Discombobulated after running into a FM

[Pinkos]

I live near relatives that I'm estranged from on top of being estranged from my parents/siblings (who live in a different state thankfully) so it's a bit uncomfortable to run into these relatives. It happens very rarely. I ran into one of them today. I had run into her over the summer and we both pretended like we didn't see each other. (Apparently she's moved into my area. Ugh!) Today, I did the same thing by looking down at my phone while crossing the street as she's also crossing & walking towards me.

Well today she decided to make a beeline for me. It was so awkward and she caught me completely off guard. She's a decade younger and my estrangement is with her parents but as she was growing up I know they had poisoned her against me (through vicious gossip) and she treated me with disdain and often was quite preferential towards my siblings and tolerated me. This continued until she was college age, which was the last time I saw her. She's now 31. I felt helpless as I saw the next generation carry on these hurtful dynamics. 

My guess is that she told her parents/grandparents she ran into me over the summer and she was told to engage me next time. So that's why I feel like this is a flying monkey situation. She suggested we "hang out" and hugged me 3 times. I could feel her anxiety and awkwardness as well. She was rushed and so it was all abrupt and ended quickly. I felt angry afterwards at the intrusion. I know she will go back and report and it just makes me mad to know they now have fresh gossip (I haven't seen them in almost 7 years) and that I may run into her again and again and be forced to have these awkward and phony interactions.

I feel like I should put my big girl panties on and just deal. Part of me wants to just be direct and text her something like "let's be cordial when we run into each other but let's not force anything" etc. Is the text a bad idea? I feel like I'm trying to control the future because I hated how it made me feel. It felt like an invasion into my privacy with the promise of more to come!

[Pinkos]

Literally 2 seconds after I posted this comment I got a text from her saying how nice it was to run into me and we should meet up this week or weekend if I have time!! I'm going to ignore it for now. I just know this is her spying for her parents. I'm sure she called her mom soon after she left me. Ugh ugh

[Leonor]

You don't have to make plans with anyone.

If this were a person who was not a member of your family, just the most casual of acquaintances, how would you respond?

"Glad you are well. Thanks for the invite, but I'm super busy lately. Take care!"

Or something like that.

They're going to make of it what they will. No matter how you respond, they will find a way to turn it into a drama. You actually don't have a real role in any of it.

So sigh and think ugh how annoying and carry on, as you were!

[Pinkos]

You don't have to make plans with anyone.

If this were a person who was not a member of your family, just the most casual of acquaintances, how would you respond?

"Glad you are well. Thanks for the invite, but I'm super busy lately. Take care!"

Or something like that.

They're going to make of it what they will. No matter how you respond, they will find a way to turn it into a drama. You actually don't have a real role in any of it.

So sigh and think ugh how annoying and carry on, as you were!

Thank you Leonor! I talked myself  down from my anxious state and your comment helped get me there faster. I realize that she's just playing off the family script. And I think it was an invitation (not intentionally on her part she's just caught up in it like I was, which is how I know exactly what's going on behind the scenes)  for me to get back into the family drama and I panicked. Cause I DO NOT want that crap anymore. So I treated her like an old acquaintance. I replied "you too! Will get back to you" I have no intention of doing so but that's how acquaintances communicate - that whole "let's get together soon" "yeah that would be great" dance so I'm treating it that way. If she follows up "oh can't next time" and let it fizzle away like that. That's my plan!

[walking on broken glass]

I can feel your anxiety! I hate 'benevolent' relatives. It is not enough that we have the close family to deal with, should we also care about the bystanders? Ugh. It's normal to get stressed over it because you feel you are about to get sucked back into all the toxicity. You just have to keep reminding yourself that you have the power not to allow this to happen. You did well by responding in a vague way. Hopefully she won't message you again. If she does, you can just ignore her or say you are busy etc. You got this!

[moglow]

And ya know what - if you do decide to meet her for coffee or lunch sometime, she's basically an acquaintance at this point. You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to and can tell her flat out if she brings it up, "I'd rather not go into any of that. Where are you working since you moved back or did you go back to school to do something new ...?" 

There's always the possibility she's an unwitting flying monkey and she doesn't like their maneuverings either. If you give enough rope, most will either air their own laundry or reach for yours. It can be interesting when it turns around that she actually needs a friend who gets it. Still doesn't have to be a gossip or tear down session, but mutual respect then move on to other things.

I say this because I have a cousin who near hero-worshipped my mother and made excuses for her most of her life. Her role seemed to be distraction when things got tense and it worked until it didn't. Cousin never saw mother in action until one day well into adulthood, and it was over for her right then and there. She did do a little sneaky [hid a voice activated recorder for confirmation] but best I know she never looked back. We had ONE conversation where cousin laid it all out for me, what was said and the way mother said it, leaving no doubt mother's bone deep contempt for pretty much all of us. I let her know yes, that's what I'd lived, I'd never known any different and had no illusions that it would ever change. And we left it there. The damage had long since been done in our family and a large portion of it was laid right at mother's feet.

[Pinkos]

@walking on broken glass thanks for the support! I was indeed quite anxious right after running into her. I don't know if that ever goes away.

@moglow so here's the thing - that's been my hope for a long time! That maybe another family member or relative will have their own "come to Jesus" moment and reach out to me and I'll feel less isolated. Again, not to gossip etc but just mutual support. That would be comforting for sure.

The thing is, like I mentioned in my OP, this cousin has never shown any interest in me. She demonstrably favored my siblings - would hang on to every word out of their mouths and seemed to be bored with me. Her mother saw our family as competition. As far as looks, education level etc. This cousin (she's my cousin's daughter) went to an Ivy League school and seems to have achieved everything that I was expected to and didn't. And I know the running narrative on me is that I didn't reach my potential etc and I deeply resent that. I deeply resent my parents going around to anybody who will listen and casting me as some pathetic loser. So partly, I suspect her mother would encourage her to see me so that I could hear all about her success and know that her family "won." And partly, I don't feel like spending time with someone who I suspect and intuit never liked me, never showed interest, and may find me boring. Her body language and follow up text also seemed perfunctory to me. She pretended not to see me the last time while she was with some friends. So I really doubt she's had any revelations. And if she is struggling or whatever, I don't care and don't want to be in a supportive role. Her family has money and they've given her a lot of support. I suspect she's somewhat of a golden child. And I don't begrudge her that at all. I have no real beef with her as far as the family drama goes. But you know what - I've been isolated/singled out by the family (her parents/grandparents were a part of that) from a young age and treated poorly and never got any meaningful support. Her aunts/uncles/grandparents went out of their way to show favoritism for my siblings while casting me as something that never was me and punishing me for it........and I'm sure that had a lot to do with how she perceived me.

I'm not ranting at you. I'm glad for your comment because I had been ruminating on things and you've given me an opportunity to clarify things for myself. Yeah, I don't like her, in short. And I have no desire to force it.

[moglow]

Well fig. I was kinda hoping with time and distance she'd found a dab of clarity, might see the whole dysfunction for what it is. It's been known to happen but it's hard to move past a lifetime of indoctrination. That's been hard for me for that matter, trying to not see myself through their eyes.

Sometimes getting it out in the air gives more room to see it and we can better let go of our own ropes. Maybe if nothing else it helps with the rumination! So I'm really glad of that for you.

[Pinkos]

That's been hard for me for that matter, trying to not see myself through their eyes.

Yes! Hard and quite tricky. It's quite astute of you to pick this up from my comment. I don't want to sit across from someone who sees me this way when I struggle from time to time to feel worthy and good enough. I don't want pity and obligation. And I suspect that's what I'd get from her: smug condescension. No, thank you!

[moglow]

The good news is, you know you're not that person they concocted in their minds, and you don't have to explain yourself. NONE of that has anything to do with you. One thing I was reminded of by a counselor, no one else, not one person in my actual day to day world treats me that way. Know why? Because I don't put up with it. I don't stay where I know I'm not wanted or where I'm treated badly. When I get that ICK feeling, I distance and/or bow out entirely, and without apology. The only reason I did with family was because I was conditioned that way, I thought I had to. The FOG ran deep for far too long. I learned that life goes on quite well without all that nonsense, I'm a fairly likeable person when I'm rested and fed [not so much otherwise so I keep my own distance when necessary!], and I can choose to believe the bad stuff or I can go where people know and tell me otherwise.

You hang in there!

[walking on broken glass]

I can so relate to this feeling @pinkos of wanting to have someone on your side. I have always felt that I am the black sheep and noone really sees my point of view or tries to defend me. I agree that it is very difficult for someone who has been indoctrinated in these family 'values' to question all that and see the light. It is definitely not the case for the cousin you mention. It's all a power game. I have a cousin who has tried to intervene in the past in the relationship with my sister, asking 'innocent' questions, like 'how often do you talk?' or making hints like 'your sister says that she hasn't heard from you in ages'. They are not done in good will: she simply wants to stir the pot and gossip. I had talked to her in the past about my sis and what she's been like to me, and she was vaguely sympathetic but always followed with 'but why don't you do x and z etc?'. She had also said once 'I am so glad that I have such a good relationship with my own sister and she understands me'. Now if this is not a power trip, what is?! I have stopped sharing personal information with her and refuse to discuss my sister. I am seldom in touch with her. Yet she talks quite often with my sister, and she boasts about how her husband is so close to my sis and has chats with her even without herself (the cousin) being present [insert slow clap here]. Her husband also casually dropped in a conversation that 'we were not friends on facebook' (he didn't befriend me and I didn't try either: I don't like him and we have nothing in common). I stay away from them as much as possible.

You are doing well to trust your instincts: if the cousin has never been nice to you, she won't have changed. And one can sense fakeness from a mile away.

[Pinkos]

Thanks for the support @moglow and @walking on broken glass! It really helps.

[sandpiper]

OK, a story for you, that I hope might help, because I had a similar thing happen.

We lived in my hometown for 30 years and for much of my adult life I was NC with mother's FOO, who lived on the other side of town. I went NC for my sanity & thankfully the size of that town meant I never saw them, but they still managed to stress me out from time to time by using intersecting social circles to create drama and to try to break up my friendships and in one instance, they hunted down a work colleague to try to smear me and to emotionally blackmail me into going to a family funeral of someone that I loathed.

So a few years ago we moved about an hour away. It's near enough for me to visit regularly to see friends etc.
So a while ago I go to an author event at the bookstore near my old home and one of my cousins is there. My cousins don't read, whereas I've always been bookish and a bit of a nerd. She came up to me and said 'Oh hello, I was hoping I'd see you here, I've recently moved into the suburb'.
I nearly had a panic attack and had to deploy all of my skills to manage my latent PTSD symptoms resurfacing. I couldn't shake her and it was awkward as I didn't want to have the 'let's install some boundaries' conversation in front of my friends. she pushed herself on me till she got my mobile phone number...and I thought at the time 'OK I will use this later on to set boundaries, when I've had time to reflect on this, and I've restored my equilibrium.'
I got the inevitable text from her the next day and I sat with that till I'd processed it.
I then sent her a message explaining in three lines why I'd gone NC and that I didn't want to see her. I feel bad for her because I know she's been through a lot, but so have I, and when I needed her to have a sense of basic decency, she made other choices. while she's the pick of a bad bunch, I have better people in my life now, and I don't want to go back to these people because they trigger all of my C-PTSD.
I had a lot of conversations with my T when I made the NC choice & when she asked me 'What do these people bring into your life?' - the answer was, nothing that was worth the pain that they cause me.

Nobody in their right mind would push someone to go back to an emotionally abusive spouse but those of us with emotionally abusive families are constantly pressed to resume our relationships with them.
That's a choice that we all have to face and I get really annoyed with people who force it on me as an issue of 'forgiveness'. For me, it's just about survival. I've worked too hard to restore my mental health and to build a good life to risk having my FOO come back inside my safe space and burn it all down again.

My philosophy is that FOO who've been abusers just have to deal with the relationships they've lost in the same way that alcoholics do. It's about them accepting that in some instances, their behaviour has damaged people so much that they may never be welcome in that person's life again. Their path forward is about accepting that bridge has burned and their journey from that point is about healing so that they don't do that kind of damage in their lives in the future.
There's a guy in New Zealand who has set up a group with the ethos 'She is not your rehab' - which is about teaching abusive men that the people they've abused owe them nothing and they should respect their right to leave.

FWIW I felt incredibly violated that day, realising that my cousin would move into my suburb - without contacting me first to say 'Hey I really miss you and I'm looking at buying a place near you so that we can resume our relationship - can we talk about that?' - and then she starts rocking up to places where I have friends, to force that on me...it felt like she was setting a trap and that 'no' was never an option for me. She was going to force me to do what she wanted and if I didn't, there was the thinly veiled threat of 'look, I can walk into your life and start fires, if you don't do what I want and give me the narcissistic supply that you used to.'

What that incident taught me, was that the core narcissism in my family was alive and thriving and I'd been smart to leave.

I don't know how big a town that you live in, but when a flying monkey moves into the area and starts trying to colonise the safe space that you've built for yourself, I think it's completely understandable that you'd be shaken up by this.

I know that my mother's FOO would all have the attitude of 'Well bad luck, it's a free world and Piper doesn't own that suburb, if I want to move there and she doesn't like it, tough, she can learn to deal with it.'
I'm used to mother's FOO forcing things on me and not having a choice or a voice, because my feelings and my wishes don't matter.

I used to love going to author events at that bookshop, but my cousin ruined that for me. I've tried going in there a few times to events since then but invariably I get sick.

If my body is telling me that I feel this unsafe because of my contact with this particular cousin, I'm going to pay attention to that.

I still feel violated and I hate the thought that she's gone into that particular space with the intention to trap me, and potentially to ingratiate herself into my social circle, for who knows what ulterior motive.

When I read your post, I had similar thoughts to Mo, in that 'Well maybe she's seen the light and she's hoping to get some support from you,' but truly - if that's her agenda, she could have found a way to reach out to you before moving into your area.
If she avoided you when she was with friends, it's an indicator that she doesn't want you potentially infiltrating and poisoning her social circle - so why wouldn't she understand and respect that you might feel exactly the same?
If they need to find sneaky roundabout ways to force themselves on us, they haven't done the work on understanding boundaries, healthy communication and respectful relationships - and you're justified in being suspicious of where this might end.
I think we all dream about having validation from FOO, but the reality is that everyone in our FOO has likely been damaged by the many years they've soaked up the unhealthy dynamics that are typical of our families. And it's really hard work not to trigger and be triggered, in our FOO.
The decision that I made on that subject came down to, well, there are plenty of people here on these boards who are doing that hard work, and who won't trigger my trauma symptoms, and who won't be gathering ammunition, knowingly or unknowingly, to share with my abusers.

I had to do a lot of work to process all the FOG that rolled in with that incident. It really was a massive head spin.
Hopefully it'll help you.

[Pinkos]

Wow @sandpiper that level of manipulation sounds like an absolute nightmare to deal with! Sorry you had to go through that. 

This cousin I don't think is doing that. Her reasons for now living in my area make sense in her life's trajectory. She grew up in the suburbs and her parents are still there. She got a job in the city after grad school and moved to the city, which brings her closer to me. I think when she saw me for the first time in 7 years or so she felt awkward and didn't want to deal with it in front of her friends.

I know my parents have been smearing me to her parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents since I've gone NC. She's been hearing all that for 7 years. But she's a disinterested party. She has no interest in me. I appreciate @moglow's suggestion and if I felt like there was any chance this could be that type of situation I would give it a chance. But I'm positive it's not for all the reasons I stated.

I also agree that in order for someone to demonstrate that they get it now - they would need to say something directly to that effect to break the ice. Not gossip but just something acknowledging the distance and clearly stating their intention. Even then I would have to discern their sincerity.

Ignoring me the first time, then being so uncomfortable the 2nd time, followed by an impersonal text has all the hallmarks of someone just feeling obligated and following the family script. I have no intention of perpetuating that kind of obligatory and guilt ridden family connection. So tedious!

[walking on broken glass]

It's about them accepting that in some instances, their behaviour has damaged people so much that they may never be welcome in that person's life again. Their path forward is about accepting that bridge has burned and their journey from that point is about healing so that they don't do that kind of damage in their lives in the future.

Thank you for this. It really resonated with me

[sandpiper]

Hey Pinkos, thanks for your feedback...yes, that all makes sense, hopefully she can report in to the puppet masters and can say 'I did what you wanted, she was courteous but she's busy,' and that'll be an end to them pushing her to go on a fishing expedition with you. I've noticed with mother's FOO that if I run into them somewhere unexpected, the behaviour that I get from them depends on the audience that they have. If they are with their friends and they need to maintain the facade then sugary sweetness & fake intimacy is the order of the day. If there's nobody around who matters to them then they're just dismissive and ignore me.
It always helps to have a practice plan in mind in case you run into her again. If she persists with the texts and the invitations though, I'd be inclined to be honest with her & just say words to the effect that you wish her well & you're happy to say hello when you see each other, but your life is a lot better for having the boundaries that you have in place with your family and you'd rather not stir up that particular hornet's nest.

Walking on Broken Glass - glad to help. Pinkos story reminded me what a horrible time I had dealing with that particular scenario. If I could rewind my life 40 years and I knew what I know now - having started that learning curve in T back then - I think I'd move to the other side of the country, because it probably would have been so much easier than dealing with the constant drama that came from DH's family and mine.

[SpiritedChange]

While I completely understand your reluctance to engage with this cousin, much of what your wrote is your subjective interpretation of past events, and just plain guess-work on your part. To be fair, you might be 100% correct, but you also might not be. At the end of the day, you cannot know for sure that she pretended she didn't see you, and her text sounded quite friendly to me. Of course she was nervous -- she hasn't seen you in so many years. It also doesn't sound like there is any history of actual flying monkey behavior from her.

I think it would  be sad if you missed out on having a potential ally if it turns out that you were wrong about her. Obviously you will need to take it slow, but it will take time for you to discern if she is a trustworthy person. 

[walking on broken glass]

I am exactly the opposite! I'd rather err on the side of caution than risk being dragged into the theatre of the absurd. Also - again, speaking for myself - I have learned to trust my instinct: when my 'spider sense' is tingling, I don't ignore it, because more often than not I am right to suspect that something is off.