do I feel a sense of entitlement from my family?

[Anka7]

Growing up my parents were mostly absent. I saw some of my extended family sometimes, only during events or parties. I became homeless at 20 and relied on food packages. I worked my way out but later learned that my siblings had also been homeless, including my pregnant sister. I tried meeting them once but they were aggressive. 

I find that when I think about them, I feel so angry. Am I being unreasonable though, is this a sense of entitlement? 

My mother taught me nothing, my father taught me how to tie my shoes and very briefly the basics of shaving. He took no interest in me at all. His own father taught him trade skills and sent him to university, and gave him a company. One day he walked me literally up the garden path and said he was leaving the family. He then chose a favourite. I haven't seen either of them for 15 years. 

I don't understand why he disowned me, I do not understand why my entire family let me down and never initiated contact with me, I do not know why I had virtually no life skills at all and had to teach myself everything. 

My immediate family is ruined, especially since my parents' divorce, my siblings are quite broken from the total lack of support and I can't bear to see them as adults.

My mother is impossible to relate to, she has no personality apart from someone who needs constant attention and will throw tantrums. She threw my posessions away when I left the house, hundreds of pounds of gear, she never helped me with anything, I remember helping her with HER homework, and she had the amazing nerve to demand money from me because she was too irresponsible to pay her bills a few years later. She has always had everything handed to her. Oh and I am 90% sure she has lied about my brother being directly related to me. 

I do not understand where other people were, my uncles and cousins etc?? They MUST have known something was wrong. I weighed 6 stone when I was thrown out, my mother could barely cook and I didn't understand nutrition. Why didn't they intervene???? Why couldn't they have stepped in and taught me basic skills? Or am I wrong for feeling this way, should it have been up to me to take control, is this a sense of entitlement? 

 

[d0nnivain]

A sense of entitlement is generally seen as a negative thing.  It usually means someone who expects to have the world handed to them on a silver platter without them putting in effort.  So no I don't think you have a sense of entitlement. 

What you actually seem to be  saying is that you were deprived of some basic human rights -- shelter, food & affection from your family as well as fundamental skills:  tying your shoes & shaving.  Now you resent your parents & extended family for those deficiencies.  That is a understandable response.  In your shoes I can't say I would not have felt resentful too.

Continuing to nurse those past hurts serves no purpose now or in your future.  Wallowing won't improve your situation.   You need to acknowledge that a lot of people let you down including the adults who were responsible for you when you were a child.  Then you have to focus on overcoming that & moving forward.   You seem articulate & introspective so you have that going for you.  Keep using the skills that you have to move forward.  As you advance your siblings who may still be stuck could be resentful but you can't let them drag you back down.   

[preraph]

You've had the life of an orphan, or worse.  I'm sorry.  What you have to understand about your siblings is they are broken.  Family is not a GOOD thing to any of you.  Why would they want it?  And why would you want to pursue it as long as this is who they are?  It would only perpetuate this caretaking and chaotic existence because you'd be trying to help and fix them.  

 

The best thing you can do is take care of yourself, try to reach attainable goals to build up your own self-esteem, and then you can start having total faith that you can stand alone if need be.  And once you reach that level of confidence and feel you are a whole person, then maybe you will find someone to partner with.  Because the danger is that you will pick what is familiar, messed up people like are in your family, and just continue the cycle.  What you want to do is rebel and reject that and treat yourself better than they ever could.  

 

If you find a partner, you want to go together to parenting classes to learn good methods with children, because you had zero role modeling for that!  You only know what you know.  You don't want to overcompensate by just letting them run wild while keeping their bellies full.  You need an actual education what is right and effective and normal, a balance.  Just as an example.  

 

Treat yourself the way you ought to have been treated.  Don't take on messed up people just because the only skill you learned growing up is how to take care of messed up people!  

[Anka7]

3 hours ago, d0nnivain said:

A sense of entitlement is generally seen as a negative thing.  It usually means someone who expects to have the world handed to them on a silver platter without them putting in effort.  So no I don't think you have a sense of entitlement. 

What you actually seem to be  saying is that you were deprived of some basic human rights -- shelter, food & affection from your family as well as fundamental skills:  tying your shoes & shaving.  Now you resent your parents & extended family for those deficiencies.  That is a understandable response.  In your shoes I can't say I would not have felt resentful too.

Continuing to nurse those past hurts serves no purpose now or in your future.  Wallowing won't improve your situation.   You need to acknowledge that a lot of people let you down including the adults who were responsible for you when you were a child.  Then you have to focus on overcoming that & moving forward.   You seem articulate & introspective so you have that going for you.  Keep using the skills that you have to move forward.  As you advance your siblings who may still be stuck could be resentful but you can't let them drag you back down.   

Thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it. In terms of resentment I feel more confused than hateful. I've simply gone on with my life as best as I can, as that has been my only option. It still feels very disorientating to me. 

I honestly can't explain why they chose to cut me loose. So a part of me really feels I deserve some kind of answer from them. I also perfectly understand that they will likely never be forthcoming about it and I am not under an illusion about that. They have communicated in every way (apart from explicitly saying it) that they don't want to know me. It doesn't change the way I feel however so that's why I'm talking about entitlement.

They aren't poor, some parts of my family are quite affluent, so it wasn't about money. I wasn't getting into trouble, doing drugs or anything like that. There was no straightforward reason to let me down so badly. I'm more upset that I've been left to make sense of this. 

 

3 hours ago, preraph said:

You've had the life of an orphan, or worse.  I'm sorry.  What you have to understand about your siblings is they are broken.  Family is not a GOOD thing to any of you.  Why would they want it?  And why would you want to pursue it as long as this is who they are?  It would only perpetuate this caretaking and chaotic existence because you'd be trying to help and fix them.  

 

The best thing you can do is take care of yourself, try to reach attainable goals to build up your own self-esteem, and then you can start having total faith that you can stand alone if need be.  And once you reach that level of confidence and feel you are a whole person, then maybe you will find someone to partner with.  Because the danger is that you will pick what is familiar, messed up people like are in your family, and just continue the cycle.  What you want to do is rebel and reject that and treat yourself better than they ever could.    

Thank you too for reaching out. In terms of standing alone I am doing fine. I have chosen not to keep trying to build a relationship with them a long time ago. That was not an easy choice to make but their lack of transparency has sent a clear message. Life without family might sound attractive at first if you don't get along with everyone and the truth is it is a very freeing way to live but losing your entire family it is not easy.

[preraph]

I can imagine. A close friend of mine was pretty much abandoned by her dad and she was always driven to win him back and he had a whole separate family and she's driven to do the same thing with them. I'm sure she just feels cheated. But a couple of them are pretty messed up. One is a junkie who has just been popping out heroin babies willy-nilly with no way to provide for them and then mostly getting taken away from her. My friend adopted one. and now she feels obligated to try to lift up the mother. It's painful for me to watch. This is all from her need to just want a normal loving family. But she's just going to be disappointed because that woman is going to bring her down more than she's going to be able to lift her up. And she just keeps getting pregnant. You can't repair everyone, so just always make it your first priority to take care of you.

[ShyViolet]

Wanting a functional, loving family is not a sense of entitlement.  Every child deserves to have a loving, supportive family.  When they don't have that, it's terrible and unfortunate.  It's not a sense of entitlement to be angry that your family screwed you up.  I strongly suggest that you get into therapy to work on these issues.