I didn't write that.

July 24, 2009 7:46 PM

Someone fabricated a letter in my name. Now what?

Back story: My uncle is married to a crazy lady. She's got some serious mental issues and has successfully alienated my uncle and their kids from anyone in the family who says "no" to her or disagrees with her. I've done both over the years. For example, the final direct, in person conflict between her and I occurred over ten years ago. I was visiting for Christmas and had agreed to the concept of singing Christmas carols. When she showed up, she brought John Rutter arrangements of carols. When DH and I asked if we could sing traditional carols and not Rutter arrangements, we explained he'd literally just completed an entire semester studying Rutter and was burnt out. She was unhappy, became cold but didn't make a scene. That was the last time she and I saw each other in person. It is that kind of petty bs that gets blown all to hell.

Fast forward to two years ago. She and my mom had a lunch meeting to try to resolve issues between them. During said lunch, Aunt demanded an apology from me for all my rudeness. Mom let me know. So, I did write a letter. I did apologize for some snarky, rude comments I made when I was 15 (she specifically mentioned them) and for specific other times of rudeness between us. I then demanded an apology back from her, citing specific events. I did state that I believe she's a harridan but I should have been more polite, regardless. So, not really an apology. However, harridan is the most extreme word I used. She responded with a post card saying I should have no future contact with them. I've had none. Not even a Christmas card.

Fast forward to this week. I'm about to return home for a visit and a different uncle is hosting a cookout. He, being one of the few people still allowed contact with them, went and invited Uncle and Crazy Aunt's kids. When it was stated that I'd be there, they both refused to participate because of "the filthy letter she wrote us last month." Both claim to have read it. At this point, I don't know what's in it and I'm not sure I care to know.

I did not write them any letter. To do so would put too much in my own life at risk, including my foster care license. I know the uncle hosting the cookout will believe me but I also know he will not convey that to his brother because he tries to stay out of the drama. I'm sure I will never be able to get my hands on the letter and would be surprised if it even still exists.

I'd like to convey to my uncle that I did not write the letter. I'm not sure how to get him to believe it though. What can I do? What would you do?

posted by onhazier to human relations (22 comments total)

Is there anything that makes you certain there ever was a filthy letter? They want no future contact, therefore they're not going to the cookout; she's crazy, so they have a crazy excuse pulled out of thin air.

For "now what", I'd say "everyone knows Aunt Crazy is crazy, so everyone that matters is going to immediately understand it's not you." Are you sure there's a problem to be solved other than Aunt Crazy existing?
posted by mendel at 8:15 PM on July 24

Really? You'd believe that someone fabricated an insulting letter in your name, before you'd believe that crazy auntie is making even-crazier excuses? I wouldn't worry about this, any more than about anything else this aunt says.

You say you want to convey to "your uncle" that you didn't write a letter. Is that cookout uncle or crazy aunt uncle that you're wanting to reassure?

You say cookout uncle will believe you? Good, mention that you haven't been in touch with them in years, and move on. No big deal. If you're worried about crazy-aunt uncle? There's nothing you can do, any contact you have with him will be violating your truce with crazy aunt. Anything *serious* that you say to cookout uncle will probably not get passed on to crazy aunt uncle, but "onhazier was nothing but nice, and asked about you, since it's been so long since she's had any news" is about as much a message as you could hope for. If crazy aunt wants drama, then anything you say is just fuel for the fire, so say nothing.
posted by aimedwander at 8:20 PM on July 24

Unless your uncles crazy radar is offline, he likely knows about your aunt. He'll believe you if you tell him you didn't write any letter. He'd believe you over her if you told him the sky was green too.
posted by sanka at 8:23 PM on July 24

You called her a harridan in an earlier letter? Oh dear. She may well be, and may well deserve to be told so. However, her unpleasantness does not excuse your own rudeness. It's an unfortunate fact that repaying bad behavior in kind rarely ends well, and that seems to be what has happened here.

If I understand your question correctly, her children claim that you have written *them* a letter in the last two months? Or are they saying you wrote another letter to the aunt and they all read it?

Either way, I think all you can do is advise the family members you are on speaking terms with that this is untrue and that you have no idea why your - cousins?- would say this.

If you can avoid calling anyone else names while you convey this information - and yeah, I know, family can be really really annoying and it feels really really good to give them a blast - it will go much better. So don't call them crazy, or go off on what a pain your aunt is. Be as neutral as possible. And then drop it. They'll believe what they're going to believe and engaging in dialogue beyond a simple denial will likely only add fuel to what seems to be a very unpleasant fire.

And if it was me, I would convey my apologies and skip the cookout. You were invited and certainly have a right to be there, but it just doesn't seem worth the drama.
posted by t0astie at 8:23 PM on July 24 [1 favorite]

I'd like to convey to my uncle that I did not write the letter. I'm not sure how to get him to believe it though. What can I do? What would you do?

If your uncle wants to stay out of all this, then there is no obvious need to convince him of what you did (or didn't) do. If it were me I would go directly to my cousins to get this sorted out once and for all. Is it possible for you to contact them directly and confront them about this letter? For your own sake you should tell them that you found out about it, and that you neither wrote nor sent any kind of communication to them. Don't ask them what was in it or any details about it. Don't get into any history between you and their mother. Somebody wants you to go there; don't give that person the satisfaction of sinking to their level.

If you need something to say, how about: "It's not a secret that I'm not close with your family, but I'd never go out of my way to poison the relationship further. I have no reason to send you a letter out of the blue for the express purpose of hurting or angering you, as I barely know you. If you ever get some kind of communication in the future that supposedly came from me, please keep that in mind."
posted by contessa at 8:24 PM on July 24

Eh. Crazy is often genetic. If you have no contact with these people right now I'd leave it that way. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you.

On the rare occasion that it's relevant you can tell people that you haven't had contact with them in years, have no idea what they're talking about and leave it at that.
posted by fshgrl at 8:40 PM on July 24

However, harridan is the most extreme word I used.

You resorted to namecalling. In a letter of "apology." That alone is worthy of its own sincere followup letter of genuine apology, regardless of this new situation.

As for this letter which they claim to have gotten from you, you're going to have a hard time effectively convincing the "grownups" that you didn't write it, and a lot of that is because of stuff you have said or written. State your case to your uncle as convincingly as possible and then drop it, or else you're going to look like you doth protest too much.

The best way to convince someone you didn't do something horrible is to be the kind of person that no one would ever believe such an accusation about.
posted by hermitosis at 8:44 PM on July 24 [5 favorites]

The cousins are too young for me to safely contact without causing more problems. They're under 18 and living at home. The kids didn't say I wrote the letter. Their parents did.

Cook out uncle is the one who wants to stay out of the drama. I learned about this situation because he was updating me as to who would be there and why these cousins would not be attending. I won't and really cannot bail on the cook out because he's hosting it since I'm in town and I'm kind of a guest of honor. I do not believe that this uncle is lying about what he was told.

I'd like for the other uncle, the one married to Crazy Aunt, to know the truth because when I was a kid, he filled in when my father disappeared. I do believe that his wife is capable of writing a fake letter. She's physically assaulted her own sister for disagreeing with her before.

I can totally see that my previous letter would set the stage for him to believe I did write a second letter. I was wrong to have written the letter.
posted by onhazier at 8:58 PM on July 24

Is it at all possible that "the letter" your cousins mentioned is the letter you wrote years ago - and that someone (either cook-out uncle, or your cousins) unintentionally bungled the receipt date of the letter in the retelling?
posted by contessa at 9:12 PM on July 24 [3 favorites]

I thought about that, contessa. Since my handwriting is a challenge to read, I type my letters and I archive everything. I just reread the letter. In no way is it filthy or even terribly harsh. It is blunt and honest. I was wrong to write it because it escalated the situation to absolutely no contact.

At this point, I'm going to go to the cookout and simply point out to cook out uncle that I've not had contact with them in 2 years. Anything else would make the situation worse. As for uncle married to Crazy Aunt, he's made his choice. He knows she's crazy. He's pulled her off her sister when they were brawling.

Ah well...
posted by onhazier at 9:47 PM on July 24

If you end up having any conversations about this whatsoever, 'fess up to your letter of two years ago even as you deny anything more recent, do so briefly, and move on. Something like "I've heard she's claiming I wrote some filthy letter two months ago, but I haven't contacted her in over two years, when I got pissed off and wrote her a rude letter after she demanded I apologize for some things I said when I was fifteen."

For what it's worth, as mentioned above, people know who the crazy people in the family are. I have an aunt (my father's older sister) who pissed off my mother a long time ago, and so my mother generally avoids her -- but my mother would never bad-mouth her or say what happened. Many years later, this same aunt said something incredibly insensitive about my father/her brother (who was dying from an illness that since claimed him), and I realized "whup, okay, I see why my mother made the choice she did" and I cut that aunt out of my life the same way. Last year my sister told me that the aunt claims the reason I won't talk to her is because she tried to give us American flag lapel pins and we were offended. My sister was laughing as she told this, because she's never suspected it was anything other than a load of crap.

In short, have faith in your relatives, don't worry about the ones you can't have faith in, and always mention your rude letter when denying the filthy one (if someone else brings it up) because it gives you credibility.
posted by davejay at 11:30 PM on July 24

I have an evil aunt that went around spreading some REALLY nasty rumors about me in our family, including that I can't be trusted around small children. (She in fact called my neighbors and told them this in an attempt to get me fired from watching their kids. The neighbors, whose kids I'd watched since the oldest (now 17) was an infant, just ignored her and didn't believe her. They didn't even tell me she'd called until like 6 months later.) My mom has told me that anyone in our family that would believe such horrible rumors must not know me very well and thus must not matter.
posted by IndigoRain at 12:52 AM on July 25

I think you've started a war here that didn't need to be started. She's acted rudely but so have you. It's time to make nice with her, this whole situation is childish.

1. Don't apologize in a letter. That's cowardly. Apologies should ideally be held face-to-face, MAYBE over the phone if they're a plane ride away. It's hard to apologize, it takes courage, but writing a letter is a scaredy-cat's way out.

2. An apology is unqualified, sincere, and specific. You can't apologize with a 'yeah, but you're a harridan.'

3. A good rule of thumb is to only ever write positive things in letters. Do not put anything in writing that you wouldn't feel comfortable being on the front page of the New York Times.

It's really easy to demonize her and call her crazy. By saying she's crazy you're saying she's beyond reasoning with, and I don't think that's true. You're just not seeing your side of the story. She probably feels as though she's at war with her family, and she could use a friend.

Why don't you give her a call, offer a sincere apology without expecting one back from her, and offer to put it all behind you and take her to go get manicures or something. This is ridiculous and life is WAY too short for this kind of nonsense.
posted by Flying Squirrel at 3:08 AM on July 25 [1 favorite]

Sorry I meant to say you're not seeing HER side of the story.
posted by Flying Squirrel at 3:09 AM on July 25

FWIW, I'm not sure it can be entirely ruled out that the letter your cousins have read is the first letter you sent - you say it can't possibly be because "it is in no way filthy or even terribly harsh," but these are subjective judgments, and even you admit that there was name calling and that the letter shouldn't have been written. Add that to the fact that people with teh crazy do tend to blow things out of proportion, plus who knows what context your aunt has provided, and it's not hard at all to see how your cousins would indeed consider the letter to be that awful.

I point this out because going right in and telling people "OMG Aunt Crazy is sending out fake letters from me" will make you seem almost as crazy and vindictive as she evidently is. Those kind of suspicions are best kept to oneself. I think the best thing to do is as hermitosis suggests and be the kind of person who no one would believe would do such a thing. People will draw their own conclusions.
posted by AV at 5:23 AM on July 25

I'm with AV. Those prone to ridiculous family drama tend to employ dramatic license in their retelling of fairly mundane stories. To her, your "filthy letter" may as well have arrived last month because it is still so fresh in her mind. She neglected to mention that it actually arrived two years ago because in retelling the story that way, she might have to confront the unpleasant fact that she thrives on creating and cultivating family drama.

As for how to move forward, that's the tricky bit. Dealing with people who are prone to rewriting family history and blowing things out of proportion will ALWAYS be difficult. It doesn't get easier to be confronted with their very own personal reality and the drama that it always entails. I find, however, that they are extinguished like a flame lacking oxygen if you simply confront them - IN THE ABSOLUTELY MOST DISPASSIONATE WAY POSSIBLE - with the facts.
posted by greekphilosophy at 6:53 AM on July 25

I think that any letter that uses the word "harridan" as a descriptor of the recipient could reasonably be described by that recipient as a "filthy letter."

Now, if that's the letter in question, holding a grudge about it for 2 years seems over the top.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:15 AM on July 25

I find, however, that they are extinguished like a flame lacking oxygen if you simply confront them - IN THE ABSOLUTELY MOST DISPASSIONATE WAY POSSIBLE - with the facts.

I'm not seeing dispassion on either side, though. onhazier recounted the Christmas carol incident with a lot of feeling (and, to be honest, it seems like a perfectly ridiculous thing to object to or have a fight about--the dispassionate solution would have been "Let's sing some of yours and some of ours" not "Husband can't stand another John Rutter arrangement").

I'm also a little dubious about onhazier's letter having been dispassionate, seeing as onhazier mentioned that it included the word "harridan". And onhazier keeps referring to this woman as "Crazy Aunt" and what-not.

Just saying that the drama doesn't seem to be all in one camp here.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:18 AM on July 25 [1 favorite]

The only specific examples we've got are that you sent her a rude non-apology letter telling her you were the one who deserved an apology (when you acknowledge that there are things she deserves an apology for), and after she went to the trouble of getting everything together to sing carols, you refused to sing any of the ones she arranged. I'm sure there's more to the story, but it's weird that your examples of her behaving badly are ones where you behaved badly.

Write her a letter apologising for whatever it is you mentioned in the first letter, and for the first letter, and say you hope you can try to have a relationship again. If this doesn't work, then fine: you've done what you can, and she really is crazy. (I cannot tell based on your description of your aunt and her sister if they tend to wrestle/brawl when they fight or whether your aunt attacks her sister. These are very different stories.)

Like many other people here, I suspect that this first letter is the one she is calling filthy. (Based on your description, I'd call it offensive, not filthy, but either she defines filthy differently or the word got misremembered by your other uncle.)
posted by jeather at 8:30 AM on July 25 [1 favorite]

I once wrote a n email to someone in my family who behaved appallingly to me. I stated the sequence of events as I understood them, expressed sympathy and suggested therapy. I suggested that the family member was experiencing anxiety, but didn't label it as a bipolar emotional spike, which is what I think it was. Didn't demand or request an apology. Expressed concern. It was an extremely reserved letter. It was described to another family member as a "torrent of abuse."

You cannot, by definition, reason with crazy people. Stop trying to win, or be proved right. You may be right, but your family is in turmoil. Accept that if you want to be anywhere near any of this group of family, you have to keep your mouth shut a lot. You'd be surprised how many people will notice when you do that. In a good way.
posted by theora55 at 10:23 AM on July 25

You can't win with crazy. They want to believe the worst of you, so they will no matter what you say or do now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:05 AM on July 26

Event follow up:

I attended the cook out and it was wonderful. I got to see an uncle who'd been alienated from the family for decades. (That's a whole other story that doesn't apply here. No, we didn't exclude him.)

As for the letter, it does turn out that the Aunt is referring to the letter from several years ago. I was simply able to say "Sorry, uncle. I've had no contact with them since 2007's letter." From my perspective, it wasn't nasty. From hers, it was.

The drama between my Aunt and I is two-sided at this point. I've tried being polite. I've tried face-to-face conversations. When a gift was given, I verbally thanked her and followed up with a written thank you note. There have been multiple attempts to make nice and set the tension aside. My 2007 letter was none of that and I acknowledge my role in the current standing of our broken relationship.

Is a letter of apology cowardly? I don't necessarily think so. However, in this case, she demanded a letter of apology from me. She stated clearly that she wasn't interested in speaking with me. She wanted me to apologize for being rude to her once when I was 15, for getting rid of a old typewriter she gave me, for writing "inadequate" thank you notes, and for not singing carols with her. These, and the subsequent letter, are my infractions against her.

Those who said that there is no reasoning with crazy people are right. I have had and continue to have no further contact with her.
posted by onhazier at 10:45 AM on August 5