I am very low contact with my narcissistic mother and enabling (also narcissistic?) father. By LC I mean that I have very little phone contact with them - they rarely phoned me anyway so now they never do. I phone on Christmas Day and maybe once or twice throughout the year. I don't have them in my house and don't visit theirs. I do send birthday cards, Mother's & Father's Day cards etc and text occasionally. Every 7/8 weeks or so I arrange (by text) dinner with them. Always in neutral territory (restaurant) and always with my DH present. I won't go into the back story except to say that I found the Stately Homes thread full of familiar stories. I finally went LC 5 years ago when I was at the point of needing counselling to deal with my anxiety around them and I physically shuddered when in physical proximity to my mother as a result of a lifetime of criticism, judgement, being told how I'd upset them, let them down, numerous occasions of being sat down and lectured for all of my faults and failings as a daughter etc etc ad nauseum.
Anyways, when I text mother to suggest dinner she normally leaves a number of hours before responding (despite the fact that when I am in her company she looks at her phone regularly). Each time she leaves it a little longer. This time, it has been over 24 hours. I know there is nothing wrong as I am in regular contact with my sis (who does not support me at all in LC but would let me know if they were ill etc). I'm fairly certain they are not abroad as they were last month and even if they were mother has the same phone as me which works abroad). I just get tired of these games. Even though I am very much distant from it now it brings back to me the anxiety I felt whenever I had to phone them or see them in the past, this has never entirely left me but obviously it's only an occasional issue now.
Not really asking anything other than seeking other's experiences of this I suppose. Presumably it's all about control but, really, what is the point at this stage? It's not going to bring me to heel (in the past the silent treatment used to be guaranteed to get me on the phone to them practically begging to know what was wrong). Btw, when I went LC I wrote them a letter telling them what I was doing and why, they never took responsibility for anything I wrote- I just got the usual responses when we eventually discussed the letter: "things weren't that bad", "I don't remember saying that", "your father would never say that", "you hear things that aren't there", "you were always too good with words", "you always have to have the last word" etc etc etc. Grrrr, getting myself worked up now...