Is this too good to be true?

[NotFooledAnymore]

For years, my DH and I have continued to allow ourselves to endure the Narcissistic abuse cycle. He grew up with it. So, he's developed the skills to just ignore his mom's uNPD behaviors over and over and over again. I haven't and every time we let her back in (after periods of extended silent treatment) it just causes more and more stress and her behaviors get worse each time.

Finally, my DH realized that letting her back into our lives as if nothing ever happened is just enabling her to continue on with her bad behavior without any consequences. She gets full access to our lives with zero responsibility taken for her horrible actions.

So, this time when she (again) spread malicious lies about us to family members (and they believed her) and then, in an email to us, she even accused of doing this thing that we didn't do, my DH finally had enough. She also accused him of not getting along with anyone in his family and only with my family and did he ever wonder why that was? 

He just wrote a very brief reply letting her know that what she accused us of was a lie and that she has a false perception of who he does and doesn't get along with in his family. He's refused to interact with her since and it's now been almost 5 months. In that time, his mom has called and left a voicemail once just talking about the weather and acting like there hadn't been complete silence for 3 months at that point or that she had just accused us of doing something awful and spread that lie to the whole family. He never responded to the voicemail.

I was so proud of him for finally standing up for me (because she normally hurls all her awfulness at me) and for himself. We haven't heard from her since, with the exception of a birthday card she just sent to our oldest child. Usually by now she would have send us a scathing letter accusing him of all sorts of things and then telling him he HAS to forgive her for "whatever it is" that she's done. She never acknowledges what she did and she always claims that she's apologized (past tense and actually never did apologize). So, I'm surprised we haven't gotten any hate mail from her yet.....maybe we will when he doesn't contact her on Mother's Day.

This is somewhat new territory for us as usually we're on the receiving end of the silent treatment. I told DH he needs to be clear in his boundaries or else we're no better and then we're just giving the silent treatment back to her. He continues to say that he has no intention of interacting with her going forward.

Was it really this "easy"? All it took was for DH to finally call her out on her bad behavior and go NC and she goes away quietly into the night? I'm sure she's smearing us left and right to everyone she can behind our backs but we're at least not hearing about any of it. Could this really be it? We can be left alone to live in peace and never deal with her drama again? Hallelujah! ....I'm still waiting for the drama, though.

One thing that "helps", if you can really call it that, is that we are now NC with his brothers as well. At best, they are enablers of their uNPDM and her behaviors. But, in all honesty, they are very much like her as well. They refuse to have a real conversation with us about why they resent DH and me so much. We've lived on the other side of the country from them for five years and only moved closer last year. That's when we realized their coolness towards us wasn't because of the distance. I am now certain, based on accusations they've thrown at me, that their mom has spun her web of lies masterfully and they believe every one of her lies even when confronted with the truth.

The one sad part is that innocent people get caught up in the fallout. I long for my kids to have relationships with their cousins in DH's family but, unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen based on the fallout with DH's brothers and mom. I do feel thankful and blessed that we have great friends who a more like family to us and we have my family who are wonderfully supportive and kind people.

Though these broken relationships continue to sear my heart, I've stepped all the way back and am letting DH determine the way forward with his family and right now, at least for this season, that means NC with his mom and brothers. And, quite honestly, it's been so much more peaceful since!

[Blueberry Pancakes]

Hello NotFooled. Well, you ask if it was really that easy? If it was, then I say 'great'. However, from my own experience and opinion, no, it is not that easy.

I believe they rarely just fall in line or accept boundaries without push back. Sometimes the push back is quite loud and very hard to ignore. Sometimes I also believe it is happening, maybe via behaviors such as a smear campaign, but maybe we just do not always know exactly how. 
     
Regardless of what others do, I think it is a great step to focus on what you need for your own wellbeing. You communicated your boundaries. You are following that up with living your boundaries. Good for you. What others do, or do not do, is on them. I think I understand the heartbreak of it though, and wondering about the collateral impact on other relationships. You are not alone. I am glad to see you have more peace now. I think that can only be hugely beneficial for you.

[NotFooledAnymore]

What others do, or do not do, is on them. 

Blueberry Pancakes, thank you so much for your insight. I'm really trying to embrace what you said about what others do is on them. I find myself ruminating so much over what they might but up to and how they're smearing us to others. But, as my DH says, we've removed ourselves from his mother's sphere of influence so whatever she says about us to others technically shouldn't have an effect on us.

It's now been 6 months and in that time I did ask DH to communicate to his mother why he was no longer interacting with her, just so we're not simply giving her toxic silence in return for hers. He told her that when she's ready to take accountability for the lies and false accusations she made about us, then he'd be happy to have a conversation with her. Her response was super vague and all she did was tell him to call whenever he wanted to call.

So, I think we're no going to be NC for the foreseeable future with her and his brothers. Though, it was interested that, after 8 months of complete silence from his one brother (no Happy Thanksgiving, no Merry Christmas, etc....) he not only texted DH a happy birthday message he also sent him a card. I can't remember the last time his brother sent an actual card.

All of this makes me suspicious that they are up to something but worrying about it won't do any good.

So far, it's all still relatively quiet but I'm pretty sure his mom things he'll come crawling back. We've dealt with this whole "silent treatment" deal for a whole year before, so she definitely plays the long game. She'll be surprised, perhaps, when we don't come back anymore.