It takes time , because essentially it is a death only in my opinion worse . Best believe that all those nice things that you keep thinking about will be brought up if you get back in touch and thrown in your face and what I realized was if you take emotion out of the equation and really look at who they are as a person and what they did for you , you will notice that it wasn ' t for you , or because they loved you they got something out of it . I can ' t say what yours got but some common ones are looking like a hero to everyone else or to replace some guilt by evening the score . Harsh reality but we have to keep reminding ourselves that these aren ' t normal people and if we try to reason with them like normal people or expose them to other family members ect there will be hell to pay . I did everything in the book you shouldn ' t do and I ended up being much worse off take it from someone who wouldn ' t stop until they saw reality and was dead set on proving it to them . the more threatened they get by you the more they will need to and take joy in silencing you . You are not alone ! 3