charm attempt?

[KitKat68]

I posted the same in another post but charm was somehow coming out as charm in the title and at the end of my post. Re-posting to make this make more sense.

My daughter (mid 30’s/f) “Jennifer” and I have been NC for four years. That is to say, she’s reached out periodically over the past four years and always abusively and I don’t respond. Recently I noticed it had been almost a year since she contacted me directly and I figured she got bored with my lack of response and found either new or renewed targets. All while knowing that she may still reach out to me/us because that’s how she is. I figured out this morning she sent me an email a week or so ago to the one email address I still allow her to contact me at that she’s aware I don’t check often.

Her email just wanted to know my “status” and suggested we set our differences aside (!!) and work on our relationship. No apology, not in therapy, and the beginning shreds of starting to project onto me again. I have not responded.

Our “differences” as she calls them consist of using us for several thousand dollars, purposely ruining the motor of my husband’s car for revenge about him being angry with her, asking my parent for loans she refused to repay, and refusing to let us see our grandkids the last four years because I wouldn’t cosign a 25K loan. Shortly thereafter I had to freeze my credit with all three major bureaus (US) because she had a job at that time where she could run credit for loans (similar to the finance person at a car lot) and some strange alerts popped up with Experian. I’ll out myself as  a sucker here for letting her back in years ago but back in 2016 she and her then husband assaulted us on a boat and we were stuck with them the rest of the day as they refused to take us back to the dock that was miles away, in general (not just the boat thing) we  stuck around for the grandkids but ultimately I finally had my eyes wide open to her abuse and walked away.

I’ve been to therapy and over the last four years things have improved for me/us greatly despite missing the grandkids. Now Jennifer has sent me this email that isn’t abusive indicating we should set our “minor differences” aside which I don’t plan to do. If she told me the sky were blue I would run outside and check…I don’t trust her at all.

I have no interest in reconciling with her and I think this is a trap, a charm attempt, that if I fell for it things would only get worse. I do feel slightly guilty (no idea why) but common sense rules my mind more than any misplaced guilt. These days anyway.

Would explaining to her just be JADEing and is it better to just remain NC?

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Sancho]

Hi Kitkat68
It sounds like you have made your decision ie you don't trust that this is genuine, there is no recognition of DD's past treatment and you have made progress that you don't want to put at risk.

The only question is do you not answer or do you say 'No thanks' and explain why.

I would start with the no answer option. My reason is that DD"s response to your non response would be informative ie will she just go n/c? Will DD respond with anger? etc

I think waiting for DD to make another approach would be helpful in guiding your next step.

[js friend]

Hi kitkat68,

I sometimes wonder what it would take for my udd to get back in touch with me, and I always come to the conclusion that it would be to try to manipulate me in some way.

I agree that you should wait for her next move.

[CC43]

Hi KitKat,

I sense that you're facing a dilemma here.  Your daughter has acted abusively towards you in the past, and you've learned to deal with that by enforcing No Contact.  If you were entirely certain that keeping No Contact was the best course of action for both of you, then I bet you would have simply deleted the last email from your daughter.

If you're here, you're probably reconsidering.  Maybe you're wondering if you're thinking straight, as you're still traumatized by the relationship, and you haven't forgiven her completely, at least not until she takes some responsibility.  Maybe you hope to have some sort of reconciliation with your daughter, yet your experience tells you that she's probably not ready.  Maybe what you could do is think about what criteria would indicate to you that she deserves another chance.  It looks like you have a very elemental criteria--she reached out once, and she wasn't nasty.  Is that enough to convince you to give her another chance?  Possibly it's not, given the severity of the past abuses.  Maybe you need to see an apology.  Maybe you need to have some interaction with her, without her lashing out or asking you for things you don't want to give.  Would it help if you laid out the conditions under which you would be ready to give her another chance?  Four years is a long time.  In my BPD-math, people with BPD are lacking in emotional maturity, and so their emotional age is probably only around 70% of their chronological age, at least in my experience.  So at age 30, they are really just starting to act like an adult at 21.  Mid-30s would translate to an emotional age of around 25.  If you think in these terms, would you conclude that she's ready to give an adult relationship another chance?

At the end of the day, if neither one of you is ready, then it's probably best to remain No Contact.  If you're ready, and you want to give her a chance to prove to you that she's ready, then maybe it's worth that chance.  You're the one who has to think about that assessment.  I imagine there's no reason to rush into anything, however.