Posted by octopusprime on November 3, 2004, at 19:57:24
In reply to Re: Family party - Next question » octopusprime, posted by fallsfall on November 3, 2004, at 9:16:09
falls, your post is very interesting and it hits some points with my family too.
my mother and father bicker all of the time. (mostly my mom picking on my dad). i can't stand it! they are also homebodies that do not like outdoor activity, go to bed early, and watch too much loud television for my tastes. this was definitely a factor in me deciding to move across the country away from them ... my family's lifestyle did not agree with me so i set off on my own adventure (i moved away for no reason, with no partner or job lined up).
so change in family relationships can be imposed unilaterally. but you probably don't want to move across the country. :)
"normal" is a wide spectrum ...
> Thanks, OctopusPrime.
>
> It is interesting to me to see how other families do things.
>
> Now you have me thinking about my inlaws (who are sadly both departed from this world). We didn't live far from them, but didn't see them often. They didn't call us much, and we didn't call them much. But I think the feeling when we *did* see them was different. Like I felt that they would be happy for us to stay as long as we wanted to. They weren't very mobile, so we went to see them more than they came to see us - I guess that when they came to see us they did tend to "eat and run" - something about not wanting to drive in the dark. And when we visit my parents at their cottage, my mother would be happy for us to stay forever. My dad gets tired of the chaos (even of almost adult grandchildren). But when we are there *I* want to leave. Because they bicker and are really nasty to each other. It isn't so much that I don't want to spend time with either of them - it is more that I don't want to witness their interaction with each other. Though my mother's need to plan each minute with interesting activities and need to eat 3 formal meals at set times annoys me.
>
> I guess there isn't such a thing as a "normal" family - that each family finds a way to interact that feels "comfortable" (!?!?) for them, and as long as everyone agrees that it is comfortable, then it is fine. Perhaps I just don't agree with my family about what is comfortable. But changing things like this requires everyone to change to some degree (maybe I should read "The Dance of Anger" again). It is hard to move towards change if you don't know what you want to change *to*.
>
> Thanks for helping me think about this.
poster:octopusprime
thread:410258
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20041026/msgs/411309.html