Three years ago I made the decision to cut my folks out of my life because I got tired of the games that my Ndad was pulling and how my Emom just kept defending his and her actions.

To give some history, I am an only child. I didn't have a bad childhood, to be honest. Both of my folks come from broken family backgrounds and they did the best in raising me with the resources they had. That being said, as I got older and started becoming more independent, my Ndad started playing guilt games with me to keep me under his control and keep his world intact. He would never do this directly, though... my Emom was always rallied to his cause and she would guilt me into changing plans just to make my Ndad happy. It was very apparent that it had become my role to make sure my Ndad felt loved by me in the way he wanted.

When I got married, however, shit really hit the fan. My parents have never accepted my wife and have often said that they believe she has brainwashed me against them. I played peacekeeper between them and my wife (and later, kids) for well over 10 years, all the while being gaslighted, abused, manipulated, etc. by them. At some point I lashed out in anger (only verbally, mind you) at my kids over a huge mess of stress and anxiety that my parents had brought on me and I realized that things had gone too far. My family did not deserve the abuse from my parents (my oldest got to where he hated going over there because of how they patronized him) and they certainly did not deserve any collateral damage from my own emotional fallout due to my parents' actions. I called them on their actions and my Ndad let loose the most hurtful and abusive verbal assault I have ever endured from him. Even with all I had been through with them, he had never turned the full force of his anger on me before and it was beyond ugly. My Emom jumped right in and defended him, denying any possibility that my Ndad would ever do something like that. I forwarded her the voicemails and texts and she refused to acknowledge them. It blew me away.

So I cut them off. Completely. Blocked numbers, blocked on social media, etc. right before Thanksgiving of 2013. I will say that Thanksgiving and Christmas that year (and each year after) were some of the best and most stress-free I have ever had in my life. I love my parents but the pain of not having them in my life was WAY less than dealing with their abuse. I entered counselling to deal with my emotional healing and after a year and a half of said counselling, I finally found it in myself to let everything go and accept my parents for who they are.

In August of this year, my mom reached out for the first time via FB (I had removed the block a few months ago but did not contact her). After talking with my wife, she encouraged me to go ahead and add her. It was a way to see how things were with them while keeping them at arms' length. (They actually live in the same subdivision as we do and yet over the course of three years I didn't once see them. Not sure how that happened.) So I added my Emom on FB. It hasn't been bad but all of the messages from her have been about how proud they are of <whatever I'm doing at the time> and how much they miss me. No apologies, no effort to seek healing in the relationship. They've never been big on apologizing for their wrongs and usually try to guilt the other party into apologizing to them through gaslighting or other manipulation tactic. Needless to say this has not netted them many friends over the years. It became very clear very quickly that they still felt as though they had done nothing wrong and were just waiting for me to return to them. I kept my interaction with her at a minimum and, for the most part, things were fine... well, acceptable, anyways. My Ndad, however, made no effort of contact during this time.

This past Saturday (11/5) was my Ndad's 60th birthday. Despite not talking to him in three years, I get a text message from him that morning saying, "What are you up to today?" I responded with, "Just getting stuff done. Happy birthday, by the way." His response was actually nice and came with a complement but I did not let that push my emotional boundaries. I just let it be at the time and the day went on.

Sunday morning I get a text from him of something out of a religious book of some sort. It was one of those self-reflective references to scripture that if you were to send to someone ends up meaning, "This is what I think is wrong in your life." This is a strong pattern of his. He would often misquote or misuse scripture in an effort to guilt me and show me how "holy" and "right" he was. I didn't respond.

Sunday night he texts again and asks me to do an impression that I used to do when I was five... no context, no lead-in... just basically demands it. I didn't respond again but I'm very bothered.

This morning I wake up to another overly pious text message. I'm ready to be done.

I'm beginning to think it was a mistake to let them back in. They clearly don't have any interest in actually fixing anything that has happened and don't think they have done anything wrong. I'm strongly leading towards just going back to having them cut off and leaving it that way.

Any thoughts?

TL;DR -- I cut off my Ndad and Emom three years ago, recently started reconnecting with them and it's clear that nothing has changed (and might be getting worse) and I may have to cut them off again.