death by the silent treatment

[nogoodDIL]

Hi! I've been lurking for a while and finally posting. Here's the shortish story of my situation.

I married a man with a BPD mom and eDad. We had a friendly relationship for about 3 years but when we got engaged everything went downhill FAST. He was the GC and MIL saw the threat of me taking away her baby. FIL, SIL, and all extended family seem to have blind eyes to MIL and her manipulation/waif tactics and defend her. She's very convincing and will give gifts to get loyalty. There was drama leading up to the wedding but we foolishly didn't expect that they would do anything to ruin the big day. Well, everything we did on our wedding day was wrong.

Long story short...THEY went VLC after our wedding without any explanation other than we did lots of things wrong on our wedding day. The wouldn't and still won't discuss it or give any examples. Not one person in his family came up to speak me at our wedding. bpdMIL convinced everyone in the extended family that I'm evil and changed him. (overnight?? we were together for 4 years before we married) No invite to holidays, told not to bring me to a funeral etc. He has called, emailed, begged for an answer and tried to fix it. They avoid avoid avoid and silent treatment. I guess it's punishment for not obeying them anymore. They don't like that I'm the one making life decisions with him instead of them telling him what to do. bpdMIL will call every other week or so and just make small talk to acting like nothing is wrong. I think that she was mad for 2 years and now that she's somewhat moved on that she just wants it to go away and not apologize. He finally sent an email to bpdMIL, eDIL, and SIL saying he gives up on begging to work it out and to reach out if they ever decide they want a relationship. No reply from any of them.

Does anyone have any advice on the silent treatment? Or going NC when they don't even seem to care? I see lots of stories here about not answering calls or having to ignore/block but not many about how to deal when they don't even try. Lots of overbearing MILs but not ones that cut you out.

[Latchkey]

Hi nogoodDIL,

I'm sorry this is going on but glad you decided to post. The Silent Treatment is very difficult to deal with and it is a very aggressive overbearing act especially in your case. It's like a black hole which as we know has a lot more going on than just the absence of light.
I'd recommend reading and Posting over on the In-Laws board as you get settled in. Has your DH gone NC or is he in the process of this? I wasn't exactly certain if he was still taking weekly calls.

Looking forward to hearing more of your story.

Latchkey

[Starboard Song]

We had this exact situation.

When we were insubordinate in a key moment, all hell broke loose. We were told not that my MIL was hurt, or angry, or was going to need a little time. We were told she no longer wanted to interact with us. Period.

We were patient, but we did not beg and plead and grovel. After just another six weeks, she turned it loose, writing a long letter. It said how terrible we both were and that she had crossed a point of no return: this was permanent. We were still patient, but -- in the face of perpetual estrangement -- told them they couldn't visit our son out of town or overnight. In retrospect, one should never allow unsupervised visits with someone who says they never again want a relationship.

Well, it didn't take long. Our failure to cave or grovel was too much for MIL to bear, and she continued to abuse us in print. So we finally declared NC. It was weird: she said she wanted no relationship with us, and we gave her exactly that. She hadn't counted on unfavorable terms.

It's been almost 4 years since this began. We've been formally NC for 3 1/2. We have not spoken a word to them since January 2018 (you're rarely complete NC -- stuff happens).

Good luck to you.

[all4peace]

Welcome, nogoodDIL. It's a little painful to type your screen name, so I want to say that I'm guessing you're a terrific wife!!

I live next door to likely BPDmil and enFIL and half the family system. Things were great for me and DH while dating, engagement and all the way up to the birth of our first child, and then it unraveled quite quickly and viciously. DH dared to request a boundary as a father and husband, and MIL got fiercely and angrily up in my face, busting into our house, and then we went into an extended phase of silent treatment and shunning.

If I could do it all over, I would have:
1. Asked DH to directly confront the original rupturing behavior.
2. Accepted the silent treatment.
3. Responded to the silent treatment by adapting our own behavior, which would have included not begging, not pleading, not apologizing. I would have chosen instead to simply move on and behave as the relationship actually was, and not as I wanted it to be. For me now, that would be no invitations to events, no helping them with things they needed help with, not trying to confide about our lives to try to create a connection, not trying to encourage our kids to form a connection.

I will warn you that I have seen the silent treatment turn into hoovering (trying to suck you back in) when you don't show a reaction to the silent treatment. The silent treatment is a manipulative behavior intended to make you beg to get them back in your life. Sometimes I suppose the silent treatment is an actual full rejection, but more often it seems like it goes back and forth between hoovering and ST.

In our case, the ST has been steadily punctuated by efforts to get our DD alone in that family system. Healthy people don't do the ST, but if someone is behaving this way I think it's safe to assume a lot of their behavior and patterns will not be healthy.

I'm sorry you're going through this, glad you've found our forum and hope you will post more in the IL section.

[Penny Lane]

Hi there,
Just adding my welcome here.

I would add, along with the excellent advice you've gotten above: Try to get really clear about what is your responsibility here vs your husband's, and what do you want vs what does he want.

Do you even want to resume contact with people who apparently can't stand you? I wouldn't. It's OK if your husband wants to be in touch with them and you want to bow out.

It sounds like you haven't done anything that needs to be amended or apologized for. I mean, like, if the stuff you did wrong at the wedding was something like "you threw a drink in her face" obviously you should apologize. But barring that, I would say you have very little responsibility here to your MIL and FIL. So really I think your energy is best focused on helping your husband process this and supporting him in what he needs to do around his parents. Along with keeping up your own boundaries. This is much easier said than done especially when what he feels like he needs conflicts with what you feel like you need. The in laws board might be a good place to work on some of that.

This is so hard, a really tough test of you as newlyweds. I hope you can find some peace, with or without a relationship with your in laws.