The Price of Happiness, a pain in my ass
As some of you may know from my 'The Price Of Happiness' post, my sister is getting a divorce. I think I've made it clear that I didn't think she did enough but I learning to accept it. Now a new problem comes as a result of my sisters divorce.
My sister lives about four hours away from my family and my parents live about a mile from us. My sister has two girls age six and four. They are wonderful children but as you can imagine the divorce is starting to affect them. My mother has always treated my sisters kids a little better than mine. She tries to hide it by waiting until mine aren't around to give them extra gifts and stuff but we see it. She treats my kids good so I can live with it, besides my sister is the only girl and the baby of the family so she has always been favored, I'm use to it.
Well my wife isn't use to this obvious favoritism. Its always been a struggle to keep peace between my wife and my mother concerning this favoritism. The problem is now that my sister is turning her attention towards her work and away from her family my mother has taken upon herself to "be there for the children". She has had them down for a week, drove up there to visit, sends them gifts every week with I love you notes and we just found out they are going on a Disney cruise in February.
I happen to agree with my mom's approach to this situation. The girls are going through a tough time and they need all the support they can get. Well this extra, extra attention is driving my wife crazy which means she is driving me crazy to do something about it. Every action my mother takes gets me hours worth of ear chewing. My wife is not heartless in fact she's a good aunt to the girls but it's the previous treatment that has caused this reaction. I can't say she's wrong I just think you have to pick your battles wisely.
Now she doesn't want to bring our kids around my parents until they treat them equally. This will never happen. This reaction will punishes my dad, who has done nothing wrong. My wife keeps pushing for a confrontation but not between my parents and her but between my parents and me. The more I resist this confrontation the angrier my wife gets. Tension is high to say the least but at least my sisters happy, right?
My sister lives about four hours away from my family and my parents live about a mile from us. My sister has two girls age six and four. They are wonderful children but as you can imagine the divorce is starting to affect them. My mother has always treated my sisters kids a little better than mine. She tries to hide it by waiting until mine aren't around to give them extra gifts and stuff but we see it. She treats my kids good so I can live with it, besides my sister is the only girl and the baby of the family so she has always been favored, I'm use to it.
Well my wife isn't use to this obvious favoritism. Its always been a struggle to keep peace between my wife and my mother concerning this favoritism. The problem is now that my sister is turning her attention towards her work and away from her family my mother has taken upon herself to "be there for the children". She has had them down for a week, drove up there to visit, sends them gifts every week with I love you notes and we just found out they are going on a Disney cruise in February.
I happen to agree with my mom's approach to this situation. The girls are going through a tough time and they need all the support they can get. Well this extra, extra attention is driving my wife crazy which means she is driving me crazy to do something about it. Every action my mother takes gets me hours worth of ear chewing. My wife is not heartless in fact she's a good aunt to the girls but it's the previous treatment that has caused this reaction. I can't say she's wrong I just think you have to pick your battles wisely.
Now she doesn't want to bring our kids around my parents until they treat them equally. This will never happen. This reaction will punishes my dad, who has done nothing wrong. My wife keeps pushing for a confrontation but not between my parents and her but between my parents and me. The more I resist this confrontation the angrier my wife gets. Tension is high to say the least but at least my sisters happy, right?
13 comments:
Tough situation. I'm sorry you're in the middle of it.
Your wife may not understand that by pushing for a confrontation, she is asking you to defy your parents over something that you have come to be accustomed to throughout your life (not just during the time you've been married). Sure, you're an adult with children of your own, but your parents are still your PARENTS.
My advice to your wife: if the confrontation is really how she wants the situation to be resolved (if there is resolution available, which I don't believe there will be), then she needs to take responsibility for her feelings and do it herself.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a nice way to say that. Some help I am, eh???
A
To make things worst I work in a family business. My parents are retired but still show up most days. We can literally see their house from our front door. This is a no win situation. Like I said my wife is not wrong so I'm torn between supporting her and standing up for my kids versus pointing out to my parents that even though they are great grand parents to my kids it's not enough. I think it makes me look jealous, superficial and petty. Not to mention I really do think my nieces need the extra attention right now so this could certianly wait. What a mess.
Yuck. An unenviable position, to be sure. But I agree completely: your wife is not wrong, but your nieces need the confidence bolstering. Ride it out for a bit and see if it doesn't work itself out. ;-)
I think your wife is wrong about not wanting to take your kids around your folks. No reason to punish your kids for something they (hopefully) don't understand yet. And it's an adult situation that needs to be handled between the adults without the kids being drug through the middle of it.
Have you tried telling her that instead of biting off your head, maybe she should talk to them about it?
I agree with the girls needing the extra support, but maybe your wife could mention to your mom that the favoritism is noticable this time around...
Hm.
Talk about being stuck between an angry wife and a hard place.
ooo toughy. I don't envy you. How reasonable is your wife? (aren't you glad you're family and friends dont' know about this blog?)
You could explain to her that your kids have it a lot easier as they have something that no amount of grannies money can buy - a loving mum and dad - who also love each other.
Sure the grandparents love them too, and the granny is spending too much time and money with the other neices but thats her choice and I'm sure your children will grow up and understand why she did what she did. My grandma was never really close to my sister and I, she always favoured the boys. But I don't care, my parents loved me enough for all of the grandparents. :)
Also point out the fact that by stirring an already sensitive situation, you are hurting a lot of people that don't deserve to be hurt: you, your kids!, your dad, and probably your nieces and brother in law.
The anger should be directed towards your sister and it looks like she's managed to cause chaos and get off scot free again.
e.
also your kids will gorw up to remember the arguements and bitterness. I'm sure your wife doesn't want that.
It's only money, all my happy memories as a child don't involve money. if it's the affecttion she's worried about, I'm sure they get enough from you, your dad, your wife and each other.
And it's not like your mum hates your kids, she's just a bit preoccupied at the moment.
Your mum doesn't sound that reasonable really, tell your wife that arguing with her will solve nothing. All it will do is make you argue, it's already happening. Tell her to be the bigger person. :)
sorry if I spoke out of line, but we grow up thinking our parents are perfect, sooner or later we realise they're just human.
hope that helps.
e
also do you 'really' think taking them to Disneyland is a good idea? I mean isn't that just trying to deter tham from realising whats happening by throwing money at the problem?
Would it be a more postive experience for them to come and visit you or your mum and have a week or so together as a family?
I'm sure that what they need is family around them right now, not trips to Disneyland.
e.
Yeah unfortunately this is not a new situation for the wife and I. For many years work was the same way. She wanted my parents to just give me everything and couldn't understand why they treated me like an employee. I started in our shop at minimum wage as a diesel mechanic. They made me earn everything just like everybody else, which I agree with and appreciate.
Everybody wants their opinion heard and my wife is no different. We have had a lot of discussions about support verses adding stress to the situation but when it comes to the kids it's hard to keep emotions out of it and think clearly.
I do have to take some blame here. I always told her I could accept the favoritism with my sister but if it ever happened with the kids I would say something and I have but I never thought my sister would get a divorce, so be careful what you say. Right now I'm just ducking hoping it will all work out.
The Disney cruise is the straw that broke the back so to say. My wife has always wanted to go on one but our daughter is to young. My sister and her soon to be ex are going with them so it will be confusing but good for the kids. My mom has always thrown money at my sister to buy her love. As I've said my sister can be a cold person and hard to deal with. Sometimes I think blind, deaf and dumb wouldn't be to bad but only one out three sucks.
it can be frustrating for women to see the men they love treated badly even if the man doesn't know it.
For example, the B/F's mum idolises his older brother. He's the blue eyed blonde haired hot shot lawyer with a great personality, everyone loves him. He always did better than him at everything at school according to his mum and the B/F. I think the B/F is so intelligent and all our friends think so too.
It breaks my heart to see his mum talk about his brother like the sun shines out of his backside and never anything nice to say about the B/F. She makes me so angry, but the B/F doesn't seem to notice or care? So whos the loser here?
My moms the same way about me and my sister but who does she call when she needs something? Me.
The B/F has accepted this after many years and realizes it will never change. To fight it would be like beating a dead horse it just isn't going anywhere. He's aware of it but you pointing it out doesn't help anything. He can either accept it or cut off his family, that's life.
Humm Men seem to deal with this kind of thing so much better than women don't they?
e
Well men don't like to be cry babies ;p
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