Letters to the Editor
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Kill 'em with poise
From generations of feuding family: the ones who "win" are the ones who respond with the most grace over time. Send Christmas and birthday (or equivalent) cards that are short, but not perfunctory. Stay elsewhere. Try not to get into the rest.
In the long run, whether they apologize or not, you will win because you will have stayed out of drama. The family members (nieces, nephews, cousins) who are most interesting and like-minded will probably seek you out in Europe and find to their surprise that you're wonderful. But they won't have been barricaded by long over-reaching fights about, well, essentially nothing.
And as for the siblings? They will either let it go - now, or in the future when some family crisis shows how petty these concerns are - or they won't. You can't control that, so just try to treat them with the arm's length kindness that duty and blood ties call for.
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Family feud
Expressing hot anger directly to an offender is never a good idea unless you are intending to end that relationship permanently. Try the following process: write out your grievances in a hot candid letter or two addressed to the offender, expressing everything you feel in vivid detail. It may take several letters of rage to dispel your feelings. Here's the important part -
DO NOT SEND ANY OF THOSE ANGRY LETTERS. Save them or throw them away. The writing process will gradually calm you down enough that in a few days you will be able to take a long-term perspective. Then you can decide what to do next. If you want the relationship to continue, as is usually the case with family members, write a diplomatic statement that expresses your feelings briefly, without blame, add a little mea culpa perhaps, followed by hopes/suggestions for better future relations between you. Indeed, ask the other person for their suggestions in that regard. Often they've been as frustrated and upset as you. By inviting them to relax, you may actually give everyone confidence to work things out. Or maybe not. In any case you have become part of the solution, instead of the problem. This process has worked wonderfully for me.
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See the parents, skip the sibs
Whether or not you have a good relationship with your siblings is not that important -- they seem to want to drive you away, and it doesn't seem worth it to pursue their approval. However, you should not let them drive you away completely. Your parents won't be around forever, and it will be great if your kids can have some memories of them and learn more about their European heritage.
Talk to your parents, bring the kids to see them, and if your sibs are around, it's up to them to invite you and your family to be part of their lives.
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family relationships are unique
One of the things I love most about my family is that I probably wouldn't be friends with any of these people if I wasn't forced to by an accident of birth (my mom's a complete narcissist, one of my sisters is always asking me for money, and my dad thinks that the actual biblical apocalypse will arrive in his lifetime). Luckily, I have friends to support me when I'm in trouble and friends who share my passions for the outdoors or social justice or science or music or whatever. I have to be way more polite and careful with the words I choose around my family. But the unique set of obligations implicit in a family forces me to grow and adapt and forgive in ways that are different from anything else in my life.
While your siblings sound like meddling jerks, they have the same parents that you do, and share a genetic and experiential bond that no one else does. As such, they offer you an opportunity for self-reflection and understanding that you can't get elsewhere.
Take as much distance as you need from your siblings to cool off, follow the great advice of other posters to address the situation with poise and grace, and try not to say anything you'll regret later. Good luck.
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and another thing...
That stuff where your brother and sister were complaining about your husband was way over the top. The only expectation they are allowed to have of him is that he makes you happy. If he's doing that, then they have *no* business complaining about him to you or telling him how to behave.
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"Sine You Asked"?
At this writing, the link to this article on the main page is titled: "Sine You Asked..." This tells me two things: The software behind Salon is crap, since it doesn't autofill recurring feature titles; the copy editor is crap, or has been laid off due to record low profits from this dying webzine.
Pathetic.
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Welcomerain - thanks for mentioning the typo -
No need to cast doubt on Salon's software or Salon's copy editor.
Simply point out the missing letter .
Thanks for being an eagle-eye.
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What's a European?
a Dutch? an Italian? a French? or a (GASP!)Greek? makes all the difference in the world as far as the seriousness and length of a so-called "Feud"
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I'm casting aspersions, not doubt,, you illiterate anonytard...
...and I'll cast 'em wherever I like, and you can kiss my Irish ass if you don't like it. I have no doubts whatever that the editing here sucks.
In between the half-literate slam-piece on "Skinny Bitch" and the elementary typo on the front page of Salon, it's dead obvious that Salon is understaffed and undertalented. It doesn't take an "eagle eye" to spot such an elementary typo. It takes an editor's eye, and there are no competent editors at work here.
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very well put
Whoever wrote this:
In some families it is better to observe the rules of polite social interaction.
In some families, one can be real.
My family falls into the former. I put an ocean between myself and them for about three and half years and every time I had to see them during that time it was very difficult -- all of the "perceived slights" intensified, everything I didn't like about them and my position (as the youngest) in my family magnified three hundred times. Now I live within 20 miles of them (my sister lives almost next door to my parents) and it's actually easier now that I'm close and see them every month. I've gotten the hang of the "polite social interaction" thing,
the ability to treat them more like friendly acqaintances and the acceptance that they will never know/understand who I really am (or certain sides of who I really am, at least). As with LW, with me it was also a situation where if I ever got angry, I was suddenly "unstable" and in need of psychiatric treatment. I wasn't allowed to vent, and that's just rules of my relationship with my older sibling and parents. I can either battle it in vein or accept it, and I've come to learn that the latter leads to significant improvements both in my relationship with them and in my own peace of mind. If it were a perfect world, my sister would be the type of girl who quotes Yeats and goes out for beers and actually gets depressed from time to time, someone compassionate and understanding, but she's not. I can't say she's a bad person, just not the kind of person around which my soul can breathe, if that makes any sense. If I could change it, I would. Unfortunately life doesn't work that way.