Should I Try To Repair My Relationship With My Family?

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

A few weeks ago I went to visit my maternal grandfather and uncle (who is mentally handicapped) in Quebec’s Eastern townships, near the Vermont-Canadian border. I had come to visit my grandfather because he was lonely, as all of his friends had recently died. During that time period he insulted & berated me constantly, calling me a chronic drunk, saying that I was of “bad character” because of the shoes I wore, and telling me that I was “dumber than a dog”. He also insulted my mom on multiple occasions because she still maintained contact with my maternal grandmother’s side of the family after my grandmother died. My grandfather and I have always had a rocky relationship with each other, when I was very young (0-9) he was fairly doting but after my younger cousins were born he became a lot more harsh & critical towards me & my younger brother. According to my mom this is because when she was growing up my grandfather favoured her 2 youngest siblings over her & my uncle because they were closer to him in personality & looks than my mom, who looks a lot like my late grandmother. My youngest aunt & uncle have made it clear that they despise my mom & my immediate family in general.

My grandfather did not have the happiest marriage, to be honest. He got married extremely young to my grandmother & only married her because of her glamorous movie star looks. My grandfather & grandmother had nothing in common personality wise, she was a party girl who wanted to live a glamorous lifestyle in Montreal while he was a boring accountant content with life in rural small town Quebec. My grandmother also had an alcohol abuse problem, something that got worse because of their lifelong unhappy marriage. They separated but did not ever divorce because of their conservative religious upbringing. As a result my mom & her 3 siblings had a very unhappy childhood. My grandfather & aunt & uncle blamed the unhappy marriage on my grandmother’s alcohol abuse problem but honestly both of them were at fault for the unhealthy marriage. My grandmother doted on me & my brother when we came to visit (until she died) but the situation was always tense visiting them growing up.

I thought that my relationship with my grandfather had improved after my grandmother died. I decided to visit him when I was in university and he was glad to see me then, he took me out for beer & said that he wanted to be there for me on my graduation day. But I guess things changed because he was very hostile to me a few weeks ago & blew up when I told him I didn’t like it when he insulted my mom & I. I left his house a day early on a very angry note.

Is it worth trying to salvage the relationship between me and my grandfather? I want to have a good relationship with him after all he is my grandfather & grandchildren are supposed to cherish their relationships with grandparents. I just don’t see how I could repair this relationship when it has been shaky to awful to begin with…

Family Drama

Here’s my question for you, FD: do you actually want to try to repair things with your grandfather? Or are you doing this out of a sense of obligation – the “grandchildren are supposed to cherish their relationships with their grandparents” issue you mention?

I ask because… well, honestly, I’m not sure your grandfather’s actually earned a relationship with you. It certainly sounds like he doesn’t really want one, and the way he’s behaved in both the past and present suggests that there isn’t much hope for one in the future.

Not, mind you, that this is inherently a bad thing. Quite frankly, I am not a believer that just being related to someone entitles them to your love, respect or a place in their lives, especially as we grow up. The old chestnut of “blood is thicker than water” is one of those sayings that people often misunderstand because they never hear the whole saying. We assume that it means “family comes before everything else”, but the full saying is ”the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” – that is: the chosen family is ultimately more meaningful and more important than one’s family by birth.

That doesn’t mean that your biological family is unimportant by definition or that they will never matter as much as the family you choose to make. Your biological family can still be your family of choice. But that relationship isn’t automatically and inherently more important than any other, requiring your love, respect and place of importance in your life just because you share DNA or a name. And frankly, the idea that family automatically deserves your respect and love has caused a lot of harm as folks break themselves to pieces to maintain a relationship with family who only ever hurt them.

Now, it’s entirely possible that your grandfather has issues affecting his cognition and emotional regulation. That sort of night-and-day flip, where he’s suddenly insulting you and your mother after seeming to be warmer and friendlier to you feels very abrupt. If he has his own drinking problems or some sort of cognitive decline, that can cause people to lash out – often viciously and seemingly without reason.  The same goes with any feelings of loneliness and isolation as he gets closer to death; these might be weighing on him and rather than managing his issues in a healthy or productive manner, he reacts like a scared, cornered animal.

However, if he does have those issues… well, that doesn’t change the way he treated you, nor does it obligate you to eat shit and pretend it’s steak. Especially considering how he and other members of his family have treated you and your immediate family. Having a relationship with you isn’t something that’s given automatically; it’s a privilege that people, including your grandfather, have to earn. And considering the misery he seems to have caused over three generations… well, frankly, he’d have a lot of work to do to try to make amends for a lifetime of shitty behavior.

(And honestly: I’d be willing to bet your grandmother’s alcoholism was as much a matter of self-medicating from what sounds like a miserable marriage as some sort of inherent flaw in her as a person…)

You aren’t required to have a relationship with him at all, or even to consider him as family in anything other than the technical sense. The fact that you and he share DNA doesn’t create a requirement that you stand there and take his abuse, especially if he’s continuing to treat you, your mom and other members of your family like shit. It takes two people to have a relationship and two to repair one. From what you’ve described, you’re the only one making any of the effort, or at least for longer than a few hours. It doesn’t seem like your grandfather has had any real interest in having a new one with you or repairing the old one. And if that’s the case… well, he’s made his choice, and his choices drove you away. That’s a him problem, not a you problem. If he decides he wants a connection with his daughter and grandsons, then that’s entirely his call. He can put on his big boy pants and actually do the work to make amends and repair years of generational conflict.

Until then? He made his bed. Now he gets to lie in it. 

Good luck.

My boyfriend and I have been dating for 3 years, he has been open since the beginning about his porn usage, but he said he “wasn’t a huge porn guy”. Our sex life was great up until about the 2 year mark, after that it became less frequent and I became the main initiator. My boyfriend has heart problems, and so every time I’ve asked about it he’s said he just doesn’t feel like being sexual as much, which is fair.

Except the problem is I’ve noticed that he often jerks off after I go to sleep in the other room. I feel hurt by this because why does he so often wait until I leave to do the deed instead of asking me for some type of help? I feel inadequate or like I don’t look good enough for him to want me anymore and he would rather fantasize about random girls then even bother to have sex with me. This is taking a toll on my self-esteem. I don’t know if I should believe that the heart issues are all that’s going on or if he just doesn’t find me attractive enough anymore. Or both?

Laptop Widow

This is one of those times when I wish you’d included a little more information, LW, because there’re some details that might be helpful. The nature of his heart  condition and whatever treatments he’s receiving, for example, could be relevant to your problem, especially if he changed medication or started a new therapy. Statins, beta-blockers and other medicines prescribed for heart failure or other cardiac-related illnesses are known to affect sexual performance and libido. So it’s entirely possible that he’s telling you the truth – his condition is making it that much harder for him to be physically intimate with you.

While I understand the why it feels like he’s choosing fantasy over you, it’s important not to leap to conclusions without actual evidence. It feels like the obvious answer, but feels aren’t always reals, especially when those feels tie into any pre-existing insecurities or anxieties you may already have. The worst-case scenario feels more real in part because of the inherent bias we all have towards negativity; the fact that it seems obvious is often because it aligns with a negative outcome. You don’t actually know what’s going on in his head… yet.

The masturbating when you’re asleep doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s lying. One of the things about masturbating, especially with cis men, is that sometimes you don’t necessarily want sex – that is, the holistic process with a partner – but rather just orgasm. If he’s having issues with erectile function, low general desire, an inability to get off as easily as he had before… well, it’s not that much of a stretch to see this as his just trying to rub one out rather than ending up either frustrating you, himself or both of you. Waiting until you’re presumably asleep may well be an attempt to avoid the very situation you’re in – making you think that he would rather crank one out to Pornhub videos than have sex.

Alternately, there’re other things that could be coming up – stress at work, frustrations in the relationship, boredom with the kind of sex you’ve been having in general… or his physical attraction to has run its course and he’s simply not that into having a physical relationship with you.

It’s hard to say, based solely on what we know from your letter. 

Another aspect that I would like to know is whether he’s still physically intimate with you in other ways. Do you two still cuddle or have the same casual touch that you’ve had over the course of your relationship? Do you still have physical affection – the sorts of hugs, kisses, holding each other’s hands and all those myriad forms of physical contact that you’ve had over the years, or has that faded, too? Do you both still give other expressions of affection that you had prior to the sex falling off a cliff?

If you do, and the only difference is that you’re not having sex, that would suggest that maybe it is a matter of his heart condition. If you don’t… well, that would lean more towards his possibly being on the way out of this relationship. But possibly isn’t the same as “is”.

The only person who could answer this for you definitively, however, is your boyfriend. So he’s going to have to be the person you ask.

So far, he’s been evasive, blaming his lack of interest on his heart condition. That may be true, it may be a face-saving white lie (especially if he’s having erectile dysfunction or can’t get off during penetrative sex), or it may be a lie of convenience to get you off his back. And the way to get to the heart of the matter is to have an Awkward Conversation.

In this case, you’re going to want to lead off by telling him not just that you’re bothered by the lack of sex in your relationship, but the way it’s making you feel. Considering the potential nature of the problem, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re using “I” statements – this is about how you feel, rather than accusing him of lying or doing something maliciously. Whether he’s embarrassed and feels emasculated by his condition or he’s just not interested in you sexually, if he feels attacked, he’s going to get defensive. Making this about your feelings on the matter and the way it appears to you can help facilitate an actual discussion, rather than leading to him just shutting things down.

Tell him that his seeming to choose porn and masturbating over sex with you is making you feel undesirable and how it’s hurting your self-esteem. Tell him that you’re feeling distanced from him and that just saying that it’s the heart condition when he’s jerking off at night makes you feel unwanted or that he’s choosing fantasy women over you, even if he doesn’t necessarily want actual sex.

Let him know that you want to know what’s actually going on and why knowing will help, and what you’d be willing to do to help – assuming there’s anything you can do.

Then let him share his side of things. Hopefully, he’ll open up and give you the actual truth – even if its’ unpleasant, at least knowing what’s going on will make it easier to decide what you two will do next. If he continues to insist that it’s his heart condition and doesn’t elaborate… well, honestly, that would make me think that it’s more that his desire for you is lower and he doesn’t want to tell you to your face. Or it could well be that he’s not ready to admit that he can’t get off the way he used to and needs more friction or pressure or specific acts to gain and maintain an erection or to finally get off.

You’ll have to weigh what you know about him, how he’s acting with you outside of the bedroom and whether the other signs of love and affection are still there. If they are, then that’s a better sign and possibly an indication that couples counseling with a sex-positive counselor would be helpful. If they’re not, then it’s going to be time for you to decide how long you’re willing to go without the sort of intimacy and connection you want from a romantic partner.

Good luck.