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[Peanutbutter20]

Anyone here have experience with an extended family member who has undiagnosed PD who uses alienation, shunning, and refuses to acknowledge or accept family members or life events / new children? anyone have experienced with being a target of alienation after being treated kindly for years ?

[engineer31]

Peanutbutter, unfortunately, yes. MIL treated me well for the first 1.5 years of being with DH. Then I had my daughter and things changed. I used to get along with everyone, but because MIL likes to gossip, she's told her side of what's happened to everyone that will listen (which is literally everyone) in the family. I had to cut ties with just about all of DH aunts/uncles because they "don't want to get in the middle" but they put themselves in the middle when they took pictures off my social media and shared it to MIL knowing I had her blocked. They've excluded me from a whole lot but then expect me to bend over backwards and use all my PTO to come visit them. I stopped talking to all of them almost 2 years ago now. My DH has finally seen the alienation and division she has caused and is done too. They have no intentions of changing. I think the part that sucks the most is when other family gets in the middle. That's the hardest part for me. It's when they choose to only listen to MIL and not talk to us about what's going on, but then lack respect when they are around us. Just this weekend one of DH's aunt and uncle came to visit the area and we met over  at some other family member's house. The 2 that are visiting, I know hang out with MIL and FIL all the time. The first thing that happened when we got there was aunt started taking pictures of our kids, which I know are going to get back to MIL if they haven't already. This is a clear boundary we have set and everyone knows it. MIL only wants pictures of our kids to show them off. She only cares about her social status, not actually being in their lives. Everything MIL has done, is for social media. She has complained to everyone that I do not allow her to see HER grandchildren, but doesn't tell them the truth about why....she spreads rumors that DH is planning on leaving me when he is done with school (in 6 months). The whole thing is a nightmare. I hate losing other family members because they choose to believe her BUT I'm trying really hard to accept that them choosing to alienate us is a reflection of their character, not mine. Me choosing to remove them from social media and not accept their disrespect is a perfectly fine and healthy boundary. I don't know what you're going through, but I hope this helps a little. You are not alone.

[Adria]

Yes, Peanutbutter,

At first PDMIL seemed nice, and then when she would invite dh and I and my kids (dh's step kids) over for dinner, she would have dh sit in between her and FIL, so wierd and awkward.  The other thing was that she never took dh's wedding picture down of him and his first narc wife, so I was faced with that every time I walked in her house (dh said she was really nasty to his first wife).  Then his whole family started ignoring me and my kids, then they all eventually latched onto my kids and kept ignorning me.  It has been 30 years of fun and games with his family.  It's only been the last five years or so that dh has come Out of the FOG with his family.  He no longer jumps like a circus monkey.  I've gone VVLC. MIL is now in her 90's. I'm nice when I see her, but don't do phone calls or anything else with her.  She seems to want to connect with me more now because she is stuck in an old folks home, but for me, it's a little too late.

[Starboard Song]

Anyone here have experience with an extended family member who has undiagnosed PD who uses alienation, shunning, and refuses to acknowledge or accept family members or life events / new children? anyone have experienced with being a target of alienation after being treated kindly for years ?

Yes, yes, and yes.

We are now 7 years NC from my in-laws for this very reason. After years of being increasingly negative, we had a crisis. My MIL was angry about an extended family member moving to town, and she announced she no longer wanted to interact with us. This wasn't our first rodeo, so we were fed up. And we felt it was critical to support a family member making end of life decisions. So we didn't play ball. We didn't beg for forgiveness or admit we were wrong. We didn't cajole her. And so her Silent Treatment of us became nasty: with long, condemning letters, smear campaigns in the community, and hostile criticisms. After 6 months of this -- from someone who'd never reached these heights before -- we cut them off.

In retrospect, the previous lack of such antics was because of our previously obsequious behavior.

In any case, you are not alone.

[Pepin]

Oh yes.....yes to everything.  CN MIL behaved herself at the beginning and even confided in DH that I was the favorite -- what I later learned is that I was her favorite target because she wanted DH.  When my kids started maturing past the toddler years it was if CN MIL couldn't keep up with them emotionally.  She saw how intelligent they were becoming and that she couldn't compete.  The next best thing for her to do was to start whining for DH and get him to alienate our kids and even me.  It's like she needed him more than we did and she had her own husband.  And then FIL died and everything hit the fan.  DH literally became almost a replacement for his father and CN MIL really turned up the heat on ignoring the children and I.  She only wanted DH and she would do everything within her power to get him to herself.  Her demands of him were ludicrous and amazingly he complied with almost everything.  She wasn't a nice person at all.  And now that she has passed, it is pretty clear who she was and how completely awful she was.  She was no saint.