Can’t Fight Hate

Posted by fxckfeelings on April 29, 2009

Monday was about wanting to be liked, so today is about wanting to control hate. Anyone who’s read a history book, seen a Michael Bay movie, or mentioned the Yankees to a member of the Red Sox Nation (yeah Van Every!) should know that hate is not something that we have much power over. Sadly, that doesn’t stop us from sometimes trying. Here are ways to manage hate before you start hating yourself.
–Dr. Lastname

I cannot fucking stand my sister’s husband, never have, never will. He’s a condescending moron, and whenever I try to talk to her about how much he sucks, she just gets mad and doesn’t talk to me for a while. I love my sister though, even if she’s got shit taste in men, and don’t want to stop seeing her or her kids just because he’s always around, being a bastard. My real goal is to get her to leave him, but since that’s not working, I’ll settle on figuring out how to not want to murder my brother-in-law so I can still spend time with my sister.

First of all, you should ask yourself whether you hate your sister’s husband because you find him annoying, or because you think he’s bad for her. Either way though, there’s nothing much you can do, and sharing your feelings with her will reliably make things worse, so you’d better shut up and re-examine your goals.

If your goal is to make things better for her family, rather than to just ease your annoyance, then you’ve got a complex, frustrating job ahead of you on a problem that will probably never get solved. If you confront his obnoxiousness, she’ll be mad at you or him or both, and the conflict will be harder for the kids. And I assume he isn’t going to change and she isn’t about to leave him, whether you push or not, so don’t.

Your goal in the long run is to maintain a positive relationship with your sister while minimizing harm to her and her family and sparing yourself from having to spend more time than necessary with her husband. It requires painful, frustrating compromise, but that’s life. Sorry if that comes off as obnoxious, but alas, it’s true.

So it may hurt to lose access to your sister’s company, see her pushed around by a jerk husband, and expose yourself to humiliation at his hands. You need to take credit, however, for making the best of an important relationship.

You’re being a good friend to keep the relationship going when her husband’s obnoxiousness may have driven others away. You’re protecting her and their kids when you bite your tongue and prevent him from starting a fight. You may feel helpless, but you’re really doing the right thing, since doing what feels right is actually pretty wrong.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement reminding yourself that your goal is more important than avoiding humiliation or expressing frustration. “I can’t protect myself or my sister from the obnoxiousness of the guy she married, and I’ve demonstrated to my own dissatisfaction that speaking out does more harm than good. But because I value our relationship and the job of being a good brother and uncle, I’ll put in time when I think it’s necessary, bite my tongue, bear the frustration and sadness, and remember that I’m doing it for a good cause.”

After all these years, I wish I could get my brother to stop hating our mother. I’m not saying she was ever mother of the year, but she is our mother, and I think he should take my lead and figure out a way to get over it and be there for her now that she doesn’t have much longer. He won’t talk to her, and I do, but if he finds out she and I have been spending time together, he won’t talk to me (as if I were doing it to annoy him, when he has nothing to do with it!). He says he won’t attend any family events at my house if I invite her, which is not fair to me or my kids. I need to make peace.

Remember, young grasshopper, the more noble the goal, the harder to accept that you can’t accomplish it. It would be wonderful for everyone, including your brother, if he could talk to your mother before she dies (and I think there are a few Lifetime movies with that plot line), but you’ve got no reason to think that he’s going to change, and every reason to believe that you’ll join your mother on his shit-list if you keep pushing. Don’t do it. The goal of making peace is likely to widen the war, so instead of making peace, try to keep the war contained.

You might argue that everyone can bury the hatchet if they want, so it’s a mistake to say that your brother can’t change. But that’s not truth, that’s the inscription on a Hallmark card. You know as well as I do that some people are angry for deeper reasons than hurt feelings or pride or misunderstanding; they’re angry because their personalities can’t stand needing someone or tolerating the crap that living in this world entails.

For those people, being angry, particularly if they have a sympathetic anger-buddy, makes everything seem more bearable and controllable. If you try to talk them out of their anger, they feel like you’re robbing them of their integrity and trigger a suicide bomb in your face.

Sad, but that’s the way it is. No answer. Not solvable. Shrinks don’t know why or how to change it, and asking why is just another way of avoiding acceptance. So instead, ask yourself how you’re going to manage it.

To make the best of it, think of it as an impersonal affliction. Some kids can’t tolerate their mothers and divorce them (usually, these kids demonstrate fragility and intolerance in other areas as well, so it’s not just their mothers they’re bothered by). Now, you could argue that these kids are fragile because of what their mothers did to them, and sometimes you might be right, but you’ll never know, and talking about it that way will make everyone feel like a broken loser.

Or you can argue, as I would, that mother-divorce can happen to nice mothers and families, and good families are the ones that tolerate it without blaming one another and falling apart. So, since you can’t give your mother a peaceful reconciliation with your brother, you can instead share your feelings of pride in her ability to survive such a sad loss and make the most of the rest of her family relationships. That’s probably the happiest happy ending you’re going to get.

STATEMENT:
It may help you to compose a statement of your positive perspective to counteract the recriminations that spring spontaneously from pain. “I love my family and have tried hard to ease the conflict between my mother and brother but I’ve learned it can’t be helped. I accept the pain of a permanent family conflict and not being able to get together and share our love. I reject the idea that anyone is at fault, and I’m proud that the rest of us can continue to be a family together and not respond negatively to our hurt.”