My uBPsis recently is in her "don't leave me" upswing part of the cycle. She wants to meet up and "chat" about what we have missed in each others lives the last 4-6months. She does NOT want to talk or "drudge up" the past. Ya... . because she doesn't want to acknowledge ANYTHING! I sent a nicely written email setting my boundaries (basically said we NEED to talk about the recent crap to understand each other better. Preferably with a therapist). She replied today still saying she doesn't think therapy/talking about it will help and that she would maybe consider therapy IF our first few meetups go horribly bad.
Do I meet up with her and just be a neutral tight-lipped robot? Or do I stick to my boundaries and keep the rift between us going? I honestly feel better not dealing with her BS/drama. I just feel like I'm giving up on her if I follow through with my boundaries.
Help!
I suggest you do what I didn't, be tight lipped. I was doing "medium chill" and it worked for a few months, but my mom knew something was up. She managed to draw me back into her web of drama by continuing to overstep the drawn boundaries, belittling my husband, who is the best thing that has ever happened to me and who has done to deserve her hatred. So I lost it, tried to discuss it with her again as an adult. I found out in the process that she has been trying to turn my brother against me and others. She does this by twisting things I have confided to her, repeating very personal things to others, to hurt me, but under the guise of being "concerned."
She finds males to be "all good" and most females "all bad." To a point where she can witness verbal abuse from a male family member to a female (such as myself) and her anger is directed at me, for responding in kind instead of taking it. In other words, my uncle calls me fat and she feels I am persecuting him for complaining about how he talks to women or telling him he is a sexist pig. I'll point out the pattern and name half a dozen women he's said the same things to, but she feels all the women are responsible for not understanding that he doesn't understand he is being rude. When I as a child, my brother bullied me terribly, using martial arts. I would cry and scream, then I was punished for screaming, my brother was never punished for battering me. This, while we lived in a home where mom allowed her boyfriend to beat her up regularly, then disciplined me for hating him for it. The only love I got involved her grabbing my head, pulling it toward her and kissing my ear so loud it hurt my eardrum. When she pulled away and I said ow, she looked satisfied, like she just gave me what I deserved. She did that often.
I know this is her illness and her upbringing by a verbally abusive dad, but she treats me the way her dad treated her. Worse, the happier I am, the more she wants to hurt me, to take my down a peg. When I was a teen, she was doing speed. She lost our home and moved into a tent on a river bottom. I had to move in / my brother at 17. Yet regularly, she criticizes me and shows "disapproval" that I never went to college, she made sure to express this to my grandfather too.
I feel like she hates me. In fact I am kind of sure of it.
I am at a point where my love for her is fading, but I am the only one who is around to take care of her as her health deteriorates. I am here to attempt a return to medium chill. It is s hard because I have so much anger in my heart toward her, and in her senior years.
What the hell do I do?
