I hate my uncle

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When my Social Security disability was approved and I told him about it, he said that I wasn't really disabled and that I should be out there trying to find a job.

Later, this year, like a month or two after my disability was found to continue, he tells me it's my choice to live on disability, and that the reduced income and inability to afford a car is therefore my fault. This was when I asked him to pick me up so we could go to my grandma's together.

I then offer to go out of my way so we can go to grandma's together, on the condition he stop talking crap about my disability. I explained to him that I went on disability only after 2 years of fighting a worsening of my condition. He says that he's entitled to his opinion, that it wasn't easy for him to work for 32 years, and that disability was a "lifestyle" (yes, my gay uncle used that term!) I chose to take on.

At this point, I laid it on thick, telling him I wasn't interested in spending time with an uncle who says such things and that I am also entitled to my opinion. I told him he shouldn't assume things about my disability when he still barely knows me.*

This dude is friggin' arrogant and won't listen. And him responding to me talking about my disability with his job, which we weren't talking about at all, gives me the creeps, because it almost feels like he sees me as his mini-me. Eww.

*In retrospect, he will probably claim to know me better, but to be honest I've seen him very little over the course of my life. He lived for us for a month when I was 5 before leaving. I didn't see him again until I was like 9 or 10, and only for a day or two. Then I didn't see him again until 2005, after I had graduated high school, for 2 weeks when he stayed with us. I didn't see him again after that until 2010 for a few days, then 2011 for a week. After that, I didn't see him again until December of last year when I relocated to Sacramento. He let me stay at his place for a night or so here and there between December and February, adding up to a total of no more than 10 nights over that period. Since then, I haven't seen him once.

Sounds like a man who is stuck in his ways.

Is there some reason why you can't simply stay away from him? I mean it doesn't look like you're going to do each other much good by interacting.

That's what I'm doing. I haven't seen him in person since February and we rarely talk by email or phone. I tried offering the olive branch, but he rejected it.

Still, it gets me pretty angry the way he's talked crap like that.

Still sore about it after 5 months. Sometimes I'm like that, I can get angry about things that happened years ago. Some things really touch a nerve.

The email convo that triggered the OP happened just yesterday, when I finally confronted him about what he was saying about my disability. Now that I know he won't change, I'm not going to interact further.

Oh I see. Well, you've given him every chance, and he's blown it. Some folks just can't stand the idea of anybody being on benefits, as if the disabled aren't disabled or something. There's probably not a lot you can do. Can't really build a friendship when one person insists you don't deserve your income.