The punishment can be anything from no Christmas presents, a public rebuke, not being mentioned as a wonderful son or daughter in an email to the family or just a more subtle rebuke of a deep sigh, clearing the throat, a sniffle, a pained facial expression, and so on. Any of it sets the person “straight” and they immediately kiss butt to be let into the closed family circle again. It is not allowed to show any sign of being upset at decisions made, etc. Sometimes the children will talk but nobody will ever bring this up to the parents and if it comes up, will certainly deny ever having meant anything with it, it was all misunderstood. Being accepted by the closed family unit is what matters most in life.
You can get the status of being tolerated at family functions but don’t kid yourself, you’ll never be part of the family. Your opinion will never matter and you’ll never get any support unless it is to show what kind of a looser you are and how you need others to help your sad self.
My MEM family is a closed family unit. Those married into the family are either mentally unstable or physically very unhealthy and always in and out of the hospital. There is a clear understanding that they will never be part of the closed family unit as they are simply not made of the stuff it takes to be part of them. I was the only healthy , emotionally stable woman to marry into the family and have been a threat to all of them from the beginning. I was constantly put down in subtle ways to keep me distant. I was told I couldn’t hike as far as my MEM’s sisters, I couldn’t cook as well, I could bear children as well, I couldn’t ride a horse as well (despite the fact that I rode dressage and western and had trained wild mustangs for the BLM program), I couldn’t keep house as well, I couldn’t run a business as well, and on and on and on. I tried to make friends with them but found it impossible. I bent over backwards to get just the right gifts for my MEMS mother but all without fail disappeared and were never seen in her possessions. It took me years to realize there is no way to ever “join” them. To be one of them, you’d have to be dysfunctional.
One time my MEMs mother told me how wonderful one of the other daughter in laws is as she worked very hard to make friends with the my MEM's father (whom my mother in law is divorced from but not separated if that makes sense, still share bank accounts, houses, property, etc. and he is Narcissistic) . She was telling me all the wonderful things this sister in law has done for the family and if one was willing to do that, it would really help the relationship. In her passive aggressive way she was telling me what was expected. I fully understood her meaning but also knew that this sister-in-law was not fully accepted into the closed family unit, even this mother in law still complained about her. I hated the games by then and just said that I don’t kiss butt. I reaped a heavy sigh for it, that was meant for my MEM so he would know what an awful disrespectful person he married.
If a spouse of a MEM supports mother and MEM, there is no conflict between the MEM and her. However, most spouses are not happy coming in second or even third or fourth or last. Often times the spouse of a MEM comes after mother, sisters, brothers, sister-in-laws married into the family, father, grandmother, and so on. Everybody in the closed family unit comes first because that is the only “tribe” or “family” they have ever known and they don’t see that it is completely dysfunctional.
I can only think of my visit to the German population in a large city. They spoke German but not the German that German’s speak anymore. The language evolved but theirs didn’t. They still called themselves German and speaking German but Germans knew something was different and didn’t totally understand everything. A closed family unit has been supporting dysfunction for generations, it is their own language and unspoken rules that are so ingrained, they will never see it being inside the closed family unit. Unless they step away from it, endure the consequence, feel the loneliness of being abandoned by their closed family unit, and work on finding their true selves, they will die never having truly lived.