Such families characteristically experience powerful feelings of ambivalence, resentment, denial, guilt, and anger. Rejecting families cut themselves off completely from the affected person. Accepting families provide care. Both types of family experience strong personal, emotional, and social impacts from their decision. The stigma attached to HIV and its modes of transmission and the shame that AIDS patients and their families usually feel stretch the bonds of loyalty and love in even the most supportive families. Cycles of anger are both creations and results of feelings of hurt, rejection, and regret about broken family ties. Those feelings often remain with the survivors as a persisting cause of family dissension and disruption, long after the death of the family member. Nuclear families and families defined by affiliation both experience these impacts, although each type of family experiences some impacts specific to the nature of the family.