When I Outgrow My Family

I am renegotiating relationships with emotionally immature relatives who are older than me

There are certain older family members I have not seen in several years and I have been dreading seeing them again. Specifically, my relationship with one person has been on my mind. Let’s call them Sam. My relationship with Sam worked when I was a kid and teenager. However, the older I got, the more I realized that I was outgrowing Sam emotionally. I was also outgrowing the role I would play with Sam. We eventually reached a point in our relationship where things came to a head, and had a very negative confrontation and falling out. Since then, it has been radio silence. I have found it difficult to determine the appropriate way to move forward. I’d like to get back on cordial terms with Sam and see them at family gatherings occasionally. I’d like to be able to approach these interactions calmly and for us to have positive experiences. I know our relationship will never be the same as it was before and I want it to evolve into a pleasant one rather than one that is filled with animosity.

For most of my childhood and teenage years, Sam and I had a nice friendship. Sam would take me out for nice meals, treat me to shopping sprees, and be my photographer. We would travel and do adventurous things together, and Sam would let me crash at their apartment when I was in town. Sam occasionally offered me refuge to get away from our dysfunctional family. We would sometimes vent about our families together. I sought their advice during tough situations. I kept them company and emotionally supported them when they went through a difficult time as well. I was on their side when other family members couldn’t understand them. I am very grateful Sam offered me a place to go when I needed a break from my parents.

In my mid-twenties, things in my life were not going well and I sought therapy for the first time to work through my issues. It was at this point that I began to outgrow Sam emotionally. I was throwing myself headfirst into challenging unconscious beliefs and my family culture. I was willing to do the hard and uncomfortable work of self-reflection and healing wounds that have been with me my whole life. I was taking the time to process past traumas and experience the pain of these events and move forward. I knew Sam was going through tough times and encouraged them to do the same thing. They were resistant to the idea.

In addition, as I learned more about myself and my relationships, I began to notice disturbing behaviors from Sam. I noticed that they often bullied and yelled at other family members — my family, cousins, grandparents, and even me. They would make passive-aggressive jabs at me and I’d try to sidestep them while reassuring myself their behavior was appropriate. I noticed they made judgements about my choices or teased me, making me feel like it wasn’t safe to be myself or express my honest opinion. I noticed they tended to steamroll over me when I countered or disagreed with something they said, to the point that I felt like I was invisible — not seen or heard. Once, I witnessed them get triggered and their reaction was violent. Our relationship did not recover from the fallout.

Since our last interaction, I have been at a loss on how to move forward in my relationship with Sam. It is clear to me that I have done much emotional work on myself and am now a different person from who I was a few years ago. This inevitably impacts my relationship with Sam. Like with my other family members, I will need to renegotiate my relationship with Sam with my new boundaries on my time, energy, and money. Our relationship will not be the same as before; we will likely not have the same level of friendship as before. I see myself treating Sam as I treat the rest of my relatives with limited access to my life. I also hope that we can treat each other respectfully as adults.

In rebuilding a new relationship with Sam, I plan to keep the relationship light and shallow. Topics like what is going on with other family members are landmines for us due to past and ongoing family tensions. In addition, we will likely not agree on family matters and could potentially run into disagreements. Safe topics for us are pets, the latest movies and books, food, and other neutral things. Just as I do not divulge what is going on in my life with certain coworkers, I will not share many details with Sam about my life either. I want to protect the emotional progress I’ve made from immature actors. I have cultivated emotionally healthy relationships with my family and partner and made great strides personally and professionally. These are things I will keep to myself, away from potential judgement.

My therapist emphasized to me that I should avoid judging others who seem to be less emotionally mature than me. It is impossible to know what is going on with others; they may have been through trauma that keeps them from further emotional development. The best course of action is to show these people compassion and grace and try to meet them where they are. Also, the way these people are living is working well enough for them to not have the incentive to change it. Thus, it’s not up to me to make judgements about other people’s lives even if some of their habits are unhealthy.

Along the same lines, I can choose to lay the dead past to rest and forgive Sam for any perceived slights and transgressions. Sam was probably doing their best with what they knew at the moment. I also choose to forgive myself for not noticing some of Sam’s toxic behaviors earlier and tolerating passive-aggressive behaviors. I know I was in a dysfunctional family situation growing up and seeking refuge at Sam’s residence was my way of choosing between the lesser of two evils. Even if some of Sam’s behaviors were problematic, we still had good times and offered each other companionship in times of stress.

One major problem with emotionally immature people is that they tend to make everything about themselves. I found that was the case with Sam. When I was with Sam, I felt I had to do everything their way meaning my needs and wants were not met. When I put that together with the emotional neglect I received from my parents, I realize there were very few situations growing up in which my needs and wants were considered. I felt like I was invisible. In the most frustrating cases, I was blamed for situations unfairly without being able to defend myself. From these experiences, I learned the importance of being seen and heard and surrounding myself with people who do see and hear me.

I look to surround myself with people who do see and hear me. These are people who make me feel emotionally safe through their engaged attention and friendly reassurance. They respond to my feelings and requests. They automatically make me feel more optimistic and less stressed. Spending time with this type of person leaves me feeling happier, more hopeful, and lighter. I’m more cognizant of people I need to avoid. People who present themselves as people to whom I cannot say “no,” like my grandmother, are “relationship wolves.” They seem weak and needy, entitled to what they want. It is easy to get sucked into their problems and find myself feeling guilty for not helping them. It is a tactic employed heavily by my grandmother. I’ve learned to keep a safe distance from people like this.

There was a time in my life when I gravitated toward emotionally immature people. As mentioned earlier, emotionally stunted immature people may have faced trauma that stunted their emotional growth. Thus, I think it is likely that emotionally immature people also tend to be emotionally hurt people. I think there were several times in my life when I chose the company of emotionally immature and hurt people because that was where I was at in life too. The trend I noticed among people like this is that they are likely to unintentionally hurt others because they were not in touch with their own emotions. Before I started healing myself, I didn’t see anything wrong with associating with people like this. After I started healing and growing emotionally, I noticed these problematic behaviors and slowly detached myself from these types of people.

Spending time in the company of people who treated others poorly led me to develop the false belief that I was an inherently bad person. I had one ex-boyfriend who treated other people, women and men, badly in front of me. Because I was constantly in his company at the time, I started to believe I was like him. However, I realize now that most of those destructive things I saw from him were the results of his decisions alone. His choices were not my choices. My goodness remains. I am not an inherently bad person, nor did I have to be guilty about it. I didn’t even realize that was something that was weighing on me heavily, yet it was a huge relief when I reminded myself of my goodness.

I am now at a place where I can look back on my relationship with Sam and be grateful that I had an ally in childhood, even if it was not an altogether healthy relationship. I let go of any hurts or misunderstandings we had in the past. I know our relationship will no longer be a childish one. I hope we can raise our standards and let go of immature and hurtful dynamics which stem from our family history. I hope we can get to a place where I look forward to seeing them instead of dreading it. I hope we can develop an equal, adult relationship based on respect for each other and our boundaries in the future. I am pursuing a life of happiness and fulfillment and would love to be able to share that with my family in an authentic way.

“In Buddhism there are said to be seven veils of illusion. As each is discarded a person is said to understand another aspect of the true nature of life and the self. To list the veil makes one strong enough to tolerate what life is about; and to see into the patterns of events, people, and things; and eventually to learn not to take the first impression so deadly seriously, but to look behind and beyond.

In Buddhism, the lifting of the veils is necessary for enlightenment…When we look for our truth, we are also able to dispel our illusions. When we are able to see through these illusions, which in Buddhism would be called “barriers to enlightenment,” we are able to discover the hidden side of rage.

There are some common illusions about rage. ‘If I lose my rage, I will be changed: I will become weaker.’ (The first premise is correct, but the conclusion is inaccurate.)…This illusion is challenged by questing, by asking…We lose our illusions when we take the risk to meet the aspect of our nature that is truly wild; a mentor of life, rage, patience, suspicion, wariness, secretiveness, remoteness, and resourcefulness.

It is quite a journey, this fixing of rage: stripping down illusions, taking rage as teacher, asking the help of the instinctual psyche, laying the dead past to rest.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves