Demanding responses and I'm not giving in

[lindentree]

Been LC for a couple years wit Nm. Been Out of the FOG for about 7 years.

Recent contact: Saw her a couple times over Thanksgiving as well as my F (her ex) and in-laws. Thank God we live 500 miles away. She got a lot of contact with me between visit, a phone call since our return home of her talking all about herself with feigned interest in me, my work, and kids, and then some texts about when/where to send her xmas presents as they are traveling for xmas. It was all annoying at times but relatively drama-free.

Why is it that as communication frequency increases, she has to sabotage it with a guilt-trip outburst?

Todays' incident: Today was jam-packed cleaning, cooking, homeschooling my two kids, entertaining another family for a few hours, hubby working in another city today, and an event tonight we attended as a family. She texted me pics of her cooking and wildlife near her house to share with my kids, (whom she hasn't asked to talk to on the phone in months) then 4 hours later "did you see what I sent it makes me sad when you don't respond" something about "her grandchildren" blah blah blah.

Like, does she not know how easily I could cut her out of my life and literally only have he quality of my life improve?

I'm noticing she's probably getting a lot of fodder and narcissistic supply because if we get to talking about politics (which we actually see eye to eye on!) or my small biz, I tend to open up instead of staying medium chill. Please remind me to not go into personal things with her!

Right away I felt dizzy from the text outburst but tried to allow myself to feel those feelings of confusion and frustration and then knew I needed to do something soothing back home with my wonderful FOC. One thing that always helps is sharing here and hearing feedback from all of you.

And I set a 3 min timer to tell my dH but not spend too much time ruminating. He's Out of the FOG with her but still says, "maybe you can call her once a week" to help me not get these crazy texts that try to guilt me BUT I tried that once and nM got all waify and took it as a personal attack that I would try to establish a weekly call time. I reminded him we don't have to take any action based on her guilt-ridden text. The only answer is no contact for the time being.

Also doesn't social media suck because even though I don't let her follow me on my Insta, she can see my public business profile where I share some personal stuff sometimes but it would take a lot for me to block her from seeing my business page. And of course we're FB friends but this sort of behavior makes me want to cut her off completely.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...

[moglow]

Mine was like that at times - it struck me as very all or nothing thinking on her part. She'd go sideways and attack, then when *she* felt all better she'd overload with meaningless texts and complain she didn't get a response from me. I didn't have an appropriate response and simply didn't want up engage at that point. 

It was hard for me to remember, every random text doesn't need a response AND we have other things going on. Part of that for her may be the holiday angst, thinking to force some extra special connection because of the season. That's not how it works!

You're not responsible for her stuff or satisfying her whims, no matter how hard she thrusts it at you. 

[Cat of the Canals]

Cripes, I'm so glad PDmom doesn't text. She's tried over the years to establish communication via other means like Google chat and Facebook messages, but I realized after a while that she was just setting up more ways to bug me when I didn't immediately respond to her demands for attention. I started ignoring her on those platforms and feigned ignorance when she'd ask about them, "Oh, I barely use Facebook these days." She's now resorted to stalking my Goodreads! Every time we talk, "Oh, I saw you've been reading a lot lately." Dear god, woman. Get a life!

My PDmil DOES text and one thing that has helped is my husband pretty much never responds immediately. He usually waits a day or two to reply to her messages. He's done this for years, and it's the norm now, so it's difficult for her to stir up a guilt trip over it.

Anyway, good on you for not riding the guilt trip train. I think it gets easier and easier once you start seeing the manipulation for what it is.