Support thread for those who experience family drama around the holidays

[diamond lil]

I know I am not the only one. It happens every year: family dramas seem to re-ignite and get more dramatic around the holidays, when people gather together in someone's small living room.

Feel free to vent about your impending drama here. I'll start:

I dread getting together with my husband's side of the family this year because of new drama between DH and his sister over her abuse of the welfare system (he called her out on it; she's mad as a result), and of course his brother who has horrific, if not bordering on illegal parenting practices. See my previous thread on leaving children alone with a cocaine user.

Everyone smokes which bothers me, and I foresee a Bratz doll for Olivia from at least one relative. DH's family is textbook dysfunctionality.

[Caneel]

Well, we don't see the really dramatic ones anymore but ay, ay, ya, the stories I could tell from years past....

My dad will creat a bit of something, not necessarily drama but much attention getting activity. All I ever heard about Christmas (and all holidays) is that is all total BS yet there will be much sighing and comments about how he will be at home, likely alone. (this is his choice, he has many options for visits and entertainment.)

There is potential for drama betwen my mom and her brother, my uncle, who is turning into a mean drunk. There is a long-term issue between them relating to inhertitance and money.

My mom thinks everything is just fine between them. My uncle told me, while drunk, his true feelings about his sister/my mother. I fear the fuse is close to being lit and he will tell my mom exactly what he thinks of certain past decisions and behavoirs.

Said uncle was not included in my Thanksgiving activities because of the above. Don't know what is going to happen at Christmas. I'm not sure who is hosting the get together. (not on the 25th but sometime during the season)

[EmmysMama]

The new baby is going to cause the problems this year. I told my family I am NOT going anywhere with a newborn. My parents and sister live 2 hours away, my aunt lives 1 hour away, the rest are way too far and not planning to come. My ILs though, they always have a humongous get-together and they expect you to drop everything and go, and you MUST GO ON Christmas day. Visiting any other time doesn't count, and they will not come to your house. Everyone must go to random relative X's house.

I'm not going. They don't believe me. I've also told DH that he and DD are not going. We're going to stay home on Christmas. My mom and sister are bringing sides, I've got bread and cookies frozen already to reheat, and DH and my dad are frying a turkey out back. I'm going to turn off our cell phones and unplug the landline so they don't call asking "When are you going to get here!? Everyone wants to meet the baaaaaaaaaby! It'll be fiiiiiine!" every half hour. They aren't going to like it.

I don't care if everyone wants to meet the baby. I'm not packing two kids into the car, driving wherever they decide to meet, eating food I don't like, hiding while I nurse, and fending off twenty people all trying to touch the baby and begging to hold it. And then coming home to a wrecked house from opening presents in the morning? No thanks.

Oh, I forgot the helpful advice they'll want to give me. Nursing is bad. The baby will suffocate in that wrap thing. Why don't you just bring a bottle for when *gasp* MEN are around? DD is too attached to you. Give the baby a pacifier. DD can eat 12 cookies, right? Oops, I already gave them to her. Lighten up, it's Christmas! It. never. stops.

[diamond lil]

Stick to your guns, EmmysMama! We had a brand new baby last Christmas and I told our family the same thing. We did not leave the house. The people who actually cared came to see us, not the other way around.

[HappyAgain]

Well I have been avoiding the "Toxics" since before Thanksgiving. We are staying home this year and I am so excited and happy! I will be muting the phone for the 24th and 25th. The only people I want to get a hold of me know my cell phone number and it has caller I.D.

In the past no meal I cooked was "good enough" and no gift was "good enough" even though I spent an out of proportional amount on these people. Nothing I do will ever be good enough, so why bother trying???I AM DONE..



YAY!

[ebethmom]

We finally get to stay in a hotel when we visit my MIL!! Last year was our first Christmas with that arrangement, and it was the most peaceful gathering I've experienced there. It was certainly the first Christmas in our 12 year marriage that MIL didn't throw a temper tantrum.

I try to stay as far from the fray as I can. I can't stand how my IL's speak to each other. It sounds more like barking than conversation. My dh turns into one of "them" while we visit, and I can't stand that either.

[rabbitmum]

Good for you, Emmys Mama and Happyagain!

We are doing Christmas at home, too. Just us and the kids! It will be lovely! We are grownups, and where we spend Christmas is our own sweet business.

[momtokea]

Oh, I just saw this thread. I belong here. I just posted my issue here
My inlaws make me hate Christmas. I'll be following this thread. Hugs to everyone and stand strong

[mom2tig99Nroo03]

i belong too. even worse though, we're living with the inlaws right now...

[mrsjtc]

Count me in.

My IL's are coming this weekend with my crazy out of control 4 year old nephew. The MIL watches him all day and cannot be apart from him for an overnight apparently. If they just come for a few hours, they leave him with his parents. But she has a monster-load of control over SIL and has decided that the boy is coming with her.

Last time he was here, he embarrassed all of us during a concert at my dds' homeschool enrichment program. Then he barked from under the table at a restaurant and wanted to eat on the floor. No one has any control over him. At. All. (I fully understand pretend play but when in public, please, teach your child how to behave.) They are coming to a musical at our church Sunday morning and my oldest dd has a solo. I am so nervous he's going to do something embarrassing and make her nervous.

They are just awkward, self-centered people who will make my weekend long and annoying. I envy people with great in-laws.

[Vancouver Mommy]

My alcholic, addict, mentally ill sister has been in my basement for over a month, won't go to appointments and is likely going to crash very soon. Nothing says festive like the twinkly lights of an ambulance and the ambiance of the psych ward.

[mamalisa]

I'm sorry mamas. It's taken us 14 long years but we've finally rid ourselves of family drama. We spend it with the kid and my dad and everyone else can suck it. Sad, but true.

[Vancouver Mommy]

Originally Posted by mamalisa

everyone else can suck it.

Thank you. I shall repeat these five words over and over to myself until my holidays have been cleared of unnecessary family drama. This makes more sense to me than anything else I have heard this holiday season.

Edited to add: This is now my Facebook status update.

[Laggie]

My dad and brother are no longer speaking, so I'm left as the hub and having to arrange 3 separate family gatherings so as to accommodate my mom, my dad, and my brother, since no two of the above can be in the same room at the same time.

I feel like just disowning the whole lot of them!

[diamond lil]

Originally Posted by Vancouver Mommy

My alcholic, addict, mentally ill sister has been in my basement for over a month, won't go to appointments and is likely going to crash very soon. Nothing says festive like the twinkly lights of an ambulance and the ambiance of the psych ward.

I'm so sorry. God bless you for providing her with a safe place.

[dawningmama]

to those dealing with family drama. I've pretty much cut off thefamily members with the more difficult drama. I do actually miss them this time of year. Cutting out the dysfunction actually did cut out a good bit of the fun. I'd rather have a quieter, more boring holiday than one where cops are called, stuff gets broken and/or we have to take that family trip to the ER.

Moving this over to Personal Growth.

[Leta]

Okay, this thread is hilarious! Good for all of you amazing, strong, humor filled women that you cope as well as you do!

I have made very insistent choices about the holidays so as to avoid drama. My childhood holidays were dramatic to the Nth degree, so I've had my fill, and I want better for my kids. Oh, the stories I could tell...

But I'll stick with just one. After my grandparents got divorced (in 1998), my dad cried on Christmas. To be clear, my dad cried one day a year. Christmas. And he cried ALL DAY LONG. He would hide in his bedroom, and come out to fill up his rum soaked egg nog, smile like a red eyed corpse, and run back to his room as fast as possible.

My brother and I started calling it "Crymas" around 2000.

[proudmomof4]

Sounds like you girls would be good candidates for living as expats - somewhere not so close to home.

I love the "Cutting out the dysfunction actually did cut out a good bit of the fun." - hilarious!

[mamalisa]

Originally Posted by Vancouver Mommy

Thank you. I shall repeat these five words over and over to myself until my holidays have been cleared of unnecessary family drama. This makes more sense to me than anything else I have heard this holiday season.

Edited to add: This is now my Facebook status update.

I'm so happy I could help

Originally Posted by Leta

Okay, this thread is hilarious! Good for all of you amazing, strong, humor filled women that you cope as well as you do!

I have made very insistent choices about the holidays so as to avoid drama. My childhood holidays were dramatic to the Nth degree, so I've had my fill, and I want better for my kids. Oh, the stories I could tell...

But I'll stick with just one. After my grandparents got divorced (in 1998), my dad cried on Christmas. To be clear, my dad cried one day a year. Christmas. And he cried ALL DAY LONG. He would hide in his bedroom, and come out to fill up his rum soaked egg nog, smile like a red eyed corpse, and run back to his room as fast as possible.

My brother and I started calling it "Crymas" around 2000.

Isn't it awful when it's so absurd and bizarre that you can actually joke about it??

Growing up my dad worked a lot, he was rarely home for a family meal. He was always home for holidays though and always cooked the holiday meal. (As a kid I thought this was really nice, she's cooked the other 360 days of the year, nice of dad to do the cooking for her.) For some reason a holiday was the best day for my parents to fight, I don't know why, maybe because they didn't really spend whole days off together normally? Every year it would go exactly the same way, dad would cook all day, mom would watch tv in their bedroom, dinner would be done and dad would send one of us to tell her dinner was ready and she would say the same thing "I'm not hungry". Every. Single. Year. For 15 years. Well one year, this just hit dad wrong and she had happened to come out of her room to announce that once again, she wasn't hungry. Dad launched the entire turkey into the kitchen sink from across the kitchen, sprinkled it angrily with powdered kitchen cleaner and loaded us in the car to go to McDonald's while screaming at my mother for being such a crab ass.

So as long as no one throws a turkey, it's all good here

[darcytrue]

Originally Posted by diamond lil

and I foresee a Bratz doll for Olivia from at least one relative.

ugh....that in itself is bad enough.

My family and DH's family are both dysfunctional. Neither one is really worse than the other. I enjoy getting together with family but it's tough to hear my own sisters talk about their wonderful lives after years of watching them ignore and neglect their own kids who are now mostly over the ages of 18. They have no close relationship with their own children and it's SO sad in my opinion. They then think I'm stupid because I home school my kids and I just had another baby a few months ago and I'm over 40. So I have to go around them worst of all and listen to their useless crap. IMO their lives stink because they have no children around anymore and are lonely because their 3rd husbands (yes both are on their third husbands) are not who they really want to be with. They have nothing IMO and I feel sorry for them.

My mom smokes and her house wreaks of cigarettes but I want to go see her. She is a psycho and is mentally unstable and will likely say a lot of weird stuff while we are there but I want to go.

My dad and stepmom will have tons of famliy over and my stepmoms kids always act like they are so above us and we are all beneath them and that bugs the heck out of me. Her oldest child just got their PhD so that person is right up there with God now.

My DH's family isn't quite as bad but he has 3 neices who have all had babies out of wedlock and are basically poor and I feel sorry for them every year. They all had a bad upbringing because his siblings also ignored their children when they were raising them and weren't good parents to them so now they are all carrying on that tradition with their own babies. It's hard to watch.

I will likely have to witness my DH's 20 yr old neice feeding her 3 mos old table food. I've already been told they do this. We had our babies two weeks apart. My FIL was asking me the other day when I intend on feeding my 3 mos old solids. uhhhhh...no time soon, thank you very much. They are all very uneducated in the area of caring for babies.

I'm a very social so I like going to the family get togethers at Christmas but I could do without all the drama. It comes at us from every angle.