Getting rid of negative people (even if they're related to you)

RK -

Newsflash: you have no obligation to keep in touch with your relatives. You owe them nothing. (Not even your parents - they chose to make you, you didn't ask for it.) You don't have a duty to spend time with them, not to mention lend money or offer a place to stay. You don't even have to write Christmas cards to your grandmother if you don't want to.

The same applies, obviously, to people not related to you. If you have people in your life who repeatedly push you down emotionally, get rid of them. Right away. What did you think would come out of it?

Some people may come to your mind instantly, but you might wonder how to cut ties with them. There are two ways.

  1. Inform them, using some method of communication (text is fine, face to face also, anything in between), that you don't want to be in contant with them anymore, at least for a while. If they ask why, you can tell them, or not - it's up tp you.

  2. Continue living your life, not informing them. If they try to contact you, you can either ignore them or refer to option 1.

Then, after your lack of communication has teached that person you don't enjoy their company, they will change their behaviour. And then you can decide if you want them back - if their new way of treating you is no longer pushing you down but pulling you up. It is very unlikely they've changed so much they would suddenly start increasing the quality of your life but it is possible.

A word of warning: if you let them back in your life, too close to you, they may interpret this as an approval for them to revert back to their old behaviour, in the occurrence of which you must do the alienating phase again.

You might be sceptic about the success rate of this method. While I can only speak for my own experiences, I must say I've done this on multiple occasions and it has worked 100 % of the time. Sometimes I've had to do the alienating phase twice to ensure the wanted behaviour but I've always got the relationship where I want it - distant or nonexistent.

RK