Coach, you MAY be right but not necessarily. Her conflict may also be driven by something like (1) I DON'T want to be around those insensitive broken bozos but (2) I DO want to look like a "nice person" and/or "good wife" and/or "engaged mother", so I HAVE to. Kobayashi Maru.
We are possibly both projecting our personal experiences into Thinker's wife's brain. The more POVs, the merrier; grin.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
If you're at all typical (and of course you may not be, but stick with me here; grin) you have dealt with familial vagaries by minimizing them in your own mind.
In that regard, I'm pretty typical
I also just realized that Mrs. Thinker and I have opposite methods of dealing with our own (and each others) families.
I tend to minimize or ignore "familial vagaries", and then escape when it get's too stressful for me. I would consider b1tching about my family or her family to be disrespectful and rude, so I don't do it.
So, when I spent time with her family, when things started to bother me, I backed off and then found reasons to get away and go do things by myself - run errands, go back to work, etc. This is pretty normal in my family but my W interprets this as me ignoring her family and treating them badly.
My W comes together with her family as a big noisy chatty group. Non-participation is considered unacceptable and rude and I have seen the family turn on someone who doesn't show up. Afterwards, however, they all seem to complain to each other, in 1 to 1 conversations, about all of the other family members. My W does the same thing with my family - engaging chattily, and then complaining to me or to her family members about members of my family. This seems to be pretty normal in her family, but I interpret it as her being rude and disrespectful.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
My sitch between W and parents has a unique aspect to it. Three or four years ago, my sister divorced my BIL. Now, BIL knew W's best friend from family parties, etc. Some time after the D, BIL asked W for BFF's phone number. Fast forward a year or so, and BFF and xBIL are now married. Of course, parents are a little cold to the idea that the man who hurt their daughter is now married to my W's BFF. On top of that, now W can't invite BFF to family parties anymore because of bad blood between xBIL and my sister and parents. I think this festered in her for a while, and now has boiled over since the sitch between W and I. I'm sure that has some background in her to affect her R with my parents now, kinda like her feeling alienated by my parents is a way to justify distancing herself from them so she can be more with BFF.
Me-40 W-41 Together-10 M-8 S-6 S-4 Bomb 5/08 Bomb 10/08 Thought things were better, was wrong. Still living together Wife doesn't think she will ever love me again.
Her conflict may also be driven by something like (1) I DON'T want to be around those insensitive broken bozos but (2) I DO want to look like a "nice person" and/or "good wife" and/or "engaged mother", so I HAVE to.
From everything I know about her, this is it.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
I have this big smile all over my face about your post about how you and your family deal/function vs hers, and the fail points of trying to apply those strategies to the other. Just *understanding* the dynamic is the hugest step to dealing with it effectively, or at the very least understanding when it goes pear-shaped.
It's the "Love Languages" thing all over again. Funny, we all understand on some level that "people are different", but we sure don't emote and behave accordingly a lot of the time.
Last edited by Kettricken; 09/08/0904:58 PM.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
I finally figured out that even more than not wanting to go, she does not want to be perceived by my family as not wanting to go.
Quote:
Non-participation is considered unacceptable and rude and I have seen the family turn on someone who doesn't show up.
Thinker's family perception of her matters. She wants to be accepted, valued and loved by Thinkers family. She feels rejected by them and Thinker is enabling/condoning it in her perception. She wants his support and validation of her feelings IMO.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
I would consider b1tching about my family or her family to be disrespectful and rude, so I don't do it.
This is totally your right to feel, and I do respect it, actually. But you might give it a little think as respects your wife. As Coach brought out, when it comes right down to it, a healthy marriage needs that sense that when the chips are down you have each other's backs against the rest of the world if need be, including FOO. Not that it's healthy to do nothing but mutally abuse each other's famillies, either. But who else should she be able to vent to if she needs to vent?
Every family has stupid crap and bad patterns going on; is it necessarily disrespectful to acknowledge specific instances as long as things don't get hateful?
Personally, my h. and I have found it pretty enlightening in understanding *each other* better ....
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
I would consider b1tching about my family or her family to be disrespectful and rude, so I don't do it.
This is totally your right to feel, and I do respect it, actually. But you might give it a little think as respects your wife. As Coach brought out, when it comes right down to it, a healthy marriage needs that sense that when the chips are down you have each other's backs against the rest of the world if need be, including FOO. Not that it's healthy to do nothing but mutally abuse each other's famillies, either. But who else should she be able to vent to if she needs to vent?
Every family has stupid crap and bad patterns going on; is it necessarily disrespectful to acknowledge specific instances as long as things don't get hateful?
Personally, my h. and I have found it pretty enlightening in understanding *each other* better ....
Understood.
I was brought up with "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all" combined with "Don't talk about people behind their backs"
So I now understand that my W's FOO POV is different, but it is still uncomfortably counter to my instincts
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
Oh, I was brought up with the same rules, believe me, and I try to live by them too, and no bad thing IMHO.
(the internet doesn't count, right? grin)
It's just that I consider my husband the exception to all rules of that nature. Tough to get that Schnarchian intimacy without full disclosure, including stuff that really drives you spare even as it relates to other people.
You will have to decide if that's a useful precept to apply to your relationship with your wife.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
