CodeJob

Happy Bday Stung!

These two women do so that they can claim they did. When you don't keep the veneer of social graces, they can heap the blame of the break in the relationship on you.

Giving them away resets the joy in the flowers. I think that is a kind idea FTS.

As for MIL, I realize she is a horrid woman. However, is it really her fault 3 of her kids are A's? My MIL has 2 out of her brood. I have never thought to lay this failing at her feet. if I came to SR in 5 years with my son going down the addict path, is that my fault?

LexieCat

Happy Birthday, Stung!

Don't let the flowers throw you into a tizzy. You don't have to thank anyone for a gift that upsets you or was given with suspect motive. If you can't enjoy them for what they are, drop them off at a hospital or nursing home for someone who will.

I'm glad you got some love from your friends, and hope the rest of the day looks better!

Birthday hugs,

Florence

I'm kind of of the "flowers? great!" variety. Never turn down a free lunch, ride, or bouquet, unless there are clear strings attached, I say.

I do understand the toxicity element, and coming from a place where I have to police my boundaries with my family pretty closely, a will lob a gentle reminder that boundaries are for you, not for them. Your boundary of no contact doesn't have to be observed or understood by them -- it's for you.

That said, I know I'm extra tender on "my" special holidays, especially because my family has often been so willing to sabotage them. When I'm feeling down and I have a toxic interaction with someone, I try to remember that I won't always feel this way, and to steer clear of interacting with or obsessing over toxic people, ESPECIALLY when I'm feeling raw or vulnerable.

In this case, they shot the arrow. But there's no reason you can't give away those bouquets or stick the offensive one out on the porch to die or something. Don't let it ruin your birthday.

Bullfrog

I think that people who have never dealt with emotional abuse just don't understand how complicated and mind-screwy it all is. There's a reason that other abuse survivors preach NO CONTACT. It's because you can't really start to find healing without it. Whenever that boundary is crossed, it just sets us back-- even if a little-- and it is energy we have to expend to get us back to healthy.

MissFixit

Happy Birthday!

Enjoy a day of pampering. I had a massage two days ago and it really helped to de-stress me. Still feeling more relaxed.

I agree with Codejob's analysis above. Exactly what I was thinking when I read your post. Don't play their games. Don't stoop to their levels. Just be above it all.

Refiner

Happy Birthday, Stung!!!! Don't let others try and get your down just bc someone p*ssed in their Post Toasties this morning! :-) I would give those flowers to a complete stranger and just MAKE THEIR DAY today! Enjoy your special pampering -- your birthday is YOURS to enjoy!

Stung

I don't mean to assign fault, per se, but I personally believe that alcoholism is an environmental factor slightly more than it is genetic (this is my opinion, not scientific fact). If you have a gaggle of kids and more than half of them become alcoholics then yeah, I think MIL has some hand in perpetuating that lifestyle, negative coping mechanisms, etc.

Personally, I know I call my mom NPD when she hasn't been officially diagnosed (even though it's all of her behaviors to a T and when I read other accounts of NPD children it's like reading about my own life) but I also believe a lot of her behaviors towards me are a results of growing up in an abusive household with her very alcoholic and very abusive dad and NEVER addressing them. My therapist has said before that my mom sounds very much like a dry alcoholic and she said that my mom could possibly BE an active alcoholic and I wouldn't know. She says that that happens with secrecy and lies and addiction. I don't think my mom is an alcoholic though, but she did a really crappy job raising me. Some of my unhealthy behaviors, yeah, they're her fault because this is what she taught me, this is what was modeled for me as "normal" and as a result it's what I now do. I'm having to seek out and find ways to do healthy things because healthy wasn't taught to me, abusive was taught to me. My mom says she doesn't want a relationship with me (I guess, this is super confusing) because she doesn't like that I keep preaching about boundaries, the word "NO" and not giving her what she wants. My mom wants to have yelling matches with me and accuse me of not making her happy. It's not my role to make her happy. She disagrees and wants to set me straight.

CodeJob

Fascinating isn't it to unravel nature vs. nurture? My MIL is 2/7. Her AH died, so oddly the two youngest who were quite young at his death are the 2 despite the least amount of time with him. More will be revealed scientifically. I don't lose sleep over it, particularly when you should be celebrating and lighthearted towards crafting your own future!

One for each decade, right?

FireSprite

This, exactly. My grandmother didn't accept my going NC with her after my dad passed away. She continued to try to make contact & eventually resorted to just sending checks in the mail, as buying us off had worked in the past before I saw her actions clearly. MIL did it briefly too - it's like you are somehow accepting them by accepting the gifts. (pass/agress) & if you refuse them, then you're the one in the wrong because "they were doing a nice thing!"

LOVE the idea of giving the flowers to someone who will appreciate them. Donate them to the hospital or Hope Hospice in your area.

While my AF had gotten sober & entered recovery, she & the rest of his toxic FOO never did. They clung to their obvious codependency & enmeshment even more tightly & it is NO exaggeration to say that I was equally hurt by their toxic behaviors as I was by my addict father's.

Some days I think the scales actually tip heavier on their side because they drove home the idea that codependency was normal over & over & over again & there was never any amends or admission of wrongdoing.... whereas my father had lived a life of amends after getting sober. And to this day they will cry victim, they will tell you how horrible *I* am for not accepting their dysfunction.


How offensive. I love how people sometimes act like going NC is just a fickle, spur of the moment decision made during a temper tantrum. Perhaps in the addict-mind things often come about this way, impulsive & dramatic. In the Codie world it's more typically an agonizing decision made after weeks/months/years of deliberation & after every attempt to excuse or allow the toxic behavior has been exhausted.

Until WE become exhausted & the only thing LEFT to do is to pull a solid piece of armor tightly around you & shelter yourself beneath it so that the slings & arrows can no longer reach you. And then we grieve when we miss those big family holidays or the calendar reminds us of a birthday. We juggle a million balls at once to try to fill that void in our children's lives, bolstering them with confidence & self-worth so that they (hopefully) will never have to make these same hard decisions in their own lives. We struggle against everything we've ever known to force new patterns for our young ones to follow, a new footprint that leads them in a healthier direction to end. this. cycle.

And to answer your question: If I ever act in any way toxic like those that I have gone NC with, then my daughter has EVERY RIGHT to refuse me a relationship, and as a parent she has every right to protect her children in the same manner. Hopefully it would be enough for me to take a big step backward & reexamine the way I'd been leading my life in a way that no one I've gone NC with ever has. Hopefully I could humble myself enough to accept the idea of change.

firebolt

OH Happy late Birthday Stung!!! Nursing homes - they need those flowers more than you do! They will mean much much more there too.

I hope you have a fantastic spa day, and a great weekend. Keep being good to yourself, keep shunning the negativity in your life - YOU ARE DOING GREAT!!!!

hopeful4

Stung, I was out sick yesterday so I missed your post. Happy Belated Birthday!!!!

I completely understand why you don't want the flowers. When my Nana was in the nursing home there were people there who literally never ever had a visitor. So we would give any flowers, candy, etc that we got to those people. It meant so much to them.

I personally am glad you don't understand their behavior. I would be a lot more worried if you did understand either one of them. What's going on in their head is theirs, just leave that alone LOL!

XXX

Stung

I am so grateful for this forum because I know there are other people who have dealt with similar stuff. My best friend's mom is JUST like mine except her mom is also a pill addict (I'm still pretty confident that my mom isn't an addict or maybe I'm just still in denial land, I don't know) but my BFF agonizes every other week about the insanity that her mom keeps injecting into her life. Now that we both have kids the manipulation is always some form of "they are MY grandchildren, I just want to see MY grandchildren" and we feel guilty that we're taking something away from our children and our parents. What about what is best for us? How about the mindset that what is best for US actually IS what is best for our children? That's the stance that I keep trying to plant my feet firmly into, and I credit my sponsor for planting that little seed in my brain. I know what kind of influence my mom has on people and no, I don't want my kids to experience that. Ditto for MIL. I just don't have any soft spot for MIL because I don't long for her to be anything to me. I still long for my mom to be a loving mother.

I'm donating the flowers today to the hospital that I was at in December. Which actually makes me feel really good. I feel like telling my mom that that is what I'm doing with the flowers that she sent me but then I wonder why I want to do that. When in doubt, don't.

I have my own biased opinion of MIL, so obviously this is all just my own opinion and with all of that said FIL is an active alcoholic but he was rarely around according to AH (in his family the two oldest and AH is the youngest are the alcoholics). MIL, FIL and my mom are all ACOA, I think the results of being an untreated ACOA is more damaging in the instance of myself (I will try to refrain from stating for my husband too) than having grown up with an actual alcoholic. In my husband's case he's a second generation Irish immigrant so he has some "Irish" stuff that was thrown at him growing up too. I don't really care why any of this is the way that it is, I mostly made that comment because she really is the LAST person that I want to accept parenting advice from, the fact that 3 of her 5 kids are alcoholics really tarnishes her parenting expertise in my eyes. More than a year ago SIL was visiting and staying at MIL's house, SIL was being force fed antabuse by MIL, SIL took one pill with a diet coke and then was reduced to tears by MIL because MIL was convinced that taking the pill with a diet coke would make it ineffective. Meanwhile FIL was out at the bar doing his daily drinking.

I agree with your whole post, FireSprite, and then this is what is so true for me. I want to have a happy reaction to flowers from my mom, but that's not the nature of this relationship. With her it's "I gave you flowers, now be a good daughter for once and do what I tell you to do." or "I gave you something now you will give me something." Like Florence mentioned, there are strings attached. There always are with my mom. If I have to accept anything from her then I need to be prepared to pay the price. I have never been close with MIL because she's just not nice (the other two SILs aren't close with her either, MIL calls one sister in law a wh0re and calls the other one a bad mother and she's not shy about it. MIL is holier than thou - because she's had 5 children and goes to mass every weekend, the wh0re SIL has 5 kids too but that makes her a **** instead of a good mother). I don't know why she does what she does, I just want her to stop…I think sending things back to her would be easier for me because I absolutely cannot make her stop sending stuff to me.

MissFixit

Sending things back to either mom or mil or telling them that your are giving their gifts away is engaging them. It is a way to send a message. The best way to get that stuff to stop without you engaging them or swatting back at them is to just ignore it. It is hard in the short term, but will get easier with time.

They send you flowers for their sake, not yours. This might be part of your frustration with the gesture.

lillamy

You know, divorcing my inlaws was almost as satisfying as divorcing my ex. So I kinda get it.

My MIL was a lovely lady who called one kid disgustingly fat and another that he would probably end up as a drug dealer.

Some people should just raise adders instead of children, I swear.

AnvilheadII

one word on the flowers: REGIFT!!! you could seriously make someone's day.

for the rest, less is more. do not engage. do not reply. and remember, just because we choose to go No Contact does not mean that THEY will respect that, or give a rip. our boundaries keep US safe. if you don't wanna deal with those people.........DON'T. don't read so much into the stupid flowers....regardless of what THEIR intention might have been, they're just flowers. toss or give 'em away but don't let it wreck your zen and the type of life you are creating for yourself!

seasaw

Exactly! Don't fall for it.

When you (and your BFF) keep your kids away from toxic people, you are protecting them. When you remove one of the biggest stressors in your life, you can be more present for your kids!

My dad (who I loved very much) had a mom who didn't die until I was 12, but we only went back East to see her twice. For a long time I wondered why I never got to know my grandma on that side better, why he didn't take me out there more - but as I've gotten older and pieced things together I realize she was pretty horrible to him growing up, she never sent me cards when I was a kid... he would tell stories about her and turn them into funny charming stories but now thinking about them, they are actually pretty grim and stark - I didn't get to know my grandma because he needed to be away from her, and she wouldn't have been that great a presence in my life. And it hasn't caused me any great hurt at all. He just didn't want to tell me when I was a kid that my grandma was a giant B.

NYCDoglvr

A big birthday hug. Regarding people who no longer want in your life, ignore all attempts to contact you. Refuse to respond. They will get the message.

Hawks

Apologies Stung.

That was an insensitive comment from me and you have plenty to deal with without me adding to the pile. Sorry.

Happy birthday and all the best.

Stung

Here we go with the triangulation portion of this now. AH just called me in full anxiety mode. I'm guessing his mom is hounding him about her "kind act" of sending me flowers. I already donated them. And why she hasn't heard from me or she's asking him for a picture of them (I have her completely blocked on my phone). See I already know how these games go. She sent my kids birthday cards last year and then would hound AH asking whether or not he got them. He doesn't live here and doesn't get the mail so he had no idea and would have to passively ask me.

Everything that they do is an attempt at manipulation, and I cannot manage communication without reacting to their nonsense so I just need to stay no contact. Her sending me anything is just an attempt to try to stay muddled in her son's life. She openly doesn't like me, her sending me flowers is just beyond manipulative and it's not even about me, it's about her and AH. Freaking psycho. AH chooses to keep this nonsense in his life and then wants to blame me for not people pleasing MIL, because why can't I just roll over and take her abuse like he does. Nope. In the words of Damon Wayans, Homie don't play that.

Hangnbyathread

I used to get this from my brother. I just stopped acknowledging it altogether.

Eventually my mom caught on to him and she has done no contact now.

She is the happiest she has been in years. We have no clue what is going on with him and none of us care. Someday when mom passes I have an obligation to make sure he is informed and let him be present for the reading of the will. If I am lucky we won't be able to find him *sigh*, but I will do my level best to track him down for the sake of the will closure.