Personally I sense that there are some information out there that prepare people before my arrival. Some people have very bad opinion about me without even knowing me. I have Aspergers and lack social skills and some people are just rude. So I am not sure that it always is a question about smear campaigning. But sometimes the reactions seems to be unresonable. A couple of weeks ago a partner I have done business with for ten years started to act rude and crazy. Like there had been a breach of faith. It was insane. So then I thought, now someone have been around her and smeared my name.

I would just ask her directly if there is something wrong. You can't read a person's mind. Sometimes people are just stressed, especially during the holidays.

Having said that, the shunning of exmos by TBMs can be a very real thing. People have different ways of dealing with it. I had a neighbor that used to shun me over something really petty. I just ignored her and sometimes chuckled at her antics. What else can you do but laugh at them for their ridiculous behavior?

When I was TBM I made the mistake of confiding to MIL that I had been called the devil's child many times growing up and that it really bothered me, that I knew it wasn't true but OTOH I felt really ashamed and guilty about it.

This was before I knew about gaslighting, etc and I was very superstitious. I was still under the sway of psychological manipulation and the feeling that I might be literally spiritually dark was very much a part of my reasons for diving into the cult head first.

She gave me this huge hug and said I shouldn't ever believe that because I'd been valiant in pre-mortality and was a chosen spirit and she knew this by personal revelation.

I wouldn't call this covert by any stretch but, more than a decade after I left Mo'ism, one of my BILs took himself, wife and kids and left the cult. MIL openly shared the whole "devil's child" thing with the rest of the family and she wanted the TBMs to concentrate specifically on bearing testimony to me so I'd rejoin because I was actually Stan's kid, even my sorta-mo parents knew it, and I was the one spreading apostasy through the eternal fam just by existing. Again, this she knew by revelation.

Thank goodness I didn't share more than that about my past with her. I wrote her a letter calling out her behavior. I haven't actually spoken more than a handful of words to her since, most of my communication with her is secondhand.

Lafayette, FWIW, I'd ask yourself how important is this person to you personally and whether it's even worth taking them aside and going back over the situation with them.

If they're just an acquaintance, I'd blow it off as just a missed connection...those happen to everyone, and the next day things go back to normal. If the person is significant in your life and they're bullying or undermining just because you left the cult, it might be worth it to try talking it out with them. Your choice. I certainly wouldn't reward their bad behavior when it happens and I'd watch that person to see if it's becoming a pattern, but they may have already forgotten it. It's up to you whether you want to call them out on it.

They don't know I'm gone yet!!

I have had people smear my name. I felt like there wasn't anything I could do about it. I decided that people who listen to a hater doing a smear campaign are not very nice themselves.