I will be following this @JackofHearts, as I have some serious long-term issues with a family member. Thanks for asking. GQ.
Sorry I can’t answer this, myself.

Yes, I once didn’t speak to my mother for a year because she would not respect my boundaries.

I also had a set to with my sister that lasted for at least a year. She reached out the olive branch before she got married, and I decided the relationship was more important than my issue with her. I’m glad I did because she died at the age of 49 just a few years later.

Yes. A sibling. He is an alcoholic and continues his ways. He was different as a teen. Nothing remains of the young boy I once loved. I could’ve handled that but when he is drunk, he can be a mean drunk and you never know when his drunken anger will show up. So I just walked away. At family gatherings we speak politely but I ignore him and he ignores me. We may sometimes offer suggestions to each other through other family members but that is it. He knows I can’t stand to be around him when he is drunk. I also have another sibling that I no longer communicate with either. After years of always being the one to initiate communications, I just gave up. He is like that with everyone. The rest still try from time to time but it’s hard to maintain a one way relationship.

No. It’s because I still have to live with them :p But a stronger reason is that I love them. Everyone has their flaws, no one is perfect. They piss me off sometimes, but they are still my family. Not to mention most often they do that out of their concern for me.

^^Same story as @Pandora.‘s
I really miss the kid I used to go hiking and camping with, hunting rabbits with bow and arrow. We could be sailing together right now, if it wasn’t for his addictions. What a fucking waste.

I was estranged from my step-father for years over the Vietnam War, the counter-culture thing, some aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. Neither of us would budge. But my mom loved him and he was very good to her, so finally, long after the war had ended we somehow found common ground. Now, my favorite memories of him are of the conversations we’d have while watching old classic westerns on Saturday afternoons in his living room.

He wasn’t such a bad guy. We were both just stubborn sons of bitches. He outlived my mom by a couple of years and I spent more time with him, made sure he was comfortable in the end. My mom made a good choice when she married that man. He was all right.

No, we have had our disagreements but have stuck together.

About twenty years ago I had one big knock-down drag -out fight with my brother when he was drunk and going through a rough depressive episode where afterward he was too embarrassed to speak to me for a few days but he finally steeled himself to call and apologize and we have never spoken of it again

At present my sister is avoiding my phone calls, she is pissed because I pointed out some inconvenient truths last time I visited but even then she still responds on FB so go figure.

No. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had plenty of disagreements with my parents and siblings,but it’s never come to severing relationships.

My grandpa is an alcoholic, so everyone does this when he passes out on the couch.

My late brother. I had come “home” for my father’s funeral. When he found out that my then bride-to-be was black, he was sure I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Not that he had anything against my then-fiancee personally, but he thought that we would face nothing but trouble, and that I should consider that. I knew his feelings were heartfelt, and he did not want to see me suffer, but I was still upset with him.

We did not speak for several years. The fact that we lived 1300 miles apart did not help matters.

Eight years later, shortly after my mother’s funeral, he called and asked to speak to my wife. He then proceeded to apologize to her, and told her that he thought she was the best thing that had ever happened in my life. The wife and I passed the phone backk and forth several times during that conversation, and we all had a deeply felt, tearful reconciliation.

We saw him several years later, when we were in town for a family reunion. He was wheelchair-bound, having experienced several strokes, complications from frostbite-related amputations. I almost didn’t recognize him when I first saw him.

I went to visit him at his home, and took my six-month old daughter (who is obviously black) to see him. He was bedridden, and asked me to place her next to him in the bed. He played with her, as best he was able, and she laughed and giggled in response. It was beautiful and moving.

Well, that was the last time I saw him. He passed later that year. It’s been 15 years, and I still miss the hell out of my big brother.

@JackofHearts This is been an unexpected catharsis for me. Thanks for the Q!

My mother was very brilliant but troubled, kind of like a Sylvia Plath type. Talented in music, writing and language but emotionally fragile and was an alcoholic. She moved out of state when I was 19 and our relationship was very strained. After the birth of my daughter we had a major falling out when I told her she would need to stay in a hotel when she came to visit and that there would be no drinking in my home.

My boundaries went over like a led balloon of course.
Too much drama to get into but, suffice it to say I kept a comfortable distance from her until her death. The woman was the master of guilt trips and “poor me” ploys and while I understood the nature of her emotional issues I refused to play into them by the time I reached my early 30’s.
I took after my dad, the architect, caring but a logical thinker not prone to histrionic displays. To this day I cannot stand overly emotional women. Nothing worse than a drama queen, gah! haha

How is this issue working out for you, @JackofHearts?

Never a parent, thank god. Mine had their faults and mercifully kept them from us until we were adults when we could understand better through our own life experiences, and ultimately accept. I feel very lucky in that department. But I’ve had to push away a brother just younger than I, a boy who was a gifted student, an amazing baseball player, and had an infectious sense of humour. From a very young age, he seemed to cast a spell over all the females in his life. He was genuinely charming. We spent the best years of our childhood doing what boys do best: trying to kill themselves in our lust for life (and traumatizing our poor mother in the process).

At a time when we could be sailing the Caribbean together, reliving the best of times and creating new ones as wiser men, he has chosen to fall to addictions which possesses him as surely as if Satan himself has taken command over his will. I miss him greatly, but I cannot have him in my life. In the process of destroying his mind and body, he destroys everything around him and has left a debris field as ugly as any downed jetliner and, most frustrating of all, appears unaware of any of this. I mourn him daily.