I’ve decided to cut off my family, and I’m terrified of telling them.

Some context: I (24M) have been living with my boyfriend (30M), for a little over seven months. He is intelligent, kind, and has an amazing personality. He is genuinely the best person I could have asked for, and being with him has shown me what it feels like to be respected, supported, and safe. He taught me how to be a man, and showed me how beautiful the world truly is.

I know my grandmother, who raised me, and the rest of my family love me in their own way. That is what makes this decision so difficult. But love does not erase the things they have done, and I have reached a point where I cannot continue pretending that everything is okay. I’ve done that for all my teenage and most of my young adult life. Growing up, my grandmother constantly belittled me. She called me slurs (especially f*ggot, in spanish and english), tore me down, and once threw and attempted to break a laptop that I had paid for myself. Even now, those memories stay with me.

My uncle is misogynistic and racist, and he continues to live with my family despite being more than capable of supporting himself. He walked away from his ex-wife and the family he had with her, but everyone continues enabling him as though his behavior is normal. Not to mention he does NOT always pay rent nor help around the house as I had done when I lived with them.

My grandmother was also never supportive of the idea of me finding a man. She even told me that I would never find anyone. But once she learned what my boyfriend does for work and how much money he makes, her attitude suddenly changed. Now she acts incredibly supportive whenever he is around, and it feels fake and transactional. It makes me wonder whether she respects my relationship at all or whether she simply likes what she thinks he can provide. I’m tired of the insults, the hypocrisy, the prejudice, and the feeling that I have to overlook everything because they are family. I don’t want to keep exposing myself or my boyfriend to people whose behavior I fundamentally disagree with.

The only person I do not want to cut off is my younger brother. He has always accepted me and supported me. I have trusted him with some of my deepest secrets, apart from my boyfriend, and he is the one person in my family I still truly want in my life.

Once I do this, I do not plan on returning to my hometown unless it is to see my brother or I am simply passing through. I am ashamed to say, I hate my family.

(TL;DR: I am scared as fuck to tell my family I essentially hate them, and want nothing to do with them anymore due to the past.)