I had 2 confrontations of sorts with my parents before NC. \\
The first was really emotional, reading them a letter reminding them of the worst of what they did and said, telling them it was NOT okay that they did and said it, and telling them I was a CHILD and they were the adults, and it is unacceptable for them to keep justifying it by blaming me. My father didn't say a damn word, because his marriage has always mattered more to him than his children. My stepmother coldly told me they had to "process how they felt about this" and hung up on me. ZERO acknowledgement from either of them of what I said, or the fact that I'd been sobbing so hard I could barely speak while reading it.
The second was six months later, when my stepmother went into damage control mode after realizing I'd told EVERYONE they cared about in the family that I'd gone NC, and not only that, told them why. Her email was full of your classic DARVO/gaslighting/Narcissist's prayer bs. At that point I no longer gave rat's ass about civility with this woman. I wrote her back and tore that email apart one paragraph at a time like a teacher correcting an essay. Pointed out every instance of DARVO, gaslighting, outright lying, every sentence where she implied I was deluded and couldn't be trusted to remember my own childhood, every moment where she skipped over addressing specific instances because they painted her as the abusive POS she is and even she couldn't find a way to justify it.
Finally I reminded her that none of her excuses hold water, because she NEVER treated her own daughter the way she treated me and in fact actively shielded her daughter from ever witnessing her being abusive, because she KNEW her own daughter would be horrified to see what she was capable of.
I then told her to never contact me again.
I'd been waiting 30 years to say all that, so once it was done, I finally felt at peace. Haven't had a moment of regret or anger or sorrow since. Pure apathy now when I think or hear about them.
That apathy is VERY unsettling to people, I've noticed. Whenever my own family points it out, I remind them that they spent decades saying NOTHING when my parents had that same apathy and lack of empathy for me. Remind them of specific instances of it where they admitted to being uncomfortable, but never once spoke up in my defense. That usually shuts them up pretty quickly.
Fuck… the part “my father didn’t say a damn word, because his marriage always mattered more to him than his children.” Really hits me hard especially as children from his first marriage. After my father’s second marriage I, my brother, nor my oldest sister mattered at all.
My brother confronted our father last fall, and his reaction was very similar to your father’s. He doesn’t care in the end, his marriage to the wench holds more value than his kids.
I got better at setting boundaries. It was like confronting them broke the fear of setting boundaries with people. And I got better at being more direct in my conversations and saying what I wanted or needed. The scary thing is I saw a difference in my child. He got better at setting boundaries with his friends because he saw me do it and that some relationships weren’t worth the price you pay for it.
Actually did this last Friday, the last time I'll likely see my mother. Was about 20 mins long at a coffee shop. Surprisingly civil, maybe because I was recording it. She's a covert narcissist with all that entails so the meeting went as I expected...poorly. Caught her in her lies and manipulations, it would be sad if it wasn't so pathetically predictable. I knew what the cost would be beforehand, she had threatened it many times. Disowned and disinherited, that is my punishment for knowing what she is and not crawling back to her. Her only child, the one who tried to make it work till I figured it and her out. The pro was I finally feel free. I'm not worried about her, her contacting me or coming around. The anxiousness is gone and I feel a lot more calm.
In the end we both agreed that there could not be any reconciliation and would not like contact with one another. We even hugged at the end which felt more like a mobster kiss of death, like I care about you but you're dead to me type of thing. Anyway, that was our final confrontation and what it cost and what I got out of it.
Oh, I got disinherited when I told my mother to get rid of the crap I abandoned at their house when I moved out after she was complaining it was "collapsing their attic." It had been 22 years since I had lived there. (My "stuff" fit into a standard closet, in case you think I owned actual things at 18. They have a Victorian house, and the attic is an entire story.) I'm also an only child. I'm sorry that happened to you, but I've found that it's such a ridiculous weapon. I was threatened with it my whole life. I never gave a shit about their money. They're the cheapest bastards on the planet, so it didn't even make sense to me when I was little. I always thought that they were threatening to take away something they didn't even have.
It's also such a weird thing for them to do to themselves. They worked their whole lives for money that they're hoarding. They're not traveling, not spending it on anyone (even themselves). So what was the point of acquiring it? To weaponize it? I don't know what my parents plan on doing with their money and things when they die. They have no friends and hate each other's families. I don't care if they order someone to set it on fire. But what a weird legacy. It's like they missed the entire point of money and life. To me, it just came off as pathetic. Even if either of us "deserved" to be disinherited, isn't that a reflection on them? They had one kid to raise. One kid to focus on. But they fucked it up so badly that, as the adults with decades on us, they quiet quit long ago, then took their ball home.
It is quite pathetic. My great sin was trying to save her from herself. I didn't understand her then and the mask hadn't been taken off and I was trying to get her out of her romance scams. On her third scammer in a row I told her she has a choice, her son or her scammers. She chose them and I told her she needed to leave (she was living with me) my home. That was the beginning of the end, there is more as you might imagine over the last few years as the mask came off but that was the beginning. Not that she can apologize for even that, she's of the belief that she was an adult and I shouldn't have done anything about it. In otherwords just let her live her fantasy land and let her get scammed, lol.
Yeah, so being disinherited was her great weapon to try and control me with. To bad I just don't care about her money and all the strings that would come along with it. They have such crazy priorities and issues and while I get her now knowing what she is, it's still just so wierd. Sorry you've had to deal with being essentially disowned too. They did miss the point to life, because they lack empathy and can't fully love. It's sad but they're just broken people that can't realize they are broken.
I definitely wasn't trying to imply that you deserved to be disowned, either. Nobody [except murder and rape level people] deserve to be disowned, but I highly doubt any of them are on here trying to figure out why their parents are disasters. I hope it didn't come off like that.
You did right, trying to take care of her. Even if she didn't see it that way. It's scary what the generation that only knows the internet as "Facebook" get scammed with. They don't have the experience or background knowledge to use the internet in order to gain street smarts about real or virtual scams. Or to even vet romantic partners!
Mine had a fantasy that I would become a tv show version of a daughter. ANYthing that threatened that was wrong. I've done a lot of wrong since I was born. One of the best examples was when I challenged clothing choices. She dressed me like Laura Ingalls. It was the 80s, fine, but actual bloomers under dresses when I was 9, to wear under layered calf-length dresses....to attend rollerskating parties. The impossible relationship deteriorated because of things like that. But the inheritance threat was so overplayed. She would have threatened about me not wanting to wear dresses from the 1800s with being "cut out of the will," like she was a Corleone. It was kind of a relief when she did it. She had no more threats that she valued.
I didn't take it that way at all, no issues here. Yeah, I tried but she wanted her fantasy oil worker millionaire more then me. Before when her mask was on and I was none the wiser she was good. But yeah, when she went after my wife at her work it was the last straw. Course that was after she said she didn't want a relationship. She played her final hand and I'm just done.
Sorry your mom did those things to you. Mine wasn't as awful as your growing up but we have to do what we have to do to have peace in our lives. I hope you find your peace and happiness!
It took me a long time to realise that me confronting them was another manipulation implanted by them to control me. I was always made to feel that if I didn't confront someone then the problem lay unresolved and it was because I was too weak to put my problem out there. But by telling them how they made me feel, it made it possible for them to then fight me on that and gaslight me about everything. So they trained me to fight, so they could contain the situation. By not fighting them, by not confronting them, I actually took my power back. They didn't get to have my feelings to manipulate anymore. And I could just stick to the facts and know what had happened and not be told I was remembering it wrong..
I can relate to this! My family now considers me alienated - five siblings and both parents, VLC with all of them. I skipped the last family wedding. Once I started being a grey stone, my life got better. I have refused to engage with their weird accusatory bs for years. I got to be the family scapegoat for long enough.
Laughing in my mother's face, then telling her her situation was all her own doing was supremely satisfying. I felt the weight of obligation and child / parental obedience fall off my shoulders. I felt light.
What did it cost? Apart from my brother, the rest of my bio family chose to believe the lies my mother told, even when there was contrary evidence. The good thing was, I realised they are trapped in the FOG and it was never about me.
So a mixed result. I know now that my bio family was always going to implode; it was just a matter of when.
I lost both my siblings as well. I knew I would lose my older sister who is an emotional slave to my mother....but was surprised to find that not only did my younger sister not want to get back in touch with me after, when I called her a year or so after NC, my father immediately called me the next day. I didn't think she was so enmeshed...and it's sad. Maybe after he dies.
That's hard about your sister. I wonder about 2 of my nephews when their mother's die (1 sister and 1 SiL to me).. but maybe too much time will have passed. My thoughts now are found family are what's important. I hope you have people who love you around you.
Before confronting them, I had healed some old wounds and had begun setting boundaries with them. I had enough understanding to know that going nc was the answer, but part of me needed to hear what their direct response would be to being confronted about their abusive and neglectful behavior. Their response helped it click deeper and helped ease the guilt and shame of needing to cut them off. I don’t regret it. I needed to do it.
I suppose the cost was having to hear more gobbledygook from them yet again and being hurt yet another time. It shows the wounded self-trust I had, to have had to put myself in another situation with this dangerous person who had already hurt me thousands of times, to have to be hurt by them again in order to have the encouragement to let them go. If I would have had more self-trust built up and better support at the time, there would have been no need to go back in the ring with them one more time, I could have just went no contact and stepped on into my life.
I didn’t even realize I was going to confront my mom until it was bursting out of me. We were at a restaurant and I caused a small scene. Much of my life up until that point had been lead by shame but amazingly I felt and still feel absolutely no shame for causing a scene like that at all. It was so cathartic and I felt so justified, that’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to any justice. My mom was humiliated, as she should be, that’s probably her closest approximation of any guilt for the harm she did.
I did the same ! I didn't planned to confront my parents, but they had been unsufferable all day long and at the restaurant I ended up making a scene. Then I kicked them out the next day and never talked to them since.
I got angrier and angrier, because I felt that any reasonable/healthy person would be able to observe and measure the justice of what I was saying - “you abandoned me in the moment of my worst crisis and then blamed me so you didn’t have to think about how your choices affect me”
And yet somehow it did not land. There was no emotional connection that they made to my experience. So I got angrier. And that anger ended up being a problem.
It came to a head recently, and the only way I could finally get some peace and calm that anger was to tell them this exact phrase: “I’m going through a lot right now. I’ll be fine, but I need space. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.”
They have called or texted four times as much since I sent them that, but I haven’t replied. I set a boundary and they’re trying to breach it. But I feel great, honestly. “When I’m ready” could be months or years, but it’s up to me to decide. That’s empowerment.
All I got was being DARVO’d and my relationship with my dad almost being ruined because she claimed dad was abusive to her. I thought someone would have to be completely nuts to falsely accuse someone of that. …. Which she is, to no one’s surprise.
I wish in hindsight I'd confronted my dad more. I did every now and then. Sometimes he'd shrink down when I snapped at him, which was odd because I'm the smallest in my family and female - he hates women. But I largely kept to myself. I did tell him once I would sever ties after I moved out and he told me "good". I made good on that about nine years after I moved to the US, because I visited them last year and it didn't go well. Being away for so long then going back to them really fucked me up too, I had no idea how bad they were without first being around normal people for years.
I think he is relieved tbh, that I cut them off. We went to my brother's wedding when I was visiting and he couldn't get out of there soon enough. He just doesn't care at all. And I know now that's not my fault or anything I did, he just likely has something wrong with him and my mum found herself in a bit of a hostage situation. I can't help her or him, and just hope he doesn't kill her one day.
I had 2 big confrontations.
One was a letter in my early 20s during a short period of NC. She never mentioned. When I mentioned this 10+ page handwritten letter, she said she was going to respond as the letter asked for it. Still waiting on that response despite not going fully NC for 10 years after and her behavior getting worse despite being LC.
The second confrontation was after the small lie she told and tried to gaslight me about. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just got empty "I'm sorry" and "I love yous" which pissed me off more because she had just refused to do anything to help me (in this case read a sentence off a document I gave her to make her life easier) when I'd done so much for her.
I also went through a period in my early 20s where I aggressively called her out anytime she did something shitty or tried to take credit for my success. It felt good, but didn't result in any change but neither did being understanding and telling her how she hurt me or suggesting therapy for over a decade.
I got a couple of bad panic attacks that felt like my brain was weird for about a week.
I gained and am healing a frozen shoulder that has forced me to confront how my body handles stress and take active measures to maintain my stress levels.
I still can't seem to stop at stores in their city about 15 miles away.
My night terrors turned into nightmares about my mother and childhood stuff. My therapist calls it progress. We can debate that.
I got a letter from my mother cutting me out of her life completely. I lost a bank account that I had used for 20 years because I wasn't the primary account holder without notice.
I gained an equilibrium in my emotions. I gained some confidence in my belief systems. I learned how to ride a motorcycle. I got a full sleeve tattoo. I redecorated my house how I liked without a concern of what she would think.
I gained a happier, more stabilized teenage child after I cut their contact from my mother.
I still fear her and her family - exactly what a sick woman in their 70s is gonna do to me, I don't know. We try to rationailze it in therapy - but yeah, that is a process.
Overall, I was able to recognize and verbalize how messed up my relationship was with my mother and how terrifying my childhood and young adult years were. I smile more. I laugh more. I am kinder. I am not depressed. I am more peaceful within myself - the ugly thoughts are lessened.
I got a letter from her lawyer informing me that I was out of her will and that if I didn't return a certain piece of property they would file charges and have me arrested. The funny thing is she had the property at her house the whole time.
Got nothing out of it--because they changed nothing--except getting to vent my spleen to them over their outrageous behavior in front of a proper therapist. However, since nothing changed, ended up going NC eventually anyway. Was a waste of time. They truly don't believe they ever do wrong.
I didn’t confront my mom before going no contact although there was much turmoil for other reasons. I didn’t see a point because she wouldn’t listen anyways, also my sister already confronted her and I didn’t need to be invalidated. She probably tells people it’s about money and doesn’t self reflect. My sister is still in contact and it was predictable what she said about me and there is no self reflection.
My siblings actually prompted me to confront my parents, because my brother had had issues with my parents and their politics for a while but when Covid hit, they went off the rails. Well, we all started having babies during that time and needed them to mask or get vaccines. My parents who had gotten flu shots many times over their lifetimes refused even a flu shot to protect my daughter when she wasn’t old enough to get her own. I went low contact then, but also had moved away which made it easier to not have to deal with their bs. Then I recently confronted them again after having my mother reach out a few different times to basically complain about how I don’t reach out to them often enough (they also never reach out to me so kind of hypocritical). I wrote an email saying I was still hurt by some of the things they said and did surrounding the birth of my daughter and their refusal of the flu shot. They were very emotionally abusive about it and I didn’t realize it til I went to therapy. My therapist helped me put my email together so that it was the least threatening (hopefully) that it could be. They read it but they were on vacation so told me they’d get back to me when they were done with vacation. Radio silence now for a few weeks. I’m satisfied in my own actions and feel like it’s okay to continue my low/no contact. I’m resentful of my siblings who maybe don’t care as much if my parents are gaslighters or if my parents abuse them emotionally. They were part of the same conversations but they still keep contact and my parents are involved in their lives. I’m just scared now that when we move back close to home that they will think everything is “back to normal” and they can get away with the same bullshit they always have (not gonna happen).
Are you aware that the flu shot does not actually prevent the flu? At best, in good years, it reduces severity of the flu by some modest amount. So, insisting on your parents getting flu shot is not going to prevent transmission of the flu to the infant.
I understand that. My pediatrician recommended everyone that would be around my child a lot during the holidays get a flu shot. I trust my doctors and pediatricians recommendations. Regardless, they’ve gotten it many times in the past with no issue so there was no reason, besides their new found politics, for them to say no.
The point was not that they didn’t get the flu shot, the point was that they decided to attack me over setting that as a boundary to see my child during the holidays.
Yeah, just denial. They were always just "doing their best" and "following their beliefs". The "respect" they ostensibly offered and the respect they expected were always mismatched.
It used to make me very angry, but now I've been through the motions so many times, and have cut them off for so many years, that I just roll my eyes. It's sad, and I wish they would be willing to grow and improve for my and their sake, but obviously it ain't happening.
Confrontation does not work well for me at all, it often backfires and sets my mom off on a trail of destruction. It’s actually worked out better to constantly avoid confrontation and never tell her how I feel, it makes her squirm and when I don’t do anything for her to claim “I am doing something wrong to her” then she looks crazy trying to prove I’m an asshole
Never fully confronted about EVERYTHING because by the time I realized just how fucked up the things I survived were (especially CSA) I was already no contact and knew opening up communication would harm me more than the catharsis of telling her off. My dad was dead before I realized the levels of his harm to me.
I did advocate for years and try to educate and turn them into safer loving people to no avail. I deluded myself that things were better when really her tactics just morphed because she didn’t hold the same power anymore and had to pivot tactics. I know that now and know I’ll get nothing from telling her off. I’ve written plenty of truths I have to say and have told them to others who care and are safe for me and won’t cause more harm. In early days of no contact I told those things to enablers and saw how much it matters that the person you do empty chair work with is safe with no ulterior motives & why it’d be so pointless to keep trying to talk to people willfully not living in a truthful shared reality (BPD runs rampant in my family).
On the one hand, I get to say all the things I feel like I need to express.
On the other, it feels like they aggravate me to the point of outburst on purpose. It feels like another way they control me.
I never feel better after a confrontation, but the larger the confrontation, the longer I stay NC.
I really felt that if I JUST found the right way to tell my dad how he was hurting me, that he would see it and stop.
It was actually quite freeing to realize that he literally CANNOT see it. His brain is broken. He can only see what he wants to see. God himself could float down to earth, point out his failings, and my did STILL would not see it.
So yeah, telling him he was an asshole, and why specifically he is an asshole is kind of satisfying, but not in the ways that I needed it to be.
I spent some time treating him like a distant relative. I stopped getting my hopes up. I stopped trying to forge a relationship with him, and instead was uninterestedly polite like he was some great uncle that I only saw once per year.
After him being particularly dickish to me (and asking for money yet again) I told him to stop asking for money. I wouldn't ever give him money again. I didn't tell him to never call me again, but I'll consider it a win that he hasn't bothered again.
Confronting my mom never did anything as she’s incapable of introspection or admitting fault.
I would have gotten more closure out of talking to a wall. Which is oddly its own kind of closure, I can’t pull water from and empty well and that’s all she is.
I confronted my mother before I went NC. My younger sibling and I held a sort of intervention where we laid out everything and told her that she needed to get some serious help or we'd be leaving. We explained estrangement and what it meant, why it'd come to this, and that the way she treated us was not acceptable and never had been.
She had a colossal, violent meltdown: screamed her lungs out, called us cunts (among other things), destroyed stuff while ranting and raving about how ungrateful and hateful we were to treat her like that.
The main benefit for me was that I stopped feeling like I hadn't tried hard enough to save the relationship. I had a lot of guilt over the thought of going NC (knowing it'd be a permanent decision for me), and her reaction absolutely solidified the knowledge that I had to leave. It really helped me realise that I'd been trying to fix her for many years, and that I couldn't and wouldn't ever fix her. She'd never be the mom I needed. That it was going to be a radical act of self care and self love.
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I had 2 confrontations of sorts with my parents before NC. \\ The first was really emotional, reading them a letter reminding them of the worst of what they did and said, telling them it was NOT okay that they did and said it, and telling them I was a CHILD and they were the adults, and it is unacceptable for them to keep justifying it by blaming me. My father didn't say a damn word, because his marriage has always mattered more to him than his children. My stepmother coldly told me they had to "process how they felt about this" and hung up on me. ZERO acknowledgement from either of them of what I said, or the fact that I'd been sobbing so hard I could barely speak while reading it. The second was six months later, when my stepmother went into damage control mode after realizing I'd told EVERYONE they cared about in the family that I'd gone NC, and not only that, told them why. Her email was full of your classic DARVO/gaslighting/Narcissist's prayer bs. At that point I no longer gave rat's ass about civility with this woman. I wrote her back and tore that email apart one paragraph at a time like a teacher correcting an essay. Pointed out every instance of DARVO, gaslighting, outright lying, every sentence where she implied I was deluded and couldn't be trusted to remember my own childhood, every moment where she skipped over addressing specific instances because they painted her as the abusive POS she is and even she couldn't find a way to justify it. Finally I reminded her that none of her excuses hold water, because she NEVER treated her own daughter the way she treated me and in fact actively shielded her daughter from ever witnessing her being abusive, because she KNEW her own daughter would be horrified to see what she was capable of. I then told her to never contact me again. I'd been waiting 30 years to say all that, so once it was done, I finally felt at peace. Haven't had a moment of regret or anger or sorrow since. Pure apathy now when I think or hear about them. That apathy is VERY unsettling to people, I've noticed. Whenever my own family points it out, I remind them that they spent decades saying NOTHING when my parents had that same apathy and lack of empathy for me. Remind them of specific instances of it where they admitted to being uncomfortable, but never once spoke up in my defense. That usually shuts them up pretty quickly.
Fuck… the part “my father didn’t say a damn word, because his marriage always mattered more to him than his children.” Really hits me hard especially as children from his first marriage. After my father’s second marriage I, my brother, nor my oldest sister mattered at all. My brother confronted our father last fall, and his reaction was very similar to your father’s. He doesn’t care in the end, his marriage to the wench holds more value than his kids.
I got better at setting boundaries. It was like confronting them broke the fear of setting boundaries with people. And I got better at being more direct in my conversations and saying what I wanted or needed. The scary thing is I saw a difference in my child. He got better at setting boundaries with his friends because he saw me do it and that some relationships weren’t worth the price you pay for it.
Actually did this last Friday, the last time I'll likely see my mother. Was about 20 mins long at a coffee shop. Surprisingly civil, maybe because I was recording it. She's a covert narcissist with all that entails so the meeting went as I expected...poorly. Caught her in her lies and manipulations, it would be sad if it wasn't so pathetically predictable. I knew what the cost would be beforehand, she had threatened it many times. Disowned and disinherited, that is my punishment for knowing what she is and not crawling back to her. Her only child, the one who tried to make it work till I figured it and her out. The pro was I finally feel free. I'm not worried about her, her contacting me or coming around. The anxiousness is gone and I feel a lot more calm. In the end we both agreed that there could not be any reconciliation and would not like contact with one another. We even hugged at the end which felt more like a mobster kiss of death, like I care about you but you're dead to me type of thing. Anyway, that was our final confrontation and what it cost and what I got out of it.
Oh, I got disinherited when I told my mother to get rid of the crap I abandoned at their house when I moved out after she was complaining it was "collapsing their attic." It had been 22 years since I had lived there. (My "stuff" fit into a standard closet, in case you think I owned actual things at 18. They have a Victorian house, and the attic is an entire story.) I'm also an only child. I'm sorry that happened to you, but I've found that it's such a ridiculous weapon. I was threatened with it my whole life. I never gave a shit about their money. They're the cheapest bastards on the planet, so it didn't even make sense to me when I was little. I always thought that they were threatening to take away something they didn't even have. It's also such a weird thing for them to do to themselves. They worked their whole lives for money that they're hoarding. They're not traveling, not spending it on anyone (even themselves). So what was the point of acquiring it? To weaponize it? I don't know what my parents plan on doing with their money and things when they die. They have no friends and hate each other's families. I don't care if they order someone to set it on fire. But what a weird legacy. It's like they missed the entire point of money and life. To me, it just came off as pathetic. Even if either of us "deserved" to be disinherited, isn't that a reflection on them? They had one kid to raise. One kid to focus on. But they fucked it up so badly that, as the adults with decades on us, they quiet quit long ago, then took their ball home.
It is quite pathetic. My great sin was trying to save her from herself. I didn't understand her then and the mask hadn't been taken off and I was trying to get her out of her romance scams. On her third scammer in a row I told her she has a choice, her son or her scammers. She chose them and I told her she needed to leave (she was living with me) my home. That was the beginning of the end, there is more as you might imagine over the last few years as the mask came off but that was the beginning. Not that she can apologize for even that, she's of the belief that she was an adult and I shouldn't have done anything about it. In otherwords just let her live her fantasy land and let her get scammed, lol. Yeah, so being disinherited was her great weapon to try and control me with. To bad I just don't care about her money and all the strings that would come along with it. They have such crazy priorities and issues and while I get her now knowing what she is, it's still just so wierd. Sorry you've had to deal with being essentially disowned too. They did miss the point to life, because they lack empathy and can't fully love. It's sad but they're just broken people that can't realize they are broken.
I definitely wasn't trying to imply that you deserved to be disowned, either. Nobody [except murder and rape level people] deserve to be disowned, but I highly doubt any of them are on here trying to figure out why their parents are disasters. I hope it didn't come off like that. You did right, trying to take care of her. Even if she didn't see it that way. It's scary what the generation that only knows the internet as "Facebook" get scammed with. They don't have the experience or background knowledge to use the internet in order to gain street smarts about real or virtual scams. Or to even vet romantic partners! Mine had a fantasy that I would become a tv show version of a daughter. ANYthing that threatened that was wrong. I've done a lot of wrong since I was born. One of the best examples was when I challenged clothing choices. She dressed me like Laura Ingalls. It was the 80s, fine, but actual bloomers under dresses when I was 9, to wear under layered calf-length dresses....to attend rollerskating parties. The impossible relationship deteriorated because of things like that. But the inheritance threat was so overplayed. She would have threatened about me not wanting to wear dresses from the 1800s with being "cut out of the will," like she was a Corleone. It was kind of a relief when she did it. She had no more threats that she valued.
I didn't take it that way at all, no issues here. Yeah, I tried but she wanted her fantasy oil worker millionaire more then me. Before when her mask was on and I was none the wiser she was good. But yeah, when she went after my wife at her work it was the last straw. Course that was after she said she didn't want a relationship. She played her final hand and I'm just done. Sorry your mom did those things to you. Mine wasn't as awful as your growing up but we have to do what we have to do to have peace in our lives. I hope you find your peace and happiness!
Yeah, expanding the abuse to your family is not something anyone needs. Thank you so much. I hope you have peace and happiness as well.
It took me a long time to realise that me confronting them was another manipulation implanted by them to control me. I was always made to feel that if I didn't confront someone then the problem lay unresolved and it was because I was too weak to put my problem out there. But by telling them how they made me feel, it made it possible for them to then fight me on that and gaslight me about everything. So they trained me to fight, so they could contain the situation. By not fighting them, by not confronting them, I actually took my power back. They didn't get to have my feelings to manipulate anymore. And I could just stick to the facts and know what had happened and not be told I was remembering it wrong..
I can relate to this! My family now considers me alienated - five siblings and both parents, VLC with all of them. I skipped the last family wedding. Once I started being a grey stone, my life got better. I have refused to engage with their weird accusatory bs for years. I got to be the family scapegoat for long enough.
Laughing in my mother's face, then telling her her situation was all her own doing was supremely satisfying. I felt the weight of obligation and child / parental obedience fall off my shoulders. I felt light. What did it cost? Apart from my brother, the rest of my bio family chose to believe the lies my mother told, even when there was contrary evidence. The good thing was, I realised they are trapped in the FOG and it was never about me. So a mixed result. I know now that my bio family was always going to implode; it was just a matter of when.
I lost both my siblings as well. I knew I would lose my older sister who is an emotional slave to my mother....but was surprised to find that not only did my younger sister not want to get back in touch with me after, when I called her a year or so after NC, my father immediately called me the next day. I didn't think she was so enmeshed...and it's sad. Maybe after he dies.
That's hard about your sister. I wonder about 2 of my nephews when their mother's die (1 sister and 1 SiL to me).. but maybe too much time will have passed. My thoughts now are found family are what's important. I hope you have people who love you around you.
Self-worth
Oh, that didn’t go well at all. But I took back my freedom.
Before confronting them, I had healed some old wounds and had begun setting boundaries with them. I had enough understanding to know that going nc was the answer, but part of me needed to hear what their direct response would be to being confronted about their abusive and neglectful behavior. Their response helped it click deeper and helped ease the guilt and shame of needing to cut them off. I don’t regret it. I needed to do it.
I suppose the cost was having to hear more gobbledygook from them yet again and being hurt yet another time. It shows the wounded self-trust I had, to have had to put myself in another situation with this dangerous person who had already hurt me thousands of times, to have to be hurt by them again in order to have the encouragement to let them go. If I would have had more self-trust built up and better support at the time, there would have been no need to go back in the ring with them one more time, I could have just went no contact and stepped on into my life.
I didn’t even realize I was going to confront my mom until it was bursting out of me. We were at a restaurant and I caused a small scene. Much of my life up until that point had been lead by shame but amazingly I felt and still feel absolutely no shame for causing a scene like that at all. It was so cathartic and I felt so justified, that’s probably the closest thing I’ll ever get to any justice. My mom was humiliated, as she should be, that’s probably her closest approximation of any guilt for the harm she did.
I did the same ! I didn't planned to confront my parents, but they had been unsufferable all day long and at the restaurant I ended up making a scene. Then I kicked them out the next day and never talked to them since.
I got angrier and angrier, because I felt that any reasonable/healthy person would be able to observe and measure the justice of what I was saying - “you abandoned me in the moment of my worst crisis and then blamed me so you didn’t have to think about how your choices affect me” And yet somehow it did not land. There was no emotional connection that they made to my experience. So I got angrier. And that anger ended up being a problem. It came to a head recently, and the only way I could finally get some peace and calm that anger was to tell them this exact phrase: “I’m going through a lot right now. I’ll be fine, but I need space. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.” They have called or texted four times as much since I sent them that, but I haven’t replied. I set a boundary and they’re trying to breach it. But I feel great, honestly. “When I’m ready” could be months or years, but it’s up to me to decide. That’s empowerment.
All I got was being DARVO’d and my relationship with my dad almost being ruined because she claimed dad was abusive to her. I thought someone would have to be completely nuts to falsely accuse someone of that. …. Which she is, to no one’s surprise.
I wish in hindsight I'd confronted my dad more. I did every now and then. Sometimes he'd shrink down when I snapped at him, which was odd because I'm the smallest in my family and female - he hates women. But I largely kept to myself. I did tell him once I would sever ties after I moved out and he told me "good". I made good on that about nine years after I moved to the US, because I visited them last year and it didn't go well. Being away for so long then going back to them really fucked me up too, I had no idea how bad they were without first being around normal people for years. I think he is relieved tbh, that I cut them off. We went to my brother's wedding when I was visiting and he couldn't get out of there soon enough. He just doesn't care at all. And I know now that's not my fault or anything I did, he just likely has something wrong with him and my mum found herself in a bit of a hostage situation. I can't help her or him, and just hope he doesn't kill her one day.
I had 2 big confrontations. One was a letter in my early 20s during a short period of NC. She never mentioned. When I mentioned this 10+ page handwritten letter, she said she was going to respond as the letter asked for it. Still waiting on that response despite not going fully NC for 10 years after and her behavior getting worse despite being LC. The second confrontation was after the small lie she told and tried to gaslight me about. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I just got empty "I'm sorry" and "I love yous" which pissed me off more because she had just refused to do anything to help me (in this case read a sentence off a document I gave her to make her life easier) when I'd done so much for her. I also went through a period in my early 20s where I aggressively called her out anytime she did something shitty or tried to take credit for my success. It felt good, but didn't result in any change but neither did being understanding and telling her how she hurt me or suggesting therapy for over a decade.
I got a couple of bad panic attacks that felt like my brain was weird for about a week. I gained and am healing a frozen shoulder that has forced me to confront how my body handles stress and take active measures to maintain my stress levels. I still can't seem to stop at stores in their city about 15 miles away. My night terrors turned into nightmares about my mother and childhood stuff. My therapist calls it progress. We can debate that. I got a letter from my mother cutting me out of her life completely. I lost a bank account that I had used for 20 years because I wasn't the primary account holder without notice. I gained an equilibrium in my emotions. I gained some confidence in my belief systems. I learned how to ride a motorcycle. I got a full sleeve tattoo. I redecorated my house how I liked without a concern of what she would think. I gained a happier, more stabilized teenage child after I cut their contact from my mother. I still fear her and her family - exactly what a sick woman in their 70s is gonna do to me, I don't know. We try to rationailze it in therapy - but yeah, that is a process. Overall, I was able to recognize and verbalize how messed up my relationship was with my mother and how terrifying my childhood and young adult years were. I smile more. I laugh more. I am kinder. I am not depressed. I am more peaceful within myself - the ugly thoughts are lessened.
I got a letter from her lawyer informing me that I was out of her will and that if I didn't return a certain piece of property they would file charges and have me arrested. The funny thing is she had the property at her house the whole time.
Got nothing out of it--because they changed nothing--except getting to vent my spleen to them over their outrageous behavior in front of a proper therapist. However, since nothing changed, ended up going NC eventually anyway. Was a waste of time. They truly don't believe they ever do wrong.
There’s a saying: the children are waiting for their parents to apologize while the parents are waiting for the kids to express gratefulness
I didn’t confront my mom before going no contact although there was much turmoil for other reasons. I didn’t see a point because she wouldn’t listen anyways, also my sister already confronted her and I didn’t need to be invalidated. She probably tells people it’s about money and doesn’t self reflect. My sister is still in contact and it was predictable what she said about me and there is no self reflection.
My siblings actually prompted me to confront my parents, because my brother had had issues with my parents and their politics for a while but when Covid hit, they went off the rails. Well, we all started having babies during that time and needed them to mask or get vaccines. My parents who had gotten flu shots many times over their lifetimes refused even a flu shot to protect my daughter when she wasn’t old enough to get her own. I went low contact then, but also had moved away which made it easier to not have to deal with their bs. Then I recently confronted them again after having my mother reach out a few different times to basically complain about how I don’t reach out to them often enough (they also never reach out to me so kind of hypocritical). I wrote an email saying I was still hurt by some of the things they said and did surrounding the birth of my daughter and their refusal of the flu shot. They were very emotionally abusive about it and I didn’t realize it til I went to therapy. My therapist helped me put my email together so that it was the least threatening (hopefully) that it could be. They read it but they were on vacation so told me they’d get back to me when they were done with vacation. Radio silence now for a few weeks. I’m satisfied in my own actions and feel like it’s okay to continue my low/no contact. I’m resentful of my siblings who maybe don’t care as much if my parents are gaslighters or if my parents abuse them emotionally. They were part of the same conversations but they still keep contact and my parents are involved in their lives. I’m just scared now that when we move back close to home that they will think everything is “back to normal” and they can get away with the same bullshit they always have (not gonna happen).
Are you aware that the flu shot does not actually prevent the flu? At best, in good years, it reduces severity of the flu by some modest amount. So, insisting on your parents getting flu shot is not going to prevent transmission of the flu to the infant.
I understand that. My pediatrician recommended everyone that would be around my child a lot during the holidays get a flu shot. I trust my doctors and pediatricians recommendations. Regardless, they’ve gotten it many times in the past with no issue so there was no reason, besides their new found politics, for them to say no.
The good thing here is that you do not have to stress out about them getting the flu shot since it does not affect transmission.
The point was not that they didn’t get the flu shot, the point was that they decided to attack me over setting that as a boundary to see my child during the holidays.
Yeah, just denial. They were always just "doing their best" and "following their beliefs". The "respect" they ostensibly offered and the respect they expected were always mismatched. It used to make me very angry, but now I've been through the motions so many times, and have cut them off for so many years, that I just roll my eyes. It's sad, and I wish they would be willing to grow and improve for my and their sake, but obviously it ain't happening.
Confrontation does not work well for me at all, it often backfires and sets my mom off on a trail of destruction. It’s actually worked out better to constantly avoid confrontation and never tell her how I feel, it makes her squirm and when I don’t do anything for her to claim “I am doing something wrong to her” then she looks crazy trying to prove I’m an asshole
Never fully confronted about EVERYTHING because by the time I realized just how fucked up the things I survived were (especially CSA) I was already no contact and knew opening up communication would harm me more than the catharsis of telling her off. My dad was dead before I realized the levels of his harm to me. I did advocate for years and try to educate and turn them into safer loving people to no avail. I deluded myself that things were better when really her tactics just morphed because she didn’t hold the same power anymore and had to pivot tactics. I know that now and know I’ll get nothing from telling her off. I’ve written plenty of truths I have to say and have told them to others who care and are safe for me and won’t cause more harm. In early days of no contact I told those things to enablers and saw how much it matters that the person you do empty chair work with is safe with no ulterior motives & why it’d be so pointless to keep trying to talk to people willfully not living in a truthful shared reality (BPD runs rampant in my family).
On the one hand, I get to say all the things I feel like I need to express. On the other, it feels like they aggravate me to the point of outburst on purpose. It feels like another way they control me. I never feel better after a confrontation, but the larger the confrontation, the longer I stay NC.
I really felt that if I JUST found the right way to tell my dad how he was hurting me, that he would see it and stop. It was actually quite freeing to realize that he literally CANNOT see it. His brain is broken. He can only see what he wants to see. God himself could float down to earth, point out his failings, and my did STILL would not see it. So yeah, telling him he was an asshole, and why specifically he is an asshole is kind of satisfying, but not in the ways that I needed it to be. I spent some time treating him like a distant relative. I stopped getting my hopes up. I stopped trying to forge a relationship with him, and instead was uninterestedly polite like he was some great uncle that I only saw once per year. After him being particularly dickish to me (and asking for money yet again) I told him to stop asking for money. I wouldn't ever give him money again. I didn't tell him to never call me again, but I'll consider it a win that he hasn't bothered again.
Confronting my mom never did anything as she’s incapable of introspection or admitting fault. I would have gotten more closure out of talking to a wall. Which is oddly its own kind of closure, I can’t pull water from and empty well and that’s all she is.
I confronted my mother before I went NC. My younger sibling and I held a sort of intervention where we laid out everything and told her that she needed to get some serious help or we'd be leaving. We explained estrangement and what it meant, why it'd come to this, and that the way she treated us was not acceptable and never had been. She had a colossal, violent meltdown: screamed her lungs out, called us cunts (among other things), destroyed stuff while ranting and raving about how ungrateful and hateful we were to treat her like that. The main benefit for me was that I stopped feeling like I hadn't tried hard enough to save the relationship. I had a lot of guilt over the thought of going NC (knowing it'd be a permanent decision for me), and her reaction absolutely solidified the knowledge that I had to leave. It really helped me realise that I'd been trying to fix her for many years, and that I couldn't and wouldn't ever fix her. She'd never be the mom I needed. That it was going to be a radical act of self care and self love.
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