hey youtube alex here in this video i want to talk about kind of a tough subject but i realized i probably should avoid these subjects just to be nice and to portray this only positive type of thing i
think that there's a lot of positivity but i mentioned it before part of my interest in traveling abroad is avoiding certain pains in the united states whether it be financial toxic people unhealthy food etc and so for me
i thought i'd just talk about why you know it makes more sense for me to avoid talking to my family why we are estranged so for those who aren't familiar estrangement for me functionally is i don't speak to
any of my family members any of my biological family members and so for me i thought i'd just talk about why you know it makes more sense for me to avoid talking to my family why we are estranged
so for those who aren't familiar estrangement for me functionally is i don't speak to any of my family members any of my biological family members well you might be wondering how does somebody get to that point with their
family i know a lot of people are close to their families especially in places i travel abroad and so it seems pretty strange this idea that we're not going to talk anymore we haven't in years i haven't talking
to several of my family members in 10 years before i get into this you should understand this is not necessarily easy subject to talk about for me even though it has been a long time for that between me
seeing them and talking to them but i think it's necessary because i think some of you may find yourself in this position at some point or another in life so really for me it started when my mom passed
away she passed away in the year 2000 i was eight years old i watched my male cousin basically skip the funeral so he could play video games literally we were getting in the car to go and he was
playing video games and said oh no i don't participate in funerals and that was the first sign i knew something needed to change but i was eight years old and how can eight-year-old conceptualize these things but really it
started before that because as soon as my mother passed away before even the funeral happened uh my aunt came to our house where we lived and basically pirated and looted everything of value in the house she even recruited
me to help with this i had no idea what was going on i didn't really fully process my mom was so as you can see that's reason enough i stayed in touch with my aunt for the next 10
years when i was 18 and i moved out i got kicked out i was responsible for myself financial housing everything i just thought why would i be close to this person that's that's basically a sociopath why would i
want a relationship with somebody that perhaps egged my mother on in her mental illness and and really took advantage of a terrible situation and was just all around unpleasant to be around enabled some really terrible behaviors on the
part of her children her children are anyway that's something else i'll get into in this video really what caused me to go no contact with my male cousin was that he basically cut me out of his wedding last
minute i was set to be his groomsman and he's a really narcissistic individual he's getting his just desserts but that's a topic for another video and so like a week before the wedding i couldn't make it when he
snapped his fingers to come to his wedding rehearsal or whatever which honestly i think marriage is overrated and a lot of people that get married could probably have stood to not get married or waited to get married in
his case he knocked his girlfriend at the time up and so he had no real choice so basically after i refused to show up on the spot to do some kind of rehearsal or whatever he said you are
no longer my best man this and that and i left it insulting left an insulting voice message on my voicemail i didn't even bother to listen to it because i didn't really like him at that point anyway he's
just not really a good person doesn't really have any friends and for good reason but after he did that he contact tried to contact me again saying oh you could still be in the wedding but i found another
person to be my best man and i was just like no i don't think so i don't really want to talk to you anymore i haven't spoken to him since it's been about 10 years i think this summer
is like 10 years since all that went down and so uh i'm really glad i went no contact with him honestly he doesn't really have any redemptive characteristics uh he got his job because of his dad he before
i went no contact joked around about how lazy they were how they don't take the job seriously but because it's a state job nothing can be done so the next person i'm no contact with my family is the
younger of my two female cousins why am i no contact with her well not too long before that i was visiting my older older female cousin's house at the time and the younger female cousin demanded to have access
to my social media i removed her because she's just basically another really narcissistic person and i didn't really want her to be privy to my business so she after i said no she cursed me out and insulted me
and then uh tried to pretend like nothing happened say a year later and oh we're all friends i was like no i don't want anything to do with you why would i want anything to do with you and
now she's approaching 40 years old still lives with her father and her son she can't hold down a job because every time she gets a job she falls asleep on the job because she doesn't take it seriously and
does whatever or she basically does something to get fired she argues or disagrees or just doesn't do something seriously so she can't hold down a job she has a spotty job history meanwhile she had resources to go to
college there was resources set aside specifically to pay for her education so as you can see we're already off to a bad start my aunt looted and raided my mother's home of all the valuables my cousin besides that
my cousin bullied my male cousin tried to bully me a lot he did bully me and i don't want to be bullied i don't want to participate in that paradigm or that dynamic i think it's really a waste
of time aside from that my female cousin also sent a really nasty my younger fellow cousin sent a really nasty letter to my grandmother talking about you couldn't control your daughter and now you can't control your grandson this
and that this and that and has poor handwriting is doesn't really have a strong command of the english language even though she was born in the united states and went to american public schools which honestly aren't that great
but still but that was really the final straw her writing this nasty letter and trying to disguise her identity she also called my grandmother senile to one of her friends like in her front yard just really an imbalanced
person somebody with some deep-seated psychological issues so at this point you might be wondering what about your older female cousin well she she's been in rehab for the last year so if that tells you anything she basically lost
her nursing license because she stole medication from people who basically were elderly people who didn't really know what was going on and then she got caught because naturally it's very easy to count medication so she lost her license
lost her job but remained married to this real loser of a guy and they had several children and two of their children basically their children are not doing so good because their parents are extremely neglectful and abusive but
she after that eventually she got back on she got clean for some short amount of time i don't really believe she got clean whatever the discussion is anyway she she fell back off on the substances then they went
bankrupt and lost their house and she decided to become a homeless person and her ex-husband was able to maintain his job for a while because he was a drinker somebody who could not control his drinking then he lost
that job and so as you can see with with these individuals and i'll get into my grandmother last just because i think that's probably the most important one as you can see they just make really bad decisions and
they don't just make bad decisions they try to drag other people into their bad decisions and they often do so with success at the detriment of everyone that gets involved so yeah i haven't had as much of a
problem staying no contact with my aunt my older female cousin or my male cousin but with the younger female cousin i mentioned that insulting cursed me out i basically last time she tried to find me on social media
and contact me on a different platform that i had locked her on and i told her look i'm going to contact the police if you contact me one more time and i will pursue legal action and there's a
record of this in the messages so she understands that if she tries to contact me again for any reason that i will contact the police so the final person that i'm estranged from my grandmother who didn't really raise
me just kind of half butted everything but that's another discussion uh in her case where can i start uh let's see well when i was in high school she would go through my room even in middle school she'd
go through my room throw away things she didn't like she would try to stop me from enjoying certain kinds of music she it wasn't parenting it was really authoritarianism and trying to trying to control every aspect of my
life to be what she couldn't be and she was deeply dissatisfied that regardless of how much she was hateful toward me she took away everything i loved i was really into chess she stopped me from playing chess even
though i was growing my skill set really fast is really a wonderful addition to my life i'd also gotten into an academic high school in nashville that is really really top-notch and really a fantastic opportunity a lot of
people go through that high school and become medical doctors engineers lawyers scientists mlk magnet but after two years their seventh and eighth grade she made up some kind of excuse to break up with her partner at the time
that we were living with in nashville this uh retired scientist guy named sidney fleischer and uh basically moved me away from there moved me back to hendersonville took me out of this really good high school to go to
terrible frankly public school that was not a magnet and that really set me back a lot because going to a fantastic high school like that for people that don't have a lot of money can really make the difference
between being really successful and scraping by and i haven't scraped by the last 10 years but i haven't done nearly as well as i could have if i had stayed at that math and science academic magnet and certainly
some other kids also got pulled out because their parents didn't have their lives together and had to leave but still it's worth pointing out that really set me back but it just started there when i was 15 she
got me on probation for arguing with her i didn't attack her i didn't spit on her i didn't curse at her i just wanted to play video games in my spare time because it really allowed me to escape
not having a mom not having a dad not really having any sense of community not living around any other asian people just all around terrible and so for three years i was tested for substances even though i'd never
done anything like that before probation i had a curfew i couldn't even i had to call the po to visit my own family which i wasn't estranged yet from that at that point as a teenager and anytime i
would ask her to do anything she'd tell me to contact the probation officer so it became this thing where she basically gave her authority over the government so as soon as i was 18 i uh not too long
after i was 18 i got in trouble with uh some greenery and i had to basically then she kicked me out i moved in with my stepdad who's not a good guy either i'm also strange from him and
i then had to move to this really small town near memphis and not a good experience as and as soon as i got there she was trying to call him saying oh no i changed my mind i changed
my mind because she kicked me out due to uh just being embarrassed and as an 18 year old getting kicked out is not easy not when you don't have marketable skills not when you went to a terrible high
school not when you don't really have any direction or instruction on how to be an adult and the sabbath is not an adult either he's totally reliant upon generosity from his family he would argue otherwise but he inherited
a lot of money and that's why he acts the way he does really entitled and i cut him off because he tried to get violent with me a couple of years ago and i'm not interested in that at
all i'm not interested in doing that i personally have trained martial arts i understand the consequences of fighting and i would only do so in self-defense and before i'd ever consider using my skills i'll run i don't care
what the situation is any trained intelligent martial artist that you talk to is going to tell you to run before you try anything else but so after this i eventually i made a made some money and i i
got an apartment back in nashville and then she called me and tried to tell me if you don't give me where you live i'm going to send people after you and she's done this before and so it's not
really i'm not really playing that game so then i just quit talking to her and i didn't see her at all through college and sometimes she would call me with a different number and start crying oh this and
that this and that and i had to explain to her look you know i don't want to live in fear i don't want to be around somebody that tries to provoke fear in me and she couldn't understand this
so i just kept up the estrangement and in the 10 years since i moved out i've seen her maybe five times it's actually this fall will be three years since the last time i saw her and before that
it was i think two or three years and i just don't really like her i think that she's a really deeply immoral person she tried to use false accusations against my stepdad when i was a teenager even though
there is nothing of the sort he's not a good guy but there's a difference between being not a good guy and being a predator so finally over the years she and i argued and fought and and uh so
that's kind of why i stated strange i was like look everybody's oh you need to be nice for grandma i'm like look we fight and argue every single time within five to ten minutes of meeting we're arguing and
arguing and uh to me it's not really helpful to me to be doing that because i need to be focusing on work and improving my skill set it's not helpful to her because she's almost she's 90 years old
so trying to argue and and this and that with a 90 year old is just doesn't make any sense it just to me it's just a waste of time and i don't care about person uh personal this and
that at this point i'm just not interested in that so the final thing that really sealed the deal so to speak was that i want to say six months ago i was going through a tough time living where
i was living just really not a good place to live and trying to call her to ask for input advice because she's always telling me how many wealthy people she knows how many wealthy people she's friends with how
high this is a common thing with narcissists by the way is they want to associate with people that they believe to be high status and will make them look high status so then she essentially uh told me not
to call her anymore and uh basically that was for the best and now she's telling her friends uh that i won't call her and her kids and her grandkids ignore her and they don't give her attention and they
just the consistent victimhood mentality and the reality is if somebody tells me not to contact them i'm not going to contact them anymore period i've had somebody else get angry a former mentor and try that and then try
to go back on it the thing is when people say don't talk to me anymore to me usually what it means is i can't handle the truth i can't handle you speaking to me in a bi-directional manner i
want it to be a unidirectional relationship where i tell you what to do and you just accept it but i don't do that because now i make my own money i'm capable of feeding myself i have savings i
don't have to take anything from anybody except for an employer which i would respect and follow their rules instructions guidelines do everything to a t because that's what i'm getting paid to do uh if if you don't have
that then really it's just too bad but yeah a lot of these people they say don't talk to me again they don't realize i'm going to follow what you just said i'm not i take what people say seriously
and some people really don't like that they want to constantly get the benefit of the doubt and constantly have somebody willing to forgive them and overlook things and it's like no like life is too short i don't i
have too many friends the thing that my grandmother doesn't realize my former mentor doesn't realize a lot of people won't realize i have too many friends i know too many people in the case of my mother i knew
she was a good person because over 100 people showed up to the funeral the parking lot was packed the building was packed everybody wanted to pay their respects because she was an incredible person and and so i kind
of thought about it as like i could just cut out the bad people in my life i can cut out these toxic people i don't have any reason to associate with them other than their manipulation tactics that make
me feel guilty or or embarrassed for not being close with them and frankly nobody's close with them a lot of these people basically they have no friends i sort of notice wait you've lived in the same area for
decades you have no friends that's really not a good sign another thing that these people do a lot is they constantly shuffle through relationships and different kinds of people because as soon as people find out what they're about
they don't want to be around them anymore when you find out somebody is aggressive somebody does false accusations somebody uh rips people off somebody's just out for themselves only you don't want to associate with that person and that's
part of why i made these channels i'm like i could associate with people who the only reason we interact is mutual benefit except for a few hate watchers i think most of people watching my channel get a lot
of benefit from this and they really enjoy my topics of conversation and and what we could talk about and i i definitely welcome all of you to leave comments down below definitely ask me whatever you feel would be
interesting content to you and i can work on organizing and putting it together but yeah with my stepdad a couple years ago i told him i'm gonna go to japan see my grandma's hometown he flipped out and called
me lazy tried to get violent with me and i had to threaten to call the law enforcement people and anytime i'm dealing with somebody where i have to threaten to call law enforcement we're not friends anymore like by
the time we're not close anymore uh by the time it gets that point there's no advantage for me in trying to once it's there it's over it's over and so i cut him off as well so i've cut
all these people off and i'm happier than ever and i've noticed in the times in my life when i maintain no contact with them because no contact has been an off and on thing with some of these people
for about 10 years once i was realized i was done i was like wow i can you know i can really even though i have nothing in some way i have a lot and i have self-respect and self-respect
is invaluable and that's why if you're somebody who's considering estrangement or you are estranged keep in mind that you have self-respect and you don't need these other people especially if you're living in the us uk australia canada typically
if you improve your skill set you work hard you work your way up you can get to a position where you're going to be able to build your savings if you live fiscally responsibly you're going to be able
to consider jobs in other countries i'm considering after i spend a couple of years in thailand finishing up my cs degree i'm thinking about going to tokyo i also really like the bay area and i'd love to work
in the bay area but man it just seems like it'd be so cool in tokyo and if i was worried about what these people thought or what they were saying i wouldn't do it because all these people have
discouraged me from traveling they've tried to fight with me on it tried to tell me oh you can't do that i can do that i have the funds i have the savings i'm not borrowing money to travel i
meet interesting people i met the lady i'm seeing right now through my travels i really opened up my mindset my world view and and they're really close-minded people so it was important for me to get away from that
yeah i hope this video has been helpful my name is alex channel's alex living abroad definitely subscribe if you find this content to be helpful empowering invigorating etc i also want to give a shout out to all my
subscribers who have been here since the beginning we're approaching 300 which is really mind-blowing to me that 300 people actively are interested in seeing what i have to say definitely comment down below if you get the chance because
that really helps with the youtube algorithm to show engagement and to share my videos with more people and finally give me a thumbs up hit the like button sometimes uh i feel like it uh it passes our minds
just because we are fans of channels and so i try to do this with channels that i'm i'm a big fan of as well and really show that algorithmic support so thank you for watching i know it hasn't
been the most happy video but i want to also explain to people what i'm getting away from by traveling long term so anyway i'll see you next time
