COVID-19: Chapter 10 - Mission Achomlished!

  1. That is sad as shit.

  2. She needs to get out ASAP. He will end up killing her one day if she doesnt

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She could inject him with vaccine first and then claim it was self defense.

Sadly I don’t think it is. My wife is a doctor and she has a former colleague that is also a doctor, and that colleague’s husband went full anti-vaxx to full fascist and no one talks to them anymore. There’s a non-zero chance that Reddit post is actually from her, which would be an incredible coincidence but it describes her situation exactly.

Totally this.

Gotta end it because he isn’t going to get better anytime soon.

He’s in a cult. The only option other than a clean break (which should be on the table, they have no kids, she can end it and move on) is to seek guidance on how to get a family member out of a cult. A lot of the natural instincts about what to do (argue with them about facts, yell at them because they’re hurting you) just drive them deeper into the arms of the cult. The only thing that ever works is to point out how the cult member’s life is worse than it was when they weren’t a cult member, and that all the promises the cult is making aren’t coming true. That’s the central strategy when trying to pull people out of a cult but it’s a tough road, it’s the only thing that works and it doesn’t work all the time.

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The op of that Reddit thread really feels their spouse has a mental illness and is fighting really hard to help them as opposed to leaving them.

I don’t know if I could do it. I have had a couple friend and family relationships sour over similar antics. One of the recommendations given her was to see if he would do a tech detoxification. So cutting off using screens for a period of time to try and reset. I just feel like the internet is the lifeblood of this thinking, though, and would be extremely hard to get a believer to give up access.

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Yes, she’s a good spouse I’ll give her that!

Being in a cult and having a mental illness aren’t necessarily exclusive, if I was going to approach this with a problem solving approach then I would say that he is in a cult and that is his mental illness. The DSM actually acknowledges that cult members can be in a delusional state that can be treated as a mental illness: ā€œidentity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasionā€. That’s a cult, baby.

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I know I have posted about this before but I have a very similar situation with my parents. They refused to get vaxxed. They believe a lot of the dumbass conspiracy stuff surrounding Covid. I have seen them less and less as a result. Last October I decided I needed to go spend some quality time with them since they are getting older and honestly it scares me how much our relationship has dwindled as well as how little time they probably have less for that to change.

Things went ok for the first couple of days but I noticed A LOT of weird magazines/dvds/books from Hillsdale college and the like. I just kept my mouth shut and tried to enjoy the time with them. The next to last night my mom starts bringing up CRT and how the Dems are encouraging kids to be trans and I shut it down pretty fast saying virtually none of her beliefs on that are based in reality and I didn’t care to talk about it. The next night before we were about to leave she confronted me telling me that I was disrespectful to them because I wouldn’t have a civil conversation about their political beliefs. That I was silencing them. That it was their house and it wasn’t fair to limit their speech in their own house.

So I asked if they really wanted to do this. Do they really want my actual opinions. I basically told them they were bigots, listened to a bunch of evil people/propaganda and were complete hypocrites with regard to their faith and then left and haven’t been back since. Didn’t see them over the holidays. My wife now refuses to even speak with them. I don’t really see any coming back from it. I have talked with them over the phone a few times but it is very strained.

I 100% believe they are decent people who were fully propagandized at first by AM radio (Rush/Hannity/etc) then Fox News and now god knows what. Living in Wichita, KS they have plenty of access to other lunatics in their community. They then feed on each other, normalizing the insanity as well as giving them a place to go and then whine and complain about their victimhood from anyone who pushes back against them.

And I’m not the only one. None of my siblings went for Christmas. My sister refuses to talk to them and my brother has about the same level of relationship as I do. Does that wake them up? No. It has just further entrenched them in the delusion they spend their entire life living in.

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I’m really sorry that you’re going through that.

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Brutal stuff that a lot of us are experiencing to various degrees. Just sucks, all there is to it.

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Japan is set to finally go maskless from next month, or at least mask-optional.

If you’d like to die of a preventable disease here’s the place for it:

Thing is if you completely cut them off, then they have no choice but to go deeper.

You gotta keep that line of communication open for change and forgiveness to be a possibility.

Eh. As one gets older there’s less and less that would make them reconsider their beliefs, and honestly, ā€œall my kids have gone no contact with meā€ is probably one of the very few that might be enough of a shock to actually have an effect.

I know that my mother over time has faded from far-right politics quite a bit and that probably wouldn’t have happened if my sisters and I told her to fuck off while Trump was POTUS.

It’s a balancing act though because even being around them is a massive drain on my mental health and wellbeing. That being said I haven’t completely cut them off and still have talked to them occasionally on the phone.

I honestly have no hope they ever come back from the abyss though. So it’s just figuring out the best way to handle it until they are dead (or I am).

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With some relatives, it’s easy enough to just play the ā€œeach of us obviously thinks the other is a complete fucking moron when it comes to politics, so let’s just never ever ever bring up the subjectā€ game. However based on your recounting of your mom’s insistence to be allowed to spout nonsense, that’s not gonna work. Some people not only wanna be right in their beliefs, but they want every single person to know how right they are at all times. There’s not much you can do with people like that.

It seems they are most upset that I won’t engage which is a major problem.

they have a right to free speech, you know

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