Chelsea

Good news everyone! About two years ago I read Real Time Relationships: The Logic of Love and tried to speak with my parents regarding many issues the book brought up. These topics made my parents very angry and do things that were very hurtful. I'm not sure why, I think it has something to do with our brains evolving in a way that made us want to like family, but I reached out to my family about a week ago. After a few email correspondences, I was thinking that I would write them off forever. It seemed clear to me that nothing had changed. Then, this morning I woke up and found another email from my mother. She apologized! I haven't spoken with her much since I received the email but I am very optimistic that we can begin interacting in a very honest and loving way. So excited! Thank you Stefan and FDR for introducing these topics to me and being so supportive! Peace & Love, Chelsea

Hi all, I haven't had consistent and/or positive interactions with my immediate family (mostly my mother) and mother's side of the family for about a year and a half now and, needless to say, Mother's Day has inspired lots of weird feelings. I initially choose to break with my immediate family and my mom's side of the family because they were more interested in controlling my actions than getting to know why I was choosing to act differently. Example: I didn't want to refer to my mom and dad as 'mom' and 'dad' anymore. Their reaction was basically to tell me too bad and that I had to refer to them as mom and dad. I was hurt because they did not ask why. They only tried to force me to act the way they wanted. (In case you're interested I chose to refer to them by their names because I felt as though we were equals and the need for a mom and dad had passed in my life.) This is a very minor example - I would not cease communication over this trivial of an issue. They also did things like tell my very Christian in-laws that my husband and I are atheists (when we explicitly asked them not to because we wanted to be the ones to have that conversation) in an attempt to scare us into taking to them (them being my parents) - among other things. In short, my parents actions displayed a complete disrespect for my, and my husband's, opinions and feelings in general and caused me to halt our relationship. My question for you is, do you think people change? Is it worth giving people another chance after such disrespect and pain? If so, how would i begin to do this? I feel badly knowing they are sad but is it with my short time on earth to try and reconcile with people who have hurt my husband and myself so badly?