Ignored by extended family after going LC with narcissist mother

[QuarantineDream]

I've been dealing with this for years so don't really know why I'm posting now (maybe because I'm Kondoing old photos...)

My mum and I have been LC and occasionally NC for years. It got particularly bad after I got married and then she and my dad divorced.

When I had my baby she came to visit once - even though I desperately didn't want to see her (and she acted pretty much as expected the entire time) I felt I couldn't deny her the chance to meet her first grandchild.

However not one person on her side of the family - not one - texted, called, sent a card or even a Facebook message to congratulate me. It's been a few years now but I just can't get over the hurt. Also one of her siblings died very recently and I sent my cousins condolence texts (she wouldn't give me their addresses to send a card, only their mobile numbers) which has brought it up again.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Googling didn't really bring up a lot of results about being cut off by extended family.

[LadyFeliciaMontague]

I would assume you got no congratulation cards, presents etc because she had given false or vague details & depending on age or details given , FB wasn’t appropriate? Or she had spun a load of lies about you as you were LC.
As for the texts you sent in condolence, tbf, they don’t know you don’t have addresses. I would ignore a condolence text (what reply would you expect? A ‘thank you’? ) or maybe she gave a false number! Or, if she had previously spun a load of lies about your LC maybe they weren’t expecting to hear from you at all?

[LadyFeliciaMontague]

Sorry, sounds awful whatever the reason, but I have no experience

[TheBouquets]

I think you must have made it clear that you were not fond of your DM to her and her relatives.
You had a baby, her grandchild, and in your own words you desperately did not want to see DM. She would have been excited to become a grandmother.
When your baby was born did you inform all your mother's side of the family or when you are LC or NC with your DM does that included DM's relatives?
You cant expect to pick and chose when you want to be family and when you don't. Your chose LC and NC and the family complied. What did you want them to do?

[TorkTorkBam]

I have direct personal experience of this.

You are thinking about it wrong.

None of this is about your worth or how people feel about you. It is all about her and her control of them.

People who are still controlled by her dare not contact you. You are well rid of such people from your life.

It is never about you and what you do or don't do, do or don't deserve. It is all about the unbelieveably selfish attention seeking drama llama in the middle, nowadays known as a narc.

You were dumb to invite her to meet her grandchild because of nonsense like you thought you couldn't deny her it. You were a right eejit, showing yourself up as not as free of the FOG as you like to think. I know. I did exactly the same with my first child with similar outcomes.

As time goes by some others may break free. When they do they might choose to find you to share war stories and be reassured by you that they can have a lovely drama free life. Or they might want nothing to do with any of you and cut themselves off completely. I'll say it again: it is nothing to do with you and everything to do with them and the controlling wanker.

[Tigerty]

I hadn’t realised that my mother had been bad mouthing me to the extended family since I was born. So as an adult when I went NC she capitalised on that to outline my failures as a daughter. Only one extended family member keeps in sporadic contact and that’s under my mother’s radar. Suspect you’ve come across something similar.

[Tigerty]

Oh and it’s not you, it’s her.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Look at the "well we took you to Stately Homes" thread on these pages and read Reddit's raised by narcissists site. Would also suggest you read the website entitled Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and get therapy from a BACP registered therapist who is well versed in the ways of narcissistic family structures. Such people do exist but you need to interview such people carefully and at length beforehand. You also need to find someone who has NO familial bias about keeping families together despite the presence of mistreatment.

You have been basically trained by your mother from childhood onwards to serve your mother at your overall expense. You are still very much an adult child of a narcissist and this has indeed harmed you immensely and continues to do so. Such training/conditioning and your FOG was likely also why you invited her in the first place to see her grandchild (an extremely bad idea on your part given that she was not a good parent to you when you were growing up). She has not changed in all the years you have known her and narcissistic parents in particular make for being deplorably bad as grandparent figures too (they tend to either over value or undervalue the relationship amongst other behaviours, all of which are harmful to both you as the parent and this child). Women like your mother also cannot do relationships so the men in their lives are either discarded or are infact as narcissistic as they are.

It is not possible to have a relationship with a narcissist. These disordered types often do the "divide and conquer" strategy on the family and indeed that is what has happened here.

Her family members have come down on her side because they do not want to incur her wrath or narc rage; you really do not need such people like this in your life.

[monkeymonkey2010]

^None of this is about your worth or how people feel about you. It is all about her and her control of them.....People who are still controlled by her dare not contact you. It is all about the unbelieveably selfish attention seeking drama llama in the middle, nowadays known as a narc^
This!!!!
This also describes my mother and her manipulations perfectly!

OP - i'm 2nd eldest out of 7 siblings - all of whom have been brainwashed into ignoring me.
Neither of my parents have ever really shown an interest in me or treated me the same as the others.
Yes, it hurts......but oh god the freedom!

[QuarantineDream]

Thanks all. I suspect (and in some cases know, because a cousin told me) that it's exactly as @Tigerty laid it out - my mother has been moaning about me to everyone for years and then after her divorce she went all out and told them all how awful I was, how I treated her horribly, took my dad's side etc etc.

I remember, even before we went LC/NC, she once threw me under a bus to my friend's mum (who she was friends with), telling her I was responsible for something my brother had done - the mum, who I'd previously been very close to, has never spoken to me since and my relationship with my friend never fully recovered either. So i fully expect she's been bad-mouthing me to all of her siblings and their kids.

I don't really know why I mentioned her sibling's death - the cousins I texted did reply just to say thanks (they live abroad where everything is much less formal so didn't take a text amiss). I know a death is different from a birth but I think it wouldn't have been that hard to send me a text or Facebook message just to say congratulations.

My mum was always the gatekeeper to the rest of the family because they all live abroad (my parents are immigrants) and there are some language barriers on both my and their parts. So whenever we went there to visit she would always organise everything - as soon as we went LC/NC I literally never saw any of them again.

I actually called her to give my condolences on her sibling's death - as you can imagine she turned it into a 40-minute rant about how badly I treated her etc. Yes, I'm an idiot.