It will continue to happen again and again and again until your wife stops playing the game. (If it was your sister doing this, it would be your responsibility to make the call.) And sadly, it will come at a pretty high cost.
Agreed. You have to put your foot down and enforce boundaries. The natural reaction of normal people is to be accommodating and compromise - this is what they intentionally exploit. The behaviour @raza_rebel describes is outrageous and IMO it's quite important not to go along with it. But you have to be prepared for the fallout. You will be painted as the bad guys (bizarrely)
The fact that you write this indicates how toxic it actually is. I say that as someone who went through identical crap for years.
IMO the difference here is that Raza says his wife fears being blamed for ruining the holiday, and describes actual physical reaction to this. Those are signs of abusive behaviour and it's really unhealthy for your own relationship. One of the issues is you spend days and days strategising how to tip toe round these people and that is exactly what they exploit.
Unfortunately, as stated before, there are a lot of family dynamics involved to make this black and white situation (preferential child treatment ---even at 40+, traumatic family event, only grandkid*). But yes, everyone was so busy haggling over other details that my SIL "made an executive decision" and booked the hotel on dates ruled out months ago (if you know anything about Disney hotels can book up a year in advance, especially around the holidays). And you are right, my sisters dismissed it because they have had 2 interactions with her, but they were overly accommodating and I felt were taken advantage of. So we talked about it and we decided that we are going since my wife gets precious few days off and will need a vacation. But I need to have a serious conversation with the wife about how to move forward. We also decided on certain things to do and eat at Disney and announced them in advance so the SIL/BIL don't undermine that (I don't care if I am on the wrong side of 40, if I don't get on the Millenium Falcon there will be consequences ). Also, I know that I vented about the SIL, but the BIL is as much to blame. He just keeps his hands clean. I am under the belief that they are so used to dictating family gatherings, that they assume this is normal. *They use their kid quite a bit to get something they want or out of something they do not want. For example, I have seen the kid up at 8pm eating and/or going to sleep, so we do not need to have family dinner at a certain time....It's a 9 year old, not a gremlin. It's just more convenient for their timetable, but puts everyone else out.
Raza, can everyone else in the family enjoy some adult outings after the SIL's family calls it an early night? Or would y'all be blamed for exclusion?
Great post, I lived this for over 5 years Agreed, and the more you try to set boundaries, that works... in theory, until the other person suddenly gets frustruated when they break them and get called out. Been on the receiving end with 2 in the past. It's basically behavior of selfish (probably incredibly insecure) control freaks who need to run the show, just for the sake of running it. And the more you try to be nice and fix things, the worse they act. It's like the Titanic going down in slow motion.
All good - you just triggered me when you said your wife feared she would be blamed for ruining everything - when they clearly sabotaged things. I had a similar experience where we invited on a holiday with another family when we had a new baby - so all very new and stressy for us. My ground rule was we needed our own separate holiday cabin - not shared - so we had personal relaxation space. All good - we researched, found a place with that spec and booked. They then invited another family to join us. I found that odd, but fine so long as they stayed with them in their holiday home and not ours (theirs was bigger). Then at the last minute they invited yet another person. So then the inevitable happened. Their place was too overcrowded, so suddenly we had this extra person sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the living room/kitchen lol while we had the other room with the baby. how relaxing??? This was so absurd to me that we decided to leave, then we were blamed for ruining everything. For years I felt bad about this as if i were some how me who had engineered the disaster.
In 2003 I confirmed with my family that we would be celebrating Christmas at my parents' home in New Mexico and bought my airline ticket (I was in London at the time teaching a semester-long study abroad program). In November my brother decided we should spend Christmas in Las Vegas and so everyone bought their ticket to go there. I had to spend a lot more money to get a new ticket (I couldn't change the other one I already had from LAX to El Paso and back then they were non-refundable) and pay for my hotel in a city I hate. But at least my brother was happy. In 2006 I convinced my family to have Christmas at my place for a change, given I was always the one who had to travel over the holidays. My family then decided it was too inconvenient and expensive to travel around Christmas and the New Year (apparently it's fine if I'm the one paying for it and dealing with the hassle), so they instead rescheduled Christmas for early January at my place, even though I would now be back in the classroom. Even though I had a meal prepared for their arrival, without telling me they decided to eat at a restaurant near the airport before driving down to my place. After that I decided I wouldn't be doing Christmas with them anymore and would instead spend my Winter break traveling overseas - after all, Christmas is right in the middle of my Winter break and if I spend it with them, then I can't go anywhere else. I don't regret my decision at all, even though I was initially blamed for ruining our family Christmas by being so selfish.
Y'all are describing my family dynamic, which took me literal decades to see through. My sister is not a toxic person, but she is still wrapped up in some of the dysfunction our parents indoctrinated into us so when push comes to shove she sees things their way; i.e., "that's just how Dad/Mom/they is/are" which if nothing else negates my own experiences. It mostly just makes me sad at this point. It's a bit exhausting having to carry on the pretense of being a normal, supportive family when I know it's all an illusion to shield my parents' respective fragile sense of self. And now they're in their 80's, starting to decline in health, and my Mom is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, so the window of opportunity to challenge this dynamic--without being a total dick--has passed.
In a way I think the only way you can challenge it is to do your own family in a positive way and not repeat all that stuff.
Recently an acquaintance told me about how they were thrown out of their parents house over christmas - delivered by text message to their brother who had to deliver the news I aspire to this elite tier level of dysfunction
Ha...how many of you were told, when going to in-laws house to change clothes after wedding reception, that they were not welcome in their home?
Well on previous family outings, the SIL/BIL have done their own thing, so I am banking on getting the same leeway. They usually have a day to themselves - the MIL babysits the grandkid for the day while they go hiking, paddleboarding or whatever activity interests them. She enjoys spending time with the grandkid so it's a win-win. We don't have any kids, so we aren't jamming up anyone's schedule. Having said that, there are some activities that run after the parks close that I am interested in going to. I will just buy tickets for the 2 of us when they go on sale and see what happens. Every time there is a family interaction with the SIL/BIL, there is always small adjustment after small adjustment until we are on their schedule. They feel the need to run the show, and part of the blame goes to the rest of the family rolling over because it's easier that way. I think it happens so frequently, that no one sees it anymore. Once the SIL/BIL gets involved, everyone defers to them. I do not want to have a situation where we all agree to dinner in one place but realize that they made reservations elsewhere because they read about some vegan focaccia bread. Or they want a picture with Mickey and we all queue in a 4-hour line for a family photo. But that possibility is out there lurking in the tall grass. Usually, my wife and I try to roll with it, but this situation hit different. Yep still upset about how it all went down. EDIT - I also don't think this is a conversation the MIL and wife are ready to have
I'm getting that all-too-familiar knot in my stomach feeling just from reading this. My parents were masters of litigating me and my sister away from acting on our own stated intentions; bit by boundary-ignoring bit. Took me a long time to realize that I am under no obligation to make an airtight case defending the rightness of my plans.
Well, you are selfish, but Christmas was ruined long before that and your selfishness is rather charming these days, but I digress... Let us harken back to the misty memories of the Great Thanksgiving Betrayal... No, not that Pilgrim myth bullshit that my ex-sister in law still believes in, Thanksgiving 1996, before BigSoccer was a thing and a place for my therapy... My mother had been in declining health for several years and while I was in grad school, her sister and her husband had been partial caregivers for Mom while I was finishing school. They were also de facto parents to their two grandsons, plus two other kids he denies making but the genetics sure seems to add up, and they had been the most recent hosts for the last few years of the family Thanksgiving / Christmas meals. So, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, my Uncle goes in for one of those cardiac stress tests, comes home, takes a shower and promptly dies of massive cardiac arrest, kinda like my Dad. (There's a long history of the men that married my Mom & Aunts dying of cardiac / stroke events, though I wonder if it may have been just them going into hiding, if so, fair play gentlemen) So anyway - Hugh Earl dies and my aunt is in no shape to corrdinate anc cook a meal to feel all of my degrenerate cousins, so the wife and I volunteer - I know how to do this. So we prepare the entire main course turkey, all the dressing, smoke a ham, tell everyone what sides they'e bringing and make 4 pies & 2 cakes. The morning of, I take all the food over there at once because we don't have a vehicle large enough to take both of us and all the food, plus she wanted to clean up and get ready. So, I haul all the food in and tell one of my cousins I'm going back home to get the wife and they asked "Hey, can you get a couple of bags of ice on your way back?" Now, I think to myself, there are 5 vehicles here with at least 8 licensed drivers, 6 of whom are not disabled in some fashion, but I'm wanting to be thankful for the blessings and shit, so I say OK. Drive back home, get the wife, get the ice and when I get back... They're done eating... They're fucking done... Now, the story that's offered is that another cousin said that I was going to get some ice and would be right back and to get started, but there's been a 4 cousin game of telephone going on so, my Mom & Aunts are furious with my shitass cousins and embarassed and I'm ready to fistfight each one of these freeloading shit********s that fell out of my aunts at some point, but again, Thanksgiving, so I pack up all my dishes & plates after I've dumped every last piece of food scrap left over into the trash and tell my cousins that the day after my last aunt passes, I will be mailing them a pre-printed divorce form with "Attachment A" as the respondent and attachment A is the list of all of their names and until then, they can all go die in a fire. And that's how I never had Thanksgiving again with any of my cousins
Like the pilgrims and Indians of old, you made the food for them, they celebrated the bounty and ate it ... and it upset you! There's a Thanksgiving moral of the story in there somewhere
My brothers and I lived about 200 mi from each other. We'd often get together with the wives for a weekend. We sent the wives off with our credit cards whilst we sat around drinking sherry, smoking big seegars and an emitting an occasional fart. Many tall tales were embellished and nary a discouraging word was ever heard.