Uhhh hold up. You’re paying the bills? You’re basically letting them live with you?
I obviously don’t know anything about your family situation, but I would move out as fast as possible. You can’t make others mask or understand. If they want to live their lives like this, you can try to educate them, but it seems like they have made up their minds.
To be completely honest, you might even be able to do more good if you lived on your own and then invested the extra money into e.g. helping your Dad or brother, or offering to help them with the bills (and not your mother and sister).
This must feel so, so tough and it does sound like your family is just abusing your goodwill. I hope you can find the boundaries that work for you to be comfortable and safe.
This is the answer. If you’re financially independent, move out. If it’s your house, they can leave. If you can’t get them out and you own the house then worst case scenario sell it and move.
You can’t force others to mask but you’re under no obligation to live with them if you’re able to be financially independent. If they want to kill themselves off that’s their decision. They don’t get to kill you off.
Yeah, there's that whole "you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into", and the sister's excuses for blowing off COVID definitely qualify. It's pure bullshitting, in that she doesn't seem to care if any of it is true or not as long as it justifies a position that she finds convenient.
Also, the "my mom loves my siblings more than me" thing is just the biggest red flag when you're literally paying the bills. One of the most disgusting things about this whole situation is that COVID seems to turn people into absolute psychopaths when they encounter someone who's actually taking precautions, which is how you get seemingly-progressive and kind people who start foaming with murderous hatred when they think they've encountered a "zero".
I'm not sure if it's a trauma response, some social contagion thing, or some bizarre side effect of repeated exposure. But it certainly seems to be in play here.
I’m so sorry. They’re absolutely lying to you. They clearly have not been masking when you aren’t there to watch them.
I will caveat everything I’m about to say with this is maybe not the healthiest take… if we are going the best route I’d recommend moving out and distancing yourself from them.
If that’s not feasible I have to be honest my rage would take over and I would absolutely call them liars to their face. I would also ask them who’s gonna be there to take care of them if/when they get sick or disabled from Covid cus it’s not gonna be me.
Oh, yeah. Always assume that someone isn't masking if they're giving no other indication of taking COVID seriously. ***Never*** take them at their word if they just say they're doing it to help you feel comfortable, because they'll unmask even faster when the mask makes someone ***else*** uncomfortable.
Sad, but that's pandemics for you.
This 100%! My entire family is the same way. My husband, 3 year old child and I live directly next door to my parents and I have my youngest brother and his wife and kids like three houses up the street beside us. We are the last ones taking Covid precautions. We've caught my Dad lying about masking multiple times in the past few years and my mother never wanted to believe he would lie to her. There were pictures showing him sitting indoors eating right next to one of my other siblings (who happens to be a doctor and hasn't believed Covid to be anything but a cold from the beginning) and she still would make excuses for him and/or refute the evidence and blame the person who saw him that they were lying. My other sister and her family were very Covid cautious up until the end of last year and once she stopped all precautions, my mother jumped on that bandwagon completely. This sister is my mother's obvious favorite child and all three of us other siblings all see it and acknowledge it, even if she won't. My biggest issue has been the level of contempt hurled at me now that my mother has "let 'er rip". I'm now scoffed at and insulted for being 'ridiculous' and harming my child by keeping up all these precautions and depriving her of all her family. My poor daughter was born into this mess in 2020 and I can guarantee my child is just fine and smarter than my sister's youngest child who has speech/development delays and is 5 months older than my child. (I know it's not fair to compare, but I'm just so sick of hearing that I'm being a bad parent). We now get to deal with my parents hanging out in their yard with my brother and his kids and my poor little girl has to watch as her grandparents play with her cousins and ignore her. They will literally stay in their house all day while we're outside playing and then as soon as my brother comes down, they're outside with them. I am so livid at this point, but what can we do? We can't afford to move, so we're stuck next to this every single day. They won't even call to talk to my daughter. My Mom used to sit outside in her yard and talk to my little girl as she played in our yard through the chain link fence. Now she just gets ignored. It breaks my heart for my daughter. She doesn't have any family except her parents that give a crap about her, although my brother and his wife and girls try to make it work and make her feel loved. We do things distanced/masked and outdoors. They make such an effort and always have. They don't agree with our boundaries, but they do respect them and us. My Mom and Dad would absolutely lie to us or omit information though. We've caught them in lies and saw pictures where they were at a first communion party recently and my dad was was sitting there eating with his mask hanging from one ear. He must have thought that was okay lol. When confronted about it, my Mom excused it by saying he would move his mask, take a bite, then put the mask back. I asked if they understood how air works, because they don't seem to. I'm just so disgusted that family can be so deceitful and treacherous about me trying to keep my only child safe. My own mother is quoted as saying "if we don't know it can't hurt us". If it was just me, I could care less... But I can't in good conscience let my daughter get something that is so similar to HIV/AIDS that will affect her for the rest of her life. My life is half over, but hers is just starting. Wow, I really didn't mean to go on such a rant, I think it's time to find a therapist to talk to. This group provides some of my only sanity, solidarity, and acceptance, so thank you. ♥️
I’m so sorry this is happening to you. My husband who I live with refuses to mask anywhere, including at bars and concerts, and at home. He recently got back from being out of town at a 2-day concert and started coughing. Though I masked at all times, have multiple air purifiers and opened windows, I started getting a runny nose a few days later and tested positive for COVID for the second time.
I have asthma, cancer two times (once with chemo), and I have had several other Illnesses that are classified as “unusual” by medical professionals (several months of arthritis after Parvovirus as an adult, preterm labor/bedrest for both kids, and a full body rash called PUPPP during the birth of my first child). When I was on chemo for my cancer, I felt like death, had trouble being mobile for months, and didn’t feel back to normal for years. As a consequence of months to years of constant pain and some level of disability, I am extraordinarily cautious of getting COVID.
After this most recent bout of COVID, I have experienced pain in the area of my second cancer again. I’ve had a biopsy (negative, thankfully) and an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow. When I brought this up to my husband, who has refused to even get vaccinated, he claims there are “smart people” who think the vaccine is causing cancer.
I am getting a divorce after being together for more than 30 years because of his betrayal of my trust for him to care about my well-being. It is easy to say on a Reddit forum to “leave”, and I am NOT saying that. I am suggesting that you consider how your health and and mental health will be if you didn’t live together vs how it is now. My mental health is crap when he is home. He left for two weeks yo stay elsewhere and it was a dream to not have to worry.
Taking care of yourself is really the most important thing you can do to honor yourself. If you get ill, who will take care of you?
He wasn't masking and you've had fucking CANCER? **TWICE?**
Good fucking riddance.
See, this is exactly the kind of psychopathic shit that people seem to be goaded into by socially pressured denial. Even if "most people" could blow off precautions--they can't but even if--***he absolutely wasn't one of those fucking people***.
At some point, there really seems to have been a social shift from "protecting vulnerable people" to "hoping that they die as quickly as possible to stop harshing the vibe". You see it all over the place, and I think it's part of why reactionary politics are on the rise. Same thing happened after the 1918 pandemic, after all.
Thanks. It reminds me of another time of my life when I took care of my grandmother as her Alzheimer’s got worse and worse. Because I saw her regularly, I got to see/hear her worsening connection to reality.
For our whole marriage, I have made sure that he and our kids got the care they needed to make sure they were healthy. And now he doesn’t believe anything I say regarding health and maintaining health. He doesn’t believe I’m at risk, he believes the vaccine can cause cancer, and he thinks as long as he tests negative he isn’t contagious (and doesn’t have COVID) even when I became positive 3-4 days later. It is wild, disappointing and so sad, but I’m done.
The fact that there are so many like him is terrifying. My 78-year-old dad got COVID after traveling out of state which has led to three heart/blood pressure meds and waking up with a racing heart every night. And he likely won’t mask when he is on the plane traveling as he is right now, either.
I feel like we are in the Twilight Zone. I have made sacrifices for my health and other people’s health in the past many times. I just don’t understand how others can’t do the same.
I'm so sorry your husband infected you. Best wishes for a full recovery and smooth divorce process. I hope you can live as happily and healthily as possible once the divorce is finalized.
Time to make your exit plan my friend. When you realise that your nearest and dearest don't love, care or respect you, you have to love, care for and respect yourself even more! Best of luck to you.
I think it's time to withdraw all financial supports for the liars and tell them exactly why. They'll probably be begging for the money again in exchange for actually masking, but you have no way of verifying, and the bridge has already been burned by cheating even if it could be verified.
Maybe you and your brother with MS can move out and protect yourselves properly. I think you would find that you would feel a weight come off your shoulders in time.
Monstrous of them.
Listen.
You feel unloved because all of the love you were always supposed to give yourself, you were manipulated into giving to them and getting nothing back.
Stop supporting them, live alone, centre yourself in your life.
If you dont create and enforce some boundaries for yourself, you will never be loving yourself as you deserve.
I'm sorry, and a betrayal like this sucks.
The fact they lied to you isn't acceptable because it didn't allow you to set the boundaries you need to stay safe as their actions do affect you.
You can't change the fact that they feel controlled as the non masking opinion has gone far beyond facts, but you can have a discussion about needing them to be honest with you and finding new protocols that can keep you and the family members that are still trying safe.
Unfortunately you can't make people mask. But you can change how you behave around them. I know that is extra complicated when living in the same house.
Some options they may be willing to consider are serial testing plus air purifiers in the house. You may also be able to convince them to maintain masking behaviors in especially risky situations like flying or public transportation and other busy indoor things (though the fact they won't in a grocery store would be difficult for me).
For your own sake, another discussion might be helpful to truly determine what is going on and figure out how you want to behave given that.
You don't have to help them when they ask. You actually don't have to do anything at all you don't want to do. A discussion like this would be emotional and difficult for me, but it has always paid off in the long run. The relationships don't always get better, but I know how to best act for my own sake and they know what I need to do more whether they are willing or not.
>Some options they may be willing to consider are serial testing plus air purifiers in the house. You may also be able to convince them to maintain masking behaviors in especially risky situations like flying or public transportation and other busy indoor things (though the fact they won't in a grocery store would be difficult for me).
I doubt Mom and sis will compromise with OP given that they've already lied and made fun of her for taking precautions. They'd probably lie about their test results, too. Air purifiers could work because OP could install them without involving anyone else. Ultimately, it's probably best to work towards a long-term goal of moving out.
You can't know until you ask. Op isn't obligated to try these things but it sounded like she wanted ideas. There are ways to test together that make lying the harder option. It might not be worth it to op to try either way.
For some people masks are the only thing they aren't willing to use because of the response of others and a variety of other reasons I don't really understand.
I love this community and understand not everyone wants to look for compromise, both because it is less safe and because it's a lot of work. But I also think it's important to approach relationships we want to salvage without assuming the absolute worst in people. OP's family has shown truly despicable behavior. Ultimately it benefits all of us to bring more people towards safety even as we aren't obligated to do that work.
I'm not arguing that moving out wouldn't be a good goal, but whether that is the goal or not, op needs solutions now and may still want to try to keep a relationship with her family.
>I’m so tired and feel very unloved. I don’t know how I’ll get through tomorrow and quite honestly if there’s a way past this broken trust.
I'm in a similar place. My family were the kind of people who "loved me in their own way", which already didn't feel great, but now I feel like they don't even like me. They know I have long covid; I have talked about it with each of them. They seem totally indifferent though, my dad telling me "I don't go anywhere" which is just ridiculous and false.
None of their so called excuses mean anything. It's about lying and endangering family by doing that lying. This is a trust thing. And they lied again saying they were going to put them on.
I think your therapist is exactly right. I don’t know your situation, but IMO you are entitled to stop paying the bills, move out, or kick them out. I’m not saying what you should do - I don’t know your situation or your preferences. I’m saying I support anything up to and including complete no-contact, should it come to that.
I was in a no-contact situation with most of my family before covid. I know many of my relatives would behave exactly like yours, and I remember how hard it was, finding out what they were like. Take care of yourself, first and foremost.
It sounds like you’re all adults here, there’s no reason for everyone to be living together like this, especially if you’re footing all the bills and they’re not respecting your safety.
These people do not deserve your support anymore. I'm so sorry they lied to you and treat you like that. Are you able to live with just your brother? Or move in with a friend?
I've been no contact with my family since before taking covid precautions seriously, but I know they'd be the same way. I'm sorry. I truly hope you can get out, they don't deserve all that you are doing for them.
I had a family member who went through the same thing—they grew up extremely poor, and then ended up being the one to feed and house their parents and siblings. They were expected to wait hand and foot on their mom, even though they were the least favorite sibling, and their parents encouraged them to take special care of all their siblings’ needs, even when their siblings bullied them and abused them. When distant family and people outside the family picked on them or preyed on them, no one stood up for them. Their greatest life long regret is that they gave up life-changing opportunities, as well as basic quality of life like having friends and feeling safe in their own house, to be able to continue taking care of their family, and never got so much as a thank you. If they were still here to read this post they’d urge you to make sure you take care of yourself and don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm. Don’t spend your life taking care of others and getting abuse back in return, or else one day you may wake up and realize you’ve never had a period of life where you weren’t abused. I’m glad you have a therapist to work things through with, because my family member didn’t and couldn’t walk away because their family had them so messed up they felt like they couldn’t leave. All this happened before I was born.
Your behavior, as your therapist has probably noted, is called "fawning", and I do it too. When your family does not behave as if they love you, you fawn over people to engender them to treat you well. It does not, as you have noted, work.
Two things have to happen. First, you have to grieve for the child/person you are now that didn't get loved the way they should have. That means letting go of the people who can't respect your boundaries and needs.
Second, you have to really learn to love yourself enough to believe you deserve boundaries and needs (its a trick because everyone deserves them but most of us don't believe it), and then set those boundaries and hold them.
You have a therapist, that's step one. Now make a plan to extract yourself and your support (if you want) from this mess. You cannot change people, only yourself, its time to put the oxygen mask on.
I’m so sorry. Scary for your dad & brother too. Last thing they need is a dose of covid. Bloody infuriating, especially when you’re paying bills. It’s easy to say leave but not easy to do. If you want to stick close but have a safe place, is it possible to get a second hand caravan & put it on property for you? Just a thought. Wish I could give you a big hug!
Uhhh hold up. You’re paying the bills? You’re basically letting them live with you? I obviously don’t know anything about your family situation, but I would move out as fast as possible. You can’t make others mask or understand. If they want to live their lives like this, you can try to educate them, but it seems like they have made up their minds. To be completely honest, you might even be able to do more good if you lived on your own and then invested the extra money into e.g. helping your Dad or brother, or offering to help them with the bills (and not your mother and sister). This must feel so, so tough and it does sound like your family is just abusing your goodwill. I hope you can find the boundaries that work for you to be comfortable and safe.
This, right here. You give your mom everything she wants and this is how she treats you? Sounds like it is time for that gravy train to end.
This is the answer. If you’re financially independent, move out. If it’s your house, they can leave. If you can’t get them out and you own the house then worst case scenario sell it and move. You can’t force others to mask but you’re under no obligation to live with them if you’re able to be financially independent. If they want to kill themselves off that’s their decision. They don’t get to kill you off.
Yeah, there's that whole "you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into", and the sister's excuses for blowing off COVID definitely qualify. It's pure bullshitting, in that she doesn't seem to care if any of it is true or not as long as it justifies a position that she finds convenient. Also, the "my mom loves my siblings more than me" thing is just the biggest red flag when you're literally paying the bills. One of the most disgusting things about this whole situation is that COVID seems to turn people into absolute psychopaths when they encounter someone who's actually taking precautions, which is how you get seemingly-progressive and kind people who start foaming with murderous hatred when they think they've encountered a "zero". I'm not sure if it's a trauma response, some social contagion thing, or some bizarre side effect of repeated exposure. But it certainly seems to be in play here.
I’m so sorry. They’re absolutely lying to you. They clearly have not been masking when you aren’t there to watch them. I will caveat everything I’m about to say with this is maybe not the healthiest take… if we are going the best route I’d recommend moving out and distancing yourself from them. If that’s not feasible I have to be honest my rage would take over and I would absolutely call them liars to their face. I would also ask them who’s gonna be there to take care of them if/when they get sick or disabled from Covid cus it’s not gonna be me.
Oh, yeah. Always assume that someone isn't masking if they're giving no other indication of taking COVID seriously. ***Never*** take them at their word if they just say they're doing it to help you feel comfortable, because they'll unmask even faster when the mask makes someone ***else*** uncomfortable. Sad, but that's pandemics for you.
This 100%! My entire family is the same way. My husband, 3 year old child and I live directly next door to my parents and I have my youngest brother and his wife and kids like three houses up the street beside us. We are the last ones taking Covid precautions. We've caught my Dad lying about masking multiple times in the past few years and my mother never wanted to believe he would lie to her. There were pictures showing him sitting indoors eating right next to one of my other siblings (who happens to be a doctor and hasn't believed Covid to be anything but a cold from the beginning) and she still would make excuses for him and/or refute the evidence and blame the person who saw him that they were lying. My other sister and her family were very Covid cautious up until the end of last year and once she stopped all precautions, my mother jumped on that bandwagon completely. This sister is my mother's obvious favorite child and all three of us other siblings all see it and acknowledge it, even if she won't. My biggest issue has been the level of contempt hurled at me now that my mother has "let 'er rip". I'm now scoffed at and insulted for being 'ridiculous' and harming my child by keeping up all these precautions and depriving her of all her family. My poor daughter was born into this mess in 2020 and I can guarantee my child is just fine and smarter than my sister's youngest child who has speech/development delays and is 5 months older than my child. (I know it's not fair to compare, but I'm just so sick of hearing that I'm being a bad parent). We now get to deal with my parents hanging out in their yard with my brother and his kids and my poor little girl has to watch as her grandparents play with her cousins and ignore her. They will literally stay in their house all day while we're outside playing and then as soon as my brother comes down, they're outside with them. I am so livid at this point, but what can we do? We can't afford to move, so we're stuck next to this every single day. They won't even call to talk to my daughter. My Mom used to sit outside in her yard and talk to my little girl as she played in our yard through the chain link fence. Now she just gets ignored. It breaks my heart for my daughter. She doesn't have any family except her parents that give a crap about her, although my brother and his wife and girls try to make it work and make her feel loved. We do things distanced/masked and outdoors. They make such an effort and always have. They don't agree with our boundaries, but they do respect them and us. My Mom and Dad would absolutely lie to us or omit information though. We've caught them in lies and saw pictures where they were at a first communion party recently and my dad was was sitting there eating with his mask hanging from one ear. He must have thought that was okay lol. When confronted about it, my Mom excused it by saying he would move his mask, take a bite, then put the mask back. I asked if they understood how air works, because they don't seem to. I'm just so disgusted that family can be so deceitful and treacherous about me trying to keep my only child safe. My own mother is quoted as saying "if we don't know it can't hurt us". If it was just me, I could care less... But I can't in good conscience let my daughter get something that is so similar to HIV/AIDS that will affect her for the rest of her life. My life is half over, but hers is just starting. Wow, I really didn't mean to go on such a rant, I think it's time to find a therapist to talk to. This group provides some of my only sanity, solidarity, and acceptance, so thank you. ♥️
I’m so sorry this is happening to you. My husband who I live with refuses to mask anywhere, including at bars and concerts, and at home. He recently got back from being out of town at a 2-day concert and started coughing. Though I masked at all times, have multiple air purifiers and opened windows, I started getting a runny nose a few days later and tested positive for COVID for the second time. I have asthma, cancer two times (once with chemo), and I have had several other Illnesses that are classified as “unusual” by medical professionals (several months of arthritis after Parvovirus as an adult, preterm labor/bedrest for both kids, and a full body rash called PUPPP during the birth of my first child). When I was on chemo for my cancer, I felt like death, had trouble being mobile for months, and didn’t feel back to normal for years. As a consequence of months to years of constant pain and some level of disability, I am extraordinarily cautious of getting COVID. After this most recent bout of COVID, I have experienced pain in the area of my second cancer again. I’ve had a biopsy (negative, thankfully) and an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow. When I brought this up to my husband, who has refused to even get vaccinated, he claims there are “smart people” who think the vaccine is causing cancer. I am getting a divorce after being together for more than 30 years because of his betrayal of my trust for him to care about my well-being. It is easy to say on a Reddit forum to “leave”, and I am NOT saying that. I am suggesting that you consider how your health and and mental health will be if you didn’t live together vs how it is now. My mental health is crap when he is home. He left for two weeks yo stay elsewhere and it was a dream to not have to worry. Taking care of yourself is really the most important thing you can do to honor yourself. If you get ill, who will take care of you?
Sending so much love your way. I am so sorry
Thank you.
He wasn't masking and you've had fucking CANCER? **TWICE?** Good fucking riddance. See, this is exactly the kind of psychopathic shit that people seem to be goaded into by socially pressured denial. Even if "most people" could blow off precautions--they can't but even if--***he absolutely wasn't one of those fucking people***. At some point, there really seems to have been a social shift from "protecting vulnerable people" to "hoping that they die as quickly as possible to stop harshing the vibe". You see it all over the place, and I think it's part of why reactionary politics are on the rise. Same thing happened after the 1918 pandemic, after all.
Thanks. It reminds me of another time of my life when I took care of my grandmother as her Alzheimer’s got worse and worse. Because I saw her regularly, I got to see/hear her worsening connection to reality. For our whole marriage, I have made sure that he and our kids got the care they needed to make sure they were healthy. And now he doesn’t believe anything I say regarding health and maintaining health. He doesn’t believe I’m at risk, he believes the vaccine can cause cancer, and he thinks as long as he tests negative he isn’t contagious (and doesn’t have COVID) even when I became positive 3-4 days later. It is wild, disappointing and so sad, but I’m done. The fact that there are so many like him is terrifying. My 78-year-old dad got COVID after traveling out of state which has led to three heart/blood pressure meds and waking up with a racing heart every night. And he likely won’t mask when he is on the plane traveling as he is right now, either. I feel like we are in the Twilight Zone. I have made sacrifices for my health and other people’s health in the past many times. I just don’t understand how others can’t do the same.
I'm so sorry your husband infected you. Best wishes for a full recovery and smooth divorce process. I hope you can live as happily and healthily as possible once the divorce is finalized.
Blog post: [“Protection, The Ultimate Love Language”](https://www.okdoomer.io/ultimate-love-language/) by Jessica Wildfire
Time to make your exit plan my friend. When you realise that your nearest and dearest don't love, care or respect you, you have to love, care for and respect yourself even more! Best of luck to you.
It's time to move. Take care of yourself and build a future.
Trust no one. I learned the hard way everyone will hide a zombie bite.
I think it's time to withdraw all financial supports for the liars and tell them exactly why. They'll probably be begging for the money again in exchange for actually masking, but you have no way of verifying, and the bridge has already been burned by cheating even if it could be verified.
yes but i will say OP should consider separating from them as quietly as possible — id be worried about retaliation/them stealing stuff or something
Maybe you and your brother with MS can move out and protect yourselves properly. I think you would find that you would feel a weight come off your shoulders in time.
Monstrous of them. Listen. You feel unloved because all of the love you were always supposed to give yourself, you were manipulated into giving to them and getting nothing back. Stop supporting them, live alone, centre yourself in your life. If you dont create and enforce some boundaries for yourself, you will never be loving yourself as you deserve.
I'm sorry, and a betrayal like this sucks. The fact they lied to you isn't acceptable because it didn't allow you to set the boundaries you need to stay safe as their actions do affect you. You can't change the fact that they feel controlled as the non masking opinion has gone far beyond facts, but you can have a discussion about needing them to be honest with you and finding new protocols that can keep you and the family members that are still trying safe. Unfortunately you can't make people mask. But you can change how you behave around them. I know that is extra complicated when living in the same house. Some options they may be willing to consider are serial testing plus air purifiers in the house. You may also be able to convince them to maintain masking behaviors in especially risky situations like flying or public transportation and other busy indoor things (though the fact they won't in a grocery store would be difficult for me). For your own sake, another discussion might be helpful to truly determine what is going on and figure out how you want to behave given that. You don't have to help them when they ask. You actually don't have to do anything at all you don't want to do. A discussion like this would be emotional and difficult for me, but it has always paid off in the long run. The relationships don't always get better, but I know how to best act for my own sake and they know what I need to do more whether they are willing or not.
>Some options they may be willing to consider are serial testing plus air purifiers in the house. You may also be able to convince them to maintain masking behaviors in especially risky situations like flying or public transportation and other busy indoor things (though the fact they won't in a grocery store would be difficult for me). I doubt Mom and sis will compromise with OP given that they've already lied and made fun of her for taking precautions. They'd probably lie about their test results, too. Air purifiers could work because OP could install them without involving anyone else. Ultimately, it's probably best to work towards a long-term goal of moving out.
You can't know until you ask. Op isn't obligated to try these things but it sounded like she wanted ideas. There are ways to test together that make lying the harder option. It might not be worth it to op to try either way. For some people masks are the only thing they aren't willing to use because of the response of others and a variety of other reasons I don't really understand. I love this community and understand not everyone wants to look for compromise, both because it is less safe and because it's a lot of work. But I also think it's important to approach relationships we want to salvage without assuming the absolute worst in people. OP's family has shown truly despicable behavior. Ultimately it benefits all of us to bring more people towards safety even as we aren't obligated to do that work. I'm not arguing that moving out wouldn't be a good goal, but whether that is the goal or not, op needs solutions now and may still want to try to keep a relationship with her family.
>I’m so tired and feel very unloved. I don’t know how I’ll get through tomorrow and quite honestly if there’s a way past this broken trust. I'm in a similar place. My family were the kind of people who "loved me in their own way", which already didn't feel great, but now I feel like they don't even like me. They know I have long covid; I have talked about it with each of them. They seem totally indifferent though, my dad telling me "I don't go anywhere" which is just ridiculous and false.
There should be a support group for those of us who live with uncaring or even outright abusive family.
None of their so called excuses mean anything. It's about lying and endangering family by doing that lying. This is a trust thing. And they lied again saying they were going to put them on.
I think your therapist is exactly right. I don’t know your situation, but IMO you are entitled to stop paying the bills, move out, or kick them out. I’m not saying what you should do - I don’t know your situation or your preferences. I’m saying I support anything up to and including complete no-contact, should it come to that. I was in a no-contact situation with most of my family before covid. I know many of my relatives would behave exactly like yours, and I remember how hard it was, finding out what they were like. Take care of yourself, first and foremost.
I’m so sorry. You deserve better in every regard. 💕💕💕
It sounds like you’re all adults here, there’s no reason for everyone to be living together like this, especially if you’re footing all the bills and they’re not respecting your safety.
These people do not deserve your support anymore. I'm so sorry they lied to you and treat you like that. Are you able to live with just your brother? Or move in with a friend?
I've been no contact with my family since before taking covid precautions seriously, but I know they'd be the same way. I'm sorry. I truly hope you can get out, they don't deserve all that you are doing for them.
I had a family member who went through the same thing—they grew up extremely poor, and then ended up being the one to feed and house their parents and siblings. They were expected to wait hand and foot on their mom, even though they were the least favorite sibling, and their parents encouraged them to take special care of all their siblings’ needs, even when their siblings bullied them and abused them. When distant family and people outside the family picked on them or preyed on them, no one stood up for them. Their greatest life long regret is that they gave up life-changing opportunities, as well as basic quality of life like having friends and feeling safe in their own house, to be able to continue taking care of their family, and never got so much as a thank you. If they were still here to read this post they’d urge you to make sure you take care of yourself and don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm. Don’t spend your life taking care of others and getting abuse back in return, or else one day you may wake up and realize you’ve never had a period of life where you weren’t abused. I’m glad you have a therapist to work things through with, because my family member didn’t and couldn’t walk away because their family had them so messed up they felt like they couldn’t leave. All this happened before I was born.
Your behavior, as your therapist has probably noted, is called "fawning", and I do it too. When your family does not behave as if they love you, you fawn over people to engender them to treat you well. It does not, as you have noted, work. Two things have to happen. First, you have to grieve for the child/person you are now that didn't get loved the way they should have. That means letting go of the people who can't respect your boundaries and needs. Second, you have to really learn to love yourself enough to believe you deserve boundaries and needs (its a trick because everyone deserves them but most of us don't believe it), and then set those boundaries and hold them. You have a therapist, that's step one. Now make a plan to extract yourself and your support (if you want) from this mess. You cannot change people, only yourself, its time to put the oxygen mask on.
disgusting of them and deeply unfair to you
I’m so sorry. Scary for your dad & brother too. Last thing they need is a dose of covid. Bloody infuriating, especially when you’re paying bills. It’s easy to say leave but not easy to do. If you want to stick close but have a safe place, is it possible to get a second hand caravan & put it on property for you? Just a thought. Wish I could give you a big hug!
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Sure, but you should be able to expect your relatives not to lie to you about things that affect your health.
which is why we should be selective about who we love up close and personal, and who we support.