Family alienation when you’re an unpaid carer. Let’s talk about it.

Caring is often a lonely and isolating experience, you don’t have time to do much else and you’re exhausted all the time so you naturally withdraw into yourself and tend to isolate as a way to cope. Or maybe that’s just me.

When it comes to family relations, caring can cause a real rift. On the side of the person doing the caring, there is often frustration or resentment at other family members that could help but don’t. On the non-carer side; there is often a lack of appreciation of just how hard the job is and therefore dismissal of how the carer feels. Plus they haven’t had to give up their lives so they have other priorities to focus on. Or maybe that’s just my family.

For fairness, both my (divorced) parents live in France- ze land of ze good social care. So the distance between us and the (comparative) healthcare paradise they live in makes it difficult for them to help or truly appreciate the problem. My mother still works and would help out more if she could. My dad, not so much, he is retired and has the time, money, and ability to help. But he doesn’t. Not even a little bit. Why? Because he doesn’t care. It’s simple really; nothing about his mother’s situation benefits him, he’s not willing to make changes to his life or golf playing schedule , and his daughter does it very well for free. He also doesn’t care that me looking after his mother requires me to sacrifice my life, as long as it is not his, he’s fine with that. I don’t know what that clinical level of selfishness is called but it reaches ‘sociopathic’ levels in my view.

Some situations in life reveal who a person is. They say you only truly know a person when you’ve seen them try to build IKEA furniture, been on the phone to a never-ending helpline; or when their elderly mother needs help and you’re their only child.

In 2020, I became an unpaid carer to my grandmother, found out who my dad is, and lived through a global pandemic. Big year.

The result is that I haven’t spoken to my father in about a year and half, and if truth be told, I hate him. I hate his selfishness, his rejection, his lack of action, I hate that he chooses to ignore the problem and that he consciously puts himself first every single time and in any situation. I hate that he doesn’t even try, and that he hates me back.

The depth of those feelings have surprised me, it is like a volcanic pit waiting to erupt when I think about it. I’m too busy to dwell on it much, and I’m glad I made the to decision accept who he is, however difficult and rage-inducing it may be. I have known since I was 15 that he wasn’t the man I thought he was (this isn’t the first display of his true nature) but it has taken me 20 years to do something about and decide that I will not tolerate his behaviour anymore. I think he’s actually quite pleased that we don’t speak, he doesn’t have to deal with me and my pesky attempts to hold him to account anymore, plus it means he can go on more golf trips. A win for him – and that’s all that matters.

Every family is different, and they each have their own problems. I share this not to air dirty laundry on the internet, but because I think it is yet another aspect of being an unpaid carer that isn’t talked about. It takes shape in different ways, and I’m willing to bet that most unpaid carers face some form of alienation from their families.

I don’t think it has to be this way, having some uncomfortable family discussions when things are going well could help formulate caring plans and hypothetical distribution of roles so families can stay united in difficulty; and one member doesn’t unfairly bear the brunt.