Miss Manners: Do I Need To Respond To Awful Letters From Strangers?

[minoanmiss]

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the correct response to a critical unsolicited letter?

I am in my 30s, and sadly have been estranged from my parents for the past few years due to abuse. I periodically receive long, scathing letters from people I've never met, and from distant family members who think I should give my parents another chance. Presumably, my parents have asked them to send these letters, as they contain many misperceptions about the situation.

What is the etiquette here? I do not think it is appropriate to discuss the situation with them, and my first inclination is to not respond. But I also want to do the right thing. Most of these letters come from members of an older generation, who may care more about etiquette.
Do proper manners require you to respond to every letter you receive? Or are there some situations that supersede the rules?

GENTLE READER: Members of a generation who care more about etiquette would not write rude, impertinent letters in the first place.

Miss Manners assures you that you do not need to answer. But if you are worried about fueling the feud further, you may write back a curt, "Thank you for the advice. I hope you are well."

That this is perfectly polite, but might make them madder, is a bonus.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

OH, LW, I have been there.

Don't write back. Keep a record for yourself about who sent what, but destroy the actual letters and definitely don't reply.

In my (not quite so) humble opinion, your parents have enlisted these Flying Monkeys[tm] (Credit to Captain Awkward) to help them stalk you. Stalkers thrive on feedback. ANY response whatsoever.

I know you want to tell them the truth, not your parents' twisted and mangled recitation of your thanklessness. I have felt it drag on my soul to know people despise me and want to punish and "correct" me because those who were supposed to love me lied about me. I have been where you are. All you can do is know the truth for yourself and not respond.

I am seriously considering braving the likely horrible comments section to say this there. Please talk me out of it. :)

[azurelunatic]

You should not go there because it is no doubt filled with flying monkeys, would-be flying monkeys, assholes, racists, and general jackassery.

Plus spammers.

[minoanmiss]

Thank you for reminding me.

[carbonel]

Huh. I thought Flying Monkeys was a Reddit thing, most specifically from JUSTNOMIL. I know a lot of tropes from Captain Awkward, but I don't remember seeing that one until I started hanging out on Reddit as well.

[azurelunatic]

Oh. Oh, no.

LW, do not respond, unless you would like to unmask your parents to them for what they are and have done. And in that case, a phone call is best, as it leaves no physical trace in the way that a written letter would. To be clear, the contents of that phone call should start and end with "fuck you".

[minoanmiss]

Word. (but of course the problem with saying anything is being told "that's not true" to one's face, as it were.)

[full_metal_ox]

So where were all these surprise villagers and relatives of relatives while your parents were abusing you? Huh?

[joyeuce]

It's amazing what people choose not to see. My father once hit me several times on the legs with a reasonably sized stick, at a dramatic-society-and-families picnic. I was screaming, and trying to climb a tree to get away from him, so I don't think people can have failed to notice. No one (including my mother) intervened, or even mentioned it.

[full_metal_ox]

Then they don’t get to pop up out of nowhere decades later to be shareholders in your behavior, do they.

[joyeuce]

Indeed not. Unlike LW, I am fortunate enough that they haven't - apart from my mother. And she gets, not exactly a free pass, but a bit more leeway, on the grounds that he sometimes hit her too.

[minoanmiss]

Ah Happy Childhood Memories[tm]. It is absolutely amazing what people will Choose Not To Notice, isn't it? I was impressed that people Didn't See my mother dragging me around by my ears or nose but this takes the proverbial cake.

offers commiserative hugs

[joyeuce]

Thank you. It does make me wonder what my father's father was like; I remember very little about him.

[azurelunatic]

By all accounts my own father's father was more violent and less patient.

[minoanmiss]

That makes sense. There are a lot of holes in my knowledge of my family, but not one that comprehensive.

[joyeuce]

Grandfather died when I was about 7, so I only had a small child's knowledge of him. Now my grandmother and father are also dead, and my aunts have informed me we're "not really family" (they were adopted), so there's no one left to ask.

[minoanmiss]

Going to church, praying to Jesus, and ignoring a child's tears.

[full_metal_ox]

Which, by some sleight of mind, they reconciled somehow with Luke 17.2?

[melannen]

IF they are from distant relatives, who you remember as kind and safe from occasional visits even though they lived very far away, and the relatives have clearly been outright lied to and not just given a slanted account, and they weren't particularly close to your abusers, and the letters are phrased in such a way that, were the lies true, it would be a reasonably polite attempt to reach out to a dear relative gone astray, and you think you would like a better relationship with them... you could reply once saying "Great-Aunt Erzebet, I always thought well of you, and I fear you have been lied to. [Clear statement of one or at most two factual things that contradict statements of fact in the letter they sent.] I hope these lies will not continue to poison our relationship going forward. Yours & etc, LW". They then have one chance to send another reply where they apologize for taking the lies at face value.

If all of the above don't apply, then DON'T REPLY.

If you are getting large numbers of them and finding them distressing, Return to Sender is honestly quite satisfying.

[ethelmay]

The oddest thing about this story to me is that no one seems to think it that odd a thing to happen. I could hardly even parse what I was reading at first, because I had never heard of getting a bunch of weird letters from other people because your parents were mad at you. There seem to be a lot of missing cultural steps in here.

[minoanmiss]

It's a common trick of narcissistic abusers.

https://navigatingreligiousnarcissism.com/9-types-of-flying-monkeys-know-how-to-deal-with-each-one

I mean I've lived this. When I refused to return to my parents after colleg they told pretty much everyone I'd grown up with that I ran away to the evil Godless world, and a bunch of relatives and childhood friends called me and wrote me to tell me I was breaking my parents' hearts and I should go back to them. Fortunately I had learned one of the most important lessons of literature -- what happened to me has happened to others -- so I did a little research and found other people had expeerienced this as well. Later I came across the term "flying monkeys" itself.