Poll: Did you go out with a bang or a whimper? Or How much C is in your NC?

Started by Yael924, March 29, 2020, 02:58:22 AM

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Yael924

Let me explain:
Like many of you, I've done a lot of reading on Cluster B PDs. One article (and I can't find the link!) theorized that a cataclysmic/sudden/explosive break with a CBPD was more likely to result in a complete NC than a more measured/communicative/rational decision to go NC.

The article stuck with me for obvious reasons. Even in the global pandemic, my pwucbpd and I have maintained total NC. And our "break" was explosive and violent.

So here is the poll question in two parts.

A) Was your NC explosive or measured?

B) How much contact with cbpd since then?

My answers:
Explosive, 0 (1.5 years)

Thanks in advance for sharing and helping a shut-in fight boredom.

TwentyTwenty

Hi, I think you’ve come to an interesting point. My mom physically and verbally attacked me, in front of my wife because we disagreed with her badgering us about a decision we had made about our daughter.

So yes, it was very explosive, and very violent.

She then lied that we attacked her, and maintained that lie ever since.

I wasted a year or so, trying to get her to own her lie, and try to salvage some shred of our relationship. She would have no part of it.

Ever since giving up and seeing there was no capability of change, we have been 100% no contact, even after several attempts (including the Corona we’re sick, please see us) to force a reply from us. A little over a year and a half, extreme no contact.

And I for see many more years of the same, since it has been so beneficial to me and my family.

DaisyGirl77

I'm NC with the entire paternal side of my family with the exception of my enF (who might have a uPD, but I'm unsure).  Only cousin on that side:  I've been NC for almost 10 years, I think.  She ghosted me once I started telling her about our grandmother being abusive to me.  She, I believed, was my ride or die.  Nope...she was a fair weather friend.  With her it was a whimper.

uNUncle:  Bang.  8-9 years.  0 contact since.

uN/BPD paternal "grandmother":  Bang.  Officially 7 years this June 1st.  (Story in my signature.)  0 contact since I walked out the door for the last time.  EnF finds it hard not to tell me about his mother so I do a glaze over & "uh huh" him until he's done.  He's the only one who chooses to keep in contact with her.  UNUncle is a dastardly flake & hides so he doesn't have to deal with his mother, who worships the ground he walks on.  (Yes, I'm still quite angry over my treatment, lol.)

uNM:  Bang.  Will be 5 years this December.  0 contact, but some forced interaction as it involves my 11 & 2 year old nephews for family gatherings.  I remain civil to uNM when I have to be in the same house as her for my sister, who's in the process of establishing her own family traditions on major holidays.  Otherwise, 0 contact as uNM is completely incapable of treating me like an actual human being with my own thoughts & feelings & plans.

All of the above named people are on permanent NC.  I will never break it for any reason.
I lived with my dad's uPD mom for 3.5 years.  This is my story:  http://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=59780.0  (TW for abuse descriptions.)

"You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm." - Anonymous

NC with uNM since December 2016.  VLC with uPDF.

GettingOOTF

I'm NC with FOO.

It was a whimper with them. First with my siblings. I've had NC with them in about 2 years. I blocked them everywhere. They didn't try to reach out though my father tried to get me to.

Father - Whinper. NC less than a year. My father is incredible cruel especially around my birthday. He started ramping. Up a month before. I blocked him as I couldn't face having another birthday ruined. He called once at work. I didn't answer.

BPDXH - A large bang. He ended up being hospitalized in a secure psychiatric ward for two weeks. There was sporadic contact during the divorce. I would say I've been NC with him for 2.5 years. I have an issue with timelines when it comes to him. I think it's disassociation from the abuse. He reaches out occasionally via methods I can't stop him accessing but I never respond.

I would imagine that with FOO it's a whimper for most. My personal view is that we get ground down and by the time we've had enough we've also realized fighting with them is futile and we simply want to move on with our lives.

I imagine that most intimate relationships involve some kind of Bang. It takes a lot to leave a relationship, particularly for women and even more so if young kids are involved. Leaving is almost always preceded by some volatile event.

Sidney37

The first time it was explosive.   She picked and me and picked at me and insulted me in my own home while DH was in the hospital until I blew up, yelled at her for over 30 years worth of built up anger and she stormed out, drove home and left me with my upset kids whose father might have been dying in the hospital.   Luckily he recovered. We didn't speak for months until a bad therapist convinced me to start talking to her again.

Several years later (last year) I read Boundaries by Townsend and Cloud and knew I needed boundaries with PDm.   I also figured out that my attention and supply was like heroin to an addict.   I tried to wean her off of me.   It enraged her.  I started small - calling every other day instead of every day, not giving her extremely personal details about my kids, DH or in-laws when she asked.   I went on a very short trip that was almost 2 hours from her house and didn't take the 4 hours to and from to go see her after I had spent a terrible week with her 2 weeks before.  She raged all the more.  The more she raged, the more distant I got.  Then she started sending texts and emails that enD was going to kill himself (much more graphic) and it was all my fault because I wasn't being nice to them.   :aaauuugh:   I had been talking to him every few days in secret because he wasn't allowed to talk to me.  He was upset  with her demands not with me.  She knows my Pd ex tried to kill me and killed himself when I was much younger.   She said it anyway multiple times and has refused to apologize.   I haven't spoken to her since other than a few emails to see if she would apologize.

So once it was explosive and once thought out and slow.   I feel less guilt about the slow, thought out time.

_apparentlywicked

I'd started to limit contact due to how he's trying to make me feel guilty when I visit him. In truth he's always done this but he's ramped the manipulation up as he's become frustrated with his growing dependence. Last time I saw him the mask was fully off and he was cycling through all his ploys, like one minute telling me I was a wicked child and then in the next breath using baby talk to ask me 'do you love me as a Daddy'. I stayed calm and didn't react but did repeat that he would need to apologise. He didn't. He wasn't confused, he wasn't acting angry, just pure emotional control through words and feelings.

I haven't returned any calls for 3 months and he's not asking anyone if I'm okay and he's pretending it didn't happen and it will go away like it always has. Only the further this goes on,  the more obvious it is that he has not one feeling for me. I'm done. No drama. No confrontation, just a severing. Just a full acceptance of what he is and the natural death of any relationship I thought we had.

I have wondered if I'd like to have a go at him but I don't see the point. He's a void. It seems fitting that it ends like this and that I give him nothing.

❤️❤️

sarandro

My NC with FOO was strange...
The last 20 years, I was doing MC/GR without knowing they were a thing, because of the way I had been treated.
My two siblings never really part of my life (triangulation by Mother)

The day of my Dad's funeral (last May) all I got was shaming and blaming...no coming together to grieve.
I left that day and have been NC since then.

She sent a birthday card with the same shame/blame nonsense...I did not reply.

Not a single word from siblings all this time...that is par for the course.

So...
A) A whimper...the soggy firework of inevitability
B) Nearly a year

I now simply do not care and have no regrets, but I think I was still expecting some kind of attempt at reconciliation...some compassion.
I think they are glad I am out, so they can pretend everything is normal.

Good luck to them if they want to continue to live inauthentic lives!!!

M0009803

A) Combination of both really

B) 2.5 years

My uPDM and uPD Sis attempted to sabotage my wedding.   My wifes parents did not tell us what they attempted until 3 months after the wedding (there were other issues other than this one as well), and that ended up being the final nail in their coffin.   So its a combination of explosive (happened due to behaviour around one event (wedding), but was measured to the several other events (which required me to process and think about).

Starboard Song

Long and troubled history, followed by:

Bang
Almost Zero*
5 years


*We had sporadic contact for a few weeks when a family member was in hospital and passed away
  We left them voicemails explaining the meaning of NC
  They showed up at several of our son's karate competitions
  I met my FIL once when he respected our guidance and politely requested an audience
Radical Acceptance, by Brach   |   Self-Compassion, by Neff    |   Mindfulness, by Williams   |   The Book of Joy, by the Dalai Lama and Tutu
Healing From Family Rifts, by Sichel   |  Stop Walking on Egshells, by Mason    |    Emotional Blackmail, by Susan Forward

Sweetbriar

Whimper for me. I think it's bc my sister and father are so covert that it took me a long time to see what they were doing. I felt more confused and sad than angry at them. But I began to see that they were inserting themselves into my life to use me, and when I set clear boundaries they did not respect them. When my uNPDm went into hospital for many months it was like their masks came off. I was expected to do what they wanted, when they wanted, and I could see very clearly that I was sucked back into a very disordered family of origin. When I said no to them i began to find out they were telling rumours about me. That was the worst betrayal for me. I was shocked. And then I was mad.

I tried to maintain LC with my parents after my mother got out of hospital but my father used silent treatments to punish me. My mother continued her angry tirades. I was in the house I grew up in visiting them and had to listen AGAIN to their fighting and their dangerous life decisions. I left worried every time I visited. The last straw for me was when I offered them something because I was deeply worried about them. He threw the idea back in my face like a pouting, selfish child and I left the house that day thinking, why? Why do I go near these people? They do nothing but hurt themselves and each other, and it is driving me crazy.

I just never went back. Nothing I ever do is good enough for them. Every time I visited them I would cry afterwards. So I just walked away and decided to stay away to keep my sanity.

They don't know I am NC. I keep warding them off with reasons for not visiting.

Covid-19 is a horrible thing that's happening to the world but there is one blessing for me.  I get the space I need from them.

Call Me Cordelia

I went out without knowing it was a bang. I said to my parents I was hurt by their unsupportive and selfish behavior during a difficult time in my life, and I needed some space from them while I took care of myself. What was perfectly reasonable to me set off the BANG of stalking, harassment, and smear campaigns. After months of ignoring it I threw down the cease and desist, which seemed to work. Fully NC with parents for over 2 years now. Never going back, as things got real psychotic and scary. I've processed lots of childhood stuff since and oh my gosh I'm well out of that mess.

Siblings was more of a whimper. As I went through all of that with my parents, they showed their utter lack of caring. So those relationships just froze to death more like. The sister concierge service was closed, I wasn't playing the keep the peace game for them anymore, so they didn't bother.

ILs, bang with MIL, whimper with the rest. Over a year with her, almost 3 with FIL, purely out of indifference/avoidance. We never had a falling out exactly, but he had written me off a long time ago. I don't think he ever accepted my taking his son away from him. There was a bit of a bang with him being rude about a pregnancy announcement and I didn't put up with it silently. It was never dealt with directly, we just never talked again and it took me ages to even notice.

Blue233

Went out with a bang.  Invited to "family meeting" under the guise of "let's improve the family" after my mother's death.  Arrived to find out my 2 brothers and father had decided behind my back that "I was the problem" in the family.  This was because my father was smearing me behind my back and pretending I was not helping enough after my mother's death.  (I had offered multiple times, always turned down by my NPD father.)  Anyways, after I stood up for myself, that was the end of my place in the family.  NPD father announced I was "mentally ill" after I attempted to smooth things over a few days later.  Then he neglected to mention that I had attempted to patch things up with him to my brothers, who assumed I just left the family and abandoned "dear old dad".  NPD dad had never once in my 40 years attempted to have any relationship with me, nor have my brothers.  They assumed I would now be doting slave and mind reader taking care of all of their whims and needs just like my mother had.  No thank you.  After that meeting, I did not reach out to any of them, so the relationship with my brothers naturally died off as well as they took my father's side.  It is what it is at this point, I wouldn't go back for any further abuse at this point if you paid me in millions.  No thank you!    My father then committed suicide a year later, and I'm still not contact with my brothers.  My life is much better without all of them in it.

Blueberry Pancakes

It was a Bang. A big, bad and ugly one with my mom, dad and sister all at once.
       
That was 1.5 years ago.
   
It was bliss for 1 entire year until I tried VLC with parents due to their age and health issues. Bad idea. Another bad idea was breaking 1.5 years of NC a few days ago with my sister during this pandemic. We exchanged a text. I felt ill and regretful immediately. She called and left a voicemail which I am not returning.  Back to NC with sis. Back to VVLC with parents. 

Pepin

It was a bang and it has been 12 years.  Done with NF until his end.  The whimpering with LC didn't work.  NF has tried many times to break the NC through other people getting involved.  Nope.  It won't work.  All those flying monkeys got removed, too.

Just Jay

NC with BPM for 8 years.

There were two short periods of time that I didn't speak to her during the few year leading up to NC, but the event that made me decide to cut contact was explosive.

Once in a blue moon, there is a text exchange.

I went NC with 2 of 3 stepsisters about a year ago, which is true bliss :)  My father (their step) has been ill a long time, and they really ramped up the Golden Children vs Scapegoats routine during a particular health crisis. (Hint: They are the goldens.)   The funny part of it was Her Royal Highness The Top Golden truly was gobsmacked that I was not kissing her behind, and really flipped out about the slightest criticism.  It reminded me of that scene in Lord Of The Rings where Galadriel screams, "All shall love me and despair!"


freedom77

For me it was a BANG!  :blowup:

Zero contact in the NC with BPD/N mother

2 months and counting

She still texts, although she is blocked on my cell, and those ugly, hateful texts land in the blocked box. I don't read them anymore. She is doing this less and less...soon I'll be buying a new phone with a brand-new, shiny number.

Like all of us here, the road and relationship was complicated, that being an understatement. I could write a book.

The straws that broke the camel's back started piling up last summer when she screamed with unbridled rage "I HATE YOU!" and her eyes showed she meant every syllable of it. She did this in front of DD. It was her response to my refusal to continue letting her live with us (an unbearably regretful experience).

Her constant verbal attacks that I grew ever increasingly tired of. Finally I confronted her after years of silently putting up with her shit, and somehow landed on the topic of the sexual abuse I endured for years at the hands of people she carelessly left me alone with. She completely gaslighted me, and then when that didn't work, outright blamed me for the abuse.

The absolute final straw...the one that snapped that camel's back in two was when I realized she was beginning to abuse my DD. She was starting in on her, and I knew then, in that moment: It.Was.Over.

At first I had such a mix of emotions, but it's gotten easier. I no longer feel responsible for her in any way, shape or form, as I once did, as she was so completely enmeshed in my life.

DD and I are planning our new life, and a fresh start to come later this summer. Since going NC DD has opened up to me about how abusive BPD/N mother was to her when they were alone, and how grossly trashed talked I was.

LoverofPeace

The Big Bang! No theory here! Some may have read my story about the drive in the car and attacked from behind by malignant NPD sis, with also malignant NPD mother next to me in the passenger seat  = the instigator.

I won't mention again the lesson taught them that night in order to protect myself.

LC to VLC to VVLC to NC = 2 years this May with the mother.

NC = same amount of time, with sis.

Membership here in order to help me get on with my life = priceless!  :wave:



BeanerJane

No bang.  We were at a point in our relationship where my BPDm's usual guilt and manipulation weren't working on me anymore.  I wasn't cooperating and she was growing angrier and angrier >:(  Her favorite way of communicating was to write long screeds detailing the ways she had been victimized,  what a dirt bag I was, and how saintly she had been over the years.  She would send one of her ridiculous emails and then expect me to get in line and perform my role up to her standards.  But I didn't and I wouldn't.  Whatever reaction she was looking for I gave her the opposite.  The nastier she became the further I withdrew until one day I dropped the rope.  I decided not to respond to her latest attempt at riling me up for 24 hours.  A day went, then another one, then a week.  She sent some more nasty grams  but I kept silent.  One particularly busy afternoon I blocked her email and phone number.  The silence was blissful.  I left it blocked and four years later it still is.

Now, for the C part of NC.  I have been 100% NC but she cannot help herself.  She has tried to send letters through the mail.  If I catch one I send it right back to her unopened.  She has sent texts to my DH, mailed letters without a return address and even one with her handwriting disguised. I remain firmly incommunicado.

freedom77

Beaner Jane...your situation of prolonged contact attempts is very similar to how my mother's has been.
She kept sending nastier and nastier texts. She pulled out all the stops, brought up every transgression, what a dirt bag I am, how much of saintly victim she is. She has slowed down, but still sends her "nasty grams", they get forwarded to my blocked box, where I can decide to read or not.

At first she was sending dozens of messages a day when I first went NC. Like you I just withdrew more and more. Like you I was just over it all. I was angry at the things she said and did, but not the same kind of reactive anger years past, more a fatigued anger. Just don't wanna anymore.

I resisted the urge to answer back, or bring up all the shitty things she's done. I just keep ignoring her. I knew a lot of the stuff she was saying were attempts to goad me into contact.

35andnewlife

NC since last June. Explosive. She accused me of stealing money and I told her she was toxic and goodbye. They have attempted contact with packages and voicemail. My enabling dad showed up at the house once. I briefly spoke to him but that was it. I have maintained NC with mother since June. No plans to resume contact, although the pandemic does make it difficult...its the guilt. I don't want to, but I feel like I SHOULD.