Dear Nichole:

Your aunt is a bad person. The following is enough to indicate this to me: “For years she has downed her son and made him look like a terrible person… She has isolated him from family by bad mouthing him to everyone who will listen… She talks every day with his dad and they thrive off of judging everything him and his woman do and what they don’t do”.

You wrote, “I will not let her do that to me. I am a good person”-  but so was her son when she turned against him. He was good too. But she was not and is not good.

“I always felt I need to save people but I realize some people do not want to be saved”- interesting, you are trying to  save your aunt while it is you who needs to be saved from her.

She is behaving the way she wants to behave. You don’t hear her coming to you with regrets about her behavior, do you? She doesn’t knock on your basement  door and say: maybe I shouldn’t bad mouth my own son and sorry I bad mouth you too behind your back. She is okay with her behavior.

You asked me: “Am I wrong?” regarding your behavior, the behavior that your aunt disapproves of- my answer: no, you are not wrong. Her son as a child wanted nothing more than to please his mother and father as all children do, until his mother (and father) turned against him. What should he has done once they turned against him? Submit and say: I will do anything and everything you want me to  do?- well he already did that to the best of his ability, as a child and in vain. So as an adult, an older adult, I assume, should he yet again knock on his mother’s door and say: forgive me for displeasing you, I will do anything and everything you want me to do, just please tell me what it is you want me to do.. and not do, give me a list, a set of directions…?

And this is my point: your aunt does not want to be  pleased by either her son or by you. She has this angst and her solution to  it, being as short term as it is each time, is to bad mouth people. She enjoys it and she will not let you take that joy away from her.

And so, I say: move out of your aunt’s. And stay out and away.

anita