I think that she is, on some level. She's a widow and takes care of her adult daughter at home who has health problems. She's retired from her job, so she doesn't do much else.

My siblings can do no wrong in her eyes either. She has always praised them yet criticizes me any time I take her bait and disclose personal information about what I'm doing in my life.

Thank you Mickey. I know better than to take my aunt's baited questions so I think this weekend was just a slip up b/c I am excited about this new change in my life. But I had a thought in the back of my mind that telling her would result in being insulted by her, which turned out to be true.

Since I am the family scapegoat and my sister is the golden child who never apologizes to anyone (family, her husband or children, her friends) when she acts like a bully, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by her gaslighting behavior. I think my BIL takes his cues from her because she is very stubborn and never, ever apologizes to anyone or ever admits when she's wrong. If she does admit she's wrong, it's for pretend, b/c she doesn't genuinely feel remorse.

I agree with you that it's quite insane. It's an example of how enmeshed my family's boundaries are with each other. If you go against one person, they send out an all points bulletin to everyone via text about it, so then everyone gangs up on the family member (me in this case). Stonewalling and the silent treatment have become my family's weapons of choice, along with side gossiping.

You know how normal people ask you about what you've been up to? Not my family. Like, if they want to know what I'm up to, they ask everyone BUT me. At least my cousins do this to me.

Like, they can't be bothered to ask me via social media directly about my life, and will gossip with my sister via social media about me instead asking her to dish on details of my life. They would do this via phone calls before social media too. I overhead my sister talking to a cousin about me, and they were both disparaging me.

The last boyfriend I brought over to my sister's to meet, dumped me after that visit. He told me that my sister disparaged me and disclosed a lot of personal information I hadn't told him yet. I think she basically projected her hate of me on to him, warning him to "run away" from me (what his words were).

My cousins have been side gossipers since we were all little kids. They will take what they need from you, and otherwise ignore you if you serve no function in their life.

At my college graduation after my father died, one of my cousin's wrote this mean message inside the graduation card she gave, "all roads lead to nowhere if you don't know where you're going." I mean, why not just write, "Happy Graduation?" instead? So, these are the type of people I'm related to.