Father’s Day is nine days away, which has brought this thread to mind.
I have five sisters. Four of them live in the same city as me, and three of those are allegedly happily married. (I write “allegedly” because I’ve not been given any reason to think otherwise, but I’m not about to ask if that’s the case.) Every time a holiday rolls around – Christmas, New Year’s, the Fourth of July, the aforementioned FD – two of those insist on spending that day with our father rather than with their husband’s families, and they give those of us who might have other plans grief for not doing so.
This year is typical. My wife is trying to rebuild a relationship with her father, so she and I are going to go visit him for the Father’s Day weekend. Predictably the RhymerSisters in question protest at this, saying that I should spend that day with Dad, whom I see no less than twice a week; they say that Dad, being widowed and presumably lonely, shoudl always be my first priority. I’m just not willing to do this. My wife wants me with her, and I want to be with her. We don’t spend holidays apart; we alternate which family to spend it with, or, like last Xmas, go someplace by ourselves.
Does my sisters’ attitude seem strange to y’all? I’m not asking for advice, as I have no intention of bowing to their pressure; I’m just asking about your perception of their attitude.
Is your dad in poor health or quite old? I know that my brothers and I feel more adamant about spending the holidays with my Mom because she, although in excellent health, will be 91 in less than a month. When I was married, holidays were always a time of great worry for me because of the question of which parents to spend time with.
Your sisters almost certainly feel guilty about the fact that their father is “widowed and presumably lonely.” even though of course it’s not their fault (unless they killed your mom, which seems unlikely). If their husbands’ parents are all alive, so that none of them is alone for the holiday, they may well feel that your dad has the greatest need.
I think given that you see your dad frequently and you have particular reasons for spending time with your wife’s dad this year that you are being perfectly reasonable. But anxiety about aging parents is up there with anxiety about one’s own kids, so your sisters’ attitude doesn’t strike me as terribly odd.
I take it that you’re talking about their insistence that I forgo my plans. That’s not what I meant, but I wasn’t clear in the OP, so I am at fault, not you.
I was talking about their insistence that THEY spend all holidays, and in particular Father’s Day, with our dad rather than their husbands. I mean, they both have kids, but they make every FD about our dad rather than the fathers of their children. Likewise, they insist on spending all Christmases & Thanksgivings with our side of the family, never their husbands.
Doesn’t your dad also think you’re gay or something? I could see why you might not want to spend every holiday with him if he has that kind of fundamental misunderstanding of you…
I don’t think that’s too odd, but I’d feel better about it if they at least honored their husbands a little bit.
That sounds a little more selfish.
This does rememnd me of my niece, though. This past Christmas my other niece spent the holiday with her husband’s family. My nephew spent it with his girlfriend’s family. And my brother and his wife spent it on a romantic ski trip for two. This left my poor niece with no one! And just a week before she turned into an old lady of 30!
You make a good point, but I suspect my sister’s parents-in-law are both older than our father, who is in his mid-seventies. Both their husbands are a good ten years older than they are.
And admittedly the reason I go to see Dad no less than twice a week is so that I’m in control of it.
I don’t know that Dad is all that lonely. He has a good number of, ah, friends. If anything he has somewhat less companionship than he might for their sake, as they have reacted hostily to women friends of his. Once, a few years back, the two sisters in question had insisted on a family dinner to be held at his house, and insisted that a given female friend of his should not be admitted to the house because it’s still their house. They were both in their forties at the time, with kids of their own.
That was long ago and in a far country, amigo. I’m back with the wife now. But he’s very frustrating to be around, if only because he so regularly attempts to convert me to Christianity – and his particular brand of it, no other. I won’t go into other stuff because I don’t feel like bitching about him. It was simply ridiculous, I thought, that I, of all people, was the person on Dad’s side here.
Either your sisters aren’t too fond of their husbands, or they aren’t too fond of their husbands’ parents, or they want to make a child of your dad, which isn’t a particularly unusual reaction for a lot of people when they are worried about their parents. Most of us have a lot of innate guilt about our parents. After all, they did everything for us, and we all know the millions of time we repaid that with being little (and sometimes not-so-little) shits.
But, since your dad sounds more than capable of being offensive on his own, I think he can handle any intrusive behavior on the part of your sisters without your help. Your sisters don’t strike me as especially weird, but you sound like you’ve got a more reasonable grip on the situation than they do. Let 'em all be.
No. Your sisters are happily married and potentially understand your dad’s loss to a deeper extent. They probably also have their maternal instincts to thank for their fluttering.
Er, Skald is happily married, and understands his dad’s loss just fine. And you don’t need maternal instincts to worry yourself sick about your parents. I have no maternal instincts, and I certainly worry about mine.
Now. run along and don’t worry your pretty head about it.
Yes, your sisters’ attitudes seem strange, the system you’ve worked out seems reasonable.
We live in FL, my parents live in RI, my in-laws live in PA. We generally get up to the northeast twice a year: once during the summer, once at Christmas. During each trip, we spend a week or so with each set of parents. We alternate which family we’re with on Christmas itself.
Even if we lived in the same state as one family or the other, I can’t imagine spending every holiday with the same family, and ignoring the other.
It sounds to me like the sisters are being jerks to their Dad, jerks to their husbands, and jerks to you – not all the time, I’m sure, but in ways they don’t have to be jerkish about. Now, that may be unduly harsh, and if so I apologize, but it comes across to me as quite unappealling.
And yes, I do find it odd that it appears they don’t seem to acknowledge their husbands’ side of the family on Fathers Day and the other holidays.
My inlaws do this, but for a different reason. Not the 4th, Memorial Day, etc, but Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (both Eve and Day) are always held with that side of the family.
I attribute it to their father’s emphasis on the importance of (their) family. His dad owned a restaurant and was always working, and so he got this idea that he was going to do family togetherness “right,” and guilt-trips and manipulates everyone to follow his lead. If you don’t call at least once a week you’re the Bad Son/Daughter - if everyone calls once a week then he seems to pick who doesn’t suck up sufficiently or who visited the longest ago. He would even throw a fit if one of his granddaughters was spending a holiday with her dad (divorced), and insist the guy had her over last holiday and was taking advantage, etc.
Only reason we spend most all holidays with my mom and brother is we live within driving distance, mrAru’s family are in California. He flies out to visit them every other year. This august we are meeting up at a family reunion/90th birthday for one of his uncles in Iowa instead of his going to California.
This doesn’t seem strange to me at all, but maybe that’s because my husband and I don’t really take Mother’s Day and Father’s Day seriously, so we do make it about our parents rather than ourselves as parents. Also, my mom is way more demanding about tribute on Mother’s Day than I am.
Now, what does seem strange to me is that they never spend any of these holidays with in-laws’ families. So, I would say I don’t think it’s odd at all if they’re estranged from your brothers-in-law’s families, and odd if they’re not.
I think they’re just trying to edge you out of any potential inheritence.
Let me also submit that rather than them not liking their in-laws, perhaps their in-laws don’t like tem so much and therefore make them feel unwelcome. You, going to your in-laws’ celebrations is just flaunting your well-adjustedness and likeability. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I don’t think it’s odd, but it may be selfish. But maybe not. How do your brothers-in-law feel about their parents?
Growing up we spent all holidays with my mom’s family, not my dad’s father, and that was fine by my dad: his father remarried a few months after losing his second wife (dad’s mom) and pretty much decided he wasn’t going to bother with his kids anymore, not the two by his first wife, not his two step-sons that he’d raised since they were preschoolers, and not his two youngest by his second wife either. By the time I was old enough to remember, things between my grandfather, dad, aunt and uncles were better, but still decidedly chilly. None of them, except my aunt on occasion, made an effort to spend holidays with him rather than their spouses’ families.
Don’t worry, I’m taking up the slack for you - I’m a single guy and I already have to worry about which family I’m going to spend a holiday with: my dad and stepmom in Illinois or my mom and stepdad in Oklahoma. Oh, did I mention that both my parents have birthdays within two days of Christmas? I always joke that I need to find a girl who’s parents are already married because the logistics I’m dealing with are already complicated.
That said, I grew up an 8 hour drive from one set of grandparents–and they were the closer geographically.
So we didn’t always spend major holidays with family, much less minor ones.
If I were married, I’d expect to spend some holidays with his family, some with my own, and probably some with just the family we were creating by ourselves.