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Well my actual parents are dead, and I'd rather carry around their urn and have dinner with it versus the in the flesh non-sense of my in-laws! Sorry, no family is sometimes better than a horrible family! So thank you, I will think of myself with no family :-P
sorry, I am having a bad day. You are right.
I would celebrate with my husband if I was you and maybe concentrate on the part of the family who is nice.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CatzPaw
I've read enough of the OP's threads where he has previously mentioned offshoots from this topic to feel that one does not make a curmudgeonly cottage industry about a lack of interest in the extended family that he's had little contact with for most of his life – without there being some teensy, tiny, nagging, underlying wishful desire that the situation was different.
Okay you got me. I wish the situation was different and I had a family who accepted me for me as-is. But my mother and I are going to always be looked as the "uppity _____ who moved North and think they are better than us." Neither of us will ever feel welcome around them at Thanksgiving or anything else. I would far rather eat with only my mother or even completely by myself than to be judged because I have the audacity to make different life choices than them or watch my mother be shunned because she decided to live somewhere that actually had opportunities.
My father's side I fare a little better since my Uncle and I get along decent but that is pretty much it.
Okay you got me. I wish the situation was different and I had a family who accepted me for me as-is. But my mother and I are going to always be looked as the "uppity _____ who moved North and think they are better than us." Neither of us will ever feel welcome around them at Thanksgiving or anything else. I would far rather eat with only my mother or even completely by myself than to be judged because I have the audacity to make different life choices than them or watch my mother be shunned because she decided to live somewhere that actually had opportunities.
My father's side I fare a little better since my Uncle and I get along decent but that is pretty much it.
And that's fine. I have no problem understanding what you just said. (I also just noticed that this thread is four years old.)
I think the way you positioned your stance in the original post stirs up the holiday wasp nest. (But gee, isn't that what "dissenters" like to do?)
I wish it could be different for you and your mother, I really do.
..........because I simply don't have a relationship with them, excluding my mother who I am close with. As an offshoot of all the family drama threads, I am happy I do not have this problem. I am a polar opposite of most in my family. My family is highly religious, socially conservative, and mostly blue collar. I am not religious, socially liberal, and college-educated and white collar. The potential for arguments is very high. I have not had a substantive conversation with any of them in a few years, mainly because none of them reached out to me. Why would I reach out to people who don't seem interested? I could only imagine the BS that would happen at the table.
I have friends who I've gotten close with that have taken the place of extended family for myself personally speaking. I don't feel anything is wrong with not having a relationship with uninterested family.
Well, I have a pretty diverse family when it comes to worldviews as well. My brother, a Mother Jones reading liberal, and I have a ten-year standing agreement to not discuss politics lest one of us scoop up a fish fork and jab the other in the forehead. That doesn't keep us from having fun together when he comes to town to sprinkle pixie dust around the family gathering once a year.
Meanwhile, my wife's family is a bunch of Fox News watchers with political views slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun. Their family motto might as well be, "It's different, therefore I fear it." It's a little harder to be around them not just because of their hard-right political leanings, but because they can't imagine anyone thinking any other way.
Life is a great deal more than politics, however. In fact, I would offer that politics should be very little of who you are, especially around one's family. People who invest themselves so thoroughly in politics that they begin to divide the world into opposing camps lead impoverished existences without even realizing it. And they tend to be narcissistic, too. As in, "I only surround myself with people who agree with me, because there's no way I could possibly be wrong." Would that it were that simple. Finally, people who are obsessed with politics are -- and there is no polite way to put this -- duller than dishwater. One can't be earnest all the damned time. It makes one a grim dinner companion.
Instead, I believe strongly that part of the essential mental equipment of a mature adult is to be able to sit down with someone, anyone, and find something interesting to discuss without rancor. A cousin. A co-worker. A cashier at the drug store.
However, it's the second part of your post that concerns me more. Relationships are two-way in nature. People who aren't interested in you are, well, self-centered. And if they aren't interested in you, then you're right to make a family on your own, with the people who keep you in their hearts and minds.
Sometimes, in order to bask in the sun, you must step away from the family tree.
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Wow I love that
I have no family and no family drama except for the socially retarded haters on my husbands side. I divorced myself from them decades ago. My poor John is heading up to Wisconsin almost 7 hours away for his mother's 90th birthday. I will stay here and use my message gift card. No worries.
I can handle my family one at a time. One.at.a.time.
Large gatherings with the alcohol-fueled drama, the annual airing of the grievances, the distant relatives that I just plain don't care to visit with, and the stress.....I can do without.
I think if we banned alcohol at the gatherings, it might be bearable. But when the bottles come out....woowee.
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