At least you’re an adult. My parents argued all through my teen years, mostly about me.
Arranged marriage, unless everything is JUST right, kind of sucks. They hate each other and they’re stuck together. My maternal grandparents died young and couldn’t make a good match for my mother, so she ended up with someone less educated, lower in class*, mysognistic, and rather richer than her. You would think this last would be good but what it translated to was Dad didn’t like to work.
It is likely that if you complained about the bitching they would turn on you. Sometimes marriages evolve into some kind of ugly communication method. Every cop will tell you about women who were beaten by their husbands and then turned on the cops who were going to arrest the man.The ugliness is so gradual that they do not even know it. Outsiders are slammed with it. Insiders don’t know what you are talking about.
His company apparently has the sensible policy that if you choose to stay with relatives instead of hanging the company with a big motel bill, you are entitled to entertain them by way of thanks at company expense – the company’s way of expressing their appreciation at not being hung with both motel and food per deims for their employee there on assignment. Makes sense to me.
Painful as your visit was, realize this: you’ve written a beautiful passage here about how much your daughter means to you, how you’d do anything for her and above that you and your wife don’t engage in the same destructive rhetoric that would make her world unpleasant.
So despite the fact you were raised around hostility, you’ve managed to break the trend and give your child better.
Take satisfaction, even pride, in that accomplishment. It’s awesome.
Just look on the good side of life – your parents have not yet discovered the joy of section 32 of the Family Law Act: “Every child who is not a minor has an obligation to provide support, in accordance with need, for his or her parent who has cared for or provided support for the child, to the extent that the child is capable of doing so.”
Hey RickJay, I know you are not asking for advice or anything, but if this is new behavior, ask your parents to get their meds checked. A couple of years ago I went home for a family visit and my parents (who didn’t used to fight) were sniping and bickering all weekend. I eventually discovered it was the pain meds my dad was one making him bitchy. They are back to their old non-bickering ways now.
Everything. Yes. 64 and 62. I’ve tried and it’s approximately as successful as asking a mosquito to turn into a giraffe.
What a nice thing to say. Thank you.
**Fantome: Polycarp **is correct. In most mid to large companies with good expense policies, standard policy is that if you stay with friends or relatives, you should entertain them for at least one evening (and more if the stay is extended) since this saves money without taking unfair advantage of your hosts. Even a substantial restaurant bill is still much cheaper than a couple of nights in a hotel and meals for one.
My mum and stepdad are now in their early 80’s, and for the last 30 years have gotten along fabulously, with arguments and whinges against the other done in relatively good humour and quickly forgotten.
However, my mum is now in the middle stages of dementia. Whereas once upon a time she would briefly complain about my stepdad’s slackness and lack of sensitivity etc, we’d have a laugh about how All Men are Bastards, and then move onto other stuff to talk about. Now, apart from asking how my kids are every five minutes, her anger with my s/dad is her sole topic of conversation.
Unfortunately my s/dad IS a bit of an insensitive coot, so any visits now consist of my mum railing about what an arsehole he is, and him countering it with how she is ‘losing the plot’ so to speak. It makes for some really tense and not terribly interesting visits…it’s a blessed relief to jump in the car and drive out of their property as quickly as possible. Staying for longer than an hour would probably see me shoot them both in the head to put them out of each others’ misery.
So sad that living to a grand old age has to come to such ends. The so-called ‘Golden Years’ are often the unhappiest of all, when our folks (and us too eventually) should be able to kick back in relative comfort and serenity.
God yes. The: "At least I’m honest and not bottling everything up" -defense. Freud and the mind as steam-engine methaphore (“I’m just letting off steam”) did a LOT of harm there.
My mom believes it her duty to stand up for herself. Always, and instantly. Letting someone else have his or her way, just this once, even loved ones, even in small things, is not only a personal, but also a moral defeat. She has to fight all the egocentric people in her life, you know?
She is also great with the “say something and I’ll start all over” technique.
When, like apollonia, I was with her in the car, it was two years after the divorce, and I meekly asked her to stop badmouthing my dad along the way, she cried:" Yes honey, I shouldn’t do that, but you see, your dad makes me so mad, when he…" and off she would go for another half hour, while I was counting the miles till I could get out of the car.
No, you don’t “have to pretend”!
You’re a grownup, stop pretending.
When they start this, just say “I don’t want to hear about it. You married him/her; deal with it between yourselves. Don’t get me involved.”
And repeat it as often as necessary.
That will probably just start a different fight, them fighting with you because you ‘don’t care about them’. But at least that is an adult fight between the people involved, not an indirect fight where you are being put in the middle of a fight between them.
You know what’s weird? Almost every situation has the potential for bad as well as for good. And two people could have been the same demographic on paper, but still had vastly different experiences.
I recently spent a week looking after my mother while my father was in hospital. I spent a lot of that time contemplating suicide. I was just floundering in an ocean of constant unrelenting negativity. My mother had no one to talk to but me while we were at home and for her talking = complaining. Complaining about her health, complaining about the government, complaining about foreigners, complaining about my siblings, complaining about my father, complaining about whatever subject you try to bring up to break the cycle of complaining.
For instance, looking up from the TV guide and asking, “Have you seen that show Ellen?” results in, “That lesbian,” and a lengthy tirade about gays.
I left home when I was about 19. None of the neighbours had kids my age while I was growing up so I barely knew the neighbours at all. However I must have suffered 100 variants of this conversation:
“You remember the Carters?”
“No, mum.”
“Lived next to Rose?”
“I don’t remember her either.”
“Well you must remember her son Dennis, he was about 5 years older than you?”
“No, mum.”
“Well, his daughter, who lives in New Zealand; she’s married to a doctor you know, had twins.”
