Do I WANT to know what they are saying about us?

[cedarview]

Hello bpdfamily people!

My wife and I remain NC with my uBPD mother and uNPD father (their choice) because they refuse so far to return to family therapy with us. They have their carefully constructed false reality that could be damaged or destroyed in therapy so we realize why they continue to refuse, but the silent treatment from them has continued more or less for all of 2018.

We live in a small town and we are friends with other moms and dads, usually because our kids are friends first. The problem lies in the fact that my parents have been severely talking trash to just about anyone who will listen and that ends up including some of these mutual people we know. One of our well meaning friends has been reporting back to us about various craziness from my parents, including that my father had a car accident and ran through a wall in someone's home, that he is driving without a license, and that apparently my father is actively looking for a replacement "son" to leave his property to.

Needless to say, all of this information hurts me to varying degrees, and I realize that that is by design and that my very ill mother has a big role in all of this behind the scenes. I am assuming a lot of you out there have experienced the same thing; do you WANT to know what is going on or do you find that you protect yourself better by remaining ignorant of what is being said and done behind your back by your sick SO, parents, sibling, etc?

My wife has asked our mutual friend to stop feeding us information unless it involves the death of one or more of my parents, and even then we wonder if we really want to know that (just kidding but sort of not really LOL). I have come close to contacting our mutual friend and asking that she keep letting me know what is going on but I don't want to present an apparent fractured front to my extremely problematic parents. What have you all out there done in this situation? Has your curiosity beaten your desire to maintain strict NC? What happened as a result?

[Panda39]

I have come close to contacting our mutual friend and asking that she keep letting me know what is going on but I don't want to present an apparent fractured front to my extremely problematic parents.

I have not been in the situation you find yourself in with your parents.  I do however want to point out that having a friend keep tabs on your parents and report back to you, you have created triangulation which usually isn't good.  If it was me I'd just live my life and let them do what they're gonna do.

Panda39

[Harri]

I agree with Panda.  You already know they are telling lies and distortions.  I would ask myself to what end?  How would specific info benefit me (other than being informed of their death perhaps)? 

[cedarview]

Harri I know that you are correct in your analysis that very little good will come from monitoring my parent's behavior and what they are saying about my wife and me. I am dealing with a lot of anger and frustration right now as the silent treatment abuse just goes on and on and on into the foreseeable future. I continue with therapy multiple times a month but after some good initial gains my progress has slowed in adapting to this "new normal" of having my parents cut out entirely from my life. It isn't something I ever prepared for in any meaningful way and it continues to be hard to accept.

[Harri]

   Your anger and frustration is to be expected and I think is a normal response to very hurtful and abusive behavior. 

How do you accept that your own parents are abusing you and have cut you out of their lives?  I don't know how other than to keep doing what you are doing.  Posting your feelings, asking for feedback, getting different perspectives and sometimes just sitting with your feelings. 

It is hard to find a place where you can acknowledge your pain and accept that your parents are who they are.  I am not sure I have reached that balance... .or at least I have to go through acceptance sometimes on a daily basis.  At one point, on some issues, I had to reach a point where I could simply acknowledge the hurt and the damage caused by my parents as acceptance was not within my reach.  Kwamina gave me that tool/focus.  I don't know if that is helpful to you or not. 

What would be most helpful to you now?  I don't want to derail your processing of events.  How can I respond better to you?   

[Highlander]

Hi Cedarview,

My husband and I are in the same boat as yourself.  My H's therapists have no doubt that his mother has BPD & NPD and father has NPD, they divorced 25 years ago.

Luckily we took up the advice from my H's therapists many years ago to never live near them and we bought a house too far away to run into people that know them in the streets.  Our NC began a couple of years ago when both his mother and father began spreading lies about us and apart from one Paternal half Uncle, my H's Grandmother and all Aunts, Uncles, cousins etc disowned my H without seeking out our side of the story.   Within a period of 7 months, my H lost his entire family!

First of all, I want to note the excruciating deep pain that my H suffers from having both his own mother and father treat their own son in the way that they have done.  Barely a night goes by without him waking in sweats from the nightmares of his parents deceiving him over and over again.  His days are not much better, I never know what time he will wake after sleepless nights and the medication he requires to put himself into a deep sleep.

At times, it helps him when I read other peoples stories from this forum site to help him to understand that he is not alone, there are other victims of BPD and NPD parents out there too.

The other day, I read a post by Notwendy to my H stating:

“Imagine if someone said something absurd to you- like you are a pink elephant or something very strange like that. Would you feel hurt by that? Probably not, because you are certain that you are not a pink elephant. You would probably think that person was strange”

It made him laugh, so now we use the term 'pink elephant' a lot when we are discussing his pain.

Now getting to your post, as stated before, my H only has contact with his father's half brother, who has also distanced himself from his FOO due to lies from his half brother but he is not in NC with them and he also talks to my H's mother too.  This is the only person we can find out what lies are being said about us.

My H only speaks to him every 4 or so months and it always brings him down for weeks after these calls so my H has now asked his half Uncle not to raise his FOO at all, they now only talk about the weather and the daily goings on in life and this helps reduce his nightmares and pain.  Your wife is like us, we only want to know if someone has died and even then, for us, it would be highly unlikely we would NOT attend any funeral - my H will just need to know.

But the pain from the lies still runs deep because my H's sister (passed a couple of years ago), left two children behind - one now 5, the other now 14.  As much as we tried to be a part of their lives, it was impossible seeing that they are now being raised by my H's father (long story we fought as hard as we could in the courts for custody until we ran out of money and thanks to more lies and deceit and inevitable bankruptcy, we had to pull out - even though we were told we would win largely because we were able to prove the extensive perjury with hard evidence and a father that lies about his own son, is not exactly good 'parent' material for his grandchildren!). 

Naturally their NPD grandfather and BPD/NPD grandmother (who sees the children often enough) does not want those children to know what they did to their own son and has has filled those kids with lies. 

What's really hard is that we have all the evidence (through court documents, texts, recordings etc) that all the lies are completely false.  We can only hope that we outlive my H's parents and one day the children will seek us out and find out the truth.  Until then, we can only send B'day and Christmas cards with gift vouchers in them and HOPE that they are getting them.

I myself can't pretend to know what it is like to have both your own parents lie to everyone about myself, but I do live with the outfall everyday and my heart goes out to you Cedarview. 

[Turkish]

I dealt with many "replacement" kids over the years,  the most significant was a Traveler-like family,  my mom and the 28 year old daughter discussing how my mom could adopt her as an adult.  They were likely salivating over my mom's 5 acres.  It was worth some money,  but I couldn't give a rip.  Their r/s soured, as did all of my mom's relationships with "replacement children" and she finally called me to help kick them off of her property.

The point about triangulation is good, but it doesn't hurt to have knowledge of what's going on,  but here I'll say,  only of it benefits you. 

So does it benefit more than hurt you to know what they are saying? If it hurts more,  then detach. If not,  then evaluate buy also keeping in mind your wife's desire. 

[Highlander]

Apologies I said in my post:

" it would be highly unlikely we would NOT attend any funeral "

and meant to say

"it would be highly unlikely we WOULD attend any funeral"

[Panda39]

So if you choose to go down the path to know what they are saying, what do you do with the information? Do you engage in the drama? JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain)?  Do you get hurt?  Do you feel better in the known vs the unknown?  Does it change anything to know?  Does it validate you? Are their words in someway a real threat to you?  Is there anything positive in knowing? 

Why do you want to know?  What do you get out of knowing?

Panda39
 

[etown]

Hi Cedarview,
I'm so sorry you're going through this. I've actually have been in a somewhat similar situation. Last year when I decided to mindfully unfriend my mother on facebook, she did not take it well. She immediately started posting about me on her public profile. I mean, the nice thing was that she couldn't tag me in the posts anymore, which was mostly why I'd unfriended her, but it was a lot of emotionally manipulative stuff about how sad she was and how ungrateful I was. And she would still name me in the posts, like my full name. And then her sisters and brothers and friends would pile on saying what a jerk I was for drawing very reasonable boundaries. It felt TERRIBLE to see my family members talking about me this way and to realize this was probably how they'd always talked about me.
So I blocked her. I blocked all of them. But after a few weeks, my curiosity got to me and I briefly unblocked her, just to make sure she was ok. She was still doing to same thing. But I learned that day that facebook won't let you reblock a person for a full 24 hours, which meant I had wait before I could remove her again. It was excruciating!
Since then, with the help of my counsellor, I've realized that it's not actually me they're talking about, but a version of me constructed in their minds. My mom was lashing out because she felt hurt and doesn't have the emotional maturity to empathize with me. I also realized that she couldn't hurt me anymore, that I'm an adult whose life doesn't rely on hers anymore. Knowing this made me see her actions as what they were--a cry for help from whoever would listen. I'm happy she has family who are willing to support her (even if it's not in the kindest way) because I can't and I don't have to anymore. I don't want to know what she says about me, because it's not really about me. It's a hard one to swallow, but it's really the only way I've been able to make my peace with this.
So, you have every right to set boundaries around communication. And the things they're saying are likewise not about you. They probably imagine you hearing these things and regretting hurting them (do you remember thinking this way when you were a kid? I do). They probably want to hurt you because, to a child, any attention is good attention, and this is the only way they have to get your attention now. The best thing you can do for yourself is to cut off that avenue of access to you.

[hellebore1]

I agree with etown.  Seems like many BPD pull other people into their orbit - the only way to make it stop is to cut off any access to information about you, which is a lot harder in a small town, I know. 

Just remember, living well is the best revenge.  Once folks get to know you, and to know them, they'll figure out the truth.  Hang in there.