Moving Forward in When Others Want to Pull You Down

Lots of families have malicious gossipers. If one of these persons disagrees with you, you won't be asked to clarify or support your opinion. Instead the incident will be recounted in an altered version of the conversation where you are made to appear intolerant, accusatory, arrogant or display some other ugly trait.

I recall adults in my childhood who would attack me verbally and otherwise, imagining that they were supporting my parents who were saddled with such an awful child. The truth was that they had believed efforts to malign my character. People ask me why I never told an adult what was happening in my home when I was growing up, and I laugh at the implication that any adult would have believed me. My parents had convinced them that I was not to be trusted.

Today, most people that know my parents understand that they are the way they are and take their comments with a grain of salt. A younger family member is also this way and is better at masking her hostility and deception, and this can cause some difficulty.

If you meet her, it won't take long before this woman displays this trait. At the first sign of sympathy, she will begin to detail the many faults and crimes of her husband. Being human, he has his fair share. She tells all from the perspective of a person who is completely innocent of any contribution to her difficulties. Her mother (by her account) was horrible to her and has never properly apologized for the trauma caused by expecting her daughter to do household chores. She elevates her position as a wife, mother, sister, etc. by giving examples of the many failures around her. Her critical eye doesn't miss much and with time, she can easily give the worst motives to the most genuine comment or action.

I wasn't surprised when I heard she had wagged her tongue about me. She had sought me out for my opinion on a matter I've researched. I provided her with the information I had, reassured her that I thought she was doing her best under the circumstance and suggested that she try one of several options.

I left it at that.

However, that conversation has been retold in this way: She did not ask my opinion. I simply walked up to her and pronounced my judgment, impugning abilities and motives in an accusatory way.

Now, I know that this woman has problems. I know that she has falsely represented her parents, her husband, my parents and anyone else that ever suggested that there might be another approach to her decision making process. I've listened to her embellish the mistakes of others until they appeared criminal. I also know that when she asks me for advice, it is more often a craftily laid trap to give her ammunition. I know these things, and I still care about her and her children. And it still hurts to know that she takes the time to gossip and paint me as a monster.

I do feel a little better to know that no one that knows me believes her. I'm glad they would let me know.

How do you move forward when this happens in your family?

Well, I haven't the time or the energy to bother correcting a misbehaving adult. I've offered her my time and attention whenever she requested it and given many opportunities for her to leave her bad habits behind until I have finally decided to decline opportunities to visit. Thankfully, she lives too far away to visit often. I regret not having a closer relationship with her family, but I can't expend time and emotion trying to work around the drama related to all of that at the expense of my own family. Mostly, I'm just thankful for the miles that separate us. If she were physically closer, it would be more difficult.

I love her. I love her family. I love their children. Moving forward in this instance means not making myself or my family an easy target. Family doesn't always mean friendly. Those that should love and support you often don't. So, I'll be even more guarded. I'll not offer any advice, even when asked. I'll be cool, demure, nod and smile with one eye on the nearest exit when I'm in her presence.

Life's just too short to spend it building bridges others are trying to rip apart.

So whether you are struggling to leave behind the ones that refuse to join you on the journey, or wondering if it's worth it to lay aside the hurts and grievances, I invite you to join me. Set aside the things that humans fight and posture over. We have something better to move towards. Let's move forward!

Sweep Around Your Own Front Door -- Adult Siblings

Relating to siblings as adults is not a simple matter. Some people embrace adulthood. Others avoid it by rehashing their childhoods again and again in an effort to extract apologies from everyone that they think wronged them.

While you can choose your friends, you cannot choose your family. This means you will spend a lifetime being related to people that may or may not ever get over themselves. Add to this the fact that these individuals marry others that have struggles of their own.

This is (overall) not a problem for me. However, as I've aged, tolerating perpetual victims has become more of a challenge. When you've endured loss and come out the other side, you just want to celebrate and be grateful to be alive. Additionally, if you have grown to the point that you make an effort to focus on the blessings in your lives, it's difficult to be around those that like to take inventory of the disappointments.

In my family's dynamic, I am often left trying to perform a balancing act. My parents are racist and malicious gossips. They offer opinions and directions to adults as though they are given to a toddler. They regularly disrespect others and disrupt gatherings with their bickering. My job is to honor them, not to approve of them.

Younger siblings have found that it is easier to love parents from afar and have moved their families to other states and counties. However, some siblings went to the effort of packing up and taking their angst to their new addresses. This means that if they ever visit my parents, they come with unresolved histories and the expectation that their absence has somehow humbled these people. These are the same parents that have spent a lifetime defending their indefensible actions.

Add to this the fact that there seems to be some expectation placed upon older siblings to act as a go-between. I regularly disappoint others in this area. I don't carry tales or take sides. It also doesn't help that I choose to treat adults as adults. I'm have sympathy for childhood struggles. I agree that children should be loved, provided for and protected. I am not, however, the righter of all wrongs. I will not be beating up my parents emotionally or otherwise to make someone else feel better.

It's regrettable that families have financial struggles. However, I refuse to use my resources to help family members whose children enjoy luxuries denied to my own because we live within our means (or try to). We don't take expensive trips. It's each family's prerogative to spend their days and resources traveling to various activities. It's my prerogative to not empty my pantry in order to support another's lifestyle choices.

The fact that I'm not taking sides, not attacking my parents, and not shelling out hard earned money to fend of self-made crisis means that I am often not very popular among some siblings. Apparently, they have looked at me, my time and my resources as items owed them from a substitute parent. It's easier to take out their frustrations on me. . . . And I'll admit that I'm not very cooperative.

The road goes both directions. I've traveled for gatherings, made calls, opened my home, etc. The doors are still open at my house, but I no longer beg and plead for others to take the time. I finally got smart and realized that if I wore myself out to get them to spend time with me, I hadn't won a very good prize when all I got for the trouble was an afternoon of listening to complaints or witnessing disrespectful behavior towards old people.

Relationships shouldn't be the equivalent of picking at an infected wound. We need to learn how to apply some salve and let things heal. There might be a scar, but that's life. Why throw away our future and all of our todays playing the victim? My only conclusion is that it just hasn't gotten painful enough for some people. They haven't reached the bottom; it hasn't gotten bad enough for them to turn around and start living.

The message here is:
For parents -- If you want to have a relationship with adult children, respect them as adults and use your manners.
For siblings -- Get over yourself. You aren't the only person with a painful childhood. Did someone molest, abuse, neglect, hurt your feelings? Here's a news flash, the children you grew up with all experienced the same things, but they aren't waiting on you to fix their screw ups and they aren't blaming their problems on you. If you're mad at mom & dad, don't expect big sis or brother to be mad too. It's time to grow up.
For SIL's --
A. Your husband isn't a mess because he had siblings that didn't know how to parent him. If he's lied to you about other things, he's probably lying about his childhood. He isn't a pitiful victim, but he will play that card as long as you let him.
B. Just because we aren't willing to help you emasculate your husband doesn't mean we think he's right. We aren't the enemy.
C. We would love to be your friend, but we aren't going to take sides against our brother just to make you feel better. Quit trying to drag us into and blame us for your marital problems.
D. We have a shared history. Please stop being jealous when we laugh or talk together. Don't punish us because your spouse neglects you and the children. An hour with us only proves that he COULD spend time with you if he WOULD. It's not our fault that he doesn't, and he will only avoid us if you make it an issue. We aren't the reason that he doesn't do what he should. We aren't blaming you, please stop blaming us.
For Older Siblings -- Life's too short to waste it chasing around younger brothers and sisters trying to maintain a relationship when they refuse to grow up and take responsibility for their own lives. Reach out, but direct your focus to your own immediate family ties and friendships. Invest yourself in that which gives the greatest return.

“Let everyone sweep in front of his own door,
and the whole world will be clean.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When it comes to siblings, that's good advice!

The Me He Cannot See

There are times in our lives when we realize that the ones we love most are unable to see us or acknowledge our needs. To become bitter over such a reality is the response that only hurts us. Someone once described bitterness as the act of drinking poison and waiting on the other person to get sick. We are the only ones that suffer.

One of the kindest persons in my life is also someone that cannot see past her bewildered angst and hurt enough to stop doing harmful things. She has survived so much, but cannot celebrate the life that remains. She has the ability to insert criticisms into the most casual conversations and bring a chill to warm exchanges. While serving others and tending their needs, she seems oblivious to their feelings. She is my mother.

My husband is another one of those persons. We had a much needed conversation recently where I asked him to please acknowledge me when I spoke so that I would know he had heard me. His habit had been to respond to my questions, statements or comments with silence. I could never tell if he heard, agreed, disagreed, or had thoughts on the topic. This is more often about inconsequential items, but lately it had been in regard to things like home security and safety.

I outlined my reasons for needing him to let me know he had heard me if I spoke to him, and he sat in silence, feeding my feelings of worthlessness. I asked him for a response and he said, "I'm listening." Then he further explained, "I'm trying to keep things level. I believe actions speak louder than words."

To that, I replied that I agreed. His actions told me that I was not worthy of acknowledgement. His actions told me that he was perpetually angry with me. His actions told me that he would not disclose his thoughts to me because I am not part of him. His actions were cruel.

It was like a light bulb moment of sorts. His refusal to engage had not been seen (by him) as an action. In an attempt to avoid all potential conflict, he did not know he had isolated me. He could not see my need. In a world where only his comfort or feelings exist, I had become invisible. His behavior worked for him at a high cost to me.

As is often the case, it was one of those concrete moments that shed light on the problem with his approach. There's nothing like a large project involving power tools and 90 degree weather to demonstrate the folly in not answering someone when they ask you if you've got a good hold on something.

This post then is an encouragement to isolated wives that the cruelty of enforced isolation is sometimes nothing more than an adult trying to protect themselves from anticipated and imagined attacks. If he had an overbearing mother, you may be dealing with it for years, so it's better to see it for what it is and not let bitterness take root. For men, I'll kindly suggest that the universe has not rallied all of its forces to come against you. The person that shares your life, your bed and your children isn't the enemy and you aren't her victim.

For young women, mark how a young man responds to his mother. Even if she IS a bitter angry shrew and deserves his disdain, she won't live forever and the habits learned in his childhood for coping with her will be applied to his wife, whether she deserves it or not. If you see him discounting or mocking her, do not choose this man. Men learn about women first from their mother. No matter that you are not her. No matter that you are her polar opposite. He will emotionally respond to you as the kind of female his mother is (or was). If she belittled, criticized, cajoled, and condemned him, he will be very tempted to work out all of that pent up frustration with you BECAUSE you aren't her, you are safe, and he can. It's easier to take out life's frustrations on someone that has vowed to never leave.

So, when choosing a husband, look carefully at his family of origin. See how the mother in the home is perceived by those living with her. If she is seen as critical or shrewish, keep looking. Those perceptions will determine how the son's future wife is perceived by her husband.

Mining For Gold

As we worked a boy told me how there were things he would never do the way his parents did. I listened to his noble goals and remembered feeling the same way for much of my youth.

We continued working while he talked, and I considered my response.

I held up two of the tools we were using. I told him, 'We learn so many things from our parents. It's easy to see the flaws and mistakes. For instance, you might say that your parents used one of these tools and things didn't go so well for them, so you have determined to never use that tool. Instead you will use this one. However, what seldom occurs to any of us is that neither tool is a good choice. When we choose our actions by avoiding someone's failure, we forget that there are uncountable ways to do something wrong. Often we just end up choosing another version of wrong.'

His eyes grew wide with alarm. How could any of us do better if we are only choosing between uncountable versions of the wrong way to do things?

I let that sink in for a while and then continued.

'I believe that God gives us parents not so that we can critique their mistakes. That would take us a lifetime. Instead, life is like attending a school where the subjects aren't named. Our first instructors are our parents and our opportunity is to learn from them the things they did correctly. We sift out the bits of grit and sand in search of the gold which is the things they got right. Then we build upon that and do better than they did.'

I thought about my own bitter parents. My childhood memories are punctuated with images of a mother given to emotional rages and a withdrawn, critical father. They were so often locked in their own power struggles that we children were left unprotected and insecure. Then I returned to our conversation.

'My parents did some things very well. My mother was a very compassionate woman. She would take us children with her as she drove people to church who were blind and had no family to care for them. She would take meals to others, wash their feet and cut their hair. My father had such a head for figures, he never needed a calculator. He loved the precision of mathematics, music and art. He delighted in the orderliness of creation and how a well tended seed would germinate, grow and yield an increase. Mother loved to sing. Father loved to learn. They did these things well.'

The boy considered my words. 'Do you mean that I could do things BETTER than my dad? HOW?' He seemed afraid to hope.

'Because,' I told him, 'God made you the son of a man that did some things with excellence. You have the opportunity to see those things lived out in real life. You can learn how do do them by learning from his example. Then, you will be able easily do as well as he did. With effort, you will become even more skilled at things it took him a lifetime to master. But these things only come to those that are willing to embrace the good, not just on reject the bad.'

'If you want to take a course in mechanics, you don't go to the gymnasium to find an instructor. Some of us have parents that have no idea how to train children, how to love a spouse, how to be patient, how to express love . . . That doesn't mean they weren't good at SOMEthing. You just have to find out what that something was and learn from it. There are always more things a parent is NOT good at than things a parent IS good at doing.

'Running around declaring how we will never do whatever the way our parents did is a trap. We end up avoiding a particular mistake while creating a new version of the same error. Mine for the gold and let God fill in the gaps. Trust the design of the Creator. He knows what He's doing -- even if He uses some of the most curious people to get it done.'

The boy smiled. 'I think you've got a lot of gold,' he said.

I smiled back and thought, I could have had more if I had known these things at his age.