Dealing with our issues and messed up family systems

[Our abuse recovery guide]

Hi everyone! I've been replying a bit but this is my first post to this forum where I'm telling some of my story. I'm looking for some support in dealing with my extended family this week while some of them are in town.

Brief family overview: I have a uBPD mom & an enabler dad. My mom's sister is also uBPD and her kids are my only cousins, both a bit older than me. I don't think they have BPD, but there are a lot of fleas going on with both of them and the whole extended family system is very messed up and toxic.

My DH and I ended up in a bad situation while visiting some of these people last year. uBPDm was also visiting at the time. Seemingly innocent questions about how DH & I use social media led to family members (not sure who - uBPDm knows and is protecting the person or people who did this) obsessively watching and trying to break into many of our social media accounts. I'm sure that we would have said something objectionable eventually, but DH gave them exactly what they were looking for by making some posts about our visit that were seen by the snooper. He said nothing untrue, but he questioned some of our host's decisions and that was enough to create a family drama storm. The family grapevine discussed the situation behind our backs and I only got clued in after basically everyone else knew but us. (uBPDm decided that the best time to tell me was after being up all night with a sick baby. Swell timing, there, mom. ) uBPDm ordered me to get mad at my DH, and I basically did that because I didn't know what else to do. (Yeah, not very proud of that.)

By then, it was a huge mess. We were threatened with violence. DH was shunned with the silent treatment. I didn't handle it well and didn't know how to support him. I don't know why we didn't just pack our crap and go, but that didn't seem like an option at the time to me. DH apologized, twice. I apologized. We haven't been in contact with the host much except on birthdays.

When I got back and realized the extent of the snooping and hacking attempts that were going on, I stopped posting anything to social media where anyone in my family could see. And I got into therapy to deal with the sudden realization that no one supported me in my entire extended family, and that they were all united against us and are obviously pulling for the destruction of my healthy, loving, supporting marriage.

I've been slowly establishing boundaries but they haven't been tested much because I live far away from all of these people.

Flash forward to this week, the host from last year's trip and a couple of her relatives are in town. They aren't staying with me and they have a number of things to do and see, so I thought meeting up with them for a chat and a dinner would be something that we could all handle. I was wrong. Things went sort of ok while I was there alone, although I never know now if the leading questions that I'm being asked are just small talk or if someone is building a case against me about something. However, the host from last year's trip is apparently holding a serious grudge against my DH. She didn't even say hello and it was all silent treatment from the moment he came in. It was basically hell on both of us and the car ride home was terrible. (We later talked it out and things are ok between DH and I right now.)

Back before I knew that this would happen, I let it slip that we don't have any plans for the last day of the visit. I'm feeling like I don't want to see these people again after how they treated my DH, but I don't know how to walk it back (although we did not make any firm plans, so maybe I have some wiggle room?) and I'm deep in the FOG right now. So my question for you all is how do you navigate the messed up family systems around your pwBPD? And what tools can you suggest to help when the FOG is really, really thick?

[finchfeather]

Hi everyone! I've been replying a bit but this is my first post to this forum where I'm telling some of my story. I'm looking for some support in dealing with my extended family this week while some of them are in town.

Brief family overview: I have a uBPD mom & an enabler dad. My mom's sister is also uBPD and her kids are my only cousins, both a bit older than me. I don't think they have BPD, but there are a lot of fleas going on with both of them and the whole extended family system is very messed up and toxic.

My DH and I ended up in a bad situation while visiting some of these people last year. uBPDm was also visiting at the time. Seemingly innocent questions about how DH & I use social media led to family members (not sure who - uBPDm knows and is protecting the person or people who did this) obsessively watching and trying to break into many of our social media accounts. I'm sure that we would have said something objectionable eventually, but DH gave them exactly what they were looking for by making some posts about our visit that were seen by the snooper. He said nothing untrue, but he questioned some of our host's decisions and that was enough to create a family drama storm. The family grapevine discussed the situation behind our backs and I only got clued in after basically everyone else knew but us. (uBPDm decided that the best time to tell me was after being up all night with a sick baby. Swell timing, there, mom. ) uBPDm ordered me to get mad at my DH, and I basically did that because I didn't know what else to do. (Yeah, not very proud of that.)

By then, it was a huge mess. We were threatened with violence. DH was shunned with the silent treatment. I didn't handle it well and didn't know how to support him. I don't know why we didn't just pack our crap and go, but that didn't seem like an option at the time to me. DH apologized, twice. I apologized. We haven't been in contact with the host much except on birthdays.

When I got back and realized the extent of the snooping and hacking attempts that were going on, I stopped posting anything to social media where anyone in my family could see. And I got into therapy to deal with the sudden realization that no one supported me in my entire extended family, and that they were all united against us and are obviously pulling for the destruction of my healthy, loving, supporting marriage.

I've been slowly establishing boundaries but they haven't been tested much because I live far away from all of these people.

Flash forward to this week, the host from last year's trip and a couple of her relatives are in town. They aren't staying with me and they have a number of things to do and see, so I thought meeting up with them for a chat and a dinner would be something that we could all handle. I was wrong. Things went sort of ok while I was there alone, although I never know now if the leading questions that I'm being asked are just small talk or if someone is building a case against me about something. However, the host from last year's trip is apparently holding a serious grudge against my DH. She didn't even say hello and it was all silent treatment from the moment he came in. It was basically hell on both of us and the car ride home was terrible. (We later talked it out and things are ok between DH and I right now.)

Back before I knew that this would happen, I let it slip that we don't have any plans for the last day of the visit. I'm feeling like I don't want to see these people again after how they treated my DH, but I don't know how to walk it back (although we did not make any firm plans, so maybe I have some wiggle room?) and I'm deep in the FOG right now. So my question for you all is how do you navigate the messed up family systems around your pwBPD? And what tools can you suggest to help when the FOG is really, really thick?

[claudiaduffy]

Finchfeather,

Hi! 

Perhaps the single most useful thing anyone ever did for me was tell me that I had permission to say "no" to my family with no explanation given. It's wonderful. I had been struggling, at the time, with not wanting to visit my FOO at Christmas. I was single and had no invitations to join any other gathering and had no good reason, in my opinion or my FOO's, to skip out on Christmas, except that I really just did not want to put up with another year of the unhealth, no matter how well-behaved people had been recently.

So I went out to lunch with a friend who is a counselor, and was telling her all this, and she stopped me.

"You know you can just say no if they ask if you're coming."

"But - they'll know I'm turning it down and am not doing anything else."

"And then what will happen?"

"Well, they'll think I am a bad daughter and sister."

"Whose rules are they using to decide that?"

"EVERYBODY thinks you have to be with family for Christmas."

"Whose rules are 'everybody' using?"

"I... .well... .it just seems like you should do that."

"Those rules are only your rules if you want them to be your rules. This is totally your choice. You choose what you want to live by, and you get to stand firm and unashamed in your choices. It is not, by any sane definition, unloving or a rejection of your family as human beings if you choose not to spend Christmas with them. If they decide this makes you 'bad', that is their choice, and you do not have to bear the weight of it."


- This convo turned my life around. So, in case anyone hasn't said it to you - you have permission to just say no. Or even just not answer the phone. Or even just not show up to something you know is going on. And you do not have to explain yourself. You are allowed to choose what you want to live by, and if they don't understand, that is okay.

 I hope you can do whatever brings you peace and sanity!

[happyfingers]

I recognized early on that FB was very fertile territory for my uBPDm and her craziness. She already Googles my husband, daughter, and I regularly in order to glean new details about our lives, some true but mostly imagined. Last year she went crazy with a wild story about my husband trolling the Internet for children to have sex with.

Anyway, I just wanted to say I sure understand the social media troubles. I wound up just making my FB page completely public and not posting much of interest there. Hopefully my relatives will get bored and go away. The way I see it, it's kind of like playing dead while you're getting mauled by a bear. Because that's what family's all about! 

Claudia is so right. You do get to say no. I'm still learning to do that myself.  It goes against a lifetime of conditioning, so it's taking some practice for me.

[finchfeather]

Claudiaduffy, Happyfingers, thank you so much for your replies. :-)

Claudia, that's a pretty amazing conversation. I have such a hard time remembering that I don't have to have a reason (good or otherwise), that I can just say no. But the way your friend broke it down for you is just beautiful, and makes total sense. I really appreciate you sharing that.

Happyfingers, thanks for the empathy on the social media troubles and how horrible that your mom would make up such horrible lies about your husband. That's so awful. I hope your family does get bored and go away. That feeling of being under surveillance really got under my skin and started to freak me out, so that was my main reason for disengaging. It's terrible to think that someone is watching you and waiting for you to mess up so that they can never let you forget about it.

I ended up deciding to leave it up to my cousin whether or not she wanted to get back in touch with me. She didn't contact me. In the end, it felt like I fought myself a whole lot over nothing... .luckily, my therapist is back in town this week, so hopefully I'll be able to talk this over with her and get some insight into why I became such a stressed out wreck over this visit. I was nervous about talking to uBPDm about the visit, but I kept it really brief and factual and then changed the subject to other stuff. Hopefully that will be the end of it, but all events live forever in my family, so I never know when something will come back up again. I'm trying to remind myself that I have no control over what, if anything, my cousin will complain to my mom about, and that I can handle whatever comes up with non-defensive responses and other communication techniques that I've been learning.