I know this probably seems like a morbid title, but bear with me.

I’m active on Reddit, often in various “Advice” forums, and a common submission I see revolves around toxic relatives. People have horrible relationships with parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, whatever, and are often coming for advice on what to do about it. Sometimes that person, or persons, have screwed them over in various ways for decades, but when I suggest cutting them off, which the person knows is the best thing for them, they just can’t. They feel too guilty about it, or think they’ll look bad to others. So instead, they want to keep trying to find some way to make the person treat them better. And so they just constantly get let down.

But I always say that you’re not obligated to remain in contact with anyone. You are perfectly within your rights to remove toxic people from your life, no matter who they are. If the person is bringing more conflict than benefit to your life, causing more harm than good, then do yourself a favor and leave. Sorry, but blood is not always thicker than water.

I know this is hard for a lot of people to grasp, especially for those who have good families.

I remember a post I read last year where a woman was saying that her husband fell out with his sister 15 years earlier over her behavior and cut contact with her. But now, she’s in the hospital on dialysis and is considering getting off it, which if she does she’ll likely be dead within 2 weeks. She suggested to her husband that he go see her, but he said he didn’t want to. She claimed to respect his opinion but said that she and her husband have paid for a vacation to take the next month for their 25th anniversary, and she’s worried that if the sister died during that time, her husband wouldn’t be able to see her and might regret not doing so, so she was asking if she should insist on canceling the vacation, which would be non-refundable, so that her husband can go see her if he changes his mind.

Most people were like me, saying absolutely not, he made his choice, and it’s his choice to make (the woman admits she never had a close relationship with her sister-in-law), so she should leave him alone.

But there were also a bunch of people in the thread insisting that she should continue to try to get him to change his mind and go see his sister, framing this as for his own good.  They were arguing that if she dies without him reconciling with her first, he might regret it later when it’s too late. Some argued that it’s not even a question, that it’s 100% certain that he will regret it later if doesn’t see her.

But I responded no, leave him alone. And IF he does regret it later, then deal with it then. But don’t keep bugging him now, risking drama in her marriage based on that idea of what you think might happen at some point in the future. I’m sure other people have tried to force him to reconcile with his sister over the years, he doesn’t need to get that pressure from his wife, too. But, like I said, I think some people just fathom the idea of cutting off a family member and so they assume that everyone would feel the way they do. But that’s not necessarily true.

I can give a personal example now. Recently, my paternal grandmother died, just two days shy of her 98th birthday. For reasons I don’t feel like getting into (because it doesn’t matter whether anyone else agrees with my reasons or not), I had not seen nor spoken to her in about 16 years. And she lived just about a 10-minute drive from my house. Obviously, with her advanced age, I knew for years that she could die anytime, but that didn’t affect my view.

I did go to the funeral, merely for the sake of my uncles and cousins who I do like, knowing they were grieving. But here’s the honest truth:

I felt nothing. No grief, and no regrets.

Seriously, no second-guessing my choice, no wishing I’d talked to her one last time, nothing like that. She was already dead to me years ago.

And at this funeral, I saw my father, for the first time in over 23 years, when I’d cut him off too. I was polite to him, shook his hand, met my latest stepmother (he’d been married 4 times before her), whose 5 years younger than me, and my 20-something-year-old stepsister. But there was no reconciling with him, either. The death didn’t pull us together. And I know when he dies I won’t feel any grief or regrets either. I sat in the back of the church during the service (not up front with the rest of the family), and left afterward, skipping the burial at the cemetery.

If you can’t relate to this, that’s cool. But accept that there are people who feel the same, for whom cutting off a family member was the best choice for them. And if you’re someone reading this who wants to do it, but is feeling pressure not to, believe that it’s your life to live, and your choice to make. Don’t allow someone to make your miserable just because you’re related to them.