I have family that I was very close to and we no longer talk because of his wife.
She is mentally ill (undiagnosed by a professional btw, so there’s no meds) and hides in her house, doesn’t work, hates everyone in our family and talks about everyone behind their back, lives for her only child (unhealthily) and is just awful.
My uncle married her and since then has undergone radical changes in his personality. She’s told our family to shut up at the table while arguing politics, she’s screamed at my uncle not to sing (his fave activity) and is just downright ugly.
My mom got cancer and since she’s (my uncles wife) the only one who didn’t work in the family I though, ok she’ll offer to help mom. Well she didn’t. My mom had to ask her friends and coworkers to drive her to her cancer appts for 2 months. I cleaned her house, did her laundry, took our her trash, did all her meds in the daily boxes, picked up prescriptions, bought her food, paid her bills, and that beeyotch got pissed because I asked why she didn’t take mom to any appts instead of sitting on her arse. (Oh yeah I did and I was not nice about it, that’s MY MOM!)
So I am the confrontational one in our family and chose to talk to my uncle about it privately. He got very mad and kept asking why I felt like that and was shocked. I listed all the things she’d said and done and he started bashing the family, like “I know you all go out to the bars after we leave.”, and I’m like “That never happened, you’re making stuff up now”, so it got worse and I ended it by calling him a hypocrit, he said they were done.
So now it’s been over a year since I’ve seen them and life is pretty good. I do miss my uncle, but he had changed into someone I no longer knew or care to know anyway. It’s hurtful a little bit, but I’m glad there’s no more superficial politeness.