Cutting Ties With Your Family Members Is Completely Fine, and Here’s Why

Family ties are believed to be the strongest bonds that you can have in your life. Whether yours is family by blood or family by choice, you hope they always make you feel loved and you never expect to get hurt. However, some family members can become too toxic and that’s when breaking bonds with relatives might become appropriate.

Today, Bright Side would like to share with you 9 situations where breaking ties with toxic relatives is totally okay.

They gossip about you.

Our families are supposed to be people with whom we can share our most intimate secrets when looking for a piece of sound advice or simply sharing our joys. However, if your family members spread the secret information you give them further, run away from them or at least learn to keep your mouth zipped. Keep in mind that not only is it your secrets that should be kept inside the family, but also, those relevant events from your life that you share with your inner circle — no one has the right to carry the details of your personal life outside the place you call home.

They judge you.

Healthy criticism is a good thing. It helps us to look at ourselves from another side and understand the mistakes we are making. And very often, these are family members that help us become better. However, if the criticism that they radiate repeats often and if it has an aggressive tinge and destroys your self- esteem, it’s high time you terminated these toxic people from your life.

They turn to you only when they need something.

A toxic family member appears on the horizon of your life when there is something they can benefit from or gain from you. Once the task is complete, they will quickly disappear from your life until the next lucky chance they get to use your kindness. Do you know what happens when you need their help? You’ll hear tons of pretexts about why they can’t do things (if you can manage to even get in touch with them at all).

They manipulate you.

Healthy relationships are those where you feel free and happy. If you keep feeling guilty, stressed, and judged, perhaps you don’t need those relationships at all? Manipulators will do anything to keep control over you, your life, and your attention, no matter what they have to do. When simple tricks stop working, they will start using heavy artillery that can damage both your mental and physical health.

They make you feel helpless.

This type of manipulating techniques is called gaslighting. People using it tend to make their victims feel unskilled and incompetent. They keep raising complexes within you, as well as question your sanity and sober-mindedness whenever you are about to make another important decision. If you feel like this is something that happens often when communicating with your family members, go ahead and cut the ties. Your mind and your psychological health will be grateful to you in the end.

They try to control your life.

This reason is very close to manipulation, with one exception — in this situation, it’s their power that plays the main role. Oftentimes, dominant family members get so used to everyone listening to them without any objection that any attempt to go against their will is faced with aggression. Sometimes it can even rise up to the level of bullying.

They make you feel exhausted.

There are people out there in the world who have a unique knack for making their interlocutors feel exhausted after communicating with them. And sometimes those people can be members of your own family. If you feel a lack of energy every time you talk to this person, if you feel like you’re talking to a wall, if you feel like your tolerance is waning, phase this member out of your life. Your mental health will thank you for this.

They keep reminding you of your past.

In other words, they keep rewriting narratives about your younger life, which you might want to keep a secret. Sometimes, reminding a person about their past can be pretty painful, but those family members who keep doing it even after you asked them not to, should be left in the past too.

They stress you out completely.

If the relationship with your loved ones stresses you out and creates chaos in both your mind and in your soul, when all you can talk about after interacting with your family member is how tired you are, then it’s high time you thought about eliminating them from your life (or at least communicating less).

How good are your relationships with your close family? Are you considering cutting ties with any of them? We would be glad to hear from you in the comments!