Retirees, how do happy families manage to be happy? (friends, years, adult)
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just don't say this to social scientists, economists, psychologists and any number of others involved in research, collection of data, and analysis, such as marketing analysts, equity analysts etc, etc.
me - you can say anything to me. i don't know much and will totally believe you.
Ok, I think this is useless to debate here. You're lumping very different things together, and that can't be done. And you're not understanding what I'm saying. But that's all right too.
One of my sisters has two kids who were hostile to each other. Actually, it was her daughter who was really the hostile one, bitterly jealous of her brother and how she thinks he got "more" growing up. It was very stressful for my sister. I suggested that she let drop casually how much her son cares for his sister, always asking about her. Now that was not true, but it softened the daughter and she approached her brother and they have been close ever since. I feel bad about encouraging a lie though, I know it was unethical. I would not personally have done it, yet I saw my sister about to force them together and I knew that spelled disaster.
I'm guessing you had a "hunch" this might work and it obviously seems to have been for the greater good.
I would not be able to pull this particular trick off because of the dynamics . . . I have told one "child" my dream that someday they will drop resentments and focus on the good and let bygones be bygones.
A lot of "stuff" happened in my family, so there is a lot to overcome AND I know it is possible.
Ah, my dear, dear Anifani! Just when things are degenerating into name-calling thinly disguised as (pseudo) intellectual debate, you bring the discussion back to reality of the most clear-headed sort, but you do it with kindness and compassion. What a damn good combination. Wish I could match it.
Ah, my dear, dear Anifani! Just when things are degenerating into name-calling thinly disguised as (pseudo) intellectual debate, you bring the discussion back to reality of the most clear-headed sort, but you do it with kindness and compassion. What a damn good combination. Wish I could match it.
<blushes>
I just enjoy hearing everyone's ideas . . . that's why I keep coming back . . . it is fascinating to me to be shown a perspective I hadn't thought of before, or that I had interpreted differently.
Words are so powerful! And the way we string them together . . . I supposedly write with clarity but on several occasions, I have re-read something I wrote a month earlier and see that the positioning of JUST ONE WORD could change the way someone interpreted what I meant.
For example . . . I wrote earlier (and barely caught it in time to edit it) . . . "I feel certain people would think x x x." I re-read it and it sounded like a jab . . . "certain people" . . . when what I meant was - I feel with a degree of certainty that people think x x x."
Dear me!
I bring all this up b/c I think this can happen to any of us while quickly writing posts here. I slap-dash mine off and then realize later a "tone" might be perceived where none was intended! I know it can happen to all of us.
I think this happens in families (and in all relationships, really - coworkers, neighbors, the cashier at the grocery store) . . . we say something and then it is very hard to retract it, modify it, explain it . . . we may say something and hit a sore spot and it feels to the other person we are "rubbing it in" when we truly knew nothing about their "issue" or sadness or pain . . .
So much of what happens with estrangements is very often based on WORDS. Words we said in anger, words we misinterpreted, words that were deliberately twisted by someone with an unkind agenda, words that were unnecessary, words that were judgmental (or interpreted as such!), words that -- if we could take back, we would!
And then there are the unspoken words. Words we should have said; apologies we should have made; clarifications we should have offered on someone else's behalf; words we should have demanded be listened to or found some way to share to defuse a misunderstanding.
Language is so powerful and can result in something as positive as giving someone HOPE . . . or as negative as emotional bullying.
Our words can be machetes or they can be a healing poultice. Kind of humbling, when you think about it.
One of my sisters has two kids who were hostile to each other. Actually, it was her daughter who was really the hostile one, bitterly jealous of her brother and how she thinks he got "more" growing up. It was very stressful for my sister. I suggested that she let drop casually how much her son cares for his sister, always asking about her. Now that was not true, but it softened the daughter and she approached her brother and they have been close ever since. I feel bad about encouraging a lie though, I know it was unethical. I would not personally have done it, yet I saw my sister about to force them together and I knew that spelled disaster.
Well -- I can say when our marriage was circling the drain, and I just couldn't see anything good, a friend told me to start writing down three good things about the day. Every day -- and they couldn't be the same things, but it could be ANYTHING.
I could write epic length emails about how miserable I was, but finding those three good things was -- really HARD.
But as I kept doing it, it got easier. Then one day a "switch flipped" and I pulled myself out of the mental mire. Marriage was still a mess, but *I* was okay.
Then one day the switch flipped on the marriage and then WE were okay. We've been married 30 years now -- still going strong.
It's really a decision you can make to be okay. And take what steps you need to make it so.
Like when my mom died. My sisters and I decided family would take precedence over everything. No fighting, much talking and all decisions were made TOGETHER. We're all still close.
I sort of like being the weird ones that didn't fight over possessions. Sisters are more important than things.
I have no idea, my family fell apart after my grandma died 10 years ago.
That happened in my family too...on both sides. It seems like the grandparents were the real 'glue' that kept everyone together and once they were gone so was the 'togetherness'. Growing up my dad moved us quite a bit for his work but never more than a 6-7 hour drive away. His sisters mostly stayed in the hometown near their parents but no matter where they lived they ALWAYS went home for holidays, etc.. It was great because we were close to our cousins and grew up together. Then the grandparents and, one by one, the aunts, uncles and parents left us and it feels like we've all become strangers.
I know that me, my siblings and cousins all have our own grkids...and even great grkids...so we tend to stick to our individual family units. But, and I've tried, they never seem to want to have ANY family get togethers anymore. Not even once a year. I have always been a very family oriented person, loved how we grew up and am sad that it changed so much. However, I feel a little better knowing other families are the same way. It bothers me a LOT when it comes to my own kids though. None of my kids have spent a holiday with me in over 10 years. The prefer to stay home with their own family units.
And then, there's how my brothers treat my mom. They both live here in town but you'd never know it. One brother does things for Mom from a distance it seems. He rarely comes to her house, he rarely ever calls her, he does send her flowers for her b'day and Mother's Day. Other brother MIGHT remember her on special days but usually doesn't. He's the one who'll do things around the house for her though so we do see him every few months. These two brothers have a 'feud' going on between them too, which doesn't help. Mom just had her 86th b'day and I tried to talk them into a party for her...they weren't interested or 'had other plans'.
All that to say that I believe grandparents sometimes play a big role in keeping the family together and I also think that we've become such a mobile society that too many of us don't live close enough to one another to try.
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