Those who enjoy drama and conflict

Luckily none in my family - at least one or two generations up or down from me. Three of my four boys are married, and I feel I've hit the jackpot with all those young ladies.

There are people like that, however, in my extended family and my family-by-marriage. But thankfully, they are easily avoided or ignored.

I have friends who are constantly in family turmoil due to these types of people. It's awful for them.

Not in regards to conflict.

There's one if you tell them anything.......then the rest of the family, their friends, their neighbors, their colleagues, the other ball team Moms, their manicurist,  etc...are all going to know.

Stirring up stink is a hobby for some people. Some workplace managers and politicians enjoy this, too, as people who are pitted against each other aren't evaluating they, themselves. Asking, "Do you have any proof of that?" will often either shush them, or lead them to saying "Many people think" type crud (sound familiar?). Repeat the same request for proof or validation, and they go away. Be prepared to be bad-mouthed after that (people who pull this sort of thing don't like to be discovered, confronted, or bested). I'm sorry you have one to deal with.

My brother's ex wife was a shit stirrer. We discovered this a while after they split (after 20 years of marriage).

Mom and I were chatting and discovered that the bitch had told her I was really having a hard time with her getting remarried after my Dad passed. No such thing was ever said by me or my brother. There were other things, but that's the one that sticks out the most!

My MIL is s shit stirrer. She will absolutely lie to one person to get them upset with another family member. DH + I have been married 18 years and every single family event she has started some sort of shit.

Neither of my sons like drama. At all. My husband would often listen to work gossip (mine) when I shared, but overall, there is no drama in the house. Extended family now is either far away or not big into either.

My DH and DS find yelling at each other to be a perfectly valid method of communication, and they can then go right on to acting like nothing has happened. DD and I are both peacemakers who are often rather traumatized by this. I hate it! (And some of it is just both "sides" being too extreme, to be fair - I loathe any degree of conflict and kind of freak out, and they also need to learn how to tone it down some. DH knows to tone it down with other people, but DS hasn't completely learned that yet, so our interactions are sometimes difficult.)

I have an aunt and cousin - her daughter- that are pot stirrers. There's something wrong with them but I'm not sure if they ever formally got diagnosed. Aunt would blame everyone around her for her troubles. Cousin would just start shit over anything she took as a slight. Didn't get that copy of the family photo to her before a different family member? Ohh, you were excluding her on purpose. The other aunt in this group stopped hosting holidays because of them. My parents refused to host as well as an uncle. After some stupid drama over not getting enough birthday greetings on FB and several racist comments from them and others in that family, I cut off contact. My sister claims ignorance and stays in touch. Dad does enough to keep the peace. Uncle washed his hands of them years ago, shortly after grandpa passed away. Last I heard, cousin's oldest kid doesn't talk to her, aunt's last husband left her, and at least one of her kids don't talk to her.

DH has at least one cousin that likes drama and will say stuff to get people riled up. She tried it the last time we had everyone together. Her siblings ignored it. The in-laws mostly rolled their eyes. The newest in-law was ready to fight until her DH told her that she does this all the time. Ignore it and she'll drop it. It's kinda funny to watch the wind go out of her sails.

DEX That is horrible.

DH's oldest sister is the problem in his family. She's actually much better the last few years. She lies and doesn't seem to think the rest of us talk and discover we've all been told something different. Her own 2 DD's have cut her out of their lives in the past.

Thankfully that’s one thing I haven’t had to deal with in either of our extended families. BUT DH worked for a guy once who really didn’t like me and did and said a lot of shady crap to try to get DH to dump me. His boss didn’t like it that I was telling DH that they were taking advantage of his good nature, and I didn’t like that they had ramped up his hours and had him working close to 80 hours a week for a shitty salary with lousy benefits when that wasn’t the initial deal that all had (handshake) agreed to. Seriously, who does that? Years later we were both delighted to be able to witness karma biting that guy squarely in the ass. It doesn’t happen often but when it does revenge is sweet.

My MIL is the agitator. So DH had 2 sisters and 1 brother, there were 4 of them. The MIL and both SIL cut BIL out of their lives over a stupid argument about sitting at the kids table at Thanksgiving one year. Both SILs don't talk to each other over a stupid argument (sensing the theme here?) about shoveling parking spots when you street park. MIL would tell one SIL what the other SIL said and vice versa, stirring the drama. Everyone would ask DH about the ex-communicated brother (oh and they cut both of his kids out of their lives too) and I'd tell DH to keep his mouth shut, if they want to know what's going on with him they can reach out to him.

I told DH once he passed I wouldn't hear from his family, and I don't (other than occasional texts from his brother). He would say "oh, that's not true", to which I'd respond "they can't even come see you when you're dying (brother did), they're not going to pay me or DS any attention". And I'm perfectly fine with it. They're terrible people (except the brother). Because I was raised right, I will send birthday cards and I have DS call MIL on her birthday and Mother's Day and Christmas. But that's it. No one invited us to any holidays the year after DH passed, no one reached out at all. I'm good. Unfortunately when DS talks to MIL he always hands the phone to me so I have to make nice. Last time I talked to her she was lamenting about how none of her kids talk to each other and I said "well, you raised them", it was out before I realized what I was saying. Needless to say we got off the phone shortly after that.

Ugh, I'm sorry so many of you have to deal with this (or have in the past).

I've had several extended family members in the past who were just plain toxic, mean, and self-centered, they were not agitators of the type you're referring to. Thankfully, the main one is no longer in our lives (a sibling's ex). The other one is still in our lives (not a blood relative though), and has matured a bit so she's not quite as drama-inducing as she used to be. She still lashes out at times and says extremely hurtful things; we limit our contact with her but it's difficult because she really has no other family left.

As far as the type who stirs things up just for the sake of agitating, pitting people against other, and creating drama, we had an aunt growing up who did that. (She's no longer in our lives.) She was my mom's brother's wife and constantly stirred things up, usually hurting my mom in the process. She capitalized on my the strained relationship between my grandmother (my mom's mom) and my mom to agitate things between them, and also between my other aunts and uncles (my mom's siblings and their spouses). It was a mess and my mom had almost no positive interactions with that brother and his wife from all their lies and scheming; we stopped visiting them and would only see them at other family events where we limited our interactions. One of my cousins from that family was also a mean agitator and tried to stir up cousin drama - she seemed to have it out for my sister, who was near to her age. She ended up getting her panties in a twist that DH and I didn't invite all my cousins to our wedding - she took that as a slight and replied huffily that if they weren't invited she wasn't coming either! (Thank God, LOL.) I have a lot of cousins, but wasn't close to any of them, none were near to my age, and so none of them were invited, although all of my aunts and uncles were invited. We did invite a few of DH's cousins that he was close to.

TL;DR version: mean people suck!

My ex’s next wife was a terrible instigator. At least she tried to be. She would make up all kinds of stuff like I hid in the house and wouldn’t answer the door when she came to pick up my son for visitation. Truth: we went for an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant that my son loved. She actually came 2 hours early and figured she would get him just because she was already at my house. She wasn’t there when we came home from dinner so I had no clue anything was brewing.

My ex came to pick him up and blasted me for hiding in the house and playing games. I quietly went to my purse and pulled out the dinner receipt and hoped there was a date and time on it. There was. I also mentioned our son might not want another dinner and let him tell you we had already eaten. Surely if we were hiding in the house our son would say something!. I asked him if he had ever seen me play childish games like that. He agreed it wasn’t like me at all.

She also told him that I instructed the neighborhood kids to spit on her car. Yeah, I have that power. What the heck? I was also calling and hanging up in the middle of the night when he was away fishing for a weekend. I asked him how I would know he wasn’t home. I wouldn’t. It was just something for her to say to create hostility between us.

She was afraid we would get back together. He actually did ask me to but I refused. He asked me when the two of them were living together right before they got married. He told me he couldn’t live alone so if I wouldn’t take him back he would be forced to marry her. How romantic of him, huh?

He had cheated on me with her. Did she really expect him to suddenly change? He ended up cheating on her too. And she had the nerve to come crying to me when she found out! He asked me to get back together again after he and that wife divorced. I still wasn’t interested.

My son told me he is cheating on his current wife too. He is going to end up alone if he doesn’t knock it off. He is 70!! And time and drinking has taken a major toll on him. He needs to stop fooling around and be happy with what he has.

My sisters are both drama creators and I stopped all communication when my mom died because of their games. I like my life peaceful.