1. If your mom is toxic, there should be no guilt.
“If your mom is toxic, there should be no guilt about maintaining your own boundaries.”
2. Being your mother doesn’t get her a pass to make you miserable.
“Being your mother doesn’t get her a pass to make you miserable.
Side note—I initially read the question as you asking if it’s OK to punch your mom. Just in case you were curious, that one’s a no.”
3. I just cut ties with my mom after a long history of putting up with un-mom-like behavior.
“I just cut ties with my mom after a long history of putting up with un-mom-like behavior and frankly it feels pretty good to not have an emotional obligation to someone who didn’t feel one toward me anymore.”
4. I don’t want my mom to be a part of my life anymore because she is a very toxic person who only looks to push your buttons.
“If your mom is a toxic person, of course it’s okay. Having a narcissistic mom myself, I can understand where you’re coming from. I don’t want my mom to be a part of my life anymore because she is a very toxic person who only looks to push your buttons so she can play victim with everyone she knows to gain sympathy (one of many things she does to manipulate me.) That toxic behavior cost me friendships and close contact with relatives. To be fair, my mom’s relatives are narcissists as well and a few of them wanted “legit” reasons to cut contact with me anyways so no loss there for the most part.
In the end, I knew my life was not going to go anywhere with this woman in my life so I left. Although I still talk to her, it’s very low contact and I intend to go no contact with her soon so I don’t have to deal with her anymore. Moving to a different state helped a lot because my mom has anxiety to leave within a 30-mile radius of home.”
5. I’m so much better without that darkness in my life.
“My mother was abusive and manipulative, especially when I got out of college. She couldn’t stand the fact that I: A) Didn’t move back home; and B) was developing a life for myself.
She resorted to name calling, insults, attacking my partners, finding where I worked and calling me there (Never gave her that number). She would send me angry messages about how I am an awful son and she wished I was never born. She sent pictures of my things I had left behind in her home and said she sold them. She showed me pictures of gifts I had given her over the years smashed to bits.
In the end I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t keep giving her another shot, another chance, and had to go dark in terms of her. She was stalking my social media and I had to change all of it, lock things down, change numbers, etc. It was an incredibly hard experience and yeah, I miss the memories of the mother I once knew, but today I’m so much better without that darkness in my life.”
6. Blood relation is not a pass to be a shitty person or reason to tolerate.
“Blood relation is not a pass to be a shitty person or reason to tolerate.
Family does not automatically mean love, but love can mean family.
Live life for you, not how you think others feel you should.”
7. You need to take care of yourself first.
“Ever been on an airplane? Their safety speech before they break out the liquor. ‘Always put your own oxygen mask on before assisting other passengers.’
You need to take care of yourself first. Once you catch your breath, you can decide if you want her in your life at all, occasionally, the point is it’s all for nothing if you’re not happy.”
8. Toxic people are toxic people.
“It’s hard but toxic people are toxic people, no matter who they are to you.”
9. If your mother is that much of a lying scumbag piece of subhuman filth, then yes, it is very much okay to push that toxic bitch out of your life.
“Yes, especially if your mother takes out multiple loans to fund the addiction of a sociopathic opiate abusing piece of shit that she also cheated on her husband with, and then flying the cunt from Canada across the Atlantic, renting a place for 5x the normal rent costs, not minding the constant verbal and physical abuse that the drug addict dished out whenever he wasn’t high.
If your mother is that much of a lying scumbag piece of subhuman filth, then yes, it is very much okay to push that toxic bitch out of your life.
TLDR: if your mom is a cunt cut her out of your life like a surgeon would with a tumor.”
10. My mother was and still is a nasty and abusive woman who I don’t want anything to do with.
“My mother was and still is a nasty and abusive woman who I don’t want anything to do with. I don’t want her around my husband (should I ever get married), I don’t want her around my kids (should I ever have kids), I want nothing to do with her. Just because she is your mother doesn’t make her a good person. And don’t let other people influence you and try to say, “but she’s your mother how can you do that?” Those people were probably lucky enough to have a decent human being as a mother.”
11. One of the best parts of being an adult is getting to decide who gets your energy.
“One of the best parts of being an adult is getting to decide who gets your energy.
I’ve been no contact with my borderline mother for 2 1/2 years. It’s not always easy but it has ABSOLUTELY been for the best.”
12. Because she conceived you doesn’t mean she gets to destroy you.
“Because she conceived you doesn’t mean she gets to destroy you. You wouldn’t let anyone else walk over you. Why let someone that should be nurturing do it?”
13. Mine is addicted to opioids.
“Absolutely. Mine is addicted to opioids. After years of taking care of her shit, I cut ties. There is no reason for a kid at 19 to be taking care of his 40-year-old mom.”
14. You don’t have to validate cutting your mother out of your life to anyone else.
“Yes, OP. Yes.
As an adult, you get to define the relationships you maintain, as you are responsible for your own health and well-being.
I’m a 24-year-old gay man that has cut his entire mother’s side out. It was an incredibly difficult, scary, and taboo thing to do. However, it was the first time in my life that I *lived.***
There will be nights that you wonder if it might be better, having had time away. There are nights where you imagine what it’ll be like receiving a call that she’s died, and that you never got to say goodbye. Maybe she’ll seek you out at your job—mine has tried to. You don’t have to validate cutting your mother out of your life to anyone else.
Blood is thicker than water, OP. But the family we form around us—which is going to be the most difficult and seemingly hypocritical concept we’ll ever be asked to grasp—isn’t blood or water. It’s concrete. It’s another family inviting you to their holidays and making your favorite dish. Its other mother’s calling you son (or daughter), and that’s okay to accept.
OP, my dear, dear kindred soul, you had no say in your birth or childhood. What happened to us as children cannot be our faults, even though we’ll always struggle with blaming ourselves, because we had no power in those situations. This is our one shot at life. Make it a good one. I like to think that’s what any mother would ultimately want.
I am so with you, my dear kindred soul. I will never meet you in this 7bn+ world of ours. But I am rooting you on at every challenge you meet. You’ve got this. You have so absolutely got this.”
15. Not having a terrible mother is far more important than having a good mother.
“Not having a terrible mother is far more important than having a good mother.”
16. Once she started threatening my life and harassing me at work, my boss (an ex-cop himself) called the police and I cut contact with her.
“I had to do it with my mom. She was extremely verbally abusive toward me growing up. Once she started threatening my life and harassing me at work, my boss (an ex-cop himself) called the police and I cut contact with her. It’s hard for me to admit, but that was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. Things have only gotten better for me since (aside from a recent break up, but that’s another story entirely). The point is, it’s okay to choose your sanity over your relationship with her.”
17. I haven’t had contact with my mother in almost 6 years and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done!.
“I haven’t had contact with my mother in almost 6 years and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done!
My mental health has been a lot better and I’m no longer constantly living in fear.”
18. Mom liked drugs more than being a mom.
“I pushed mine out a few years back. She had (has) mental health issues that she has either ignored, self-medicated for, etc. since I was a child. This isn’t why.
When I was young (9 or so) I was taken by CPS for no food in the fridge, her boyfriend pretty seriously abusing myself and my siblings, and general uninhabitable living conditions. She lost custody to my father who was military but thankfully stationed in the same town at the time and we were immediately placed in his custody. However, the courts in California are, and in some ways still are, very slanted toward the mother. He had pushed for full/joint custody long before this and was denied, but I digress.
So she gets weekend visitation unsupervised with us and more shady stuff happens. She stops showing up for visits more and more until she stops completely. For almost a decade I didn’t know if she was alive or not. Finally I prove to be too much of a problem child and I’m sent to live with her. I don’t blame my dad, I was in a very poor place and he did what he could at the time.
The night I show up she calls him about the child support arrears being absolved as she’s now the primary caretaker. She still had a lot of issues and I moved out of her house after a few months to live on a friend’s couch.
Fast forward to me working through some of what happened when I was a kid and I send her a very emotional e-mail. I felt like I put my entire heart in that message and at the end was asking for a simple apology and a desire to move forward with a healthy relationship. Her response was that obviously I still had some issues and I should just move on like she did. That tore it, I was done. Haven’t talked to her since aside from once or twice when she created new Facebook accounts to try to request me as a friend on.
TL;DR: mom liked drugs more than being a mom.”
19. Just because someone pushed you out of their body doesn’t mean they are your family.
“Just because someone pushed you out of their body doesn’t mean they are your family.
If your mother is a toxic or hateful person, then it’s acceptable to go low or no contact. Sometimes people are like that due to fixable issues (be it relapsing into addiction, or being intolerant of the choice of an SO, etc.). Sometimes it’s just who they are and your life will be better.
Sometimes cutting off a family member whose toxicity and negative impact actually helps them get over their shit. (E.g. bigoted parents who realize that you can cut them off for being a bigot just like they can cut you off for marrying someone they hate).
Sometimes it doesn’t fix a thing with that person. But what it does mean is their bullshit is not your bullshit anymore. (e.g. no more having to deal with a drunk parent wanting a ride for smokes at 2am).
People who’ve only known good relationships or are used to dysfunctional relationships will try to play the family card. But family is more than blood relationship. We make our own families. Sometimes its blood ties. Sometimes it’s love ties. Sometimes its ties of friendship and respect.”
20. Blood does not give people a free pass to fuck your life up and continue to fuck your life up.
“As someone whose mother is currently incarcerated for molesting me as a child, yes, yes it is. Most people don’t have to ever think about cutting their mom, or any other family member, out of their life, so it’s easy for them to say, ‘Family is family, no matter what they did to you.’ This is the gist of what my grandma, my mom’s mom, has said to me many times. It used to make me feel guilt, but you know what? No, blood does not give people a free pass to fuck your life up and continue to fuck your life up. Yeah, it can be hard for some people to cut family out, but in the end, if it makes you feel better mentally and helps your wellbeing, then it’s the right thing to do.”
21. She went completely off the deep end at my wedding, booing my wife and I.
“I no longer talk to my mother. She went completely off the deep end at my wedding, booing my wife and I. She destroyed her bouquet and said we gave her a lesser one. Crashed the bridal party’s spa appointment to get hair and makeup done. When we were announced at the reception, she booed. She destroyed favors, she told my uncle whose wife of 40+ years just passed away that she’s burning in hell, and all sorts of other things. A lot of this I found out after the fact and half my wife’s and my families spent the entire day running interference on her so we didn’t get the worst of it. Bar none, she acted like the lowest of the low, something slightly above that first amphibian crawling out of the primordial ooze and calling itself a land dweller. If there was anything she could do that was destructive, she did it. The last thing she said to me was ‘I hope your plane crashes’ as we left the next morning for our flights to Australia. I haven’t spoken to her much since, and not at all in the last fifteen years. I’m sure my life is better off for it.”
22. Blood does not mean you have to keep someone around.
“You ALWAYS come first. Blood does not mean you have to keep someone around, I don’t talk to anyone in my family because all they do is bring me down. Don’t let your mother keep doing this, stay strong and even if it hurts, if it’s best, push her out of your life. Try your best not to hesitate and even if your family judges you for it, you are no less of a human being. your feelings and mental health matter, and if you need to push her out to better it, then there’s nothing wrong with that.”
23. My mom was a drug addict and alcoholic that had her first child at 16; I came 13 years later, and she still chose the party life over her children.
“Both my wife and I have shit mothers. She was raised by her grandparents and I was raised by my father (a great one) and step/adopted mother. My mom was a drug addict and alcoholic that had her first child at 16; I came 13 years later, and she still chose the party life over her children. For years, she promised to be at functions, pick me up for a weekend or even come visit and would constantly no show because she was at a bar. It was hard to not know why your mother didn’t make time for you and it really didn’t get better as I got older. High school graduation, drunk, college graduation, drunk, wedding, drunk. She came down and stayed with my wife and I after our first child was born to help (she promised she would behave) after a week (she planned to stay for a month) she left because she needed to tend to her “plants”, her marijuana farm (has a green card to grow) and she missed her BAR. I have since pushed her out of my life and could not be happier. I am a little sad she doesn’t seem to want anything to do with her grandchildren, one of which is the only girl in my family in 30 years. My wife, on the other hand, let’s her mom be a part of her life and all that woman does is upset her because, no matter what, her brother will always be better (he’s not).”
24. I pushed both my parents out of my life almost 10 years ago. No regrets.
“I pushed both my parents out of my life almost 10 years ago. No regrets.
One word of advice: Some people have a strong social need. If you’re one of them, and if you don’t already have a support network in place, you may experience a strong drive to reconnect even though you know you shouldn’t for your health. Try to make sure you have enough family/friends in place before you disconnect to make the transition easier on yourself.”
25. Giving birth to someone doesn’t excuse bad behavior toward them.
“Giving birth to someone doesn’t excuse bad behavior toward them, don’t consider your parents to be different from other people just because they are your parents. Think about how they have treated you in the past and how they may treat you in the future and act the same way you would if it was someone outside of your family. Parents are people and they are not a different species from other humans.”
