When it comes to letting go of relationships with our toxic family members, we have a few options available to us. I know from experience and from treating others that it is imperative to try all of these options. When we try everything, it makes our final decision to not contact more comfortable as we realize that the toxic people in our lives leave us with no other choice.

1. Friendly Contact

The first step to setting boundaries for these toxic relationships is the friendly contact option. With this option, we fake it until we make it when we are in the presence of our toxic family members.

With friendly contact, we are careful not to expose ourselves too much. We make sure to keep conversations and emotions superficial, positive, fun, and largely about our toxic family members. Because they like to feel like everything is about them, we can use this as a viable strategy, knowing that we are doing this on purpose as a way to protect ourselves from unwanted drama, at least to the best of our ability. Knowing that we are doing this on purpose helps us avoid beating ourselves up for always giving in to the needs of our toxic family members as a way to please them.

Friendly contact may work, at least in the short term. The problem is that our manipulative family members don’t like things to be peaceful or friendly, so they are likely to annoy us in some way, trying to get us to lose control of our goal and end up back in their web of destruction.

2. Low Contact

Another option is to start a low-contact relationship with our toxic family members. In this option, we choose to only see or talk to them at family gatherings, holidays, or other major events. Otherwise, we do everything we can to avoid them. This option may also work for a while, but our toxic family members will quickly pick up on this and do everything they can to force their way back into our lives.

The bottom line is this. When our toxic family members feel like we’ve pulled away or backed away, they escalate their manipulation because they don’t respect any of our needs for space. They don’t want us to have the space or time to think rationally about our relationship with them because once we do, they’re exposed and they’re lost. That’s why the middle ground is the worst place to be with our toxic family members. They have no idea how to operate in this area. They’d rather be all in or all out. When our toxic family members sense the gray area between us, what they usually do is cut ties with us.

3. No Contact

When we finally reach the point with our toxic family members where we decide that the only healthy option for us is no contact, we’ve reached the front lines of a very difficult, liberating, but very painful decision. If we’re in this place, we can trust that we’ve likely been abused more than we ever deserved—assuming we deserved any at all. If we’ve reached this point, we can trust that our toxic family members pushed us into it. We should never feel guilty for protecting ourselves with no contact.

We have every right to protect ourselves from those who manipulate and emotionally abuse us. At some point, we loved our toxic family members and wanted them in our lives more than anything else. Yet, too often, we sacrificed our happiness in service of theirs, shut our mouths when we desperately wanted to speak up, and did what they wanted because it was easier than dealing with their drama. We need to understand that our toxic family members simply led us to the door that we have now chosen to close.

ToxicRelationshipSigns

When the relationship is built on any type of abuse: mental, physical, sexual, verbal, or emotional.

When the only communication you have with them is negative.

When the relationship creates so much stress it impacts important areas of your life at work or home.

When you find yourself obsessing over gossip about yourself trying to correct misinformation and being constantly ostracized you lose sleep over it.
When the relationship is all about the other person, there is no real reason why the other person should not put in any effort to keep the relationship healthy and maintain it with you.

When crazy, lose-lose games dominate the relationship – like the silent treatment, blame games, and losing arguments that revolve around you.

Important Questions to Ask Before No Contact

• Does this person admit when they were wrong?
• Does this person sincerely apologize and change their behavior?
• Does this person show remorse for what they did?
• Does this person validate your perception?
• Does this person respect the boundaries or limits you have set?
• Is this person willing to do anything and everything to make the relationship work with you?
• If the answers to these questions are a resounding no, then you need to consider cutting ties.

Why No Contact Is Hard

This decision is more forced upon us than voluntary, which is confusing because we are programmed to believe that ending relationships with family is morally wrong. However, our toxic family members are just human beings and not always healthy people. If these people weren’t our family, we would never choose them to be a part of our lives. Under the ideal of the perfect family, we spend years sacrificing our mental and emotional health under the idea that we have to make this sacrifice because these people are family. We are programmed to believe that ending relationships with them means we are bad people. No one wants to feel like they are inherently bad.

However, here’s what I know for sure. It’s much better to decide to go no contact and have our hearts broken than to stay in a relationship where our toxic family members break our hearts over and over again.

Related Story: Can A Relationship With A Narcissist Ever Work? New Study Says Maybe

Finally: Secure a Support System

Before you choose to go with no contact, I highly recommend having a loving support system in place to reassure yourself that you won’t be alone once you make this change. What you need to be prepared for is the reaction of your toxic family members. They will likely do everything they can to isolate you by targeting your primary support and doing everything they can to turn them against you. Once you see the smear campaign in full effect, you need to trust that you need to shut up and not engage. Just let it happen and pass.

The more you fight the smear, the more gossip and lies will grow and the crazier you will appear to others. Our toxic family members are smearing us for the sole purpose of trying to deprive us of the support system we need and deserve. They want to make sure we don’t have a soft spot to fall and that we don’t have people on our side who support our decision.

If we want to be healthy, we have to be prepared for the fact that when we leave our toxic family members, we will likely also have to leave many others who are connected to us. We have to be okay with this and accept it as an acceptable loss. I have seen in my life and have seen others who have also been in a similar situation that things turn out for the better when they make these decisions.

In some ways, this is a blind journey, to be sure. We can’t predict everything that will happen. But I believe that whenever we positively activate our mental and emotional health, we find that what has left a gaping hole and void in our lives will eventually be replaced with better and healthier situations and people for us.