I definitely understand. You’re not alone. My mother is a textbook narcissist. My dad definitely enabled her to some extent; basically he avoids conflict and her personality is very domineering. I do love my dad, but I very much dislike my mother.

I have lived in a different country since my early 30s. I’m in my 40s now. They visited only once years ago. I visited more recently than them but haven’t been back. Partly it was financial, I went through some tough experiences job-wise. But I really felt like she didn’t want to see me, and, of course she makes the decisions about traveling to visit family. For example, they would plan for the family to get together and choose the destination without involving me. It was always somewhere that would have been very expensive/hard to get to for me and my husband. They always have time/money to visit my siblings, but not me. I stopped skyping with them after several times where she scowled and barely spoke the whole time. I mean, who needs that? She exuded hostility.

I made a few recent attempts to email and skype with her after she had been diagnosed with some health issues and memory problems, but it was the same as ever. She sure didn’t seem to enjoy it and I hated it. Even my husband, who had said maybe I should make one last attempt at skype, afterwards, acknowledged it was awful and he could completely understand if I didn’t want to try ever again. Some people have said I should visit her because her memory isn’t getting better, but if skyping was that bad, I think it would be even worse in person.

These days I have limited contact with my father through social media, but that is it. Neither of them seems like they want to reach out any more than that. I mean we recently bought a house and they didn’t send a housewarming gift and haven’t even asked how things are going with the situation.

If you need to limit contact for your own well-being, I would say go ahead. You have every right to put yourself first. Just because someone is a blood relative doesn’t mean you are obligated to receive poor treatment from them. Hugs and good luck!