that, but still. It sucks not to have a safe place to land, were something to happen to DH (his family is pretty dysfunctional, too). It sucks to be thrown off-kilter by a random contact from my incredibly dysfunctional sibling or to have to set boundaries yet again with them and/or our parents.

I don't look down on them, I just wish I had true parental support, as many of my friends and peers do. I know their relationships aren't perfect, but I'd take imperfect but safe.

This is about where I land too. And, I can feel resentful sometimes about all the therapy needed to help me cope. A lot of money and time and energy, while well spent, could have been spent elsewhere, and I resent people who don’t have to pay the cosmic inheritance tax.

My in-laws have many issues with addiction, drugs, crime etc. We keep a lot of distance and my DH is resentful at times. But we are also careful to not condemn most of their issues as character traits. Addiction can be very heritable, so we want our kids to know they may be vulnerable and how to get help.

We also recognize that the learning challenges that our kids get support for (ADHD/ Dyslexia) would be a really different set of issues without support/ intervention. So that helps move us from resentful to sad pretty quickly.

My extended family is so dysfunctional that one of them was on a full 20/20 episode.

For me, its not shame or resentment but just the wonder of how I'm the only one that was able to break free of it. I am the 3rd of 4 siblings. We range in age from 40-50. I am the only one employed and financially self sufficient. One sibling and his children live with my parents. Another sibling never married, never had kids (but wanted to do both) and lives with an extended family member because she hasn't had full time work in 4 years. The oldest sibling is unemployed due to health issues. Part of the problem was that we were raised in a house where there was a belief that successful people were lucky. My mother has a victim mentality and doesn't understand that life is something you have control over. You know the saying, "life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it." Most of my family lacks the self awareness and emotional regulation to deal with conflict and adversity in life. They spend each day waiting for good things to happen vs. making good things happen.

Eventually mt crazy family aged and many died off. It was a relief.

Totally. Most of the time I accept it, but I have moments of deep resentment and rage at how dysfunctional my family is. I put in so much work via therapy to break the cycle and am proud of that, but still. It sucks not to have a safe place to land, were something to happen to DH (his family is pretty dysfunctional, too). It sucks to be thrown off-kilter by a random contact from my incredibly dysfunctional sibling or to have to set boundaries yet again with them and/or our parents.

I don't look down on them, I just wish I had true parental support, as many of my friends and peers do. I know their relationships aren't perfect, but I'd take imperfect but safe.

Me too *raises hand* I don't have any contact with my FOO and it's been healthy for me. I have made peace with not knowing if they're alive or not, because they're just very burdensome people and will suck the life out of you. Life is too short to be treated like crap and I'm just done being the family scapegoat/golden child/pawn. It also helps that I live on another continent.

Nope. Their problems are not mine. I am not them. I am stopping negative cycles and starting positive ones. I'm very proud of myself and happy with my life.

Anonymous wrote:I feel the same way, OP. Just white hot flashes of rage/resentment when I see others having families that are helpful and not abusive.

I do therapy, even now in my mid 30s and it helps.

I also have to continuously refocus on how proud I am of the family I created and how im so glad I broke the cycle of abuse that spans many generations in my family.

I’m not a perfect mom, but my kids will NEVER experience the things I experienced growing up.

All this.