No one’s family is perfect. Family members can be embarrassing, flaky or prone to arguing constantly, or just terrible at putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Some families are definitely worse than others, however – and when it comes to toxicity, those listed here are the worst of the worst. Here are the stories of 25 toxic families as found by Reddit, and the moments their relatives realised that they were totally out of line.
1. Stolen birthday
I had my graduation from engineering the same day as my mother’s birthday. I, of course, had no control over the date that was chosen.
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My mother said I “ruined her birthday” so she scheduled her birthday party to be on my actual birthday. Her birthday is March, mine is August.
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2. Friends in the hospital
Years ago I was in the hospital after getting stabbed in the abdomen. I went under and had to be brought back, woke up in the hospital full of stitches, but still alive. I had a really great group of friends that came throughout the weeks of my being there, to the point that I got my own room because it was disturbing fellow patients I shared a room with and the staff were super nice about it.
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The only family member to visit was my younger sister. My mom, dad, other four siblings… None of them came, and my mom only phoned and communicated to me through the nurses, never speaking directly to me until I was back at home.
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3. Christmas redecoration
My ex-sister-in-law once broke into my house and started painting my living room while I was at work.
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When I asked for an explanation, I found out that she didn’t like the colour and that it would just ruin her Christmas when she came over for the holidays.
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4. Cat attack
I was 8 and sitting in my new babysitter’s apartment having an asthma attack. I was very allergic to cats and my mom had left me with her despite knowing my allergy and knowing that she had nine cats. What was so important that she leave me there? She wanted to f**k my older sister’s boyfriend and needed me out of the way. She hadn’t even sent my inhaler with me.
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I nearly died. My sister found out and got in a fistfight with my mom in the hospital hallway while respiratory therapy was working with me. They both caught an STD from the dude and I learned to always have my inhaler on me.
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5. Grandma’s fake funeral
I have a lot of these and they’re all pretty crazy, but I’ll go with the first one. When I was six years old, my aunt (who was my guardian), faked my grandfather’s death. She lied to all of us: local churches, her friends, and strangers, just so she could get sympathy and money.
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She wrote to multiple people asking for support. She needed money for a headstone and the funeral, etc. People bought into it. You can imagine our surprise a year later when we received a letter from our grandpa saying he was coming to see us.
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6. Whose money is it anyway?
My family basically put everyone’s paycheck together and whatever was extra after bills it was more or less fair game to use for my parents. I constantly got my paychecks drained, so I tried saving money up by saying I had a little less than what I did. After a year I had about 1k saved up.
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My mom took my card to “buy dinner” and proceeded to check the balance on my card. She saw that I had a lot more money than I was telling them about. She used my card to buy over $150 of food that I got none of and then kicked me out of the house for “making the family do with out.” Imagine not being proud of your kid for trying to save money.
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7. Takesies backsies
When my parents retracted their promise to pay for my college when they realized that I had been accepted into a premier school on scholarship. They pulled a “here is your one way ticket, you go you can never come back”. I ended up going to the local state school they wanted, flunking out due to stress depression and painkillers.
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24 years later, my brother is on his 4th 4 year degree and they are supporting him and his wife. Oh and his “professional poker playing”.
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8. Monster brainwashing
I was visiting my parents and had turned on Super Monsters for my kids to watch. The episode that came on was one where the students make fun of someone because they look different. During the culmination of the episode where they discuss how it’s not nice to laugh at people who are different and that we should treat all people with respect no matter what, my father grabbed the remote.
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He turned it off declaring “I’m so tired of this indoctrination bulls**t. I’m not gonna sit here and watch this”. I wasn’t aware that treating other people like human beings was indoctrination.
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9. Not even socks
My birthday: “I got you a pack of socks, but I realized I can get them cheaper from somewhere else, so I’m going to return them.”
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My brother two weeks later: “I think I’d like archery, will you get me this 600 dollar bow?” Parents: “oh hell yes!” …I never got the socks.
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10. Prison party
Each time my brother got out of jail/prison (4x) there was a party with at least 20 people including all my siblings, parents, etc. but when I graduated college and grad school (the first of my family to do either), only my grandmother showed up.
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BUT if anyone needs money, a favour, a go-between, or to borrow something, guess who they run to?
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11. Graduation blues
My mom didn’t even bother coming to my college graduation because my younger sister had a softball game. It wasn’t an important game or anything, but she’s a narcissist who lived through my sister’s sports achievements, so she valued that more than my achievement that she couldn’t use to boost her own self-esteem. I graduated with a 4.0, but never got so much as a pat on the back from either parent for it. It felt bad.
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To add another story: I also got the top score (5) on all my AP tests for two years in a row in high school, so I got a special award from NY state. My parents never even mentioned it to me. I hung my award on the fridge myself. It was so sad.
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12. Credit check in the hospital
When my mom opened my mail, took out a credit card check, made it out to herself for $4,000, and put it in front of me to sign while I was in the hospital getting chemotherapy. I did not sign it, and she was very angry and told me how I owed her.
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We really didn’t have any kind of a relationship after that because I was just trying to stay alive and the stress was too much. Then my sister started jumping all over me because I was asleep and didn’t answer the phone when she called me. Because I was tired from the cancer and the treatment. Yeah we’re still not talking.
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13. Lunch at the dealership
It happened this past week. I asked my mom if we could go out to lunch and we made plans for Thursday lunch. She stood me up to go shopping for a new car, kept calling and saying, “just one more dealership!” I was waiting over 3 hours in the shopping complex by the restaurant.
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She apologized over text and asked if she could come to see me in person to hug me and show me her new car.
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14. Paint on the windshield
When my dad gave me the silent treatment because he thought that I crashed the car he had just bought for me and I wouldn’t own up, because it had red marks either side of the window.
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He thought I must have hit a barrier or something, despite me pointing out that would have smashed the screen. After a week of racking my brain, I asked if there was a red for sale banner across it… he replied yes, then slowly began talking to me again.
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15. Abandoned abroad
I was living abroad for a year. My family weren’t happy for me at all. My best friend, who was living with me, was talking with her family on a daily basis and they came to visit her – all her siblings and parents (every month someone was visiting).
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My family? They barely called me, maybe once a month and no one came to visit me. My dad and brother were supposed to come and visit and in the end they didn’t. I knew we had a messed up situation, but when I saw how my friends’ family treated her, I knew lack of love in all my life was not normal.
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16. Fighting on the lawn
11 years old when my mom and I came home to my aunt stealing our stereo equipment, when my mom confronted her, she pulled a knife. at the same moment my uncle happened to be driving by, slammed on the breaks, reversed and then came into the yard on the lawn and hit the corner of the house a little bit, jumped out of the van and pulled a gun on my aunt.
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As my mom unpacked everything for me later she explained that my aunt was stealing to get money for her drug habit. much later I found out that my uncle was high as a kite and shouldn’t have been driving at all. I look back on that day as the day I decided not to never do drugs.
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17. Endless toxicity
There was a single moment when I realized how much of our conversation, whether we were at the dinner table, driving in the car, going to church or school, at church or school and pretty much anywhere else, would be about how dumb and bad people are and how much better we were than them. Friends, family, enemies, each other. We would just constantly spew malicious talk about others.
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I remember the first time I pushed back, everyone just stopped and stared at me like I had horns growing out of my forehead. Thankfully, I think we’ve all changed dramatically. It still happens, but far less frequently.
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18. Skipping the wedding
When my parents told me they couldn’t come to my destination wedding, but, “Oh how funny, we’ll be a few resorts over from where you’re taking your honeymoon” (in a different foreign country).
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My family couldn’t afford to come to my wedding, but they could afford to take a week long all-inclusive vacation.
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19. All or nothing
One parent bombards my phone by calling me multiple times a day, to tell me the same s**t, and to unload all of their problems onto them.
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The other hasn’t so much as texted me since Xmas unless to reply to something I sent them. Not even on my birthday.
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20. Chicken for dinner
I had a pet rooster when I was 7-8 years old, my grandma who lived in the states and came to visit us in Panama once every 4 years( red flag right there), finally came to visit. So I came home from school, and I looked for my pet rooster, and I couldn’t find him, So diner time came and we were having diner, which was as you might have guessed…”chicken”.
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I asked where is my rooster… ” you’re eating him”…NOOOOOOOOOO, you know who murdered my animal, my grandma, and it’s not like we were poor either, we had a large house and three cars, so by no means were we struggling financially. I hate that old fart.
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21. The empty ice tray
My stepmom kicked me out of the house for 3 months after beating my a*s because I didn’t refill an icecube tray. I was rushing out the door late for Spider-Man 3 and forgot.
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My stepbrother shot literal holes in the fancy dining room wall with a air rifle after (pre-legalization) taking bong hits in the kitchen. There was barely a discussion.
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22. Bedroom chaos
I came home from a school trip, and it was dark and I was walking home, I really enjoyed the walk, and when I came home I was generally happy, only to see my room trashed. Like- literally.
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Weird stains on the wall (coffee?) my dresser was also outside empty, my clothes on the floor and my bed placed in the middle of the room, clearly thrown with the sheets ripped off. It made me realize that whenever my mom gets angry she’ll just trash the house, only this time she got personal and did it to my room.
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23. Lazy in labour
When my parents showed up with a whole party uninvited while I was in labour with my first baby, waited outside for 6 hours while I laboured, then when I had an emergency c-section they went home before I woke up from the anaesthesia and didn’t say anything until I texted them that they could see us.
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They didn’t come back until after lunch the next day and they were mad at me and my husband for not being more informative, even though i couldn’t text them because I had been asleep.
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24. No more blue jeans
I don’t like blue jeans because I just don’t wear blue pants, anyway one Christmas I got a ton of jeans and i respectfully told my aunt and grandparents that I don’t like jeans and my aunt said oh well f**king deal with it and my family started laughing at me.
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I laughed along (it wasn’t funny at all) just so it didn’t seem awkward. I also got mocked during the day and my aunt also said that she wishes I get more jeans during prayers at dinner. Next Christmas I also get a load of, you guessed it, more jeans.
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25. No takeaway for you
Local Chinese food place has a 4 for 30$ meal deal thing, my family is my two moms, me, and my brother. So, 4 for 30$ right? Everybody gets a meal right?
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Nah. My brother got two. When I got upset about it, I pretty much got shut down in every way shape and form. I was ungrateful, I was needy, I did too much, lord y’all would have thought I lit the new house on fire cause I was mad we moved or something!!
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