When you have to let a relative go: the guilt that follows you home

“On Monday I have to tell him we don’t need him any more. And on Sunday it’s my mum’s birthday, and he’ll be sitting opposite me.”

Many of the stories people from family businesses carry around for weeks, sometimes months, begin like this. The decision has often already been made — in their head, in the numbers, in conversations with management. But it has not been made where it hurts most: in the family. The cousin who has been with the company for twenty years but no longer does the job. The brother-in-law who was taken on because he was “going through a rough patch”. The younger sister who joined after university and never really found her place. When you have to let a relative go, a business decision turns into a family event.

In this post I won’t talk about contracts, severance pay or procedures — that is the work of lawyers and HR specialists, and you will need them at a time like this. I will write about what no contract can settle for you: guilt, what shifts in a family when a relative is dismissed, and how to get through the first family lunch afterwards.

One person, two sets of rules

Researchers of family businesses have been describing since the 1980s how the family and the company are two systems that live by different rules. In 1983 Ivan Lansberg called this institutional overlap: the family distributes according to need and belonging, the company according to contribution and competence. In the family you belong because you are one of us. In the company you stay as long as you do the job. Renato Tagiuri and John Davis drew the same relationship as three overlapping circles — family, ownership, business — and showed that this very overlap has both its strength and its price.

As long as everything goes well, the two sets of rules never meet. The relative works, the salary is paid, Sunday lunches are pleasant. But when the work isn’t going well, both sets of rules suddenly find themselves in the same person — and in you, the one who has to decide. As a manager you know you cannot keep him. As a grandchild, son, cousin or sister-in-law you feel you must not let him go.

This gap is not a personal weakness of yours. It is a feature of every family business. Once you see it, a lot of things shift: the guilt you feel is not proof that you are doing something wrong. Above all, it is proof that you care about both systems at once.

Why guilt is so loud here

Guilt is the emotion that tells us we have harmed someone — or could have. And losing a job really does cause harm. In a large 2009 meta-analysis, Karsten Paul and Klaus Moser found that on average 34 per cent of unemployed people had psychological problems, compared with 16 per cent of those in work. Losing a job is not just losing an income; it means losing rhythm, status, contacts and the sense of being useful. So your guilt is not irrational. It is responding to something real.

With a relative, though, something else joins it. You are not only taking away a job but — or so it seems — part of their belonging. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, one of the founders of family therapy, wrote about invisible loyalties: the unspoken ledger of debts and merits that every family keeps. Who gave what to whom, who owes whom. When you let a relative go, it can feel as though you have broken that ledger. Perhaps it was his father who once helped yours when the company ran into trouble. Perhaps your mother promised her sister that her son would “always be looked after”.

It helps to separate two kinds of guilt. Healthy guilt and toxic guilt look alike at first glance, but they lead to very different actions. Healthy guilt asks you: “Did I act fairly? Did I do what I could to make this as painless as possible for him?” Toxic guilt tells you: “You are a bad person for even thinking of it.” The first leads you towards careful action. The second paralyses you — and often leads to years of putting things off, which in the end harms everyone, the relative included. You will also find a short explanation in the knowledge base under guilt.

Underneath the guilt there is sometimes shame as well — the fear that the family will see you as cold and calculating, “just like Grandad was”. Guilt and shame are not the same: guilt is about an action, shame about who you are. You may have to answer for the decision. But it does not make you a bad person.

Moral distress: when you do the right thing and it still hurts

People who have to make decisions that hurt others often describe a particular feeling: they know the decision is right, and yet it feels as if they have crossed something important. We call this moral distress. I write more broadly about how leaders carry it through redundancies and crises in the post Redundancies, crises and moral distress.

In 2009 Brett Litz and colleagues described an even heavier form, moral injury — a lasting wound that arises when a person does or allows something that deeply violates their values. The concept was developed with war veterans and should not be carelessly transferred to everyday life. But it offers a useful hint: what hurts is not necessarily the decision itself, but the gap between what you had to do and what you believed about yourself. “In our family, we look after our own.” “Family comes first.” When you act against the sentence you grew up with, the image you have of yourself is shaken too.

That is why explaining the decision to yourself rationally is often not enough. You also need a space where you can say that it cost you something — without someone immediately assuring you that you did the right thing, and without anyone judging you.

What a dismissal shifts in the family

From a systemic point of view, a family is not a sum of individuals but a web of relationships in which a change in one place moves everything else. There is more on this in the post The family as a system. So when you let a relative go, it is not only his position that changes. Alliances, roles and conversations you will never hear all shift as well.

A few patterns that often appear in stories like these:

• The go-between. Someone — often a mother, an aunt or a grandfather — steps in between you and starts passing messages. We call this triangulation: the tension between two people spills over onto a third, who carries it for them.
• Taking sides. Relatives feel they have to be “for” one or the other. Some phone calls fall silent, others become more frequent.
• Old roles. If you were always the “responsible one” in the family, the one who sorts things out, the family may attribute this decision to you too — along with the anger. If the relative was the one who “never quite makes it”, the dismissal can harden that story even further. I write about how roles arise in the post Roles in the family.
• Old accounts. A dismissal often reopens old stories: who got more, who was overlooked, who inherited what.

None of this means the family is “bad” or that you caused it to fall apart. It means the system has come under strain and is looking for a new balance. What you can do is consciously choose which role you will play in that search — and which you will not take on.

Before you speak: what belongs to whom

One of the most common traps is hiding the decision behind others. “The board decided.” “The consultants said so.” “Dad wanted it this way.” That is understandable, because it is easier. But sooner or later the relative will learn the truth, and then a sense of betrayal will be added to the sense of loss. If the decision is yours, say it as yours.

It helps to answer a few questions before the conversation:

• What exactly is the reason? Would you make the same decision if this person were not a relative?
• Was the relative ever really told what was expected of him — or were expectations only voiced as hints over lunch?
• How much of what you feel is anger about the work, and how much is anger from older stories?
• Who in the family will expect you to apologise to them — and do you really owe them that?

It is also important to think about boundaries. Here a boundary does not mean a wall. It means clarity about which part of the relationship is changing (the working one) and which remains (the family one). You need to have that clarity yourself first, before you can offer it to someone else.

The conversation: one decision, two relationships

Others will tell you how to handle the formal part. From a family point of view, though, something simple matters: both relationships are present in the conversation, and both deserve words. A short example (composite, not a real person):

“I have to tell you something difficult today. I’ve decided that your contract won’t be renewed. It’s my decision, and the reasons are about the work, not about who you are.”
“So you’re throwing me out. After everything my father did for yours.”
“I understand that’s how it looks. And I know you’ll be angry. But you’re not leaving the family. I’ll be glad to see you at the holidays, even if you don’t want to talk to me.”
“I don’t know if I’ll come.”
“That’s your choice. The door stays open.”

There is nothing magical in this short exchange. But notice a few things: the decision is stated clearly and without apology; the other person’s anger is allowed and doesn’t have to be fixed straight away; the family relationship is named separately. And nowhere is there a promise that couldn’t be kept. “Everything will be fine” is not a sentence you should say. “The door stays open” is.

Don’t expect the first conversation to be understanding. Often it isn’t. A person who has lost their job has a right to be angry — and sometimes anger is the only way they can carry their shame in that moment.

The first holidays afterwards

For many people the hardest part is not the conversation itself but the first family gathering after it. A christening, a birthday, Christmas lunch. Who will come? Where will I sit? Will anyone say anything? Many put this gathering off or avoid it, but avoidance has its price: the longer it lasts, the harder it is to return.

A few things that often help:

• Don’t expect normality. The first gathering will be tense. That is not proof that the relationship is destroyed, only that it is wounded.
• Talk to the host. If someone else is hosting, your parents for example, ask them in advance what they need. Don’t ask them to mediate.
• Don’t explain the decision at the table. A holiday is not a meeting. If someone starts, you can calmly say: “We can talk about that another time. Today I’m here for Mum.”
• Allow someone not to come. Don’t take it as a verdict, but as their way of looking after themselves.

Time really does help here, but not on its own. It helps when someone uses it for small steps: a birthday message, a question about the children, an invitation to coffee that has nothing to do with the company. Out of steps like these a new understanding slowly grows — not about who was right, but about how the two of you are now relatives to each other. Without these steps, the pain tends to harden into resentment, which then sits quietly at every family table.

Exercise: two letters you don’t send

This exercise takes about half an hour, and you can do it today, whether the conversation is ahead of you or behind you.

1. Write the first letter as the manager. Briefly and factually: what happened, why the decision was necessary, what you did to make the process fair.
2. Write the second letter as the relative. What this person means to you, what memories you share, what you regret — not the decision itself, but the pain it brings.
3. Read both letters aloud. Notice at which sentence your voice catches. That is probably where the guilt is that doesn’t yet have words.
4. Underline the sentences that are not yours. Sentences that sound like your father, mother or grandfather: “We look after our own.” Ask yourself whether you agree with them — or have simply inherited them.
5. From the second letter, choose one sentence you could one day really say. Perhaps not today, perhaps only in a few months. But keep it.

The exercise is not meant to “get rid of” guilt. It is meant to separate it from the decision — so that the manager can do their job, and the relative in you can do theirs.

When this does not apply

I want to be honest about the limits of what I am writing, too.

Sometimes the guilt is justified. If the process was not fair, if the relative was left to his own devices for a long time without clear expectations, or if he became the scapegoat for problems that are not only his, your guilt may be telling you something true. Then it is not enough to soothe it. It is worth looking at the decision again, or at least at the way it was made. Family therapy is not a search for the guilty party, but nor is it a release from responsibility; more on this in the post Family therapy is not a search for the guilty party.

Sometimes the answer lies elsewhere. If poor work is a sign of addiction, serious illness or mental distress, the conversation about the job is only part of the story, and it makes sense to connect it with help from a doctor or other professionals. If you feel the relative is in serious distress after the dismissal and is saying he can’t go on, encourage him to seek help: in Slovenia, the mental health crisis line Klic v duševni stiski is available on 01 520 99 00 (from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samarijan helpline on 116 123 (around the clock), and in an emergency call 112.

Sometimes there is nothing left to preserve. There are families in which the relationship was empty or hostile long before the dismissal, and the decision merely revealed what was already there. There, the goal is not to keep warm holidays at any cost. The goal can also be to accept the relationship as it is, and to stop hoping that a single decision — in either direction — will repair it.

And finally: always handle the legal and business aspects of a dismissal with specialists in that field. This post does not replace them.

Where therapy can help

As a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, I am training in relational family therapy. This approach looks at how patterns from the family of origin repeat in present relationships — and how they can be changed. When a relative is let go, these patterns are often very close to the surface: who in the family was allowed to be strict, who had to be kind, who always tidied up after everyone else.

In a session we can look together at where your guilt comes from, which family stories the decision has woken, and how to stay in touch with the people who matter to you without having to give up the decision. Sometimes it makes sense to invite other family members as well. For those who would like to take a wider look at their family history, there is a longer session, A Look into the Past, in which we draw a genogram together — a map of the family across generations. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work in English.

What to remember

• The family and the business measure belonging by different rules — the gap you feel is structural, not a personal failure.
• Guilt when letting a relative go is often a sign of care. Separate healthy guilt, which leads to fair action, from the toxic kind that paralyses you.
• Say the decision as your own, and in the conversation name separately the family relationship that remains.
• The family will look for a new balance — make sure neither you nor anyone else becomes the go-between for everything.
• The first holidays will be tense; a new relationship grows from small steps, not from one big reconciliation.