How to Avoid a Family Cutoff BUT STILL Disconnect from toxic family members
In this post I will give you 10 steps for how to avoid a family cutoff but still disconnect from toxic family members by focusing on your own integrity. Integrity is one of the key building blocks of trust, both in relationships and with yourself.
This post is part 6 of my series on How to Rebuild Trust after a Parent’s Affair, based on Brené Brown's Elements of TRUST. Here are part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.
Honestly, I hesitate to use the word integrity, because it comes with all sorts of judging moral connotations. But integrity at its base is all about structure.
Think about a car or a stove. You really want your car or stove to be in structural integrity, because otherwise, they won’t work. Think of yourself as a human in a similar light. If your heart and your mind are not aligned, then you will act outside of your integrity. Depending on the situation, acting out of integrity may cause small blips or huge problems.
But if what you are after are deep, nourishing relationships, then acting with integrity is the only way to get there.
Let’s start with Brene Brown’s definition of integrity as one of 7 ingredients to build trust in relationships. For Brown, integrity is about choosing courage over comfort in relationships. Meaning, doing and saying what is right over what is fun, fast or easy. It also means walking your talk. What you say and what you do are consistent, and you are not asking others to do something that you will not do yourself.
This is a blog about parent infidelity, so one way to talk about integrity is the way that an affair breaks it. In so many situations, the cheating parent chooses what is fun, or easy, or thrilling, over the commitment made. Similarly, when talking to their kids, couples often choose the route that glosses over the infidelity, or paints one parent in a better or worse light than they actually deserve. Being honest and up front about cheating is so incredibly difficult, it makes sense that families want to avoid it altogether.
But again, we are not after surface relationships here. We are after a deep connection with the people in our lives who we love.
I have written other posts (here and here) about how to speak with your kids about an affair, so in this post I will focus on how to act in integrity when you are the adult child who discovers the affair.
Adult children who discover an affair often tell me that they often don’t know how to be. What they thought was the truth of their family has been blown up, even while their adult life may stay exactly the same. They don’t know how or if to talk about the affair, and they feel in one way like their life is proceeding as normal, while inside they are mixed up.
The solution, before you even deal with your family, is to regain your integrity on the inside.
10 steps to Regaining your Integrity
Give yourself some time. This is new information that you need time to process. Depending on how the affair plays out, it may really rock your world. You may need time to grieve. You will likely go through a stage that feels like chaos in your mind, as in, you don’t know what to think, you are unsure any more of what is right and what is wrong. This can feel incredibly destabilizing but is actually a good sign, because ot means that you are moving along in the process. Think about how something has to be broken down before it can reform.
Set some initial boundaries, and give yourself permission to change them later. You may need a break from speaking with your parents, and that may piss them off. That’s ok, and it does not necessarily mean that you need a family cutoff. Sometimes, when an affair comes out, everyone needs to go to their corners for a bit. TIP FOR PARENTS: You will be more successful if you respect the boundaries immediately, even if they hurt. The harder you fight, the longer it will take the boundary to change.
Learn what Integrity feels like. To do this, you need to get in touch with your physical body, as your mind tends to get in the way. To do this…
Think of an event or gathering that brings you unbridled joy. Where do you feel it in your body? It could be a bubbling in your chest or relief in your shoulders or tingles in your hands. For me, my stomach feels expansive, like it is suddenly full of space.
Next, think of a gathering or event that you went to and hated. A work event, an obligatory dinner with friends of friends. Where do you feel that in your body? For me, I feel the opposite sensation to a joyful experience, a constriction in my belly. Then it gets hard to breathe. (These steps are based on a similar exercise in Martha Becks’ Finding your North Star). This is your Integrity Barometer. You may need to practice it a few times before you go on to the next step.
What is the conversation you want to have with your parents? (Or in-laws) Make a list of the questions that you want to ask, the feelings you want to express, and how you want things to go moving forward. Don’t edit yourself. You need to know exactly what you want going in. When you are ready, try and have that conversation.
Do an integrity check. How does your body feel about the conversation. This can be tricky because with hard conversations, they can really feel bad even when they go well. But I mean, do you feel like you said what you needed to? Did you feel like you were honest for yourself, even if you pissed off your family? How did you feel about your family’s reaction? If it did not go well, is it worth trying again? How does trying again feel in your body? NOTE: You can keep trying for as long as you want. There is no wrong answer here. But what if I get tired of having the same conversation? What if it is clear to me that my family is not going to ever want to have this conversation? Or change? What do I do?
Set a stronger boundary. Here is where it gets harder. You need to stay within your integrity even if the conversation goes badly, and you do not come to an agreement. For example, maybe your husband’s siblings do not believe that the affair happened, and all you want to do is keep trying to convince them. But I can promise you, from experience, that will not work. What is more likely to work is setting a stronger boundary. Something like, I see we do not agree on this point, and I cannot spend the holidays with you as this is effecting me deeply. Actions speak louder than words.
It’s at this point that you are probably starting to starting to say to yourself: But wait! If I listen to my body and stay in my integrity then I will never spend time with my family again! I can’t do that! I am not ready to cut off contact with them! That’s ok. Cutting off contact is one option, but here’s the thing: If in your heart you want to continue to have contact with your family, then you ARE acting within your integrity.
Learn how to accept your family as they are. Because then, being with them will not set you off. Part of discovering our integrity is recognizing when people that we love do not desire the same kind of honest relationship that we do. Then we need to make a decision about what it is that we are willing to live with.
How do you do that? That is for the next post on Non Judgement.