Stop the Voices! What my NM Might Hear in the Silence of NC

by Quercus, co-written by her "DH"

Why does my NM hate "No Contact" or "radio silence" from me? She hates me on many levels, that's quite obvious. I, as the SG, always assumed that she hates "No Contact" because:

1. It reflects badly on her that she can't boast about what her daughter's doing to other people (someone's inevitably going to put two-and-two together, and NM won't be able to claim that she's the 'perfect parent' or that her and her eldest daughter are 'closer than close' if she can't produce new information!), and,
2. How can she "out-do" me at being a woman if she doesn't know what she needs to beat?
3. She thinks I'm secretly pregnant, as if she has a divine right to know what the contents of my uterus are! Think I'm making it up? When she shows up unannounced, she strains to see my stomach and comments on my waistline. And then she sends me reminders of her friend's grandchildren's existence.

But my DH, who is helping me write this post, has another theory: the major reason that my NM can't handle "No Contact" is that in the silence, she's forced to wonder if maybe she's made mistakes.

My NM (his NMIL) is not a sociopath (though she's close enough for our liking!). She actually does have a perfunctory conscience of some description (it's just not as robust as yours or mine), and just enough empathy to be really annoying; we know she knows she's doing wrong but wrestles with her limited conscience to do so anyway!

I was lamenting to my DH about how I'd like to scream certain 'zingers' at my NM and EF, pointing out the hideous logical inconsistencies and ironies of their claims of mistreatment by me, but that it's impossible to get them to really 'hear' my points! "What if I said it this way?" or, "What if all I reply with is, 'What, like your NF used to do to you?!'. She'd be hard-pressed to miss that point, right?!"

DH said this to me, which prompted the composition you're reading today:

"Your point is lost when you get upset because it draws the attention away from your legitimate concern. The argument ceases to be a logical scenario involving reason and becomes an emotional one. Your point is lost because your angry outburst is then happily seen as a defensive mechanism of your guilty conscience . . . or something, it doesn't really matter what your Mum thinks. Your reaction provides a major and tangible distraction from her own introspection - you are to blame if you lose your temper, not her. It prevents her from being left alone with her own conscience, while she's seeing you blow up."

Note that when he says, "Gets upset", he means a shouting match in person, as well as a snide retort in response to an email. So long as my NParents can spot 'anger' in me (which they will read into even the shortest sentence), I'm sunk - they can relax, because in their minds, I'm the one who is being unreasonable. DH has more to say, regarding my NM / his NMIL:

"And even her being left alone with her own conscience doesn't guarantee she's going to actually examine herself completely. But even a tiny shred of a conscience is going to challenge her much more strongly if she's left alone with it and not provided any distraction. It's the same phenomenon as when there are political debates; virtually no one changes their mind on the issue at hand, they just get more and more entrenched in their preexisting opinions. Your Mum isn't going to be forced to think through her involvement in this situation while your 'reaction' is acting as a diversion."

Now obviously I have a major bias when it comes to the wisdom of my DH - I think he's brilliant! But this explains so very much to me, I thought it important to share in case it fits with your situation, too. 

With my evil NGrandfather and my NM, their goal has always been, and seemingly will forever be, to make me cry or scream and yell. They want to rattle me into an outburst, and with my frayed nerves and their penchant for malevolence, it's not exactly hard for them to get me shrieking "Foul!" at the top of my lungs and/or sprinting from the room in tears. (If they don't get the pleasure of doing this in person, they'll settle for phone calls and email).

But with "Low Contact", and now the current state of affairs (which amounts to "temporary No Contact" for all intents and purposes), they have been denied the opportunity to distract themselves and/or assuage their guilt by causing me to blow like Mt St Helens.

My EF knows this, too. His job is, at any cost, to bring me to my NM. It reminds me of a fairytale or fantasy adventure - "Bring me the head of the escaped prisoner, and I shall give you her weight in gold and rubies!", sayeth the evil Queen.

DH and I think that the "radio silence" drives my NM batty because she's not being reassured that I'm the crazy one (no new blow-ups, no new allies in the form of witnesses to my blow-ups). She can't watch me get upset and feel whatever positive feelings or reassurance she gets from that.

Instead, she has to deal with whatever guilt and self-doubt she feels. I know from the literature I've read on NPD that she likely feels that crushing void of emptiness and self-hatred that they try to stuff full with "narcissistic supply". If I'm not there with my anger to make her feel like a big and influential person, if I'm simply ignoring her, the negativity must be intolerable.

(Going back to the "Pathological Triad" post - if I don't say or do anything, it's harder for her to make me into the 'persecutor' and see herself as the 'victim'). 

DH says that the best bet my NM has of ever seeing anything from my point of view, or of seriously critiquing her parenting skills, lies in the crushing silence of "No Contact".

I had told my NParents of my need for 'space' on several previous occasions, and it didn't sink in. So we discussed it with my shrink and sent in the big guns - an email from my DH telling them that they need to back off for the sake of my health and wellness. It was blunt, it was serious, and it was judiciously ignored by my pathetic parents.

Both of them had contacted me again (separately) within the week. EF is just pretending nothing's happened ("Did you catch the game last night? What a crock, eh? Ref must be blind!"), but NM is throwing everything she's got at me. I translated her recent message into the following:

"I don't give a crap about what you're going through (or you in general), though I'll say "I LOVE YOU" because I know it gets an emotional reaction. I can't refute your claims if you don't give me something to gaslight you about. I'm going to keep pretending this is the first time you've ever expressed a problem regarding our relationship, despite 30-something years to the contrary. What you are doing is unfair to me - I want what I want, and I'm never, ever going to give up until I get it, and I'm going to claim that it's LOVE that's driving me to do it! You are in the wrong, You are a horrible person, You are the Abuser, I am the Victim here, not you. You have no right to be pulling this crap! I feel sorry for myself. You should feel ashamed for what you are doing. I'm going to say "I LOVE YOU" again, though the structure of this message, and past history, does nothing to support that assertion. Oh, and you're breaking my heart."

Lovely. The 'breaking my heart' bit was left untranslated. It's their tag-line.

Can I just point out again that this was in response to a message from my DH to my NParents, telling them that I was having serious and distressing difficulties (suicidal thoughts, self-harm, major depression, physical illness, weekly visits to the Psychologist)?

Knowing this, does the structure of my NM's (translated) letter seem a little amiss? If it doesn't, you're an ACoN! I'll point out what a non-ACoN (my DH, my Psychologist) sees in this: the message does not show ANY LOVE TOWARDS ME. There is no concern for my safety. There is no concern for my happiness. There is no mention of my situation, apart from the opening line where she said, "I know you said you needed space, but I need to talk to you." The only reference to my situation was a segue to launch HER letter of "poor me, I'm the victim"!

ANY MOTHER who ACTUALLY LOVED her daughter would be PREOCCUPIED with HELPING her daughter in such a dire situation!

I can be sure this won't be the last of my NM's efforts to get me back 'under her thumb'. I may have bigger challenges to face than this. I can say that I feel less and less guilty about 'cutting her out' as days go by. I realise that, despite what she might claim (thanks to Mulderfan for pointing this out), she hasn't really got a heart to break. Or, she does, and it was broken years before I came into this world. It's not my responsibility to fix it. And if I tell her what she "did wrong" so that she can, pardon my laughter, "fix it" (i.e. dismiss my complaint outright!), she's not going to learn a single thing, as usual, and she's going to go right back to her comfortable cycle of parasitizing me rather than facing her own demons.

Going "No Contact" induced quite a lot of guilt for me in the beginning. Now I see it is the only way forward for me and my family (that's me and the DH). It's like an amputation - no one wants to have to lose a part of them, but if it's going to kill you, well, you gotta do what you gotta do. Amputate, grieve, rehabilitate in the proper sense of the word, and adapt. There's a life left to live after this.