Family Dynamics

[Miss Chicken]

One of my sisters, lets call her Jane, phoned me and told me my other sister, Sarah, was in hospital and that I should visit her.

the conversation went something like this

ME: Sarah told me she doesn't like being visited in hospital and therfore I don't.

JANE: It would nice if you did.

ME: Did she tell you that?

JANE: No but I am sure she would like a visit

ME: I will only visit her if asks me to.

JANE: Can you phone and she if she would like you to visit.

ME: I don't have her mobile number. She has never given it me.

JANE: What!! I have her number.

ME: Well she obviously likes you to ring but she has never given her number to me. I won't phone her unless she gives her number to me.

JANE: Do you phone her at home?

ME: No, I wait for her to phone me. She doesn't like being phoned at home because she is says she is usually too busy to talk.

JANE: I phone her at home.

ME: That good. She obviously doesn't mind you phoning.

I then reminder Jane that she sees Sarah more often then me, despite the fact that Jane lives in Adelaide and I live in the same city as Sarah.

JANE: When was the last time you saw her?

ME: When we went out for lunch when you were over.

I explained I only saw Sarah two or three times a year at family gatherings (i.e. on my mum's birthday).

JANE: Why don't you try to see her more often?

SARAH: Because she doesn't have the time to see me.

I used to ask Sarah to go to the cinema with me, or ask her to have lunch with me in the city but she never seemed to be able to fit it in. So I gave up trying.

I am the one who isn't busy. If Sarah has spare time I can easily fit her in to my unbusy schedule. I have never refused to spend time with her if she has asked me.

Jane now thinks I am being uncaring. As far as I am concerned I am respecting Sarah's stated wishes.

WITH SOME FAMILIES YOU JUST CAN'T WIN.

What do you guys think?

 

[Spot's Meow]

Yeah, situations like that are tough, because you may think you are respecting her wishes but she may think you're blowing her off. Or she may be just fine with things, it's always so hard to tell what people's true feelings are if they aren't communicative about it.

My younger sister is starting to plan a wedding to be held in several months to a year from now, and the miscommunications and tears have already begun. Planning a wedding can really tear a family apart! Hopefully we get through this alive.

 

[Kestra]

Tell her to elope. Seriously. I say that as a former wedding planner.

My own family is crazy but I love them anyway. Unfortunately, within the past year my sister and I have gone from being good friends, to estrangement, and now she simply loathes me. It's been incredibly difficult to cope with, especially as I don't know if we will ever be on good terms again. That's a very difficult thing to accept. Luckily I still have the rest of my family's love and support which is sometimes misguided but always well-intentioned.

 

[Miss Chicken]

A few weeks ago my mother fell and broke her wrist. Sarah text Jane in Adelaide to tell her. I knew nothing about it until Jane e-mail me asking me what was happening with Mum.

 

[gturner]

You should take advantage of the opportunity and visit your sister in the hospital. Whlie you're there, slide the call button out of her reach, then shove a syringe full of blue fluid into her I.V. and start ranting about how she never makes time for you. Try to make your eyes bulge and your hands shake as you say this. Have it out with her, but work in a long bit about blue dragons and elves before you depart. When your other sister calls deny everything and say that you never went to the hospital and won't unless asked. Blame your sick sister's story on the drugs they are giving her, which must've combined with her latent childhood psychoses.

 

[Spot's Meow]

Tell her to elope. Seriously. I say that as a former wedding planner.

We've tried! My parents feel like a big wedding is a waste of money, but my sister is living in fantasy land and wants everything to be all romantic and fairy tale like. Gag me. My mom encouraged her to elope but she's not having it.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

If I was in the hospital I wouldn't want people to visit me either. The last thing I want when I am laying there is to feel like I need to "entertain" people. If I said I didn't want people to visit me and they still did I'd think it was maybe a little sweet of them, but I'd still be kinda of ticked and wished they had listened to me in the first place.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

You should take advantage of the opportunity and visit your sister in the hospital. Whlie you're there, slide the call button out of her reach, then shove a syringe full of blue fluid into her I.V. and start ranting about how she never makes time for you. Try to make your eyes bulge and your hands shake as you say this. Have it out with her, but work in a long bit about blue dragons and elves before you depart. When your other sister calls deny everything and say that you never went to the hospital and won't unless asked. Blame your sick sister's story on the drugs they are giving her, which must've combined with her latent childhood psychoses.

Clever. Devilishly clever.

 

[Deckerd]

Sounds like you are the one out of the loop.

 

[T'Bonz]

Sounds like Jane needs to mind her own damned business.

My extended family would make a good soap opera. I live near the only two members with whom I get along (they don't do as much drama as the rest.)

Raised my kids differently. They know I hate the drama and feuding crap.

 

[SeerSGB]

Sounds like Jane needs to mind her own damned business.

My extended family would make a good soap opera. I live near the only two members with whom I get along (they don't do as much drama as the rest.)

Raised my kids differently. They know I hate the drama and feuding crap.

That sounds like mine: It's not a family reunion if someone isn't broke down in tears and feels like total shit for not "living up to the family name"-- as if being a drunken, moonshine swilling, pot dealing, unemployed redneck is something to strive to be.

Oh the stories I could tell.

 

[John Picard]

Sounds like Jane needs to mind her own damned business.

My extended family would make a good soap opera. I live near the only two members with whom I get along (they don't do as much drama as the rest.)

Raised my kids differently. They know I hate the drama and feuding crap.

That sounds like mine: It's not a family reunion if someone isn't broke down in tears and feels like total shit for not "living up to the family name"-- as if being a drunken, moonshine swilling, pot dealing, unemployed redneck is something to strive to be.

Oh the stories I could tell.

One older brother of mine has been estranged for over 20 years and lives 20 miles from our parents. Sister is the oldest, and she's a sociopath, while my two other brothers and I chat on occasion while they live close to the parents. I am the furthest away at 800 miles and don't talk to the parents because I was taken advantage of by my sister but the parents make me out to be the bad guy. They know she burns through money faster than the US Congress and won't admit she can't hold a job for more than a couple of years.

My ex-wife's family puts the "fun" in dysfunctional. They fight amongst one another, steal, lie, and are deceitful, but are always quick to pull the "family card" -- related by blood means you take care of your own, no matter what Always in each others' business and constantly creating drama. And my ex couldn't understand why, after we were divorced, I turned down an invitation to spend Christmas with them.

 

[SeerSGB]

As the oldest grandkid on my dad's side, I'm suppose to "Watch out" and "Be there" for the younger grandkids: which apparently meant bailing them out of jail; stop one of my cousins from running off at 19 to California and marrying a 50 something dude she met on the internet; and letting my wife go to jail and get deported cause another cousin came into the store she worked at and stole on $1000 in OTC drugs and electronics, then when he was caught he tried to claim my wife had helped him do it; when I confronted him I got "Man, we're blood, she's just some piece of pussy you can get another, you can't turn on blood."-- wrong card to pull with me, I called the cops and told him where he was.

Apparently I'm a bad person cause I told them all to get their own shit together, grow up, and learn to stand on their own two feet rather than expecting someone always being there to catch them.

 

[Tan Ru]

DAMN‼

My family now seems like The Nelsons after reading all those family-inspired train wrecks!

My life is too dull.................

 

[John Picard]

As the oldest grandkid on my dad's side, I'm suppose to "Watch out" and "Be there" for the younger grandkids: which apparently meant bailing them out of jail; stop one of my cousins from running off at 19 to California and marrying a 50 something dude she met on the internet; and letting my wife go to jail and get deported cause another cousin came into the store she worked at and stole on $1000 in OTC drugs and electronics, then when he was caught he tried to claim my wife had helped him do it; when I confronted him I got "Man, we're blood, she's just some piece of pussy you can get another, you can't turn on blood."-- wrong card to pull with me, I called the cops and told him where he was.

Apparently I'm a bad person cause I told them all to get their own shit together, grow up, and learn to stand on their own two feet rather than expecting someone always being there to catch them.

Many years ago, my then-wife's oldest brother [then age 35(?)] was arrested and charged with rape of a minor. Seems he started a "relationship" with his then girlfriend's 15 year old daughter. Wife's mother (father was deceased) always chuckled and made light of her son's philandering ways, such as how he was always screwing someone's wife when he was in the Army, and how, on more than one occasion, he literally had to jump out of a window with his clothes bundled in his arms.

Anyway, family was pissed that he was being charged (deceased father was former law-enforcement) and they thought they were untouchable. I secretly laughed when I heard them talk about how OKC police came to the house and picked him up. Family then was livid that girlfriend and ex-husband were out for blood. Brother is then out on bail and wife tells me he's going to live with us as she's going to "straighten him out". He writes hot checks on our account, is always out playing golf, not working, and coming home drunk after midnight. I lit into her about it and how he was being a dick to the kids, and then giggled when she waited up for him one night (I was "sleeping") when she lit into him and kicked him out. I found his stash of porn in my garage (really sick shit) and dumped in on her mother's porch (which is where he went to live). That won me no accolades, but I didn't care. Wife announces one day, "Mom want you to write a letter to the District Attorney in support of Tony so he can get a lighter sentence." During our marriage, I got sick and tired of "Mom wants" -- I don't give a flying fuck about your mother and what she *wants*. Anyway, I responded that I did not condone what her brother did, would not besmirch my good name in defending him, and had it been either of my brothers I would have said, "You sorry, dumb bastard.".

I was on her mother's shit list for that one too. Oh damn

 

[iguana_tonante]

I can't stand this sort of crap. I just do what I feel is right, family grumbling be damned. I've been accused of being the bad guy so often that I don't care anymore. Italian families: same shit as everywhere, but double the size and shouting volume!

 

[SeerSGB]

It's the way you gotta be. I tell them [family] over and over again: I'll give them help, only when it's the right thing to do. I won't cover for them with the cops, I won't give them money for 'shine or drugs, and I won't lie for them. Apparently I'm the asshole for putting my wife and kids first and fore most and won't go into debt or risk jail time for their asses. So be it then,I'm the asshole, now please piss off and go starve to death quietly in a ditch somewhere.

I have disowned so much of my family, that I admit to knowing or being related to less than a handful of them past my grandfather's generation. Basically: Dad, a aunt her husband and...well actually I think that might be it.

 

[TheBrew]

I can't stand this sort of crap. I just do what I feel is right, family grumbling be damned. I've been accused of being the bad guy so often that I don't care anymore. Italian families: same shit as everywhere, but double the size and shouting volume!

Overall, I get along with my family. Only person I have any friction with is my brother. I lived with him for a year and he just decided to treat me like I was his personal slave. I ran around ragged for that guy while also trying to graduate college. To be fair, I do have "oldest brother" syndrome so I have to take care of everything and I am usually right about everything. But we talked through it and tried to move beyond it.

However, he just kept on being negative about how I spent my time. If I wanted to watch movies and play video games, why should he care? I has handling both my shit and his. Then he decided to follow this swami hack religiously. And became really preachy about it. I borrowed one of his books and read through so that I could make a fair judgment and it was full of self-help crap like "visual your life". Stuff that, while not bad advice in of itself, doesn't require a religious devotion to. And he started to interject in all of his life and it got really annoying. But I could roll with it, I guessed.

The final straw was that I was moving out and he wanted a mutual friend to move in for when the lease was renewed. I had to work hard to convince him that my brother would be a good roommate and not flake out. Literally right after I busted my ass off to move him in to our living room (since I wasn't going to leave for two months), my brother decided that he wanted to transfer schools and move out. On top of it all, my brother was gone for the summer to visit friends in AZ, a trip that I worked hard on the logistics to make happen for him. So I ended up taking my summer classes, helping my friend move, clean out my brother's room, and clean out the apartment so that I could try and get some of the deposit back. I stuck my neck out for him and he left me in the guillotine.

Of course, he's a "free spirit" so to him its okay to screw over other people on his whim. I just got sick of him taking advantage of me so I broke it off. Now he's moving to India to become a "monk"

I love my brother, but I have decided to not take a part in his shenanigans. If he wants to waste his life, fine, but don't ask me for help.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Sorry to hear about your family troubles, Miss Chicken and Kes. I have a very strong bond with my relatives (parents, siblings, nephews, nieces), having come from a large Asian family. Though I have to admit, it hasn't always been fun. One of my brother-in-laws is an alcoholic, drunken idiot, and there was one ugly episode that occurred on Halloween night last year that tore apart an otherwise happy extended family. So anyway, the rest of the family doesn't see my other sister, her dummy husband, and the kids. I still see my niece and nephew occasionally but not as often. I think we're better off without the brother-in-law in the picture, but I surely miss the kids.

 

[propita]

Family!

When my Dad was dying, we couldn't get my brother to get from Vegas to Orange County, and kept my Dad on the machines for one more day as a cousin paid for my brother to fly out! Then he (brother) says he regrets not keeping in better touch with my parents. After Dad died, my brother swore he would keep in touch with my Mom. Right. Hasn't happened.

I don't talk with him much. He can't be bothered to spend the time and I can't be bothered to keep trying after decades.

Tell her to elope. Seriously. I say that as a former wedding planner.

We've tried! My parents feel like a big wedding is a waste of money, but my sister is living in fantasy land and wants everything to be all romantic and fairy tale like. Gag me. My mom encouraged her to elope but she's not having it.

Hey, if your sister wants a big fairy tale wedding, let her have it as long as she's paying the bills. Sounds like one of those women who's been planning out the wedding but hasn't really thought about the marriage.