I have been dealing with a smear campaign for over 5 years now between my BPDH and his relatives (who have not much been in our lives for the past 30 years, so they have had few actual experiences with us - they live several states away and H is not one to frequently touch base with them.). while they know that my H was a very difficult child, they don't know that he has BPD. They know that he's an alcoholic, but he's convinced them that I "caused that."
The smear campaign began about 6 years ago when my H insisted that I had an affair (I've never even held hands with another man in 30 years!). Not only would he not believe me, he told EVERYONE that I had an affair... . coworkers, called his relatives, etc. After a short period of time when he couldn't uncover any "evidence" of any "affair", he finally told me that he believed me. But, he never really cleared that up with others because doing so would have made him look stupid for accusing a totally innocent person. Well the "cheating" accusation popped up at least 3 more times after that... . all during drunken rages. One night, to escape his frequent rages, I went to sleep upstairs. He called my cell phone and accused me of being in bed with another man. I was upstairs in our own home alone, while he was downstairs! That's how nutty this is/was.
Well, the smearing has continued to the point that his family thinks I'm horrible. Our own children are mystified because if given the opportunity, they would tell them that their mom (me) is the victim and that their father is a crazy, cruel, raging person. One of our kids won't even speak or see my H. The other one barely tolerates him. They both think he's irrational, paranoid, and outrageous.
My sister is a T, and she keeps telling me that time will reveal much because H is getting worse and worse because of the alcohol and testosterone replacement therapy he's (wrongly) on.
Once H retires, he will likely move to live near his relatives. At that point, they will begin to see how their brother really behaves. He won't be able to hide his BPD for long. He was around them last fall during the election and he called one of his SIL's an idiot for her voting choice. H will routinely insult people who vote differently than he does. However, his relatives weren't the targets of his rages, so they don't know much about that except for a couple of incidents that occurred about 6 and 20 years ago - each involving a different sibling. Their memories are either short, or they aren't savvy enough to realize that those rages were huge red flags of a more serious issue.
His brother (who H relies on for advice now), hates me, but did chide my H when BIL witnessed a phone call where H was raging at me. H was mad that he had lost his house key and was locked out, so he raged at me. BIL made him apologize and he told H that his behavior was unacceptable and that it wasn't my fault that H lost his key. That said, BIL isn't bright enough to put 2+2 together to realize that if H would rage about his lost key, then what other unreasonable rages is he doing.
There is a backstory as to why BIL has always disliked me. I have always been very pleasant, but he never liked me because he thought I was a rich snobby girl from Calif. So ridiculous. I came from a large middle class family. My dad never earned more than $50k per year... .
. That amount is LESS than what THEIR father earned. But, my parents were savers/investors, so we had a large beautiful home. H's parents were silly with money and always lived paycheck to paycheck.
So, when we got married, my parents gave us a beautiful church wedding with all the trimmings. This was far better than anything H's family had ever seen. So, BIL and a few others were "put off" by what they saw because they probably had memories of their own far-lesser weddings. This is a family that is VERY jealous of what others have, but they never consider the fact that they're earning good money, but they piss their money away on junk and impulse purchases. (MIL had 8 kids... . she bought her kids EVERYTHING on their Bday and Xmas lists... . every item... including all accessories). My family had 7 kids and my parents would only buy us ONE thing from our list and it had to be within a low price limit. Any other gifts that we got were practical... . like new PJs, or new socks.
So, from the get go, I was the snobby rich Calif girl in their eyes.
Therefore it wasn't difficult for H to "build" on that misperception whenever he saw an opportunity to smear me.
It is painful to know that your reputation has been smeared, especially when you feel that you have little opportunity to clear your name.
It's all very upsetting to know that you're being smeared. All you can hope is that time will reveal the truth.
