“Everyone” includes YOU. It has taken me many years to grasp this, and I hope you can see it too. I am not suggesting that you only every do things that make you happy. There are legitimate family connections that need to take precedence, but this occasion does not seem like one of those to me.
If it were the only time this year that same group would be assembled I might be urging you to suck it up, but that doesn’t sound like the case.
I don’t get the impression that she treats Antigen as if she’s fragile so much as Mary sounds like a bit of a snob - she sounds like she can’t manage to treat Antigen as if she was just a human being like everyone else, regardless of where she came from.
I think you really will have to stand up for yourself on this one, Antigen. You will probably need to see George and Mary a couple of times a year, but you don’t have to see them every time they invite you.
Just say no. Just be honest. With yourself and with them. No one will die. You can do it. They’ve heard it before, I promise.
Stop attending, if it feels like this relationship, is being forced upon you. You may find, once you do so, you don’t mind the occasional event where they are. Or not.
Either way, it’s good practice for when you have a family.
Honesty, give it a try!
Yeah, for her the exotic visitor isn’t a human being, it’s something to be looked at. Like a vase.
I don’t think it’s that bad. I think that I’m just different enough to make her slightly uncomfortable and she doesn’t know how to react to me, so she nods and smiles and mostly ignores me. I’m polite, I engage in conversation, I compliment her meal, and as far as I can tell I’m meeting the social expectations of such a family event. My best guess is that she’s got a different expectation for the event than I do. In my mind it’s a family dinner, so we’re friendly and silly and we chat about what we’ve been up to, what we’ve been reading, that sort of thing, and that’s normally how it is with my husband’s family. With Mary, it’s like she’d prefer it to be a tea party or art gallery opening. What I don’t understand is why the dismissive tone seems to be aimed at me alone, when my husband acts in an almost identical way.
It doesn’t matter. I will be skipping the Mother’s Day party and everyone will have to live with that. I’ll deal with the next event as it comes up. I’ll be seeing these people at two other events (which I actually want to attend, despite their presence) in the next two months anyway, which will be plenty for me. My husband’s parents keep agreeing to these get-togethers in part because they enjoy George and Mary’s company, and also because they see how it simplifies things for my brother and sister in law, and my nephew, by giving them one event to share with both families. I’m sympathetic to that, but it also makes me a little bitter because I don’t have that option for my side.
Antigen, when you and your husband start having kids, you and he may have to start your own traditions. Unfortunately for you, your husband’s brother got started first and as such has been dictating family gatherings by including his wife’s extended family in the mix. And no one else has minded much as the common grandchild is the only one and everyone loves him so much.
But as the number of grandchildren grow including your own, this arrangement will get old. Your husband and his brother need to have a conversation including their parents about how longer term family gatherings need to take place.
In the meantime, it’s perfectly okay for you to pass on the invitation to mother’s day dinner.