I have stopped communicating with them completely actually. What did you mean by "and a lot of good that did"? What kind of good or bad?
Originally Posted by PeterB
You might have been sarcastic there . My bad.
Just meant I ended up in divorced anyway so "playing nice" and "pretending" didn't help. Honestly, I'm not sure it impacted the end result either way - that was probably already determined.
As an example, post-BD and during IHS my now-ExW would invite my parents over for Sunday dinner and cook a great meal. My parents and I knew she was having an affair. In fact, I knew from snooping she was just doing it to "keep the peace" while being mean and vicious behind my/our backs in communications with AP and her friends/family. However, she didn't know we knew. She was putting on a fake face with the dinner invites and my parents and I were pretending out of fear in hopes to keep the family together. Both sides were being fake. In the end the same result happened regardless. With hindsight, it probably would've been better to stand up and say "I know what you're doing. I'm not interested in family dinner while you're doing that.", if not a different result at least for my confidence and reclaiming my power.
Now, that's different than saying "congrats" or not for a job - just an example to demonstrate why you shouldn't "fake it" and try to "nice them back". I think you're right not to engage her family, especially the ones who are being deceitful.
My family does not interact with her or her family anymore. I asked them not to and they agree, for the reason you mentioned: cannot give the impression that nothing is wrong. Also, I know she will cause a major incident by going after my parents and me if and when she talks to them. This is a guarantee. There is everything wrong about what she has done. We know they know about her affair. So being nice to them only panders to their behavior. After BD they actually told my parents that even if D happens, the relationship between them and between my parents and my WW should be as before. It's preposterous. Their daughter has an extramarital affair and is about to victimize an autistic toddler and they expect my family to treat it as if its nothing. When WW talks to her parents on the phone, it's as if nothing happened. They talk/gossip about everything in their lives except the situation at our home.
. My bad.
