My Aunt

[MiddleOne]

My father's older sister was not always been pleasant to me when I was young, seemingly because I lived with my grandmother and she was jealous even though she had a poor relationship with my grandmother (her mother). My aunt is now 80 years old.  About three years ago my aunt's daughter, my cousin, friended me on facebook.  I accepted and we exchanged a few pleasantries while catching up with each other. Two years ago I noticed my aunt was one of my cousins fb friends, so I sent a friend request thinking it would be odd to ignore my aunt. After some months went by, my aunt accepted my friend request. We didn't have any direct exchanges, but nothing seemed amiss and I enjoyed looking at photos of my grown cousins and their families in my aunt's fb albums.

A few months ago I noticed that my aunt was no longer one of my friends on fb. It seemed puzzling so I sent a message to my cousin asking if anything was amiss. Yesterday my cousin responded that my aunt doesn't resent me, but she doesn't care for me and prefers other nieces and nephews better. "You're just not her cup of tea" she wrote. Cousin added that I shouldn't expect to be everyone's favorite. My cousin also wrote that I was never friends with her mother, therefore her mother could not have de-friended me.

I find my cousin's response mind boggling. I wasn't trying to be anyone's favorite, rather I thought we were keeping in touch as members of an extended family. What bothers me most is my cousin distorting the truth  by claiming my aunt was never a fb friend at all. What is going on here?

[Pilate]

Weird. Facebook has many positives, but it also opens up a Pandora's box of weirdness.

I don't know what's going on. Could your aunt have purposely denied being friends with you on facebook to your cousin? Could your aunt, who is 80, be forgetful about who she's friends with? Could an 80-year-old (or 40 yr old in my case ) click on something on FB and accidentally add or remove things?

Your cousin's comments seem more difficult to interpret across a computer screen. Her comments strike me as the weirdest part. Is "not her cup of tea" meant to sound droll and funny or a bit more acidic as in "get over yourself"? Strange. If your aunt was jealous of you as a child, is it possible that she shared her (incorrect) perceptions of you with your cousins over the years? Could you ask the cousin what she meant when she wrote what she did and are you okay with getting a less than pleasant response, or would you prefer just to gloss over it and keep things medium chill, so you can communicate occasionally about family stuff?

The cousin's response seems to say more about her and her mom--WEIRD-- than it says anything about you.

Online communication is so difficult to interpret sometimes, and some people do not communicate online very well. Facebook makes it worse, sometimes. 

Sorry your having this weird situation.

Pilate

[InaMinorRole]

I have a slightly different take on this. I was fine with your cousin's response until the bit about "you can't expect to be everyone's favorite." Unless there was some reason to say it that doesn't appear in your post this was uncalled for. I don't think you should escalate this but if it were me I would chalk it up to some weird family dysfunction that is not your fault, and if you're posting here you have enough to deal with. Let it go. They're not your favorites either, are they?

[MiddleOne]

No they are not my favorites. I wrote back to my cousin saying that while I don't agree with some of her statements, I don't want to fight with her, and then I wished her well.

It's a good question whether my aunt has related incorrect perceptions about my relationship with my grandmother to my cousin. We were close, but my grandmother had 20 grandchildren in total and spoke proudly of all of them. My sisters and I lived with my grandmother for several years as children and, in my early twenties, I returned for one year to help my grandmother after she was disabled by a stroke. I have heard through the family grapevine that my aunt believes my grandmother preferred me and I benefited more than her children and other grandchildren. This is not the case because my grandmother's 10+ years in assisted living depleted her resources and no one inherited any money. While my grandmother was alive she helped several grandchildren with book money in college (myself included,) but I was not paid for the year I spent taking care of her. My aunt was demanding and several times persuaded my grandmother to give cash gifts to my aunt's children for things like car purchases and patio furniture. My grandmother bent to her will on a few occasions and sent checks for several hundred dollars, but after that she declined saying monetary help with education was possible, but not discretionary purchases. I think my aunt believes I was given money that others were not.

I think my aunt knows exactly how to navigate facebook and, for example, customizes her privacy controls so that all of them are set very high. You can't search for her by name or see her friends. I strongly suspect that her de-friending was intentional. Very weird. I'm moving on.

[Pilpel]

That is really weird.  If they want to keep you at arms length that sounds like a good thing ... .  for you.  I don't friend everyone I'm related to, but I would definitely not defriend someone I'm even distantly related to.  It's nice to keep in touch.  Your cousin's comments sound like you've been a topic of conversation in their family -which, I know, is probably absoultely baffling to you.   It sounds like people who hardly even know have made some pretty dramatic assumptions about you. 

I'm going through something similar with my SIL.  She's very demanding with my parents.  She's raged at them before complaining that they gave her so much money after she had baby #1, now where's the same amount of money for baby #2 and 3?  And my mom has told me that she's gone into rages and has accused them of doing more for me, and recently she said I think I'm a queen because she wanted to inherit a set of dishes that my mom had in mind to give to me.  I don't even care about the dishes.  My mom could donate them to charity for all I care.  If I were my mom I would  have told her it's none of SIL's business who she give my stuff to after she dies.  She can give it all away if she wants to.

[Dev]

Sorry if this is blunt, but your aunt sounds like a b*tch and your cousin, for whatever reason (possibly survival instinct) is buying into her mother's pettiness. You were questioning what I think is a deliberate slight - the adding and defriending. That's something my uBPD mum would do, thinking she was "punishing" someone by accepting then rejecting their relationship, even if it is a stupid Facebook thing. It would give her satisfcation. Your cousin maybe felt uncomfortable at being confronted about it, but the jab that you "shouldn't expect to be everyone's favorite" is personal, specific and not very classy. If your cousin and aunt want to be miserable and nasty and hold onto imagined slights from decades ago, that's their problem.

Make sure you upload plenty of photos about how happy your life is!   Don't forget lots of shared inspirational quotes about "letting go" and "forgiveness".