Dysfunctional Family Ties and the Holidays

[Voyager]

I'm sure some of you saw the title of this thread and could relate to it. Let me begin by saying that I am sorry that I have not been that supportive over the past few weeks. I've got some deep issues that I've been dealing with, and they've been exhausting all of my emotional availability. I'm sure some of you can relate with that too.

When I went to an Alano meeting the other night, it worked on me in a way that I did not see coming. I saw in the lives of the people there how destructive dysfunction can be to someone who does not have a functional family or support system. The Alano members all shared about how alcoholism and dysfuntional relationships have messed up their lives. I saw dysfunction in a new light - like it's an infectious disease.

Attending this meeting helped me see something very clearly. My mom and dad both made some horrible, selfish decisions that resulted in my family being destroyed with dysfunction. My dad left when I was almost two years old, but I still have limited contact with my mom. Ever since my dad left, she has continued to make horrible decisions that have wrecked our family with dysfunction. I seem to be the only one of them who sees it.

Today I took my wife and daughters to my cousin's house for Thanksgiving. They have a very functional, large family. My mom cut these people off years ago due to an offense of some kind. They do not share her offense, and she is welcome in their house. My mom should have been there today loving on my kids and enjoying herself, but she chooses to remain angry and judgemental towards them. She only thinks about her offense and not about anyone but herself. This is the very attitude that wrecked the lives of my brothers, sister, and their offspring. They all live in dysfunction and criminality, and she finances it all. I try to keep my family and myself away from this so we do not get infected with it. If they could suck us in, they would. The hard part is, apart from my cousins we do not have any other family to choose from - and my mom has done her best to try to keep us from them.

I realize I cannot change my mom. However, I find myself in a difficult position trying to continue staying in contact with her due to the infectious dysfunction that she sucks everyone around her into. If I listed all of the ways she has damaged the lives around her (including mine), this thread would scroll on forever. Do I forgive her for it? Yes. That's not the question. The question is, how healthy is it for my daughters and I to have any contact with her at all?

Anyway, I am just ranting. I need to get this off my chest. Thanks for listening and being an encouragement to me. This forum is a very healthy place, for the same reason Alano is. I am going to continue attending the Alano meetings once a week or so. It seems to provide a lifeline for me. It's not everything I need in a support system - but it plays a role in my attempts to escape dysfuntion.

:cool:

[Turtle]

(((((((((((((((((((((((((Voyager)))))))))))))))))) ))))))))))

love from Turtle

[Theodora]

Dear one!---- What courage and what evidence of growth in your life to have continued to make positive choices for yourself and your own family unit!!!! Good for you!!!

Will spare you my own little "book" on my own family dysfunction and where I am estranged from the family. (See my posts on NACR, if interested, for something of my "alternative Thanksgiving." The thread is at http://www.christianrecovery.com/vb/showthread.php?t=2995 )

What I would validate for you is how VERY important your awareness of your mother's LIMITATIONS is. Realistically, it may be that she will never come to the point of healing in her life to be the kind of mother/grandmother which she MIGHT be, if she were willing to relinquish her identity as a martyr. I LOVED your phrase--that she had missed an opportunity to "love on" your children. What a loss for all---and how very sad! Still........by finding an extension of "home" for yourself and your children, you never know how much healing this may eventually effect in their lives AND in yours.

After my mother died (almost 10 years ago now) and I was puzzling over various aspects of our relationship, as "triggered" by various bits of memorabilia etc., the thought came to me...."If I didn't know better, I'd think that she was jealous of me!" ---followed immediately by the realization that just because people are related in certain ways biologically, does not mean that that excludes jealousy---or all the other "darker" emotions to which humans are prone.

I'd guess too that issues of "control" enter into the relationships of parent and child more than we might like to admit. Quite simply, if your mother's own self-esteem issues are triggered by witnessing in someone else's family what she could not herself manage for her OWN family, possibly her ONLY method of "coping" is to avoid the contact---using anger at some perceived slight to justify this. We're all VERY adept at "seeing the mote in (someone else's) eye."

On a personal level, since your growth has brought you to a point where you ARE able to discern her imperfections, she no doubt KNOWS this----and, probably, FEARS what you might do with that knowledge. Depression too can radically affect what someone is able to do by way of action, of ANY sort---but especially the painful action needed to heal relationships....and I'd guess that your mother is probably also struggling with depression....true???

In any case---as you continue to work through your own "stuff" and figure out what is best for yourself and your immediate family, do continue to stay in touch with your perceptions of where "red flags" are being raised. We might WANT to reconnect with our loved ones and effect SOME sort of healing---but you're absolutely on-target to recognize when that effort wouldn't result in THEM changing, but of YOU having to adapt to their old dysfunction---being "sucked in" as you said.

I'm thankful that you now have a group to support you "face-to-face." Had not heard of that particular organization before. Is this similar to Al-Anon?


((((Voyager))))

Keep up the good work---thanks for your post----and do be assured of my prayers for you and yours.

Blessings to you and yours THIS day! :)

Theodora


I'm sure some of you saw the title of this thread and could relate to it. Let me begin by saying that I am sorry that I have not been that supportive over the past few weeks. I've got some deep issues that I've been dealing with, and they've been exhausting all of my emotional availability. I'm sure some of you can relate with that too.

When I went to an Alano meeting the other night, it worked on me in a way that I did not see coming. I saw in the lives of the people there how destructive dysfunction can be to someone who does not have a functional family or support system. The Alano members all shared about how alcoholism and dysfuntional relationships have messed up their lives. I saw dysfunction in a new light - like it's an infectious disease.

Attending this meeting helped me see something very clearly. My mom and dad both made some horrible, selfish decisions that resulted in my family being destroyed with dysfunction. My dad left when I was almost two years old, but I still have limited contact with my mom. Ever since my dad left, she has continued to make horrible decisions that have wrecked our family with dysfunction. I seem to be the only one of them who sees it.

Today I took my wife and daughters to my cousin's house for Thanksgiving. They have a very functional, large family. My mom cut these people off years ago due to an offense of some kind. They do not share her offense, and she is welcome in their house. My mom should have been there today loving on my kids and enjoying herself, but she chooses to remain angry and judgemental towards them. She only thinks about her offense and not about anyone but herself. This is the very attitude that wrecked the lives of my brothers, sister, and their offspring. They all live in dysfunction and criminality, and she finances it all. I try to keep my family and myself away from this so we do not get infected with it. If they could suck us in, they would. The hard part is, apart from my cousins we do not have any other family to choose from - and my mom has done her best to try to keep us from them.

I realize I cannot change my mom. However, I find myself in a difficult position trying to continue staying in contact with her due to the infectious dysfunction that she sucks everyone around her into. If I listed all of the ways she has damaged the lives around her (including mine), this thread would scroll on forever. Do I forgive her for it? Yes. That's not the question. The question is, how healthy is it for my daughters and I to have any contact with her at all?

Anyway, I am just ranting. I need to get this off my chest. Thanks for listening and being an encouragement to me. This forum is a very healthy place, for the same reason Alano is. I am going to continue attending the Alano meetings once a week or so. It seems to provide a lifeline for me. It's not everything I need in a support system - but it plays a role in my attempts to escape dysfuntion.

:cool:

[jane]

Voyager-
we havent' got it all figured out with my family YET but we do with my husband's mother.


We see her on our terms. We visit her, don't let her manipulate us into coming to our house or bringing her anywhere that we get "stuck" with her.....

We go to visit with a time in our minds and leave when that time is over.

We still get "zinged" but it is a whole lot less and we try to shake it off quicker.


Nothing is ever good enough and the expectations flip as soon as you flop.

We also don't tell our children any of our concerns. We make it an exciting adventure to go visit their "Bobshi" (polish for grandmother) and what ever treasures she gives them, we make them a wonderful thing.

If she is grumpy (critical and yelling at them) we leave and we immediately tell our children that SHE was not feeling good that they were behaving and that it was time for us to leave until she was going to behave better.

I am probably the only one left that still takes her arrows. She makes it a point to point out my son's disabilities- talk about how wild my sister's kids are- and that NO one in her family has any delays..... at which point we leave quickly.

I am always dressed wrong, the kids are dressed wrong, they are either too clean or too dirty, too quiet or too loud, too cute and self centered or not social and friendly enough....you get my drift.

I remember a time when dating my husband, he was talking about his high school graduation. No one from his family came. I was puzzeled, what?

I actually didn't believe him. The next time that I saw his mother, I asked in a non judgemental, trying to get info way- "so how was the weather the day Tony graduated?"

She said, (and I kid you not) "I didn't go. Once you been to one, you heard it all and it is boring".....she went to the first two children's graduation and none others!

As if a high school graduation was about HER!

I knew then that I hated this woman. Do I forgive her? NO.

She named my husband his name because her sister just had a kid and named him Tony. She didn't want him, didn't want to name him, he has no middle name- she was stuck in the catholic faith and couldn't use birth control and her husband was a drunk survivor from the Polish labor camps in WWII.

Can I understand her pain?

yes.

But I love my husband SO much that I can not forgive or understand her total rejection of him and his siblings.....and then she says she loves him and wants to see us more!

anyway,

yep, we understand---- ((Voyager)) to you and your family.

I dream of days when my children have children and I cook for the entire brood!

Until then, I cook for the 5 of us and sometimes a guest or two....and guard our holidays from any naysaying critical dysfunction. We don't rush to do things perfect, it isn't about the dinner but about the cooking together....and talking and being.....my kids can dress and act any way that they want to.

yes I am rambling....

it hurts, doesnt' it?

Love you and Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

Love,
jane

[Hope 98]

Thanks for this thread.

I have the wonderful good fortune to be observing Thanksgiving with my dysfunctional family tomorrow.

Yesterday, I cooked turkey for the 5 people in our house. We were light on some of the trimmings, but the food we did have was enjoyed by everyone. It was a peaceful day!

Tomorrow, I take my husband and daughter to my sister's house. The wounds of this past summer are still very fresh and unresolved. I'm counting on the fact that there will be about 22 people there including 7 kids under 8 years old. There should be too much activity & confusion to get backed into a corner. There's also an event at church that can serve as a reason to escape early.

Somehow, at some time, the REAL problems in the family relationships NEED to be addressed. Tomorrow is not likely to be the time for that.

Seeing others struggling with the same feelings that I've been struggling with, helpsme to know that my feelings aren't unfounded. I may be struggling with bad relationships - but I'm not "the problem".

[ex-shep]

only had to time to skim the post. can relate. ran afoul of family polictic myself. I had enough recovery to nonchalantly detatch from the dawnybrook. Not a picnic. You have my support. Next venti white mocha on me :)

[Carmen]

Hi Voyager,

Thanks for sharing. I don't know if anyone's family is really "normal."

I grew up with an alcoholic, none of my friends had fully intact families due to sickness, alcoholism, divorce, separatism or authoritarianism.

My inlaws are selfish, too. We won't be going to see them this Christmas, and I am already hearing it every time they call that I and the kids didn't accompany my husband on a weekend trip to celebrate my FILs 80th birthday a few weeks ago. "It was too bad you missed so much...." subtle, but it NEVER stops! They're like drippy faucets that you can't turn off. They contradict what I teach the Children about God. They criticize everything I read, including the bible. I never can say anything of value that doesn't get contradicted. Especially my daughter is delegated to the kitchen to help make jam and cook (at least she likes that), while her brother gets special treatment, computer programs and building projects - he is the only male grandchild. They don't respect me because I have no degree and my family is not influential nor wealthy. They won't speak to my parents even though there is no offense between them. I get criticized for not teaching my children enough written German and my daughter's reading gets criticized. She has dyslexia for crying out loud! They even tell her to her face that she is too fat. The doctor told us to help her raise her self-esteem but my parents-in-law aren't helping that one bit. Talking to my SIL revealed that she gets treated the same way, but in reverse. Her family is "somebody" and she has a degree, is getting another that she plans to use to get a good job, maybe even a career. She gets the line, "but look at Carmen, she stays home with the kids and doesn't just leave them with a babysitter."

Both my SIL and I are foreigners and we have to listen to anti-American and anti- whatever remarks when we are there. "Americans are too fat, Americans have no culture, Americans are primitive, Indians are dirty and lazy..." I have (Maya)Indian blood - and my children know that they do too...what does that tell them about how their grandparents really feel about them being partly American and partly Indian? We go visit out of duty, even my husband and his brother don't like their parents anymore, this stuff has gotten worse over the years. The less we see them, the better. That is why I didn't mind moving to Italy; even though we lived over three hours drive away from them in Germany it was still too close.

I don't want to send the kids to their grandparents next summer. The kids did learn a lot from them in early years, but I think that now they have outlived their usefulness. They are more of a hindrance than a help to their grandchildren.

My parents on the other hand, have resolved their problems, are Christians, and would make great companions for the kids. We are the best of friends now, but we couldn't find work near them.

If anyone doesn't have a dysfunctional family, then he is something of an anomaly and very, very, blessed, in my opinion. You are blessed to have your cousins, Voyager.

Carmen