I have a good relationship with my dad now but that wasn't always the case. It's too long a story for this comment but I've confronted him a few times over the years about various things. On one such occasion, he said something to the effect of, "Why don't my kids ever want anything to do with me?"
I said, " I love you Dad, but you're an angry dick about everything and you always have been. Would you want to spend time with your dad if he was like that?" His dad was exactly like that. He didn't say anything but I knew I struck a nerve.
He's worked on himself a lot and is a much, much better grandpa than he was a father.
I don't know your situation and you can't change your family members behavior. That's on them. But sometimes it's ok to let them know what their behavior is doing to everyone else around them.
They may not understand that. And if they do and just don't care, then they'll have to deal with the consequences.
That's great advice, thank you. I'll have to relay it to my sister since she's the one actually dealing with it since I moved out of state like 20 years ago and rarely go home. Maybe we'll have to gang up on him/have an intervention. It's just hard to catch his ass sober.
I could tell them I get wasted every Friday and no one would bat an eye...but my mom would have a heart attack if she found out I've ever been in the same room with marijuana. I'm in my 30s. Some things are better left as secrets
The ironic part is that her favorite relative outside of our immediate family is my cousin who I learned - to no surprise of my own - smokes a TON of weed.
I have no reason to hide it from my dad but...what's the point? Even if he doesn't tell my mom, we're not gonna share a joint or anything
One specific family member, hope that's okay. But I could never tell my mom about when I was molested on a work trip with her ex-partners company. One of the families took in troubled boys and I woke up in the cabin with him in my bed. Hands in my clothes and drunk as hell. I beat him so bad. One of the other actual children of employees woke up and helped pull me off him and got him out of there.
We never talked about it. I don't know what he(the helper) knew at the time.
What I do know is if I ever tell my mother this she will drive and she will one hundred percent kill the people who brought that monster into my life. And I love her too much to put her through that (both having to hear it, and the murder, and the subsequent jail time).
It was, but I am actually doing really well now, generally. Stable and supportive partner. Love and joy on the daily!
Have some health issues but I feel like who doesn't these days? It does make having friends a struggle but I have a lot of.. acquaintances and small relationships can be fulfilling, in their own way.
Generally great relationships with my family, minus several humans who have been downgraded to biological associates.
On the whole pretty excellent and like to think I'm doing as well for those around me as I can despite my limitations.
Sorry, unsuspecting victims, for the wall of text, the word vomit needed out, I suppose.
I'll likely retire before my parents, aunts and uncles. I won't tell them, I"ll just stop working and if they ask, I will say I'm an investment manager. Boomers and Gen X were shit with their finances, I guess.
I'm genuinely struggling to think of anything. I don't have a lot of loved ones but define them with the criteria "I can be my true self around them".
I have definitely lost loved ones because they couldn't come to terms with who I am (pansexual). Many people hate you for being bi, let alone pan. My sympathies to all those who have to hide, have been there. I've lived in rough places where I couldn't even allow a smidgeon of my true self to emerge, and it kills the soul.
I don't mean to be offensive, but what is the difference between bi and pan? It always seemed a meaningless term because bi already covers basically everything.
Not the person you were asking, but I can provide an answer. Pansexual generally means attraction to people regardless of gender - sort of gender blind. A bi person (like me) might find that the attraction they experience to different genders is shaped differently, qualitatively — or the magnitude of attraction may be different — like if you were a 1 on the Kinsey scale, which means "predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual". Someone who's pan is more likely to be a 3 on the Kinsey scale, but also, it's possible to be bi and a 3, and that's subtly different.
There aren't set rules on this, it mostly comes down to what terms resonate with people. I'm someone to whom pansexual as a label could apply, but I identify as bisexual because that was the word that made me go "wait, this is a thing that's possible?". The terms people use are often rooted in history, personal or otherwise.
It's trickier to explain the lexical niche when I myself am not pan. It's like if you're working on a project and have someone passing you tools, and you reach a step that needs a particular spanner, of which you have two. You ask for one of those spanners, but despite it fitting many of your requirements on paper, it isn't quite right for what you're trying to do. You try the other spanner and it's perfect. Keeping both spanners is probably useful because on simple jobs, they are interchangeable, but when getting into nuanced, complex situations, having the choice is useful.
By this, I mean that I have also had the thought that "[Pansexual] seemed a meaningless term because bi already covers basically everything", but when you're talking to someone about different spanners and they say "that one isn't the same as that one. I need the other one", it's generally wisest to assume that this person has some insight that you don't have on these spanners, or their particular use cases — who am I to tell people what tools are most useful for them, after all? Like a lot of identity stuff, it's hard to explain, but it matters a lot to some people.
what the other guy said. it's different for everyone. But some part of me identifying as bi not as pan is also self-reflective. It's because it's the term I want. Like how someone can be Alexander, Alex, Al, Xander, AJ... yet we don't question the difference, we just instinctively understand it's a preference.
Any one of you could die today and I may not even find out, and most likely won't care.
I should clarify that I can't tell my loved ones this because it's not true. No offense, but I don't know you and don't expect you to feel any different about me.
"I'm not interested in entertaining your whacky mentally Ill monkey bullshit. I don't care what shakespearean sob story you've spun for yourself to justify your poor self control. You are a grown ass adult, stop using a few traumatic life events that happened decades ago to excuse your current shitty actions.
My immediate loved ones are the only people I really really really try to have empathy for and forgive them for their poor self control and lack of trying to even consider improving themselves. Everyone else who tries to spin me their sob story for why they act like pieces of shit can get bent.
I love you but being close to you is not good for my mental health and I am struggling through life right now and cannot spare the time or energy for your drama or mental illness.
I hide things about my hobbies from my wife. It's not because she'd disapprove, it's because sometimes I just don't want anyone's opinion about what I'm doing/making.
I will not tell my wife and parents that when they go (my wife is older than me) that I will have nothing to live for so I will check out myself. I came to this decision a couple of years ago and am happy.