Oh dear. Apologies in advance, the back story is huge and I'll try not to go into massive detail or this will turn into a thesis.
In short - currently having very limited contact with my abusive stepmother, father or halfsister. There have problems for many years, a lot came to the fore when I had children and none of that side of the family gave a shiny crap about mine, or me.
I haven't clapped eyes on HS for well over two years, mainly because she is horrible. Contact with my father & SM zero from my end, as I want them to either sort things out or just leave us alone, rather than trying to pretend everything's normal. So in the last year, they have totally ignored this request, refused to sort things out and carry on sending birthday cards and money even though we've said that under the circumstances it isn't right to accept. So they will contact me for trivia but won't tell me that:
- My beloved aunty was in hospital. She died and we didn't get chance to see her.
- My dad had cancer. They told the world and his dog and I found out months later by text from SM's sister because she thought it was mean me not knowing
3)That my sister was pregnant.
Now, I don't care to know that my sister is pregnant, but I'm wondering why my father left me an answer phone message (I've spoken to him twice in over a year) to tell me that she's had the baby. I'm pretty sure he knows full well that no one told me she was pregnant, so why bother telling me at all that his favourite child has spawned what will be his favourite grandchild, unless he's trying to rub my face in it?
And this has got me to thinking - maybe he doesn't know. I now know that my SM makes up quite terrible lies. Maybe he thinks she told me, because maybe she told him that? Coincidentally, it has been going around my head in the last week anyway -my SM is telling everyone that she was going to come over and see my children and I told her she couldn't at the last minute. This categorically is not true, it's not even slightly true, she's made it up. And on the phone to DH recently she told several more lies that are so blatantly lies that it's actually embarrassing. And I'm wondering if she's actively engineered this split with me and my father, like she's systematically isolated him from all of his blood family and replaced them with hers. Just like she successfully isolated me from my family on both sides, and my mother when I was growing up. I was on the phone to her once (my father must have been pottering about in the background) and she said to me, totally out of the blue, "Why do you hate your father so much?" I have never said that, I wasn't saying that at the time on the phone and I can only think she said it for his benefit. So I'm wondering if she's also told him this made up story about him not being welcome to see my children, and many more, to keep him away?
If this is the case, I'm not sure what I should do. He's ridiculously passive and has stood back and been complicit in her treating me and my brother like shit for our entire childhoods. He really doesn't seem to care about me in the slightest because I've pissed them both off by having a relationship with my mother. My SM is a very larger than life personality, comes across as a pillar of the community, is a JP, very kind and respectable and no one seems to be able to see through it. And yet she is ridiculously controlling; she phoned the hotel where we had our wedding to get a list of guests so she could see if my mother would be there, she used to get a family member in the police to run checks on boyfriends, the list goes on. And I don't know if my dad just doesn't see what she's like or doesn't care.
I'm torn between trying to talk to him (hard as he shares an email address and mobile with her so I have no way of addressing him directly without going through her) and thinking that it's probably not worth the aggro. I'd say he just doesn't care, and after a course of counselling I've been advised to cut myself off completely and take care of myself and my family, but this is the second time he's tried to call me in a month and I'm wondering if I ought to respond in some way? It feels a bit like if I just back off and we never see them again then she's won, she's got exactly what she wanted and has totally managed to cut him off from his whole family. He's let her, but still...
Sorry, this is incredibly long. I just needed to get this all out and down, and if anyone can offer any perspective on this that would be much appreciated.
