My aunt gaslighted me today

So, I went to visit my mom in her memory care room today and we called her sister to say hi (who is my aunt). When my aunt asked me to update her on my life, I took the chance to tell her that i was going back to grad school (I'm middle aged). Instead of the normal response I expected of, "Hey that's great," my aunt's response was rather snarky and gaslighting, "Don't you have enough degrees? Who is going to pay for it? You can't even keep a job."

To avoid upsetting my mom who has dementia, I just made the excuse with my aunt (who was on speaker on my smart phone), that I had to use the bathroom. When I returned, my mom was still talking to her sister (my aunt). She asked me to hang up the phone call so I did. My aunt didn't even attempt to apologize to me.

This is why I hate my family so much.

Congrads! Hey, the only folks who ever acknowledged my accomplishments were friends and coworkers. Your aunt does not sound like someone to expect support from.
Never stop learning.

Thats not gaslighting, thats being a b.

Sorry to hear you experienced the same dismissiveness from your own family too.

Do you know what my aunt did after she hung up the phone? She texted my sister and told my sister that I yelled at her and was rude to her. She totally lied!

So, now my sister and BIL won't speak to me.

I cannot believe this nonsense. You know?!

Totally!! 100% a "B!"

She lied to my sister and painted me as if I was the one who acted inappropriately - b/c I'm my family's blacksheep and my sister has always been the golden child of the family (she can do no wrong in their eyes).

I'm so fed up. This nonsense has now impacted my sister's children who won't respond to my calls or texts. I don't know what to do.

I emailed my aunt and just simply told her, "Your comments hurt my feelings." That's all I wrote. No response from her...

When she baited you to update her on your life, I suppose the best response was to tell her you are doing fine and give her no information. Sadly, you have family who aren’t truly happy for you but just want to tear you down.

It’s probably best to let this die down and hopefully the other family members will forget and move forward with you as though nothing ever happened.

That isn't gaslighting. Maybe she is jealous!

So Sorry this happened! i agree with the other wise and wonderful posters and with TishaBuv that the best course of action may be to simply avoid discussing this kind of thing and giving only the bare details if they ask you. i Hope and Pray that your Sister and Brother-in-law will Forgive you Soon. Sending many Safe, warm hugs to BOTH you, @Motts, your Family, your Friends and ALL of your Loved Ones! Keep fighting and keep rocking NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, OK?!

I think it’s quite insane that your sister and her kids stopped talking to you. Even if you hypothetically had an argument with your aunt, what is that to do with your sister? If my brother had an issue with someone else, I’d not stop talking to him. They are so unreasonable

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.

There is something seriously wrong with them.

When other people don’t know how to respect your feelings they will remind you of that every chance they can.

I agree with you 100%. Too bad they won't make the effort to change.

Also, agree with this 100%. They won't respect my feelings no matter what the context or situation and they love to put me down anytime I see them in person or communicate with them via email, text, or instant message.

My advice would be to go your own way. I discovered too late in life the wicked extent of my family's scapegoating and badmouthing of me.

I'm definitely doing that right now. Although I have family on my FB, none of them ever reach out to me to get together in person and they never message me either.

The one thing I want though, is my dad's life history in old family photo albums that my wicked aunt hoards from myself, my siblings, and our mom. She's wicked because she also has my dad's old baseball cards that she refuses to return to us (as she refused to return to my dad, when he was alive -- even his own brother refused to give my dad back his baseball cards). My aunt's siblings all hate her too, ironically enough, b/c she hoards things of theirs, and won't return their familial items to them (jewelry, photo albums, dishes, towels, etc.).

I have a few photos of my dad but it makes me feel irate to think about how my horrible aunt holds on to photo albums that don't even belong to her.

My cousin is writing a family memoir and won't even include my siblings and I in the genealogy research. I just come from a family of jerks (PG-13 adjective but use your imagination).

At least I'm doing that now. I'm walking away from my own flesh and blood who have shunned me my whole life. Weird. I'm not the only adult to have to do this either. The transition has just been weird.

I'm so sorry - these people sound JUST like my family! I have separated myself from them for almost 2 years now, and it's much more peaceful. If they want to gossip about me, let them, lol.

Hey Toughcookie! Sounds like you know exactly what I'm going through since you've gone through the exact same thing with your family.

I don't know why I wasted the past 30 years of my life around these family members. But at least I have the sense now to walk away.

I don't even talk to my cousins anymore on either side of my parents' families. They never make an effort to reach out to me, so I won't bother reaching out to them.

My brother and I are permanently estranged and now my sister and I will be estranged soon. Her BIL is holding a grudge against me, b/c he is upset that I left the temp agency where he works in IT, after the temp agency recruiters refused to accept my applications for their temp to hire roles due to me being over 40 (i.e. ageism).

For the past year, he's held this grudge against me, as if I'm responsible for his work reputation or his feelings. I'm not responsible for those things at all. I only joined his temp agency b/c I was looking for work. Meanwhile, I gave that agency a few months and nothing happened, so after I spoke to the agency manager, I left. If my BIL wants to hold that against me, then let him. He acts like such an a**hole towards me now it's really pathetic.

What bothers me about my sister is her interference with our mother's care who is in a memory care facility. My sister gets medical updates on our mother's health but won't share those updates with me, so I constantly have to chase after the nursing director for those same updates.

My sister has always undermined me and she's not the oldest either -- I am. Any successes I've had, she is automatically jealous of and finds a way to sabotage me, especially where romantic relationships are concerned. She has told past boyfriends to "run" away from me and told them that I was mentally ill and cuckoo.

If I ever decide to date anyone I will tell them I am not in touch with my family and if the guy has a problem with that, he's not the right guy for me.

Why do some families have to be so damn toxic!!

Well, based on my family, it's a generational thing. There are two Grandfathers in my family. On my mom's side, he was an abusive alcoholic, and screwed everything up for his kids & their kids by being horribly abusive. They all ended up with either victim or abuser behaviors. Lots of substance abuse, lots and lots of toxicity and ugliness, and it all came from that one man. On my dad's side, he was a Nazi sympathizer, hated pretty much everyone but himself, and believed in some really unhealthy child-rearing practices. And his wife (my grandmother) was a raging alcoholic. So that's what happened in *my* family. I think every toxic family has a source or two. Someone who did the damage to a bunch of people, and it just gets passed down. I'm the only one of my whole extended family who seeks help or even sees anything wrong..

My dads family is kind of like that. They were assholes to us when I was growing up. We’d be invited to family gatherings because my grandma wanted us there but we would be put in a corner or they would have their backs to us at the table. Now since my grandma and dad are dead my uncle refuses to have anything to do with my mom or us. And we are just confused as to why. I just have the uncle and 2 cousins on that side. But my uncle was super helpful to my dad when he was sick and dying. Then after the funeral he just ditched my mom and my siblings and I. That was 7 years ago and he should be doing a lot for us in my opinion. I don’t even know if my cousin is married. My uncle just lives a few blocks away too.

Luckily my moms side of the family is the complete opposite of my dads side in every single way. So I don’t think of my dads side too much or feel like I’m missing much since it was never really there to begin with.