What are the holidays for, if not being required to put up with crap from other people that you’d happily avoid at any other time? I guess there’s also shallow commercialism, but there’s no reason you can’t do both at the same time.
Maybe in the long run, you can try to dissect why your wife has such a strong emotional reaction and help her to identify what she’s doing out of negative emotions and what she wants to do for positive ones. Then she could determine a course of action that maximizes the positive and minimizes the negative, but you can’t force that on her, and it sounds like you two have other issues.
In the meantime… try spiking the egg nog (even if it’s just yours). A little booze is probably your best alternative.
The other option is to say heck with them all. It actually works for me - I don’t even open Christmas cards from my side of the family. Curiously enough, my annual bout with asthma went away at the time time I stopped dealing with them at the holidays. But that’s an extreme option, and I wouldn’t go that far just because of what you’ve described.
Maybe there is a way to make the trip a little more tolerable since 7 hours in the car for even the best of things sounds like hell to me. Maybe go for the weekend and get a hotel then have MIL watch the kids one night so you and the wife can relax.
I think it’s a little bit of both. She really struggles when she’s w/ our kids for a long period of time (and they’re really well behaved, so the problem is with her). She also wants me there for appearances, so she doesn’t get the “where is he??” questions from everyone.
My 2 sisters-in-law are actually staying at our house tonight w/ their kids, so we can all leave at the same time tomorrow morning. When I found out neither of their husbands were coming, I suggested they just make it a “girls trip” (in a joking way, although I was completely serious)… That did NOT go over well.:eek:
So let me change my advice to say don’t take my advice.
Be advised also that growing a pair also means it hurts so much more when you get kicked there.
Good suggestion, but there is NO WAY I’ll be staying anywhere near these people for more than a day. Trust me, the drive is the absolute best part of the trip. It’s actually our excuse to leave early (we didn’t bring any extra clothes, hate driving in the dark, etc), as my mother-in-law always wants us to stay the entire weekend!!
Then don’t. Stop. Don’t let it make you feel so bad. It’s a situation you can’t get out of so stop letting it bring you down.
Enjoy the drive with your family, enjoy spending time with the family members you DO like, and enjoy the fact that it’s only once a year.
When it comes to the uncle, take the phone, say “Hey it’s ARC. Merry Christmas. Here’s [next relative]” and be done with it. Say “You motherfucking scum sucker asshole!” under your breath. Go home and stab a pillow 17 times in his honor. But don’t spend all of December brooding over how you have do to something you don’t agree with for 2 seconds.
This is your wife’s family. Forever. You are her husband forever. Learn to get over it, because nothing is going to change about it, ever.
How old are your kids? Do you think a parenting class would help teach her better ways of interacting with them, disciplining or praising them, etc?
I think your initial question about the holidays and your extended in-laws is the wrong question - it’s a red herring. What’s far more important is what’s happening in your own home, each and every day.
Are you in a generally happy marriage? Because there’s a difference between a marriage where each person does things they don’t want to do to make the other person happy and one where one person demands that everything go their way. And the advice is different- if you go to make your wife happy and she does things she doesn’t enjoy to make you happy, then you suck it up and go, it’s only one day. On the other hand, if this is just one example of how you always have to do things her way or she makes you pay, then grow a set because as long as you keep giving in the demands will never end.
And really, I do think that family dynamics like these are nigh-on impossible to understand for those of you out there without large, extended weird-ass families. My family includes everything from successful entrepreneur/business owners to college professors to RNs to grocery-store clerks to people who refuse to work and freeload off other relatives to felons. It’s easy to say you’d never go to a family gathering that included some of the people like the OP and I list, but it’s a lot harder when you’re in the reality of it. Put it this way: you might have a very good reason to never ever ever want to be around Joe the Pedophile, but Joe’s 75-year-old mother Mary is convinced he’s been framed or nobody ever told her the truth and she thinks he was in jail for 10 years for stealing a TV, and Mary is very sweet and best friends with your mother-in-law who you think is great, and your wife grew up with Aunt Mary babysitting her and spoiling her and wife has a very soft spot for Aunt Mary, and nobody wants to break it to Mary that nobody wants to be around Joe, so he’s invited to Christmas. So then you get to either be the bad guy who refuses to go to Christmas dinner and you might even have to tell Aunt Mary why you hate Joe, or you suck it up and go to Christmas dinner, try to avoid Joe, and make sure your drink is heavily spiked.
Multiple that story by 5 or 10 similar ones, because any large family who lives close enough to have holiday gatherings have lots of this kind of stuff going on, and holidays suck until you become the old clueless lady/gentleman who lives under the impression that all the bad people he/she grew up with are dead, and the remaining family - all their kids and such - are precious angels and you’re the matriarch/patriarch and goddamn it you want ONE day a year where the family gets together.
At least, that’s how it’s played out for me. Family holiday parties are the reason humans invented alcohol IMO.
I don’t know if it’s generally happy. She should be happy… I really do go out of my way to be the “non-typical” husband. I clean (almost obsessively at times), cook (when I’m home before dinner time), take care of the kids, give backrubs and generally just try to be respectful and avoid conflict.
Am I perfect? No. Sometimes I have lazy days where I don’t feel like busting my butt doing chores all day. I see other husbands who do nothing… They come home from work, expect dinner to be made, and sit around watching TV all night. When their wives ask them to do anything, they get upset and act like jerks. My own father was like this. Sometimes when she’s complaining about me, I tell her at least I’m not like alot of other husbands, so be thankful. Her response? “I didn’t marry other husbands”.
Does nobody understand that it’s easier to just “go along with it” than to hear your wife nag and gripe all the time??? Sorry, but “growing a set” (for many married men) only makes the problem worse. In my experience, arguing with an angry, demanding woman doesn’t typically end well. Unless you enjoy that type of dynamic in your relationship. I personally want peace and happiness.
Dear God, every family tree has its share of squirrels. We tease my husband constantly because of the nuts he’s related to. He finally said, “Look, I don’t wanna hear any more about MY family, because YOUR family has Uncle H.”
Uncle H was a metaphysics PhD. REALLY woo-woo.
I’m one of the few who says, ah, Hell, it’s one day, just GO.
Go, if only to protect your kids from the nonsense. Talk to your kids in the days following. Get their opinion of the dysfunction. Point out how your opinion differs from the crazy relatives. And especially explain how Grandma deserves respect, and that is why you make the drive every year.
When you get to be Grandma’s age, you certainly want your kids and grandkids to treat YOU with respect!
When it’s time to talk to Uncle Pedo on the phone, just say, “Merry Christmas” and pass the phone to the next person. It won’t kill you to say just those two words.
Leave early. As soon as the dishes are washed, pack up the car and go home.
~VOW
Great question… and NO! The daughters and ex-wife have nothing to do w/ his side of the family. His ex won’t allow the daughters to even have contact w/ their grandparents. The whole family believes she is an evil lying woman who convinced her daughters that their father molested them, and the judge was also supposedly corrupt because he was up for re-election and needed a “guilty” verdict to solidify his position. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.
MY 2 CENTS: You don’t get sentenced to life in prison unless there is SUBSTANTIAL evidence that you did the crime. I know the justice system isn’t perfect and jurors can make mistakes, but I can honestly say that MY own kids would NEVER accuse me of touching them inappropriately unless something questionable actually happened.
And I would start out by refusing to go or take the kids, your wife can drive herself there. I would not want my kids anywhere that a pedo is an accepted guest, teleconferenced in or in person.
What the flying fuck are you doing when the pedo is out of the slammer, let him babysit?
