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You should read the funny, funny, novels of P. G. Wodehouse. In every one of his Jeeves novels, there's always the dreaded Aunt Agatha, who "Wears barbed wire next to the skin and kills rats with her teeth." That way you won't feel alone in life, for everybody has at least one person like that in their family.
My Aunt Betty is that way. For some reason, I've never understand, she has had an intense dislike of me from the time I emerged from the womb. My brothers don't understand it. My sister and mother doesn't understand it. After all, I'm just the walking Boy Scout creed, thrifty, loyal, obedient, reverent, lusty, etc. etc.
So, when I first get engaged, I mentioned my Aunt Betty to Mrs. CPG, and she says, "Oh, you're exaggerating. Nobody's that bad." Sure enough, she rides into town on her broom, and demands dinner with us. So we go, and somehow or another, Betty seizes on an innocuous comment, "I think we should probably have a joint checking account." She practically takes her steak knife, cuts me open and dangles my entrails over the chandelier of the restaurant. I get a five minute roasting about how women should have total and utter control over their own money while the future Mrs. CPG looks on in horror.
Later on, having put my intestines back in and leaving the restaurant, my bride-to-be says, "Man. I thought you were kidding. But you weren't."
I guess what I'm saying about all this is to just treat it like a big joke, and don't take it personally. Not everybody in the world is going to like you, no matter how hard you try. Even family members.
It would probably be best to make other plans. It doesn't sound as though she's all that interested in your kids and family anyway, let her have her daughter visit.
I really hate that phrase. I guess it comes from the Christian mantra "the meek shall inherit the earth." Yeahright, after the abusive loudmouths we've suffered have s**t all over it. No thanks
I know how to pick my fights and give as good as I get, but in situations where you know (like your current ordeal) that all the old bat is looking for is fuel for her fire, I'd suggest surrendering the field with dignity and leave it to her scourge. Just quit having anything to do with her and leave it to her to figure out. Explanations really wouldn't matter, people like that know how to twist things around to make it look like they're always the victim anyway.
I really hate that phrase. I guess it comes from the Christian mantra "the meek shall inherit the earth." Yeahright, after the abusive loudmouths we've suffered have s**t all over it. No thanks
I know how to pick my fights and give as good as I get, but in situations where you know (like your current ordeal) that all the old bat is looking for is fuel for her fire, I'd suggest surrendering the field with dignity and leave it to her scourge. Just quit having anything to do with her and leave it to her to figure out. Explanations really wouldn't matter, people like that know how to twist things around to make it look like they're always the victim anyway.
This woman would have a really really hard time finding me and I would be spending Christmas and every other special occaision as far away from her as possible. IF she asked why, I'd tell her I didn't want to deal with her negativity and nastiness.
Wow! She does sound nasty. I would limit my contact when possible and have fun with it when you have to be around her.
Those "Hannakah" cupcakes reminded me of something.......
My mom, who I love dearly but would still like to throttle at times, has this religeous superiority thing. I am a spiritual person and don't affiliate myself with any particular organized religeon. She has railed at me for ages over this and one day I had had enough and decided to launch a counter-attack. Here's an excerpt.......
MOM: Honey, if you don't go to church, you'll burn in Hell. How are we supposed to stay together in the afterlife.
ME: Mom, you know I'm not a fan of organized religeon because I have seen too much hipocracy in the church.
MOM: But, I want my family to be with me in Heaven. There is no hipocracy in the church. How can you say that??? Go with me to Sunday school this weekend.
ME: Well, there is this friend of mine who invited me to attend a service with her this weekend, so I'll be tied up.
MOM: Oh? Where? What time?
ME: In the meadow at midnight.
MOM: WHAT??? What kind of service is that?
ME: It's a Wiccan service. They are conducted during the full moon. We gotta be naked though so I'm on a diet right now.
MOM: God doesn't tolerate that sort of thing, young lady!!! You will spend eternity in a very dark place.
ME: I have one of those "Q-Beam" flashlights Mom. It has rechargeable batteries.
MOM: Are you joking with me? I can't believe you take this so lightly!!! Blaaa, Blaaa, Blaaa
Then she hung up on me. She still talks to me but isn't as intense about it as she was.
Instead of being ticked off, I laughed like an idiot for the rest of the day. See, you just have to have a little fun with them sometimes.
I was taught as a child that you can only pick your friends, you are stuck with your relatives.
May I make a suggestion?
For Christmas next time, make plans to go somewhere. DisneyWorld is nice, Aruba is great, Paris would do. You get the idea. Look around and decide where to go for the holidays. Then 6 weeks ahead of time send her a nice card inviting her to come with your family.
In likelihood she will refuse to go. It is too expensive, it is too far away, only stupid people go there, whatever. She will make excuses.
But here is the thing, you invited her and you did it in writing.
At first she will insist that you have no intentions of 'really' going. But by going, you can send her photos, and it will begin a wonderful new family tradition for your children.
It will set the precedence that you no longer MUST spend each holiday with her.
My mother is very controlling and tells everyone in our family what to do. My siblings hate it, but they all live local, so they all go for every holiday. I left that area following my career. We have invited my mother and my siblings to come and visit us each place where we have lived. But none of them have ever their hometown. The result is that I have been 'freed' from that scenario.
I think one of my sisters is on her way to becoming one of these Aunts. She is the never-married one in the family. She sat down with me a few months ago and wanted to discuss something important. I was ready for her something like "You need to move back to LA to be near the rest of the family". Nope.
She asked why I never play catch with my teenage son. Now, he doesn't play baseball and has never been interested in any sports. I was totally caught off guard. I answered honestly that I was never made aware that my son had a burning desire to play catch. Maybe she had watched "Field of Dreams" recently? I don't know.
I later asked my son if he did want to play catch and he looked at me as thought I had sprouted a third eyeball in the middle of my head and said, "No thanks".
I think one of my sisters is on her way to becoming one of these Aunts. She is the never-married one in the family. She sat down with me a few months ago and wanted to discuss something important. I was ready for her something like "You need to move back to LA to be near the rest of the family". Nope.
She asked why I never play catch with my teenage son. Now, he doesn't play baseball and has never been interested in any sports. I was totally caught off guard. I answered honestly that I was never made aware that my son had a burning desire to play catch. Maybe she had watched "Field of Dreams" recently? I don't know.
I later asked my son if he did want to play catch and he looked at me as thought I had sprouted a third eyeball in the middle of my head and said, "No thanks".
Go figure.
Well! Dont you know that little boys who arent into sports are on thier way to becoming gay????
Wow. I feel embarrassed as I think I have an Aunt that is Archie Bunker's clone!~ She constantly ridicules and is one bitter person! I dread going over for the holidays......I think it is out of pure guilt as my mother had passed away and feels like she has to most likely..
In a nutshell... I used to be very close to her. I remarried and am tremendously happy! Second time around for me is great. Anyway, my Aunt is a "Catholic" and abides by everything in the book.... I divorced and got remarried to my soul mate. I remember telling her he is really a great guy and want you to meet him. Her reply was "Oh, you thought so and so was great too!" Needless to say, I was a bit taken back. I was dumbfounded and thought, wow, thank you sir, I'd like another! NOT!!
She has been nasty and one up on me on everything from my twins (her daughter had a child 1 day before mine were born)...If I even mention them, she cuts me off and goes off about her daughter's kid...I can never get a word in about my kids so I don't even talk about them to her...When I had my twins she sent a picture of some couple who had sextuplets in her area... Ok, and your point? LOL.. then mentions how someone she knows has triplets.. THat is great...but ever since I had my own kids she will ignore anything I mention about them!My kids were born a bit early and her grandkid was born 2 weeks early and said he was a preemie (mind you, he was 10 lbs. at birth) My kids were 3.5 and 4 lbs. each ! (healthy as horses I might add)..
I made cupcakes with "blue snowflakes" on them (the little candy decorations) and she comes into the livingroom and announces "Are these for Hannukah?" very snidely. My answer should have been "yes, we recently converted to Judaism)...I am Roman Catholic, btw. and so is she. I have nothing against anyone's religion as I have friends of the Jewish faith also...She said, well,they are blue, aren't they? I looked at her and gave her a blank stare.... Any chance she gets she will start flying with insults. Her daughter is married to a lazy jerk *but she knew that from the start seeing she married the patient! (She is an RN).. He quits most of his jobs after a couple years...and she always wanted to stay at home. Her last kid was an "oops"!at 44 she had him.... I am SAHM with my twins right now and will not leave them before and after school for 12 hrs. a day....when my hub works LONG hours in his profession and we agreed it is better for them to have someone at home *for a couple years* while they are still little. They turn 4 in a few weeks. It seems to kill my Aunt that I stay at home with them while her daughter works for a living.. Up until the past year I worked full time all of my life! and part time once the twins came....To me, it is between my husband and I how we raise or kids or deal with things! I couldn't imagine if I had converted to another religion..She might fall over and go into cardiac arrest lol...My husband is Protestant too...so I am sure that's one against me for not marrying a Catholic... Oh, my first marriage I married someone in my own faith,never lived with him before I got married,went to the same church and got divorced..My choice, btw...
Any chance she gets she starts hurling insults... My husband said let's go somewhere else next year! I agree! I hate confrontation and know it makes her feel better when she puts someone else down.
I am really ready to go off on her one day lol but will be the bigger one and shrug it off...
What would you do?
Well now! That's quite a story, and I've heard it in one form or another many times.
Your aunt sounds jealous of you. You're doing things she can't and god hasn't rained fire and brimstone down on you!
Has the idea that just because somebody shares DNA with you doesn't mean you have to be best friends with them occured to you?
My mom and her mother had a competition. Her mom(grandma) had a kid late in life, and my mom had me just a few years after. He was much later than his other syblings. He's the golden child! He cannot do anything wrong, while the other kids are all failures. He graduated college after 6 years(i think most people only go for 4 max to that college though, but he's a genius. He got out after much struggling to join the army! I think you enter e-9 or something, after 20 years he retired e-11, but they act like he was a general. What he was was a grossely overweight officer who barely made it, and almost got kicked out a year or two before because he had an affair with an enlisted woman. His wife took my grandparents to the cleaners paying her off to hush up about that. They were pretty well off because they owned a business on Welsley Island back in the 50's and early sixties that they sold right before it was valueless for ten times what they'd paid, and made a ton of money off working the other four kids to death, with the promise it would all be theirs someday. Oh my mom was Catholic too and her divorce was a HUGE shame on the family, of course nowadays everybodies divorced including the golden child, but that's ok.
It was like a boom town. Imagine owning hotel and casinos in tombstone and making a bunch of money and then selling it all right at the apex, and two weeks later the gold run outs. That's what my grandparents did.
They then turned their attention to creating a perfect child.
Anyway I tell you all that just so you know others have trouble with family.
My answer? Get new family! Seriously, you won't ever win! But you're probably a very nice, caring person. There are plenty of people who will adopt you. We come from families like this and we're desperate to make them like us, accept us....F em! I have a good ten women who people mistake for my sister. I have older guys around me you'd swear were my father, the way we hang out, laugh, do things together. Sometimes family is not a reat thing, you try hard and the hopefully give up on people who have nothing better to do but make you feel bad.
I have great family members I do hang out with, I just stopped trying with the impossibles!
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She constantly ridicules and is one bitter person! I dread going over for the holidays......I think it is out of pure guilt as my mother had passed away and feels like she has to most likely..
I was dumbfounded and thought, wow, thank you sir, I'd like another!
My kids were 3.5 and 4 lbs. each ! (healthy as horses I might add)..
