January 2, 2011

• Regarding Relationships

  I have tried very hard (for someone with *NO* psych background) to figure out the effects of having family involved in your life.  This is a HUGE topic of discussion.  So many ways to go with it. by the way.

  For example, one part of it might have to do with caring for family – “priority of family” might be a better way to say it.  Take nursing homes.  There just weren’t retirement villages in 1850, to pick a date.  (In fact, that’s when schools were just starting to become widespread.)  In those times, families needed each other.  The elderly took care of the children, helped to educate them, did chores to free up the younger folk to do harder labor.  It’s not like that anymore – we are a society that shoves our kids off into daycares so that we can work/gain wealth, then shove those children into schools all day (regardless of whether or not we work)..  So is it any wonder that we shove our elderly off into retirement homes instead of caring for them?  Family impedes personal freedom.

  That’s just one topic within the broader subject of relationships.  I also have considered how the family size (number of children) affects a family.  My MiL had two children – both of which have nothing to do with them.  My mother had three… she has significantly more to do with hers.  My aunt had five children (as did my second cousins).  They are constantly together, a family that is close and bound.  OTOH, my ex-fiance came from a family of five, and they split and every kid moved to a different state – they are NOT close, at all.  What happened, there?  And I know single child families where the child and mother are so close… which makes me wonder if size is a determining factor in closeness, or if it just leads to busyness/more events/more connection (because there are more grand kids to watch?).

  Weltangschauung is another factor I have spent a LOT of time considering.  It’s a big German word that refers to the ‘worldview/behavior’ a child is taught in the first seven years of his/her life.  Stubbornness, anger management, patience, stillness, kindness… these things are learned as a child develops.  That’s why we have so many personality disorders today.  How many children are on drugs like Ritalin to ‘manage’ them?  While I wonder how much can be attributed to vaccines (chemical imbalances), I also can guarantee that those daycares and the lack of a caring parent aware of the development of a weltangschauung is another HUGE factor.  This is a MAJOR bone of contention between my husband and I, because the behaviors I see him teaching the children are NOT in line with what I consider acceptable.  But that’s a rant for another day.

  What I really… I’ve wasted a lot of space, but what I’m getting to is the place of extended family in a child’s life.  When I was a little girl (younger than 8), I spent a LOT of time with my grandmother (Dad’s mom).  My mom would drop me off there, because I was older and a bigger handful than my brother and sister (both in diapers).  So I got a half-n-half weltangschauung: half my mom (impulsive, temperful, irrational, selfish) and half my grandmother (patient, kind, organized, service-oriented).  Meanwhile my brother and sister didn’t get that same mixed bag… they just got my mom’s.

  Now I’d always valued extended family FAR more than my brother and sister have… I was very interested in seeing family, reconnecting with people, going to reunions, spending time with my aunt.  I was the one who hung out with the cousins.  My brother and sister never went to reunions, couldn’t have cared less about seeing anyone, and didn’t much hang with the cousins… and I thought it was because of my grandmother’s weltangschauung. 

  As opposed to what my mom’s world-view was.  Over and over, all my growing up years, I heard “They had their family, now I have mine”.  When I was 8, we joined the Air Force and I grew up the rest of the way a LONG ways from family.  It was “just us”… and my mom WANTED it that way. 

  And even back then I knew that it would bite her in the butt, that in the end, she was raising us to have our “own families” someday… which would exclude her.  And I thought that, as a result, I would have to work HARD to show my kids the value of spending time with the grandparents in order for my kids to have that same world-view that I had… even though a WHOLE ‘nother part of me wanted nothing to do with family.  Because that’s what I’d lived MOST of my life.

  So the past FIFTEEN years, I have fought tooth and nail to keep extended family as a big part of my life, for the sake of my children.  And it was really a battle:  Brian’s mother is a horrible, selfish, bigoted person.  She has belittled my faith, disrespected my household rules, guilted me about my parenting/visit frequency, gotten every dirty dig she could in over anything and everything SHE didn’t approve of… I hated it.    And she neglected my boys – she only likes girls, so (just as she neglected Brian growing up), she has ignored and cast aside my boys… which was THE last straw.  When she started to hurt them to where they realized it, it was over for her.

  Conversely, my mother has utterly SMOTHERED my children.  It’s never enough.  We did town day every other Friday for years, but she always pushed for more, went beyond my comfort zone, disregarded my boundaries… it has been nightmaric.  I finally said ENOUGH to the Town Days, hoping that would allow me MORE distance.  Instead, she has taken that as a freedom to do as she wishes and in the past two months we have seen her every single week, and recently got calls every single day.  It. Has. Driven. Me. Crazy.  Because she raised us that ‘you had your family, now we have ours’… and while I wanted to keep family involved closer than when I was younger (which was – never)… she pushes too far.

  But I have tolerated it, because I felt like I *HAD* to.  I wanted my kids to want me in their lives when they had families, and I thought… well, I explained that already.  What a MESS.  And I have been utterly miserable.

  Then came the day I cast Brian’s parents OUT of my life.  I thought for sure I would feel guilty about it.  I thought I would ‘miss’ something of it, that I would see something in my children that would speak of a need to get with them again.  And you know what?  I haven’t.  All that happened was that this HUGE weight was lifted off of me, and I was FREE of the shit, of the nastiness, of the guilt-trips and stress and trouble.  I have been SO FREE, so light!  It has been WONDERFUL.  Brian, of course, doesn’t like that reaction, and I certainly wasn’t expecting it.  But now that the load is off… I am never going back.

  But I’ve forced myself to deal with my mother.  Because of the ‘keep the extended family’ thing I thought I’d learned from my grandmother.  It’s been utter misery, and it just gets worse and worse and worse, her encroaching until I can’t breathe and finally blow up in her face, then she takes just enough steps back to let me diffuse, then starts the encroachment all over again.  It never ends.  It drives me crazy.  And if she were a rational, understanding human it would be different, but my mother is controlling, demanding, unhearing, and utterly self-absorbed.  And if I don’t do it her way, I’m the ‘bad-guy’.  The uncooperative one.  And I HATE that.

  Then something happened.  In all this holiday bullshit where she was forcing me to come over because of this or that (‘But the kids HAVE to put up my Nutcrackers on a separate day than everything else!!!’)… I suddenly realized that… my brother and sister didn’t grow up with my Grandmother’s weltangschauun, and yet they are FAR more attached to my mother than I am.  They grew up with the ‘my family’ thing, and it’s still ‘her family’.  My brother calls my mom ALL the time… my sister LIVES with her, hello!  They are so damn close…!

  And my aunt’s family – the one that was five kids and that I thought was so close?  They’re spread from here to Bolivia.  They don’t see each other.  Half of them don’t even LIKE each other.  And they grew up seeing the grandparents and extended family.

  I think I got it all wrong.  I think I’ve screwed up big.  And I’m thinking thru some MASSIVE changes.  As in, maybe I don’t have to be miserable and deal with people who make my life stressful.  Maybe I don’t have to push the extended family… maybe I’ve handled it all wrong.  Maybe it isn’t the way I thought it was.  I’m… just thinking out loud.  But this is the way my thoughts have been going.  Maybe I don’t have to play martyr anymore.

  Maybe this year, I can make some big changes… and finally find peace and happiness.

  • 12:22 pm
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