"But we took you to stately homes" - Part 4

[oneplusone]

Can't beleive we're onto part 4, although i can't see this thread ever dying.

I was just reading through past posts to try and catch up on the months i have missed and something somebody said has triggered something for me. I know my mother didn't bond with me or love me and i think part of the reason why was because she thought i took after my dad whom she hates (although she is too gutless to leave him). I remember when i was young her saying things like my hair was like my dad's but she wouldn't say it an affectionate way, but quite a venomous way and it always made me feel uncomfortable when she said that but i must have been too young to figure out why.

The more i realise about my mother the more i despise and hate her. I remember she used to play hide and seek with me when i was very young, about 3. Only she would 'really' hide in a place i would never be able to find her. I remember crying and feeling completely distressed one time as i thought she had gone and left me alone at home. It was only after i had been crying for some time that she jumped out laughing from her hiding place. What a nasty, cruel, ugly piece of work and she parades around looking as if butter wouldn't melt and she has a lot of people fooled including my 2 sisters. I know my dad can see her for what she is which is why she hates him and i can see her true colours too which is why i hate her.

I know inside she is deeply insecure, lacks intelligence, strength and integrity. I have witnessed her lie, manipulate and cheat to get what she wants and the people to whom she lies and those who she manipulates are us, her own family. I just can't beleive my sisters cannot see through her, they are totally blind and deaf to her true character and have completely fallen for the victim role she has carved out for herself.

Cutting off my parents was the best thing i ever did and i have realised i need to set some boundaries with my sisters, my last remaining friend and even DH. How to do that is another thing, something completely new to me.

AN, i think you're right, during your therapy session it seems you were feeling the pain from when your birth mother gave you up for adoption. Like you say your bro's ex wife must have evoked, deep down in you, the feeling of having a loving mother and then when she left, it was like being abandoned all over again. You poor baby, i wish i could give you a real life hug, hope this cyber one will make you feel better ((((hug))).

I can so relate to what you wrote about feeling empty. I have had a slow and painful realisation over the last few days that not a single person in my life, ever since i was born has ever truly loved me, not in the way i needed and wanted to be loved. In the way a mother can love her child, deeply, truly, unconditionally and everlastingly. Even my dad who i have tried to beleive did at least love me during the first 10 years of my life cannot really have loved me in the way i needed as he was able to horribly abuse me and i honestly believe that if you truly love someone you simply cannot harm them in the way he harmed me. I do beleive that my parents, intermittently cared about me, but caring is not the same as love and it is love that i needed as a child. Ultimately my mother let me down, her feelings for me weren't strong enough to give her the courage to protect me from my dad, my dad's feelings weren't strong enough to stop him from abusing me. I was let down by both of them.

Then there are my sisters, they i do beleive care about me a little, but again it's not the love that i need and is very tenuous and fragile, easily broken, non-enduring through thick and thin. DH again, cares about me a little, he certainly doesn't love me and never has, he doesn't even know me and is not interested in knowing me, to him I am just a person who does things for him and if i'm no good at that (ie useless housewife aka Sakura) then i'm an inherently useless person.

Then I have a handful of friends who again i think do care about me a little, not sure how well they really know me though, and again they certainly do not love me.

No wonder I feel so empty, like I literally have a hole inside me. I am also too empty at times to give my DC's the love, warmth and affection they need, just like I did, and i fear i am creating two more damaged people just like me. I think they would be better off without me, perhaps DH might find someone who has an abundance of love to give to our DC's, they certainly deserve it. I find it extremely uncomfortable being warm, loving, caring and affectionate; I find it a lot more natural to be quite cold, distant, detached, angry and grumpy. Not surprising as that is exactly how my parents were with me all throughout my childhood. But i have got to try for the sake of my DC's, to go against all my instincts and be a warm, loving mother. It seems so alien to me, it's so not me, but i have got to force myself. It is so hard as i have to give something i just do not have inside to give, i was never enveloped and filled with love by my parents, i'm empty inside, but i am determined to make an effort for the sake of my DC's.

DH says i am cold towards him and i'm sure he is right for the reasons i have already mentioned, but i'm not sure if i can make an effort for him. I don't think he loves and i don't think i love him and i don't think i ever have. I met and married him when my 'radar' was completely wonky and i can see now he is completely the wrong person for me. He is a decent man and a good father and provider, but nevertheless, he is not right for me, he doesn't give me butterflies in my stomach or make me go weak at the knees and he never has. I did have a boyfriend years ago who did make me feel like that and i googled him the other day. I have his contact details. I haven't contacted him but have thought about it. Have no idea if he's married with children etc. Increasingly these days i feel i need to find someone who loves me, i don't want to reach the end of my life never having felt that all consuming type of love i need, i will never get it from my parents but i think there is still a chance i could meet someone who might actually truly love me. Of course the DC's complicate things hugely, but i like to think that one day in the future i will find some love.

They do say you have to love yourself before you can experience true love yourself and maybe I would think twice about contacting an ex without sorting yourself and your current situation out first. You will find love and happiness but I just think (rightly or wrongly) it should all be done in the correct order for the sake of your own sanity. Maybe that ex wouldn't fulfill the picture you have of him in your head and maybe that would reverse some of the progress you have made so far?

Confusingly, there is another part of me that knows how another persons love can help you to get where you want to be.

Sorry, that was just me releasing some random thoughts I had when I read your post.

Hi all
can I just jump in to ask for some advice?

as a family we have been going through some stuff recently and personally I have had something of a breakdown and am now in treatment for PTSD.

Aside from that my family (parents and sister) is crumbling.
My Dad was very abusive when my sister was a teenager (to her not me) and my brother and I have clear memories of a few events but we weren't there all the time and I know there were alot of other events.
My sister has just got divorced and it has meant that she has returned slightly to the parent child relationship for support.
the support has not been forthcoming and for the first 10 months after her separation was announced my Mum would cry everytime they spoke about how much she would miss the twat that my sister was divorcing. there was no understanding or comfort for her from my parents (she spends alot of time with DH and I and we are trying our best).
She has got herself into a bit of a financial pickle and so went to my dad to ask for his help and before she could ask he made it clear that now she was a single woman again she would have to stand on her own two feet and if she hadn't wanted to she shouldn't have got divorced.
Anyway.. as a result my sister was very hurt and didn't go ahead and specifically ask for financial assistance, but spent the night after Mum and Dad had gone to bed crying and being physically sick with worry and hurt. My Mum told me she heard my sister crying but didn't go to her as she assumed if she needed anything she would come and ask.
It has created a great distance between my sister and my mum and dad and it has jogged all the memories in my sister about the way dad has treated her all her life.
So, it has now been 3 months since she has spoken to my Dad. My Mum is so self absorbed about it and can not see that there are things that need dealing with and they can not be swept under the carpet.
My sister called mum yesterday and explained that she was having a really hard time at the moment and that she is trying to work through the abuse she suffered as a child and Mum went loopy - "ABUSE if we had to live with the teenager like my sister we would have felt like killing her as well!" I stopped my mother telling me this this morning and I told her that language like that made me feel physically sick.
I explained to Mum that my sister did not do drugs, she didn't drink alcohol, she wasn't in trouble with the police, the problem was that she was mouthy and she wasn't very academic, that was it.. and yet because of these things they felt it acceptable for my dad to beat her until she wet herself, or to lift her by her feet and kick her back, or to drag her down the street by her hair kicking her. IT IS ABUSE and my Mum abused her by neglecting to stop my Dad.

I have tried to make Mum see that this is the truth and she believes that you can not judge parenting in the early 1980's against today's no smacking culture. I find it astonishing that she can not see that it is wrong in ANY circumstances.

I will not walk away from my relationship with my parents, I am learning how to handle them with the help of my therapist.

So the point of all this ramble... How do I encourage my sister to get professional help with dealing with her abuse. At the moment whenever I suggest she talks to someone she says they will make her see the positive things in her life and she doesn't believe there are any positives. She wants to go to sleep and not wake up. I have been in that position quite recently and it makes me very sad and scared for her.. She feels safe at home and has been distancing herself from her friends and social life..

Please... what do I do.. thanks ladies.

PowerOfBaileys, tell your sister not all therapists will say "look what's good in your life, what have you got to moan about" - a good one won't! From what people say, therapists are all different so you have to find one that suits you. I had 2 that were no use and the current one who is excellent. I didn't feel like anyone could make me feel better but he has! I wish I could really make people believe that it can work for them because it did for me and was so worth it!

OnePlusOne, Thank you very much for your words. I felt really sad for you reading your post because it sounds like you feel as though you have nobody. Are you sure the people in your life don't love you at all? I used to think this about DH off and on. Parents are supposed to love you unconditionally. If they didn't then you are still looking for this unconditional love. The thing is though, that only parents can do this. A DH or a friend can't, I don't think. Would you love a man unconditionally, ie whatever he did? eg even if he treated you like crap? I wouldn't. When I met DH I was expecting him to provide all the love I needed, replace my parents and fix all my problems, but this is too much for any man to do! When he couldn't do this I took every little disappointment as evidence that he didn't love me at all. Now I think he did/does love me, just not completely and unconditionally because only a parent can do this. It is really hard to accept the fact that if your parents don't and didn't love you unconditionally then you are NEVER going to have that. It is a huge loss to grieve for and accepting it is the first thing to do. I'm trying to look for and notice how much people do like/love me rather than how much they fall short of loving me unconditionally. When I felt the worst I used to write it down every time someone did something loving or nice or I felt connected on a scrap of paper for each day. I'm trying to think in a less 'all or nothing' way about everything and feel more moderate.

With the children, I used to feel similarly to you but it has really improved. I was worried about saying this because I don't want it to sound smug but I want to say it to prove that it CAN get better. The more therapy I've had and the better I've felt after talking about me, me, me and more me and how I feel/felt, the better I've felt about the children and DH. See therapy might seem like a selfish/self indulgent/self centred thing to do but if looking at your own needs means that you treat other people better then it is not selfish! Are you still seeing a therapist?

Other things that have really helped are making a list of what I wanted but didn't have as a child then looking at it and thinking about whether I give those things to my children and if not, what practical ways can I think of to do it. With the feeling cold about the DCs/DH thing I used to feel like often I was trying to do/say all the right things but if you don't actually feel it when you are saying it (all the positive feelings), then they won't feel it and it will feel like a chore to you, not something that comes naturally. In my case I have to practice actually feeling my positive feelings then what I say/do comes naturally without me having to think about it. So I look at my life/my DCs/my DH/my friends regularly and really look and really see them. I look for and notice all the little things that I really like/love and let myself feel the good feelings. I practice doing this. It has changed my whole focus, there has been some kind of shift in my brain. I'm starting to actually enjoy being with the DCs rather than seeing them as a chore (apart from when I'm feeling ill or tired or rushed).

If people have let you down in the past it is hard to trust people enough to really let them connect with you. Do you feel there is a barrier there? It isn't your fault, it was there to protect you but it may be hindering you now. I used to feel with DH, 'why should I show love to you and expose my vulnerabilities when I feel you aren't going to be loving back'. The barrier went up quite early in our relationship when some relatively small events made me distrustful because I was so insecure from childhood. I felt we were more distant from each other than we should be for years because I felt there was a barrier in me. It really helped me when I realised the things he had done were not huge, they just triggered feelings from bigger issues in my past so I 'let go' of my 'grievances' against him and then forgot about being competitive in any way (eg I'm not going to be affectionate unless you do it first), and then did that 'looking and focussing on bits I love' thing on him and let my words/actions come naturally from 'practicing' doing this. The more I practiced feeling my love for him and letting myself show it, the more he has seemed to do it back!

With friends I'm learning to cope with occassional small rejections rather than taking each little thing as meaning they really don't care about me at all/don't really like me/want me in their lives etc. I realised everybody gets these little rejections and some bigger ones, even the people who are 'in the cool gang'! We probably take it as meaning people really don't like us at all because each little rejection is a trigger for how we felt about bigger rejections in the past. Learning to recognise when something is 'real' and when it is a trigger is really useful! If you look at yourself you can see how you reject people in small ways but you know that it doesn't mean that you have no regard for that person at all. Eg last night my friend wanted me to be on Facebook so she could 'cyber chat' with me about something she had found stressful that day but I wasn't on Facebook because I was busy and physically didn't have time (taking and collecting children from school play/xmas party, cooking for in-laws etc). My friend, who is very insecure and was rejected by her whole family, took this as a rejection and thought I wasn't interested in her anymore, thought that I was fed up with her and was 'going off her'. This isn't true but it was hard to convince her! I can't be everything to her and be there for her all the time but it doesn't mean I don't want her at all. I give myself loads of guilt about doing anything people might feel rejected by because I know how much I hate feeling rejected myself but Therapist said everybody gets rejected from time to time and everybody rejects other people from time to time. We need to learn how to cope with a bit of 'everyday' rejection (I think people who had nice childhoods do cope) and know that it is not as bad as the rejections we experienced in the past.

We can't prevent any little rejection or difficult experience ever happening again even though it seems like we have already had our fair share! Nobody can. This was also a problem I had, I expected everything to be perfect because I didn't deserve any more shit and when it wasn't I got angry or felt despair and had a phobia about being suddenly plunged into feeling as bad as I did when my life was the worst.

All these things are hard to get fixed into your head I think and you have to keep telling yourself over and over again and practicing. If you can gradually get your barriers down and let yourself feel positive feelings about other people it will come more and more naturally to behave positively towards them and they do reflect it back to you and behave more positively towards you.

If you feel I am being smug/patronising feel free to tell me to F off. I am telling myself these things ('revising' them) as much as telling other people.

Not smug. Not patronising.

A superb post I know where you are coming from and believe it is extremely important to talk about your own progress because it can be an inspiration to others....to show them that things can in fact get better. Maybe someone can recognise a part of themselves or their experiences in your words. It is therapeutic for you to write it, but also for others to read it. When I read positive things on this thread, it makes me smile. To read about people crossing bridges they never thought they could, to see people understanding reasons as to why they might have acted or been a certain way. Honestly, I get a lot of happiness from it.

This thread in particular is one where a common factor is the feeling that you are odd, or bad, stupid or alone. To see all these experiences in black and white is amazing because you can relate to things you thought were only in your head. You realise they are not in your head, they are real.

I have crossed many, many bridges but do feel a little guilty or as you say 'smug' writing about it. At the same time, during my worst moments I watched this thread as an observer, I tentatively wrote under different name changes, terrified to be recognised in RL. Nowadays, I am forceful in my attitude that things can and will get better and I don't care who knows it. If it can happen for me, it can happen for anyone.

I absolutely 100% know that for a fact.

ByThePowerOFBaileys
I just want to say that I admire you a lot for acknowledging what your sister went through. Many many of us on here have siblings who are in denial or who "can't remember" abuse of another sibling. THis is because they don'T want to lose favour with the parents in case they become the focus of all the hatred and animosity. So just by being there for your sister, supporting her and more than anything, letting her know that you witnessed what happened to her and that it was abuse will help to heal her more than anything in the world.
She has to break away from your parents, but it will be long bloody battle. They'll never accept any responsibility for what they've done. THey'll never let her go easily and they will treat her as though she's a naughty teenager again if she starts to make boundaries and takes steps to cutting them out of her life. Just try to be there for her as much as you can. Don't underestimate the positive influence your support will have.

Ditto what Sakura said. I think the term is "enlightened witness" and you will save your sister's sanity by validating the truth for her, when everyone else denies with lies or just truthfully can't remember (bad memories do get blocked/forgotten). My Oldest Sister did this for me and, wow, what a sincere, true, loving connection I have with her (always had- but not necessarily an active connection iykwim), while the connection I thought I had with Middle Sister being my only adult female friend has blown away like a puff of smoke in a huricane. The active connection for Middle Sister was all about her, her need to be superior, her need to be needed, her need to...well, you get the picture.

The other thread about "what do you conceal when speaking to your mil(...or mother?): I can share anything with Oldest Sister, while the concealment thread was like reading about my Middle Sister. I can not ever share anything truly personal -like getting counseling - with her or I'll just get analyzed, evaluated and judged.

thanks ladies,
all going very wrong for her the last few days. my brother and I are very much trying to help her through it.

Mum and dad have ignored us all for 16 months. Not even a phone call, an apology, nothing.

They've set me back again.

Card arrived yesterday. I know it's them cos of the handwriting on the envelope...nothing written inside the card. £140 in cash falls out.
Is this what 16 months of being ignored by your own family is worth???
They never sent anything at all last year. They never even sent me a birthday card. They haven't phoned up to speak to the DC's. Yet DD1 has received 3 text messages from dad, all yesterday. He hasn't bothered to text her all damn year.

Why now?

Do you think something has happened and they are thinking life is too short to not speak?

Maybe they are trying to make amends.

Maybe it is a test to see if you will accept their money.

I really don't know what to think thenewme.

If they are trying to make amends, then a 'sorry' in the card would've been sufficient.
But the cash thing too?

All I do know is that dad has snubbed his brother and mother for the past 16 years or so. They have snubbed us for the past 16 months. Even the dc's.

Deep down, I feel that all this silence, and now the money could be used against me in the future.

AN, thank you for your brilliant post, it has helped a lot. I am feeling so different today compared to last week. I have found out about an amazing charity near me which runs support groups and 'walking talking' groups for adult survivors of childhood abuse. I went to see the lady who runs it last week and she was a lovely, amazing, understanding woman. She herself was abused as a child so understands how we all feel.

I am planning on attending their next support group session in the new year. It is a bit scary, but I think it will be a positive thing for me to meet other people in real life with whom I can talk openly about everything I have been through. I feel that after a lifetime of 'not belonging' anywhere, least of all to my so called family, I may have found a place or a group of people where i can feel I 'belong', where i am not seen as 'bad', 'crazy' or simply misunderstood.

I am also looking forward to going on one of their 'walk and talk' sessions. The charity is based right next to a lovely park and one sunday a month they meet and go for a walk through the park; it's a chance to get some fresh air, gentle exercise and chat and it sounds wonderful. The lady that runs the charity is a chartered counselling psychologist and her partner is also trained in the area of mental health so they are professionals in this field.

It all feels a bit surreal at the moment, but I am really excited about 'discovering' this charity; I feel i have been given a new lease of life! I am going to continue seeing my counsellor, we seem to be making steady progress. I finally feel i can clearly see a light at the end of the tunnel, and although I am not there yet, I am getting closer.

I hope you are all doing ok, my best wishes and (((((((((hugs))))))))) to you all. x

Just a thought, something which I have been thinking about recently. What do you 'do' with the 'good' memories/thoughts/feelings from your childhood that involved your parents?

I don't have many good memories admittedly, but there are a handful I suppose which until now I have been pushing away. I suppose they make me feel guilty about cutting off my parents and also don't 'fit' with the image I have created of them as complete 'baddies'. But of course the truth is they are not completely bad and I am finally feeling able to look at the true picture as it were and find a place for the good stuff. I have a selfish reason which I think, or rather hope, that remembering the good stuff will be healing for me. And perhaps fill the hole inside me a little bit. I know it will never be completely filled because the bad stuff far outweighs the good stuff. But the truth is that in their own inadequate way, I think both my parents did love me after a fashion, intermittently and certainly not enough to satisfy the need in me as a child to be loved unconditionally, but I think I need to 'integrate' the few good memories I do have when, only my dad really, showed me some genuine affection and seemed to really care about and see me, the real me.

Also, after pursuing a relationship with my sisters, I am increasingly beginning to wonder how they can have a 'normal' relationship with my parents knowing how they have abused me. To me it's like aligning themselves with someone like Saddam Hussain (sorry, I know that's a bit melodramatic!); they know what my dad did to me and yet they still have a relationship with him and seemingly care about him, even love him as my youngest sisters claims.

I know they must be finding this a very difficult situation, but i just cannot understand how they can 'like' our parents, knowing what they now know about them, which they didn't know before I let the 'cat out of the bag'.

I have followed this thread for a long time and never felt able to post. I believe my mother is a narcissist or at the very least has some narcissistic traits. My father, now deceased, I believe was terribly depressed all his life and in our own words (children of) 'mad'. He perpetrated an environmnent of fear. My childhood was dire. I have read the posts on here and been bowled over by the articulate and descriptive, not to mention detailed insights and felt that I could never be part of that. What's wrong with me? I have done counselling. Maybe not enough. I feel dumb almost in comparison to some of you on here. Does that make sense? I feel like there's a huge cloud (even now) over my vision and again I'm second guessing myself on 'entitlement' to feel hurt and damaged.

Ispy, you don't sound dumb. We are all at different stages of 'working it all out' on here. The kind of haze you feel over you is probably because you never learned what 'normal' is from your abnormal parents, which is not your fault.

You sound very 'entitled'. My experiences don't seem that bad compared to others on here but I still go on about them. They affect me, I have feelings I feel like going on about to make me feel better, so I do, and nobody on here has accused me of going on about nothing. If somebody is having difficult feelings, whatever the causes are and even if their experiences seem less bad than others, they are still having the difficult feelings, so we should feel sympathetic shouldn't we?

I have done a lot of thinking this weekend and have realised that I was raised by parents who both had some sort of mental illness. This is not IMHO the same as a personality disorder such as NPD. I have done a little research on the net and am sure my father suffered and still suffers from a form of 'psychosis' and my mother has always suffered from depression to varying degrees.

Just after I cut them off, my dad accused me, via my middle sister, of 'hacking into his email account and deleting some of his emails'. This accusation is so utterly ludicrous, espcecially as the time i was supposedly spending my days hacking into my dad's email account and deleting his emails, I had just moved into a new house and was on my own looking after my 3 yr old DD and 4 month old DS. I barely had the time or energy to see to basic tasks around the house never mind find the time to do some 'computer hacking'. And whilst I am not exactly a technophobe, I am in no way knowledgeable enough to hack into anyone's computer.

My dad is delusional and paranoid and I realise now he has never been able to see the real me at all, since his mental breakdown when i was 10 or 11, and has constructed some image of me in his mind, where I am devious, manipulative, underhand, and has treated me as if i was this imaginary person. There are so many things he has said to me which point to this conclusion; once during an argument just before i cut him off he said to me "I know the way you operate" as if i was some scheming, devious MI5 agent.

Realising this has on the one hand helped me shake off any last shreds of doubt that somehow i was this bad, ungrateful daughter who had somehow done something to deserve his mistreatment, but on the other hand has had me reeling in horror at the thought of a 10 year old child growing up with a father who saw her not as the innocent, loving child that she was, but as some sort of hateful, devious, manipulatve child. And my 'chocolate teapot' mother who I must have looked to for help in this dire situation simply turned her back on me and chose to ignore what was happening, leaving me to fend for myself in the face of the 'mind games' my paranoid dad was playing at my expense.

How i survived years of that i just don't know. I can't bear to really think about the horrors i endured, not in a physical sense, but emotionally and psychologically. If ever there was a saying that was so untrue it is 'Sticks and stones can hurt my bones but words can never hurt me'. In my case the precise opposite is true, and identifying and healing the hurt that 'mere' words have caused has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

Ispy, I second AN. And the 'fog' is actually part of the problem, I think i was in fog for years, ever since I had my DD and I only seemed to 'snap out of it' after I had DS. I suddenly had clarity and it is then that i made the decision to cut off my parents.

I really hope reading this thread is helping you in some way, if only to make you feel you are not alone.

I would very strongly encourage you to start posting, because somehow, for me and for many others, the act of writing things out is very theraputic and somehow also brings clarity in a way merely sitting and thinking does not. I often work things out, have realisations and gain clarity literally whilst I am typing.

Getting started is probably the hardest thing, but please have a go, at a time when you know you will be undisturbed for a while.

You and I may have a lot in common as emotional abuse is what I suffered as opposed to physical or sexual abuse.

Ispy, I can totally relate to what you said about your father creating an environment of fear as that is exactly what my dad did as well. And we all used to call my dad a 'psycho' almost as a nickname! It is almost, but not quite, to realise now that he actually is a 'psycho' in the medical/clinical sense. As children we were all clearly budding psychiatrists! But maybe we were, children so clearly follow their hearts and instincts in a way most adults are no longer able to, and all our instincts as children must have told us that our dad was 'mad'. And indeed he was. We were right all along.

One day I might write a book about my experiences entitled "The Psycho and the Chocolate Teapot". How about that for a catchy title?!

My parents texted me yesterday to wish me a Happy Christmas. Twice they have contacted me now, in the space of 10 days. I'm beginning to smell a rat somwhere...

Anyone?

I deleted the text message as I don't want anymore contact with them. I've spent the last few years analysing the crap out of our relationship. Just one incident last year when I finally spoke up to my mum about something so petty and she threw her toys out of the pram.
Weird thing is, the text was sent from my mums phone. She wouldn't know how to text if you paid her. I showed her numerous times and she still didn't get it. Me thinks it was my dad texting on her behalf?
But I have nothing in common with the woman anymore. She gave birth to me, but was never a proper affectionate mother.
If she doesn't want to talk then I can accept that, we have nothing in common...but why text from her phone and MAKE it look like she was interested?

Hi PurpleOne
Well, texting is probably the most emotionally distant form of communication, isn't it? They invest minimum, like cheap bait.

The wierdness is a feeling that I think we have as a sort of warning or reminder of what we're dealing with.

"But I have nothing in common with the woman anymore." I know where you are coming from:

Guess what I did? I called my lovely Middle Sister on Christmas! My dh encouraged me to do so, so I did.
Middle Sister was not (ever) going to call me until I called her-since in March, I declared I was taking a break from our relationship and would let her know when I wanted to see her again. I didn't say she could not call me(or my kids; she did call ds on his birthday)-but she could put a power play on it from her perspective, fine. Actually, excellent, because I just didn't/don't want to talk to her; works for me .

Oldest Sister had talked to her several days before Christmas, and said that MS said that her friend was coming for Christmas (good-she made other plans). But when I called, the friend wasn't to arrive until the 26th . She was in the middle of assembling her "turducken" for the dinner party she was going to at 3pm.

But it was wierd talking to her-I really just didn't have anything to say to her. I told Oldest Sister later-I just felt no connection with her at all. The superficial 'everyone is fine', I told her dh had been travelling alot recently-which I know she disapproves of (even though it puts bread on our table! ) Japan, Colombia, and Hawaii-and she made no comment. Not a "wow", not a "how did I cope with two teens and an infant" ...nothing. Oldest Sister gave her doggie gifts, I did not (I decided not to-another tangent I won't go into) so she went on about how the doggie loved his gifts.

I sent her a pizelle cookie maker, a Christmas sweater that dd1 picked out, gloves, and candy. Everything regiftable, or returnable . She sent my kids, visa gift cards $50 and itunes $15 and dh and I together a $25 gift card to Walmart and dear baby a play table. So I think the gift giving went well. She didn't lose control and make herself the second coming of Santa.

But talking to her was like talking to a slight acquaintance. There was no way I could share anything personal with her. I didn't even tell her we got our basement finished-I just wasn't up for a dismissive comment about it.

I tried once to end the conversation-saying it sounded like she was busy, as she was figuring out when to put the meat in the oven/how long it should cook...she was too busy with that to give me her full attention. You know - I hadn't talked to her since March 19. But no, she kept me on...and so a couple of minutes later I said I was busy in the kitchen and "had to go".
She didn't say "I love you" at the end of the call like she would always do (and be the first to say it) and I didn't say it either. Awkward, so, "good bye". (But I did sign the Christmas card "love", fwiw).

Some mild recovery time from the contact. Realizing she couldn't give me her full attention for the call was typical dismissiveness from her. She never does give full attention- always doing something else while talking on the phone. Once I started wiping up my kitchen floor with hand wipes while talking to her and she asked what I was doing and sounded insulted when I told her, lol such typical double standard . So there it is, I made the call.