PuzzledHeart

He basically wrote. Happy Easter. Wishing you love.

I really don't know how to respond. I know I should detach with love, but what I want to do is smack him and her with a 2x4. And if I do respond with "Thanks" is that co-dependent behavior?

THIS is what I want to write to him:

****
Dear Pothead Moron:

You've been going out with my sister for the past nine years. The first two years of that relationship she was still married to ex, and her marriage would have probably lasted longer if she didn't leave that love letter to you in my parents' house for them to find. To say it broke their hearts would be the understatement of the year.

I listened to my sister as she told me how her ex encouraged threesomes and an open marriage and declared his love for her best friend a day after she gave birth to her first baby. Perhaps this is true. Who knows? What I also know is that my sister is a compulsive liar and would say anything to make her look good. What I also know is that even if what she said was true, having an extramarital affair was not the way to save her marriage.

She said that you loved her more than her ex did. What I know is that since you were unemployed, you could lavish my sister with 24/7 attention. I'm sure the pot you supplied her with helped too.

I believed her when she said that you and she were going to revamp your lives by starting your own business. The fact that you and she borrowed money from my parents - well honestly it didn't bother me that much. It did start to bother me that nine years later that you both still don't make enough to support yourselves, that you both declare that you just can't work with anybody, and that you now continue to be financially supported by my sister's ex-husband. The concept of getting a day job instead of mooching off others while working on your dream seems to be completely foreign to both of you. It also bothers me that my sister is asking random people to hire you because you can't land a job.

I should just unfriend you, but I'm afraid that I'll lose contact with my nieces if I do so so I just grin and bear it. But I can't bear to respond to your message because I really don't want don't want to wish you love. I wish you got your act together and found a job instead of attending Prosperity Gospel sermons. How can you talk about being generous and giving when all you do is take and mooch from your parents, my sister's ex-husband, and in an indirect way MY parents too? When my mom got cancer, all I heard about you was that you were freaking out because you were afraid that my sister would break up with you. And then you asked my dad for a job. How about this? FIND A JOB YOURSELF. And just don't talk about it. Actually do it!

I don't know why my sister hooked up with a guy in his mid-forties who still lives with his parents after twenty years. She is broken in her own way, and I know that she deliberately chose to be with you, so I can't blame you for her continued decline. I know she smoked pot long before you came on the scene. And I know much of the anger I feel towards you is very much a reflection of the anger I feel towards her.

The End
and
Go Screw Yourself

*****

AnvilheadII

you don't have to respond..........but you might wanna look at your own reaction to such a short simple FACEBOOK message.........?

zoso77

OK. And this would accomplish...what...?

PuzzledHeart

Oh gosh. I would never actually dream of sending that to him! I know that I have to keep my mouth shut if I want to maintain a relationship with my nieces, so I have to be as nice as pie even though I feel like a two-faced liar while doing so.

Yes, I know. I struggle so much with the "detach with love" concept. It is so difficult for me not to be judgmental, and rationally I know that being openly judgmental just feeds into my sister's shame, which then reinforces the pattern she's in. She does drugs because she is ashamed of herself, because of her trauma. She compulsively lies because she knows no other way of handling the truth.

And she's found a partner who basically does the same thing, and tells her that it's OK, which is what she wants to hear, but not what she NEEDS to hear. If she wants to be OK, she needs to undergo a serious reckoning of why she's so self-destructive. But I really believe that she feels incapable of doing that, so she's just given up. It's easier to befriend the people who expect less of her, even if those people abused her in the past, because they don't expect her to be anything else but the shattered mess that she is now.

And THAT, in the end, is what makes me mad.

Eauchiche

Dear Puzzled
I realized that I was making great strides in my own recovery when I realized two things:
1. There is no end of craziness in this world that I could get involved in if I wanted to.
2. I don't WANT to.

It's a free country. You can read or write whatever you like on Facebook. Personally, if I wanted drama of this sort, I would go to the moviehouse.

Ann

Sweetie, trying to figure out why people do the things they do is futile and will drive you crazy.

Live and let live. Or an expression I like that I heard here is "Not my circus, not my monkeys".

What other people think or do no longer concerns or disturbs me. I am happy to share their joy but when their lives become a 3 ring circus I prefer to let the circus leave town.

It's good to vent, I hope it helped you get a load off. But then let it go, embrace your serenity and peaceful life and breathe.

Hugs

thequest

I'd be suspicious but take it for what it is, a holiday greeting. Nothing more nothing less. It's what else he does besides send the gratuitous greeting electronically. A paper card would've shown more effort and there for more to be thankful for. See what happens next holiday or what he does with your sister. After years of BS it will take years to make good with a lot of people.

The alkie/addict here always throws money at his apologies figuring an/one expensive gift or outspending others will make him look yet still owing the same people 10s of thousands of dollars among other alot of other things.

He could be sincere making "an" attempt or he could be playing a long game con. Look for consistency next. Not enough information to figure out anything.

Peace

PuzzledHeart

First things first, thank you all for making the effort to pull me off the cliff.

My hackles were immediately raised because he usually does this when my sister and he are fighting. Most of the time I don't hear from him at all, because I've unfollowed him and my sister on FB. Unfriending would definitely get a reaction and I don't want that right now. Just like sending the vent as an actual reply.

Thanks Ann. I needed that reminder.

Believe it or not, I used to be so detached from this situation for years until my mom got sick. I was SO HAPPY that I lived an hour away from them because I didn't have to have this drama shoved in my face day in and day out.

I know it shouldn't affect me, but my anger starts rising when I have to deal with some financial/medical matter regarding my parents. My sister lives five minutes away from them and it would make things so much easier if she actually helped.

I need to face the fact that she won't and can't help.

I need to figure out a way to handle the anger without running away from it. Because that's all my sister ever does, is to pretend that everything's OK. One thing that my sister told me was when my mother got her diagnosis, I reacted with fear and anger, and she radiated peace and love. And I thought, if fear and anger means calling up doctors and setting up appointments and peace and love means lying to your family on a daily basis then give me fear and anger anytime.

I no longer make an effort to talk to her, but on those rare occasions, like holidays where I have to listen to her I'm just tired. I'm tired of listening to her blame me and mom and dad for something. I'm tired of expecting that barb, that I'm lazy/ getting fat/whatever, because I know it's coming. Maybe not today, but it will come just when I've let my guard down. I'm tired of listening to her tell me how wonderful everybody thinks she is, and how they know they can trust her by just holding her wrist. If it was anybody else, I would actually believe them, but because it's her I just don't. And I think she knows that. And she's angry at me for that too.

A friend said to me "It was easy to think everything was OK before because her behavior didn't affect your life. And now it does, but now you have to let it go."

Ughity ughity ugh.

You know how PuzzledHeart came to be? It was because of that Stephen Crane poem "In the Desert"

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

I thought of BitterHeart as my handle, but I didn't want to become that way, so I chose PuzzledHeart instead. But I'm turning bitter anyway, at least for now.

Well at least I learned something about myself from this vent.

thequest

I don't think one would ever be wrong to question such a greeting after YEARS of crap. But questioning and acting on them are two different things.

The long term alkie/addict frequently lies, manipulates, pressures or coerces for what they want. Not just necessity but their "needs" come first. After doing it so many times not only do they get good at I don't think they'll get caught and/or they think they know how to manipulate you. They look at some in family in particular as a pasty or mark-not true but that's how they view & treat some.

Asking your parents for money, seen that play out before.

Alkie/addict here had a hard breakup because he kept on hitting his girlfriend's rich parents for money. He was warned do not talk business with them.