Follow-up for Holiday Visit with Parents Part 2

[Big Bear]

Greetings Out of the FOG,

I would like to take a moment to share about what happened in the weeks following my recent Christmas visit with my parents.  I'll start with a brief summary of the holiday visit.  My parents travelled to my house from out of town for several days to visit me and my family.  The visit was going well for the first several days, but took a turn for the worse on the last full day.

We were all eating dinner together and getting along just fine when I briefly excused myself from the table for a few minutes.  When I came back, my mother and wife were having an emotional argument over politics.  Well, at least on the surface.  It seems like it was an opportunity to vent out some negative emotions.  One thing is for certain, I did get vibes of negative emotions.     In any case, this was an agonizing experience for me.  The visit did not turn out the way I was hoping it could have.  My overall conclusion was to build even stronger boundaries between me and my parents.  This decision was in order for me to stay healthy and protect my marriage from negative outside influences.

Now I would like to share what happened next.  Inside of myself, I felt a strong need to further separate from my parents.  I decided to let the fire die out on its own.  No oxygen, no fire.  I would do my best to deprive the fire of oxygen, so to speak.  I couldn't let my mother just act however she wants.  No way, not going to happen in my lifetime!     Conversely, to engage with my mother would simply provide my mother with more *supply*.  More opportunities to project her negative feelings onto me and my wife.  More opportunities to relish in the *drama* of being an extended family.     Sorry, mother, not going there!  So I decided to limit conversation with my mother and employ super-medium chill.   

Here is how my mother attempted to keep her source of supply going in three steps:

Step 1: Make an excuse.  Not long after the visit I received a text message from my mother.  She explained that she felt sorry for her outburst and it happened because she was tired.  This came across to me as if she were merely making an excuse for her behavior.  In fact, she frequently complains about being tired.  So, if she thinks it is ok to act like this whenever she feels tired, then she could act this way almost anytime!     I did not interpret this as a genuine apology.  To me a genuine apology would make no excuses.  I promptly deleted this text message and did not reply.  The next day my wife told me that she received the exact same text message.  She agreed with me that it sounded like an excuse to bring up being tired as the reason for the outburst.  At first my wife wanted to reply to the text message.  I encouraged her to just ignore it and not respond at all.  Thankfully she agreed with me and did not respond!  : )  Yeah!  One step Out of the FOG!  

Step 2: Be insincere.  A while later I received a voice mail from my mother.  It sounded emotional and weepy.  She claimed that she felt sorry for how she acted and that she was thinking about getting counseling to address her deeper issues.    I didn't take the bait.  She had previously confided in me about relationship struggles with others and that she was supposedly thinking about getting counseling.  But here is the crucial part - she never once actually went to counseling.  She even admitted that she thought she should have, but just didn't.  So why would this time be any different?  I didn't buy it - sounded insincere.  So I erased that voice mail and did not respond.  It has now been over a month and as far as I know, she has not attended a single counseling session.  Actions speak louder than words, and so far I don't see any actions on this front.  

Step 3: Rug-sweep.  Well, when excuses and insincere claims failed to bring about any more supply, she changed tactics.  She mailed my family a package with two small mildly amusing gifts for the kids and a thank you card.  She thanked us for our hospitality and gushed about how great the visit was.  All rainbows and unicorns!  No mention of anything negative, like it never existed.  This time I decided to respond in a medium chill way.  I sent a thank you card to say that we appreciated the gifts.  I kept it brief and simple.  I feel like mail is a better way for me to communicate with her.  It slows things down and I think this is better for me than phone or text.  

So there you have it: make excuses, be insincere, and then rug-sweep!  

So, if she brings up the topic of a family reunion this summer - time for super-medium chill!  "That's nice", "That's too bad", "We'll see about that".  

Anyway, what good is an extended family reunion?  For a covert narc, plenty!  Multiple fronts for triangulation!  Lots of flying monkeys to recruit and employ!  Plenty of targets for emotional projections!  Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

So, about the family reunion . . . "We'll see about that."  . . . "So, how's the weather?"

Thanks for reading!   

Sincerely,
Big Bear

[notrightinthehead]

Congratulations! You are acing it.

[bloomie]

Big Bear - reading through the description of your family's experience with your mother and your response to her once again sabotaging the holiday time together and I am just really sad for you all that this happened.

At the same time, I am really impressed with the clarity you have around how best to respond to the behavior and the choices afterwards by your mother to attempt to mitigate the consequences to herself and not clean up the mess she made and get the help she needs so that her relationships can be healthier.

How are things going with all of this?

[Blueberry Pancakes]

Well done. 

Whenever there is an occasion I see my parents' PD is on display, I mostly chalk it up to just providing me more clarity. As situations recur (they always seem to, even being VVLC), the tools are more finely tuned each time.
   
There was something about the third step that hit a familiar chord. I feel like the rug sweep is also an attempt to re-write history, change our perception, or a facade-management tactic for them. If we respond to it, they get to think we buy into it and they believe they are back in charge. By not providing fuel to that, the power line goes nowhere.

[moglow]

My take on her three step process:
Step 1: Make an excuse.  Not long after the visit I received a text message from my mother.  She explained that she felt sorry for her outburst and it happened because... So she KNEW it was self-serving and uncalled for and went there anyway. Noted.

Step 2: Be insincere.  A while later I received a voice mail from my mother.  It sounded emotional and weepy.  She claimed that she felt sorry for how she acted and that she was thinking about getting counseling to address her deeper issues... More of the same, only throw a blanket "I'm thinking about" instead of actually doing something about it. Also noted. [A few months from now maybe a well placed "how's that counseling going?" will remind her. Maybe not.]

Step 3: Rug-sweep.  Well, when excuses and insincere claims failed to bring about any more supply, she changed tactics.  She mailed my family a package with two small mildly amusing gifts for the kids and a thank you card.  She thanked us for our hospitality and gushed about how great the visit was.  All rainbows and unicorns!  No mention of anything negative, like it never existed.  ... Lord have mercy. Can't someone start a new playbook already?? When all else fails, it simply never happened? Y'all.

I'm all too familiar with the above unfortunately. I so bad just want to say, do what you're gonna do, mom. That's you and your stuff, not me and mine. Whether you do or not changes nothing. "Feeling sorry" after the fact would be better faced up front, by slowing down and thinking things through BEFORE it becomes a thing. But no, it's lather rinse repeat with some. Obv you've been through this before with her, it ain't a new thing.

[lkdrymom]

I think you responded very well to all of this.  The next time you do have to interact with per please ask her how counseling is going because we all want to know.

[Big Bear]

How are things going with all of this?

Thanks Bloomie and everyone else for your encouragement.

Well, quite simply I have been going through a time of grieving.  It's like a funeral, but not for the loss of a life, but the loss of the relationship.  When a person dies there is usually a public acknowledgement of what happened.  But for the death of the relationship, it is much more subtle.   

The relationship between me and my mother had been steadily declining over the past several years.  For a while, I needed to have healthy boundaries to create a safe place to stay healthy.  For a long time it was an ongoing challenge to keep holding up the boundaries.  Now, I have just lost the desire for any connection.  I decided that our relationship had just died.  The sabotage was getting harder to ignore.  The undermining became less and less covert.  The unwillingness and/or inability to change was a constant problem.  Eventually, . . . I just had enough.  I'm not totally NC.  I still maintain some token communication, mostly occasional calls to allow a connection with the grand kids.  But nothing directly from me.  I don't want to share anything because it could be used as something to spread around.  Conversely, I don't want to hear anything from her, as I have grown tired of the negativity.

So, I'm grieving the loss of the relationship.  The loss of what could have been.  The loss of the hope of an adult-to-adult relationship based on honesty and trust.  Acceptance is an important part of the grieving process and I'm working on quietly accepting the reality of my situation.  This can be sad at times.  However, I would rather face a hard truth than continue to struggle with something false.  I imagine I'm not the only one in this place.  So, I continue through my season of grief.

Thanks all for being a safe place to share.

Big Bear

[moglow]

Big Bear, I wonder if you're one of my brothers [in some ways you are whether blood or not  ]. This is all so familiar to me and honestly I'm sorry for that connection.

Acceptance isn't necessarily a fun place to go. It's very much a necessary thing for all of us and much more peaceful than where we began, but getting there after decades of "how it's supposed to be" is a hard slog. The expectations of our relationships, particularly within family, is pretty much drilled into us. We do this, they/parents do that, there's empathy and guidance and kindness, it's reciprocal - in theory. The reality for us ... isn't. What I [and sounds like you] experienced, is a whole heaping helping of very little give beyond food, shelter, getting us to adulthood and out of their homes.

Then we're supposed to somehow have these cool relationship where we share our lives, there's mutual interest and visits, celebrating the good things and mourning the losses and disappointments. Only they show over and over they still aren't interested or that we're a disturbance. We're pushed away, ignored, belittled and demeaned, battered with complaints of where we went wrong and what we somehow should have known/said/did, how we repeatedly let them down. No recognition that we're living our lives just as they are, that we're separate individuals with jobs, families, responsibilities outside theirs. But over and over we're compared and found lacking, while all around us we're around families that feel genuine, they're laughing and loving and enjoying each other's company. We KNOW it's possible and can only wonder where we went wrong.

As the years go by their demands weigh on us, all those many ways we're disappointments to them no matter our efforts. What I see now as a vast abyss of emptiness within mother makes me realize I have some of the same - only I don't dwell on it. I don't sit around and wait or demand that others fill it. I've come to realize that the old adage that you can't love others until you love yourself is SO very true! You can't give kindness you don't feel. In essence, who we are "out there" speaks volumes to who we are inside. That's where acceptance really began for me, and while it makes me sad for all that mother gave up and walked away from, I had a place to move forward out of the quicksand.

NONE if that tripe is mine, is what I'm saying - it's all her and her sick stuff. Her refusal to reach out beyond herself to anything positive, choosing instead to drag others into the mire with her. We want and need better, Big Bear, and letting go of their stuff is a huge step in that direction. Accepting that they truly are who they are and there's not one thing we can [or should] do to change it. That's all on them, just as our changes are our responsibility as individuals.

Be blessed, friend!