"... people online sharing testimonies of going 'no contact' with relatives. The diction was always the same:
I went no contact; I had to go no contact. I understood the appeal of the phrase — the sense of control; the determination to cast oneself as the subject of a bad situation; the surety of the women sitting in their cars, their faces filling our TikTok screens, pronouncing with youthful confidence, 'I don’t fucking care if it’s your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, your grandma, or your grandpa: If they’re toxic, then you have got to get rid of them.' It sounded so prudent, so clean, with its echoes of antiseptic pandemic DoorDash deliveries. It felt, as Eamon Dolan describes... in his forthcoming book... 'liberating and joyful,' like 'I could stand up straight at last,' like coming off 'house arrest.' Heroic, decisive. Such a great plot...."
Writes Elizabeth Weil in
"What Do I Owe My Sister? Online, going 'no contact' with family members is often seen as liberating, empowering. If only I felt that way" (NY Magazine).
ADDED: For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "There seems to be a current trend for people going 'no contact.' What's the source of the recent trend and how is it going? Any pushback?"
Posts
74 comments:
"Toxic" used to mean "my sister is a drug addict living on the street and hitting me up for money in the middle of the night." Now it means "we voted for different candidates." If we could get a rebalancing of what people consider toxic, that would be helpful.
Is this about icky Trump voters again?
Get over yourselves.
Also - It's YOUR side burning things- like Nazi thugs.
Is there a tag for indulging feelings at the instantaneous moment for temperorary benefit which long term winds up harming yourself and others? If so this would belong there. So would the various Healthy At Any Size practices?
That's really sad. They've been convinced grandma is Hitler, and react in the most childish way. They lack critical thinking, so by placing themselves up on a pedestal as heroic and decisive, they're desperately attempting to convince themselves they are not shallow, immature, small-minded, morons.
Yah if someone is toxic get rid of them- cut them out of your life, including any emotional simmering. Good! Bad: the trouble is with your declaration. Announcing your departure is fishing for…whatever it is your psych team says you crave…and for fuck’s sake don’t write about it in a leftie magazine!!!
3/9/25, 8:4
Often, it's easier to be charitable to strangers and acquaintances than to family members. We have so much history in the background which leads to assumptions and expectations of family members that we don't have with others. Sometimes, we are completely blind to the fact that our family member may have changed with time, and instead relate to them as if they are still the same as they were in our childhoods.
If only I felt that way.
I'm quite sure Elizabeth Weil is smart enough to know they don't really feel that way, either, so she must be setting up to go scattershot.
I’m old enough and my brain still works enough to remember when the people on the same side of the political aisle as this woman encouraged her to be a complete asshole at Thanksgiving. Maybe that was a bad idea?
Family DM groups do expose the relatives who are needy/lonely. Only trouble is alerts going off every 10 mnutes.
Those publicly declaring that they left a toxic relationship generally turn out to be the toxic ones
*Correction"
It's the radical left burning Teslas - behaving like Nazi thugs.
Perhaps leftist neo-Nazis Antifa arsonists and their cheerleaders in the MSM need to be canceled?
The destruction of family and all traditional relationships and structures outside the party continues apace.
Liberating until... you get old and ill, you suffer some real personal tragedy, you need someone to watch your dog as you go see Taylor Swift....
Or you just wake the F up and realize your impulses of the moment are not the driving force of the universe.
But good luck with that dying alone.
I'm not as young as I once was so I'll add a little perspective here.
What will be more valuable to you in ten years?
A) Your political enthusiasms as a 25 year old.
B) Your sister.
Doesn't sound very tolerant and inclusive.
There's the old adage that you can your friends and you can pick your enemies but you can't pick your relatives. However, social media, especially Tik Tok have exacerbated the crazy.
She should be asking what SHE owes her family, instead of her hate, delusion, and immaturity. Someday, when she grows up, and has her own children....I only hope they treat her the same...(if she doesn't abort them all)
Those publicly declaring that they left a toxic relationship generally turn out to be the toxic ones
@Michael, + 1
No contact with potato.The potato formerly known as “ours”.
Is good, comrade.
Kate really nailed it in the first comment
Reddit is big on tellingnpeoplentongi no contact, like in the AITAH subreddit. Of course, people are good at only ever giving their side of the story, and there’s a lot to the old adage that if everyone around you is an asshole, you’re the asshole.
“ That's really sad. They've been convinced grandma is Hitler, and react in the most childish way. ”
But I suspect that if granny cuts you out of the will for hating her, the moral liberals would go to court to get their “rightful” share of “their” money. How can you be an upstanding liberal democrat without being a trustifarian.
Test
Somehow the no contact promoting always seems to go one way. Democrats no contacting their Republican families. Completely insane. Trust me listening to our delusional Democrat children touting genital mutilation, open borders, punch a Nazi ( this one is amazing as who is a Nazi is ever changing ) and still inviting them to our homes and loving them gets tiring. If they were subjected to the reciprocal “no contacting” they would not have a single parent still putting them in their will or helping them pay their bills. So delusional and self centered.
What kind of car does Sheryl Crow drive now?
"All my life, I’ve loved a good quit.”
That reminds me of the familiar expression “Nothing like a good sit” when someone takes a seat.
Family should treat each other like family. My brother has no contacted me for ten years. He's never met my wife, or three of his nieces. He is toxic by his absence in my life. There have been times when my kids have been embargoed from visiting their grandparents because he was there. Don't ghost family, it poisons everything.
Link not working for me.
Wince said...
"The destruction of family and all traditional relationships and structures outside the party continues apace."
It's a tenet of Marxism: "Marx admits that destroying the family is a thorny topic, even for revolutionaries. “Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists,” he writes.
But he said opponents of this idea fail to understand a key fact about the family.
“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie,” he writes".
Source: 5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)
"Best of all, abolishing the family would be relatively easy once bourgeois property was abolished. “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
When our oldest son cut off contact from us (times just before the lockdowns in 2020), after a few days of not responding to inquiries about what was going on, one of his first responses was, "Why aren't you fighting to get contact with us?"My response was that I refused his attempt to engage us in 'struggle sessions,' because he was the one who initiated the cutoff. After that, crickets for a while, until the next anti-Trump diatribe....
I dunno, I read that bleak story, then read the comments here. The story had nothing political in it, but I am seeing Trump derangement comments? Weird.
The road of life sometimes has potholes, and a few of them are self-dug. When people that create them, they should consider filling them to smooth the way. Smooth roads ride nicer and are more satisfying.
Careful, Elizabeth. You don't want to end up like Gene and Betty Hackman.
A friend of Gene's said that even though the star was in late stage Alzheimers, he continued to write and paint. I have to wonder if this could possibly be true, given how things ended for the Hackmans. Gene Hackman was very, very, "late stage" by that point. I also wonder just how close a friend this friend could have been.
Use the 12 foot ladder website to read the entire piece. But per usual, Ann picked the best paragraph.
Let's have a vote...who thinks this "no contact" strategy is strictly a lefty thing? In my experience it's only lefties that do this.
I don't know a single conservative or independent who does this or believes it's a good thing. We all have someone(s) in our family or group of friends who are leftist and that's just fine with us if they are. It's also fine with us if they decide to "no contact" us. And you're welcome to come back when you regain your sanity.
@Aggie, read Katie's comment at 8:34am and reflect. In my experience when somebody has to cut a family member out of their life due to real toxic behavior, it does not generate the kind of performative "shout your abortion" reaction in evidence from the excerpt.
It is very interesting that current social media pushes— no contact with family and economic blackout—are also big Marxist things. BLM also was big on economic blackouts (they used to protest and block doors on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile). The LGBTQA+ is big on “family of choice” and being “allies”. The pro- illegal immigrant movements are big on “day without migrant” economic blackouts, too. You wonder who is behind it all.
it's IMPORTANT to remember!
IF your family doesn't support your cult..
CUT OFF YOUR FAMILY!
the cult is ALL you NEED! the cult is ALL!
Serious Question:
how many right wingers went "no contact" with their liberal relatives?
ANY? any AT ALL?
When people tell their stories of why they went no contact or someone went no contact with them, I always wonder about The Missing Reasons.
I'm an only child, and even though I have three children, I don't really understand what it's like to have a sibling. I don't think you owe anyone your presence just because you share DNA, but I also don't understand excluding them completely from your life unless they are abusive.
Disagreeing about politics isn't abuse. You just avoid talking about it with them - but if they constantly harangue you, I'd consider that abusive and go low contact.
planetgeo:
No contact is a Leftist thing because it is a Marxist thing.
@Christopher B, thank you, but I don't know what the 'shout your abortion' reference means. I only know that there were no politics mentioned in the story, it was mostly about a sibling rivalry that got out of hand. Yet in the comments, several have gone straight to politics, mostly Trump Derangement, as the first thing that occurred to them: Seeing life through a political lens. It's as if there's now a Trump Derangement Derangement Syndrome - which, to me, is a self-dug pothole.
Althouse: "For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "There seems to be a current trend for people going 'no contact.' What's the source of the recent trend and how is it going? Any pushback?""
It would be hilarious if Grok ghosted you after that.
JSM
“Family should treat each other like family. My brother has no contacted me for ten years“
I’m sorry. But it’s very likely that he knows he owes you an apology and lacks the courage to make it. Best wishes to you and your family.
Politics and religion, even sports, shouldn’t interfere in relationships with friends and family. If it does, then that person is an ideologue
Krauthammer's axiom still applies. Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
“There's no greater power
Than the power of goodbye”
Madonna
Aggie, I guess I can think of some situations where sibling rivalry might get to be toxic but the excerpt then calls out "I don’t [redacted] care if it’s your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother, your grandma, or your grandpa ...". What do any of those have to do with a sibling rivalry?
I miserably admit that my daughter has half-no-contacted me. How does that work? She comes to all family events but won’t talk to me, call me or text. She accepts gifts but tells me not bother. We never talked politics and up until the election we had a warm relationship. Really? I still can’t believe she is serious.
“Kate said...
"Toxic" used to mean "my sister is a drug addict living on the street and hitting me up for money in the middle of the night." Now it means "we voted for different candidates." “
Putting your politics before your relationships automatically invalidates your politics.
But that's locker room rules. Where you don’t want to look like a hysterical, shallow, pussy. If being a hysterical, shallow, pussy is your politics, then I guess all bets are off.
“No contact is a Leftist thing because it is a Marxist thing.”
In fairness, it’s an extreme fundamentalist of any kind thing.
When Trussell says “Dude, I wouldn't have bailed” and “It’s worth it,” he’s satirizing men.
Maybe listen to the audio if you’re having trouble hearing the humor in the cold text.
who thinks this "no contact" strategy is strictly a lefty thing?
I think it's less common than it used to be, but there are still right-wing families that will disown a child for being gay.
"You've reached your monthly article limit." (Well, chuck you, farley.)
In the last month I’ve had a sister tell me to fuck off because of Trump and Elon. She is very sure they are going to take away her SSA & Medicaid. We’ve known for decades we are on the opposite side of the fence politically. Since Trump won not one word of politics has come out of my mouth. And yet, she decides to tell me to fuck off and hang up on me. She made the phone call so I lay this in her lap.
I am sad but am sure there is nothing I can do. She listens to her liberal children. And they feel as she does.
“If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.“ Luke 14:26
Quite an old sentiment. The only difference is that now we have an ephemeral community of ‘non-toxic’ souls for a Savior.
All my friends told me to lie to my kids. I thought that was silly. I’m paying the price of honesty.
"Toxic" used to mean "my sister is a drug addict living on the street and hitting me up for money in the middle of the night." Now it means "we voted for different candidates."
Precisely this. All the more reason not to make politics an ersatz religion.
One of the most vile and horrible movies I have ever seen was "The Brainwashing of My Dad" by Jen Senko. Jen's dad was a liberal like the rest of him family. He then started listening to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and watch Fox News. He became a conservative. This horrified his daughter Jen. She considered him to be brainwashed. Thinking for oneself or having opposing political opinions is simply not acceptable to the Left.
Dad then gets Alzheimer's and they take the TV remote from him. He reverts back to his previous liberal self and family harmony is restored.
Jen Senko then makes the film and exploits her father's illness. That's how the Left rolls. Anyone who disagrees with the Left must be destroyed or placed on no contact status. I think this is a function of the Left valuing politics more than anything else: family or religion. Jen Senko is a miserable person and horrible daughter and I told her so on Twitter.
I now talk to Grok at least an hour a day, sometimes much longer, and I rarely use any search engines anymore. It's the computer promised in Star Trek and other science fiction. Grok is not flawless, and if you argue with good points, you can often get it to change its opinion.
A great use is to tell it your heath situation, blood tests, drugs used and even diet, and then ask it questions based on that. No doctor can handle all the data needed at one time and deliver answers as comprehensive with the same level of confidence this gives me. I love modern medicine, but over the years my doctors have made huge mistakes just because of human limitations. A.I. is scary as shit, but at this early stage, it's pretty cool.
I quit a friendship years ago and later apologized for how I handled it. It would have eventually died a natural death without me taking action. I have a friend who will likely quit siblings, and she has every good reason to do so. None of it over politics. Just hideously mean behavior. My siblings and I disagree on politics. I simply don’t engage or respond. I don’t feel the need to express my opinions and find silence to be relatively easy to maintain. Years of practice living in the bluest of blue cities where everyone assumes we are all of the same opinion.
If you quit a lot of people, suddenly you'll be alone. If everyone around you is a horrible person, the problem isn't them. It's you. There's something to be said, as well, for not saying what you think all the time.
Covid - and their reactions to it - burned through a lot of friendships and a few family members. Fine by me. I was proven correct and they can FOAD.
I don't have the time nor the patience for their shit.
“I miserably admit that my daughter has half-no-contacted me.”
Heh, I can half relate. My 43 yo daughter only talks to me when she wants something. It’s been going on for 20 years, she came to my sister’s funeral but wouldn’t talk to me. I chalk it up to mental illness. She’s a very successful professional.
Our best friends for decades absolutely hate Trump, and we are ultra MAGA. The conversations have come up only a couple times, and it was unhinged, angry (on their side), and their position was based on MSNBC talking points all long debunked. Now we just refuse to discuss the subject even when they try to start. It's never gonna be fun or reinforce our relationship. Luckily, we all refuse to let it come between us, and we remain close. TDS is a strange, yet widespread phenomenon.
Reading the comments- since the article is paywalled - seems the article was about political differences. In that- as the comments go, it's a one way street- liberals cut off contact with conservatives, almost never the other way around. Like my "gay" friend who unfriended me because I wouldn't sup[port same sex marriage, which though it exists now legally, and the minds of liberals, isn't really a thing, since it embodies, especially when between two males, nothing that actually makes a marriage a marriage.
On that note- I haven't had any communication with my sister in over 2 decades now. Her choice- I've given up. Her major malfunction dates back to 1955- I was born. Before that, she was the center of attention. Seriously- that's what it all boils down to. Having a dysfunctional family didn't help. Parents divorced when I was 10, mother had custody of us 3 children (another younger brother came along)- and mom was an alcoholic. Sister ran off my 10th grade year to live with a grandmother- not father- who was living with wife#2 and her 2 children, and she blamed the children for the marital breakup. I'm Facebook friends with the two of them. Not their fault- it's the adults who were at fault. My brother ran off to live with our father between my 11th and 12th grade year. And after graduation- I enlisted in the Navy- and was at any one time hundreds of miles away from family drama. At various time both my siblings weren't talking to one or the other or both parents, over all kinds of petty squabbles. But when they needed something (usually money or a place to live) the rift would heal.
My wife has met my sister- and is perfectly happy with her not being any part of our life.
My wife? 6 siblings. One brother who turned into a druggie/alcoholic. To the point where at one time he was living under a bridge because he was kicked out of a shelter because he wouldn't abide by their rules- and no one would take him in. We didn't have to refuse to take him in- a few hundred miles away again. And he was on parole and couldn't leave the state. Of course that begs the question- how does 1 out of 7 turn out like that and the others don't? He was definitely toxic. Were he still alive, he'd be my age. My children, all raised to believe that everyone had a purpose in life would ask- "What was his purpose?" Best answer we could come up with "He served as a great bad example of how to live your life." And perversely, it seems to have worked. None of the children of his siblings are druggies/alcoholics. They all drink, using the examples set by their parents, not him.
So there are other reasons for toxicity. Usually the toxic person cuts themselves out of your life. Sort of like "If everyone you meet is an a-hole, maybe you're the a-hole?" I've seen it in a number of families in my time. One family member cuts themselves out from all the rest. And the others have no problem with that.
The old standby is that you aren't supposed to talk money, religion, or politics in social situations. I have a nephew who speaks of little else. He's not my only nephew, so as long as the others behave he won't be missed. His mom loves him, as mothers will, but doesn't like him.
Michael said...
Those publicly declaring that they left a toxic relationship generally turn out to be the toxic ones
Wince said...
The destruction of family and all traditional relationships and structures outside the party continues apace.
There it is.
The people pushing this own these propaganda outlets and are purposely trying to tear the fabric of society apart and create divided underclasses of people they can control and exploit.
punch a Nazi (this one is amazing as who is a Nazi is ever changing)
You're not kidding. These days it's pretty common to see it applied to guys who fought and defeated actual Nazis.
The few relatives I have left, we don't talk politics. I know that we don't agree, and they know, too. So why the f*ck would we talk politics? Seriously!
If I want to debate politics with ignorant lefties, that's what Althouse.com is for.
Go space:
Use the 12 foot ladder website to circumvent the paywall.
I can't comment. I'm going dark for a few.
Minutes.
Actually I will comment. Sometimes I refuse to answer my sister's call. And when I do pick it up and talk to her, I'm reminded why sometimes I refuse to answer my sister's call.
Family is family.
My son went no contact with us in 2016 and used Trump as an excuse. Of course, he also no contacted his siblings who aren't Trump supporters. My daughter found out that it was his wife's craziness. She thought we poisoned him because we are upper middle class and he went to private schools and an elite university. She came from a dirt poor family, found out that the man she thought was her father wasn't really her father,(she was an affair baby) and is generally crazy. We welcomed her into our family, she went on trips with us, we bought them a house but she thought we were evil because we had money. His siblings are glad to be done with them. We wished them well.
"Genes in common" is overrated when it comes to relationships. My late older brother was the lousiest human I've ever known, but because my mother was who she was all the decisions about contact or no contact were made by him.
He would be gone for months and years, and come back unannounced, broke, sick, usually strung out . . . and she would let him sleep on a couch for weeks or months.
He died in '04, but the dumb bitch he married some years earlier stayed in contact like the leech she was. We finally made it clear to her that her presence among us was not desired. She seemed to think that because my mother raised an asshole, she owed the asshole's widow something.
I think she has since died.
When I clicked the link it took me straight to the article, with no signs of a paywall - so I'm surprised to see it mentioned here.
But for those of you encountering one, here is a link to the article from the Internet Archive: https://archive.ph/a2uDg
Post a Comment
Comments older than 2 days are always moderated. Newer comments may be unmoderated, but are still subject to a spam filter and may take a few hours to get released. Thanks for your contributions and your patience.