Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The silent treatment from Grandpa instead of Happy Birthday

I think my mistake was signing my last text message with "love". I was feeling good, life was great, he was far, far away, we were exchanging a light text message every week or so, and I felt God's love pouring through me and into everyone.

But a narcissist sees other people's love as a confession of weakness.

He usually expects me to inform him when I arrive whenever I relocate, so he wouldn't "worry". It's pretty much standard procedure in my culture to send a short message saying "We arrived safely" to one's parents, but I seem to forget that a lot. I seem to forget him a lot, for some strange reason.

So, on my daughter's birthday, I didn't let him know we arrived at my ILs safely. I forgot. We were having a good time. Then we arrived at the summer house which is near them. Then I got a message from MY FATHER'S GIRLFRIEND, saying Happy Birthday to Baby.

And then another message from HER, in which she was playing the role of his Flying Monkey and in which I could recognize his usual cold vocabulary: "Your dad is here too. He called to wish Happy Birthday to Grandma and Grandpa (my ILs) and received the information that you arrived safely". Translation: Your father wanted ME to tell you he's offended because you didn't inform him of your safe arrival, and that's why he called your IN-LAWS to ask THEM - and probably complain about you - and he congratulated THEM on their granddaughter's birthday, but he WON'T do the same to you, you ingrates!"

I learned from my aunt that he corresponds with her and other distant family members and acquaintances far more often than he does with me and he informs them of my whereabouts, making himself seem like a caring father. That's why he's after the information so much.

It's been a week now. I'm not going to call and neither is he. I wonder how this will end. If I send a casual message, it might seem like I've lost the "war". If I don't, it might seem like I've noticed that he's ignoring us in the first place - which I have, but I don't want him to know that.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry to hear he got his nose out of joint. Never has made sense to me how the silent treatment works. I finally got to the point I enjoyed it so much, I started paying attention to what I needed to do to get it again. Glad to hear you were having a great time with your daughters birthday.

    ReplyDelete

I encourage comments!!!