Family Contact After Many Years

[PearlBailey]

Curious if anyone has dealt with a similar situation, and how you handled it.

I definitely stayed longer than I should have with my ex-BPDh due to the fact I was extremely close with his niece. I had spent a lot of time with her since her birth, and she was around 11 years old when I went no contact with the whole family during the separation and eventual divorce. It made an already tough situation that much more gut wrenching.

It's been about 10 years since I've spoken to her, so she's in her early twenties now. I got a Facebook friend request (not accepting that), but she also sent me a message saying she had thought about me a lot over the years. She said she genuinely wanted to get to know me again and gave me her cell phone number.

Her mother was definitely a flying monkey during the whole divorce. She even found ways to insert herself into my current relationship by contacting my husbands exes and talking trash.

I'm very torn with what to do. It feels dangerous to have any contact with any of my ex-husbands family because of what he put me through. But I did really love his niece, and I don't know anything about what kind of person she's grown up to be or what her relationship is like with her family.

Part of me wants to at least tell her I've thought about her as well and wish her well as I never got the chance when she was a child. Keep it vague and not give her any details of my current life.

But man idk, it's scary. Anyone else ever have this situation arise?

[bloomie]

PearlBailey - the collateral damage to relationships with nieces and nephews when we detach from a toxic family system is gut wrenching. I am so sorry you have had to mourn the loss of contact with your precious niece.

I have had a very similar experience. The only difference is I went NC, or as little contact as humanly possible, with a certain part of my in law family and am still married. And have a niece who is a part of my heart that I was NC with for a long time.

In my case, my niece is an adult with a family of her own now and we have very cautiously reconnected. The one thing I did, when my own niece first contacted me was to tell her two things... I could not have the same 'relationship' or level of contact with her mother as I could with her and I have zero interest in maligning anyone she loves or discussing the events leading to NC with her mother that ended the relationships with all of her family.


She accepted that and we now are in contact around holidays and bdays. But.. what I have had to accept is I know that every single contact with her is relayed to her mother (extremely enmeshed) and I keep it as medium chill and surface as possible. I share nothing about my life and my family of any consequence.

I believe my own niece would love more contact and so would I, but I also have seen before NC that when we drew closer her mother punished her and sabotaged the connection. To say it is still heartbreaking and hard is true, but I am willing to take the small risk it is to be in limited, light contact hoping that someday the lightbulb will go on for my niece and she will break free from the specter of her mother's domination and intrusion. Probably a pipe dream she will ever come Out of the FOG, and certainly the contact is always bittersweet.

[PearlBailey]

Thank you for sharing that Bloomie!!

I replied this morning and shared with her how hard it was when I had to lose contact with her, and that I had also thought about her over the years. I asked a couple of benign questions about what she is doing for work and such. And then told her it was scary for me to open a line of contact, but I was willing to talk and see how things went.

If the conversation starts to turn into anything with the past or anything negative, I'll verbalize the same boundaries you put in place.

I also have to really decide how much information I'm really willing to share. For now I'm also going to keep it surface level and only things that pretty much anyone would already know or could find out easily.

I hope it ends up being ok. If nothing else I was able to shed some tears over the grief I was holding on to for having to lose her. And at least let her know that I never stopped caring about her. I feel like we give up so many chances at closure when we leave these kind of relationships, so this was a rare chance to get some things off my chest I didn't think I'd ever get a chance to.