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do you love your family

trudy

ip: 154.20.149.232

1. do you love your family

Vi; Interesting question. Sometimes we do not get along with every member. My immediate family are really strongly bonded. I see why. We express ourselves. We communicate. We say what we think and feel We are heard. Some other members of the family only allow thier way or the highway. In my immediate family the love is unconditional with boundaries respectfully. One can make mistakes learn and strach. One can apologize adn make change. With the ones I have distanced from if you make a mistake you will hear about it for the next century. I am more in the moment and future.
My brother once said I have to love you because you are my sister. I said no.
Misunderstandings can happen especially when new families emerge ie second marriages.
Be real to you I say to myself. I go where its comfortable and where the love grows.
Why do you ask.
trudy

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 11:09 a.m.

Vil

ip: 4.129.86.228

2. Re:do you love your family

trudy...here is why I asked (from my original post on this subject)

Vil (15 Mar, 2007 04:27 p.m.):
OK, it's time to ask the biggy....Do you love your family?
This question is inspired by Whitesheep/Zane's shrink who told him his family didn't love him which led to his coming to terms with that in his efforts to understand the way his family treated him and subsequently move on.
So, let's say for sake of conversation that our families do not love us. What's the next logical step?
1.To not love them either?
Or 2. do we keep holding on like some jilted lover and pine for what could have been, if only they loved us while we still love them?
Or 3->, you call it.

Now let me explain.....some people seem to dwell more on that their family doesn't love them, when the feelings are probably mutual; and if the feelings are mutual, then it is healthy to admit that and put the whole thing to rest. (please note that just because we don't love someone doesn't mean we automatically have to hate them; we can be indifferent in the absence of love.)

You didn't say if you loved your family. Do you? I mean do you love the ones you think don't love you. Like for example, you say your brother says he loves you because you are his sister, to which you object by saying "no". I gleen from that, that you don't believe your brother loves you. Do you love him still?

As for what your brother remarked though, I agree with you that you don't love someone just because they are family. Love is not obligatory!

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 11:53 a.m.

Trudy

ip: 154.20.149.232

3. Re:do you love your family

Vil;

I can no longer see your post. I find the quote interesting. I think when we are together we are more able to make choice. To love or not. There si a time love says yes and a time that it says no.
Rejection if we are not loved depending if we have ever felt secure can be a snap or a rolling ocean.
Do I love my brother. I think I have always wanted him to love me. I love the idea of my brother. I would love him to love me. BUT I stop my love for him becasue it is not secure. He was smart and did not omplete his education and I was a slow learner and forged to Univercity. Now he is angry that I make more money then he does. Its like there always is this impass. He was allowed to do everything I was not. Funny how I caught up once I left home. Sailiing surfing skiing but he can out sail me and it does not bother me. what ever I do or even my dreams and inspirations send him. He is upset that I turned a few men down because one got married to a person I know. My brother says that man really loved me. I said that was his second marriage and his first broke up because of his smoking dope and so did the girl. I think he was angry because I saw what tension there would be.
WE do not talk now unless we have to adn then we are most polite. Sad in a way but I have given up so I do not care if he does or does not . Do I love him. I love how I loved him as we where growing up. He loved me in his first marriage but in his second I fell off because his wife does not like me. She has her own friends and family and many of us do not count anymore.
It hurt for a while but years ago I gave up. I had better love between really good friends and other family members.
The choice though comes with many hours of consideration. The jealousy gets in the way. Yet I am not jealous of him. He has many talents and does incredible work.
Trudy

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 12:17 p.m.

Vil

ip: 4.129.86.228

4. Re:do you love your family

I guess one of the hardest things to do is to stop loving a person you once loved....so many happy memories get in the way, you know? How does one sort the past from the present?

It sounds like you and your brother being able to be polite when you do talk, even though you aren't buddy buddy, is a good thing. But my read on what you wrote is that would rather have that buddy buddy thing like when you were kids and it bothers you that it's not there when you have not changed how you always were with him. He has changed when others entered his life. Is that right?

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 12:48 p.m.

trudy

ip: 154.20.149.232

5. Re:do you love your family

If a person dies we do nto stop loving them. They are in our hearts and we are reminded of them. Do not tell anyone but I love my ex husband still today but we could never be together. Ending a relation does not mean that we have to stop the love that is in us. we choose for our saftey to not extend it. Its like resolving all the issues by taking responsability only for choices I made like not listening to my inner voice that whisper that something was not right staying a little too long. I wept when we broke up but I never have stopped loving people in my life unless they did something so hurtful that one can not find that essence. forgive yes forget never but love is a choice. I think if we love someone and lament that they are gone that is a choice that is not healthy. Take the good the treasure the love back and in silence forgive them when there is no passagge. Let them go. That does not mean we have to stop loving them. We can meditate pray for them. Wish them well on thier journey. One spends years together how on earth do we say no no longer have these feelings. Maybe I am off the wall but thte most loving I can be is to let them go and let them learn at thier cadence as I do in mine. Forget about them as life goes on and one day remember a moment and feel no pain.
Where love does stop though is differant for people. For some it may be because they are not recieving what they need or want for another something else. Once the flame is out it is out. It takes something to have that happen. I can glance back where I stopped loving someone and that was very hard. There are several times where I had to end a friendship because the friend was using me. I cried. I had to be mature. Had I set some boundries early I may have escaped the pain or not entered into the friendship but we get wiser with age. A girl friend of mine sings this beautiful song you with the brown eyes I love you still . She wrote it with me in mind. Time displaces us but in the moment I still love her so. That is the kind of closeness I have experienced. Another friend when she passed on I cried but today I feel the love and I think when I pass on I hope I see her. If not I will have a lot to say but not sure if I will have a mouth.
To sort the past from the present. things take time to heal. I forgive so the bad memories go away and the good ones stay but I remember why I made the choice or they did.
How long ago was this person you once loved.
When he was 16 I was off the map. I always wanted the brother who would protect me and he allowed his best friend to kiss me. I was upset with him. We never where buddies. He water skied with his friends and I swam. I learned to water ski after I left home. Then hooked up with him when I was 28 and I did a spiral loop on one ski and he never took me water skiing again. It was a guy thing but my best friends some where guys he just was not tht kind of guy where women where equal and I will not change him. I can not believe we where raised in the same home. You are right things changed as he went with his friends. There where lots of issues at home. I dealt with them he never did. One can not force that. So I love him from a distance. i remember what he went threw and he does not.
Tascha

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 01:34 p.m.

trudy

ip: 154.20.149.232

6. Re:do you love your family

Vil
when I asked about how long it was a question to you. Sounds like you have had a loss.
After I asked I said he when I meant my brother and I was going on.
I so want to hear what you have to say as I have chirpped along. Now that I laughed after the other thread I feel I can pay more attention. I want to hear where you question comes from if you are wanting to share or if you where just speculating.
Trudy

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 02:11 p.m.

Vil

ip: 4.152.120.73

7. Re:do you love your family

trudy (16 Mar, 2007 02:11 p.m.):
Vil
when I asked about how long it was a question to you. Sounds like you have had a loss.
After I asked I said he when I meant my brother and I was going on.
I so want to hear what you have to say as I have chirpped along. Now that I laughed after the other thread I feel I can pay more attention. I want to hear where you question comes from if you are wanting to share or if you where just speculating.
Trudy

Your long chirpping was well chirped! I had to go eat something before I could answer it, but as you said it all, there isn't much left to say.

I thought maybe that question was for me. My endless rants about my family on so many threads will now be condensed here since you'll never find them all and make any sense of them....

Love....I'm a sap for love! But in my family love is spelled S U C K E R. I have tried to armchair shrink them in my mind so I could make excuses for them so I could still love them, but the reality is that there is no love in my family...not for anyone. It's not just me. My family is devoid of love, period. I am the lone blacksheep with the love gene.

In my family-which is limited to my sibs and my now deceased mother- 'love' meant 'gimme gimme gimme' and if you don't then I'll 'take take take' or call you a bitch. I was the independent one in the family, always making my own way and only wanting what was mine. By contrast the rest wanted what was mine too! It was like this...Oh, she's got some good shit! I want that!...and then Mom would be like this...You have so much! (forget that I worked hard to get it for myself)Give them XXX! ...to keep the peace I often caved, because I knew my independence would allow me to replace what they took and I didn't want conflict.

I realize I trained my family to take from me in the name of love, but I was really just trying to avoid conflict that would, in self-fulfilling prophecy, give me the bitch label if I stood my ground/aka let conflict happen.

So once out of the family home, things changed. I was married and what was mine was also my husband's...still my family wanted 'my' things including money! My husband's stake in 'my things' was ignored as if he didn't exist! Mom would say, Don't tell him!...I knew then there was no end to who they would take from, the more the merrier! Get married and that's just more for them! It was always about their thieving mindsets! LOL

I'll continue in the another post for space....

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 03:49 p.m.

Vil

ip: 4.152.120.73

8. Re:do you love your family

My sister once told me that it was not fair that I had more extra money after my bills were paid than she did. She proposed a plan to even us out....get this.....we were to combine our extra money after our bills were paid and split it down the middle, thus I'd be giving her some of mine (well, by mine I mean my husband's and mine combined). She was NOT kidding!

I told her to F'off! All she wanted the extra money for anyway was to take car trips. It was not for necessities. She had money for necessities...it was just that after that she didn't have as much as she wanted to travel on. Sister though said this....she said that I wasted MY money on frivolous things too, so why couldn't she (waste my money on her own frivolous desires)?

OK, you get it, right?

So my loss was really their loss once I stepped out of the family picture. And for that, they are mad with me. I do not care about that, but I do care about are the lies they tell about me laced with their own perfection and victimization. And mother dearest started this trend....

Example: Mom used to get away with borrowing money from me/my husband. She was always short paying her bills. Dad worked hard and I felt sorry for him so I'd lend her money till payday. She always wanted it in cash. I obliged. Then she'd pay me back by check. THEN she'd take that cancelled check and show my brothers that she 'lended me money' and used that as an excuse for being broke, thus she'd get money off them too. When time came to pay them back, she'd say she couldn't do it because I never paid HER back! End result: my brothers believe to this day that the reason I have what I have is partly because they had to give mom money because she had to give me money, so therefore, what I have is really theirs! My idiot ass having lended her money in CASH, I had no proof to the contrary.

Shall I go on? Or are you bored?

Date: 16 Mar, 2007 on 04:11 p.m.

Trudy

ip: 154.20.149.232

9. Re:do you love your family

Hi; Life moved forward and as you grew the boundries that where crossed in childhood and early adolescennt became apparent. You reset the boundries, Hardest with me in that it is easy to get upset progressivley increasing in intensity. Frustration builds. Trick is learning to just be assertive repeat repeat . Old sayiing can not control what others do but our own reaction.
Your sister is on the same page with my brother in envy that I make more. Giving in time and money without reciprocation is old. My brother never asked me for money but the whine would be there and I would dart out get blankets food what ever when I stopped so did the relation. The whole relation was so similar what can I get what can I do that I like with zero interest in m e or what I was into... combine extra money after our bills were paid and split it down the middle...wow.�
Sis and my brother do not have clear boundries and neither do they accept our boundries. We are not responsible how they feel.
People that control or use do get angry when they can no longer manipulate. I try to focous not on the damage they do but that I am staying in my power with the issue adn ignore the rest. My mom did not set haelthy boundries either. It is amazing how distructive thier life is. Mommy dearest played a lot of games between my brother and I. The pitting was part of her control. It was a part of her recieving attention from each sibling and being the person in charge,
The processed check bites.In the aftermath I am hard on myself. Do you do that. I recognize in me I was putting out fires and not flowing. Now I glance and see the dance and I will not be a part of the party. I see it as a responce to my boundry only. It fizzles out a little more. Another attempt is always made, Staying grounded is my job and then eventually it fizzles cause they get no reaction. I sometimes as in the other field I got caught up in the dance instead of stying with the original boundry.( With the other field it was we can not be friends because you are abusive to me. )
Not bored it sounds familiar.. break the word to origin ..family liar ..laughing I get a kick out of that
It takes practice to set boundries. I find it work right now as I have not mastered this too well yet to not hook into thier reaction. Some people shame or get vicious others who respect boundries acceppt.
Between the parted pages sometimes we can find the love. WE can not stop the dance only our participation of it. Anyone can say anything, We can keep what we think is real to us. We can choose to engage or ignore. We can make further boundries. I am practicing doing that elegantly. Some people that are enmeshed do not hear. They respond to the loud frank boundry. Victim bully exchanges, The click to being assertive works even if the route is longer.
What am I respnding to and why is my format while they dance basting in the original boundry. Then I dance andclap myself on the back for staying focoused and it feels gooood.

Date: 18 Mar, 2007 on 04:25 p.m.

do you love your family

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