Was sent more of my 35yo daughter’s lies

[KitKat68]

Someone, likely my daughter’s ex husband, emailed me screenshots from a generic gmail address of Reddit posts my daughter had made about me and others. I verified these posts genuinely exist and were posted by her. Her Reddit profile is easy to find as it’s her entire legal name and her current married last name is an uncommon spelling of a common last name. Definitely her, definitely her posts. I don’t know why he bothers but guess he (her ex) thought I’d want to know and he’s a troublemaker.

By choice I have had no communication with her in several years. She has tried but not since 2024. Several years ago she used us for money, ruined one of our cars on purpose while borrowing it (shoved a bunch of plastic wrap waste in the motor via an intake), and tried to use my SSN to secure a loan after I refused to cosign. Those are just the highlights of that particular situation.

I (we) have remained completely silent over the years because reacting never ends well, helping her doesn’t seem to help. Our credit is frozen so her efforts there didn’t pan out, we paid 10K to have the motor replaced, and know we will never see the money we loaned her again.

I am grateful her chaos is no longer part of our lives. She’s remarried to someone with no apparent ability to stand up for himself and while I feel mildly bad for him in a way, he willingly signed up for the marriage and is still there despite the fact their relationship is getting his older son bullied at school (his father and my daughter’s relationship started as an affair in a small town, other teenagers who know pick on his son).

In the Reddit posts my daughter lies about how NC started between us. Compared to other things she’s done the lies seem very small potatoes. Idk if I’m angry about just the lies or if it’s just the icing on the cake. She claims I cut her off after not wishing me a happy birthday while her kid was in the hospital. This never happened and besides that, she’s never wished me a happy birthday any year and her son wasn’t in the hospital during that particular time. Just completely fabricated and not being told happy birthday is the least of it where she’s concerned.

I guess I’m just setting myself up for failure thinking she’ll ever just tell the truth or not have drama in her life. I have walled myself off from her, I learned to not JADE, and haven’t breached no contact in terms of directly reaching out or responding to her reaching out. I do not react at all and in many ways this has served me well but I’m still angry - does this ever go away?

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

[wantmorepeace]

Boy do I hear you!  Being lied about without JADEing is so hard! What I ask myself is what my goal is, what I want.  Nobody's stopping us from defending ourselves.  We just have to know the consequences and ask ourselves if that's what we want.

I don't know whether the anger ever goes away, but I know that in general our feelings come and go and come and go and change in intensity and frequency.

[KitKat68]

Boy do I hear you!  Being lied about without JADEing is so hard! What I ask myself is what my goal is, what I want.  Nobody's stopping us from defending ourselves.  We just have to know the consequences and ask ourselves if that's what we want.

I don't know whether the anger ever goes away, but I know that in general our feelings come and go and come and go and change in intensity and frequency.

You are right. Also, if I were to react I don’t want to deal with the fallout. She is meaner than I’ve ever been and has more energy than I do. Based on things she’s already done to me and other people tell me loud and clear that reacting a) isn’t worth it and b) threatens my safety. She’s already proven she’s willing to cross the line whereas I’m definitely not.

It’s just frustrating that I have no voice in the old typical way - reacting. I DO have a voice in that I have the ability to keep myself and my household safe from her without reacting in a way I might have years ago. I still just find it difficult to sit by while she lies on the internet and to people we both know. I’ve been doing just that for years now but it still aggravates me.

[wantmorepeace]

Me too.  Sometimes I feel like a doormat and it drives me crazy. Recently, I lost it and texted her that what she was saying was  BS.   It felt good for a minute and then bad when she reacted and I felt like maybe I should apologize.  (I didn't apologize.  It was BS.)  Probably didn't make much difference one way or the other.