Advice: Why is my family avoiding me after I cut off contact with my father?

Is it ok to reach out to individual family members amid estrangement? Photo / Getty Images

Q: Last November, I cut off contact with my father. He has been emotionally abusive to me my whole life. I am now in my 30s and decided to create a boundary between him and my family. My only child is 18 months old, and I will not allow him to hurt my daughter as he hurt me. Unless he acknowledges that the way he treated me was wrong and apologises for it, I will not speak to him again. The issue: My mother and younger brother still live with him, and I haven’t heard from them since I stopped talking to my father. They don’t seem to have any interest in speaking with me. Can I reach out to them – especially my brother, who endured the same abuse I did? - Son

A: Families are made up of individual members, of course, but they also function as a whole. When you called out your father for his emotional abuse, for instance, you also implicated your mother. Was she complicit in the abuse by failing to stop it? Was she being abused herself and unable to admit it? Or does she disagree with your assessment? The same goes for your younger brother, who may not be ready to handle this conflict now.

It probably occurred to you that your father might deny your accusations and that no apology would be forthcoming. But it sounds as if the ripple effect with the rest of your family caught you off guard. I think it would be extremely helpful for you to reach out to your mother and brother separately.

In your individual conversations with them, though, focus on them – not on your father. Acknowledge the tough position that each of them is in – living with your father, while still being a mother and a brother to you (and a grandmother and an uncle to your daughter). Talk about strategies for maintaining your relationships with them. And speak to a therapist, in advance, to help you make these conversations as productive as they can be.

A hard number lands with a thud

Q: My husband has a well-paid job at an elite university. We send our two kids to the day care there. The combined cost is more than my annual salary. Over drinks with acquaintances, one of them raised the issue of day care costs. Someone said they were “sooo expensive,” and another compared them to college tuitions. So, I finally said the number we pay. But when I saw the shock on their faces, I instantly regretted it. I didn’t tell them to show off. I just thought it was more real to say what day care actually costs. Thoughts? - Mum

A: I know you didn’t mean any harm. And in fact, if you had simply reported the cost of the university-affiliated day care – from an article in a newspaper, for instance – there may have been some head-shaking at the unfairness of our economic system, but it might not have felt so personal.

What you did, inadvertently, was place yourself on one side of a dividing line: those who can afford, say, US$20,000 per child for day care and those who can’t. Money is extremely efficient in creating lines like these – which is not an argument for avoiding the subject, only for raising it after consideration.

Limited bandwidth for texting

Q: We are in the middle of a medical emergency. Our young adult daughter needs an organ transplant immediately. Between travelling to be with her, consulting with doctors and planning her move before the transplant, we are at our limit. Everyone in our inner circle knows the story. Still, many of them send us texts about their news and travels. I am not one to ghost, but I can’t summon the strength to answer anything other than “How is she?” or “How are you holding up?” Am I wrong not to respond to these texts? - Friend

A: Of course not! You are the best judge of your emotional capacity – and right now, you seem to have reached it looking after your daughter and the needs of your family. Who knows why your friends are sending newsy texts? Maybe they think they will be a welcome distraction. Don’t give it another thought for now. There will be time to circle back to them later. Take care of yourself and your daughter.

The camera was candid, but I’m not smiling

Q: A kind man I know posted candid photographs on his Facebook page from an event I attended recently. One photo of me is so awful it shocked me. The angle is poor, and I look like a hideous toad. I wish I could get the word out about candid shots and their power to hurt. If I tell him how bad his photograph makes me feel, maybe he will learn something. Should I? - Subject

Judging photographs – like any art form – is a subjective business. You can’t know how I will feel about a picture of me and vice versa. If you want the kind man to take down his photograph of you, ask him to. (I bet he will.) But I see no reason to tell him how horrible it made you feel. In this age of social media, it seems unrealistic to think that attendees of public events have approval rights over documentary photographs.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Philip Galanes

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