XMAS RSVP

Posted by fxckfeelings on December 21, 2009

Even if none of us has spent Christmas with our entire families, most of us feel like we should help make it happen and feel terribly guilty if we can’t (I just feel guilty for taking their money, but only a little). We have some illusion that the holidays are the time for our criminal or alcoholic or crazy relatives to put their behavior aside, slap on a Christmas sweater, and join their loved ones around the tree and we feel bad if we can’t make the reunion happen, or even let it happen. But fear not, there’s a way to make excuses tactful and blameless without bringing down everyone’s holiday cheer. Gaw bless us, every drunk and lawless one.
–Dr. Lastname

Please note: There will be no new post on Thursday, 12/24, due to the holiday. Please continue to write in, however, because there will be a new post on 12/28. Thanks, and happy holidays!

My ex-wife was always a wild outlaw in high school, (I got the kids), she’d show up from time to time, but rarely when she said she would, and you never knew when she’d be high, so the court imposed supervised visitation. I want my kids to have a mom though, but when she no-shows, the kids are crushed. Of course, the kids want to see her, particularly for Christmas, but what they don’t know is that she and her current boyfriend were caught on video robbing a liquor store, so if she’s going anywhere, it’s probably straight to jail. . My goal is to figure out a way to break this to my kids so that they don’t hate their mother (even though I sort of think they should).

You can’t protect your kids from the hurt of loving an outlaw mother, any more than you could protect yourself for falling for her years ago. Telling your kids that she’s a bad person inflicts a worse kind of hurt, because it devalues the love you and the kids have given her (which, as you know, you can’t get back).

Even if you can’t protect them from hurt, you still can and should protect the value of their love for her and whatever is meaningful about hers for them.

To begin with, don’t buy the idea that outlaws are regular people who make bad choices. That’s one of those stupid, false-hope ideas that assumes that everyone has the choice to be good or bad and can redeem themselves by making better choices. It’s sort of a hybrid of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Santa’s “Naughty/Nice” list…and it’s bullshit.

As someone who’s counseled a lot of bad people and their innocent bystanders (like you), I can tell you that people who do bad things don’t have the same control that you or I do.

Maybe their control was weakened by childhood trauma, or addiction, or maybe they were born that way, but it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t fair and some people are fucking weak in ways that cause all kinds of trouble (and some of that trouble gets caught by the crook cam).

So think about which is better: to think of mother as a self-made asshole who chose to neglect her kids because she didn’t care and the people who loved her couldn’t get through to her; or, to think of her as having a fucked-up nervous system that made her unreliable and vulnerable to drug addiction and criminal behavior in spite of all her good impulses and the good love of people who cared for her.

Don’t tell me that saying that your wife was fucked-up lets her off the hook or tells the kids that crime is OK; they know that crime isn’t OK because her life and relationships are fucked and there’s pain everywhere. Nobody’s off the hook here, except maybe for you.

Tell your kids the truth—Mom can’t help it, but she loves you—and Christmas will not be lost. If Santa had a heart, he’d give her presents in prison because, with the gifts she’s lacking for good judgment and impulse control, she doesn’t stand a chance.

STATEMENT:
Write out a statement you could share with the kids. “There’s something wrong with your mother and you have to be careful with her, no matter how much you love her. Most of the time, she can’t meet your needs or anyone else’s needs or even her own needs, other than the need to feel good right away. Recently she stole something and got caught and she’ll probably get put in prison for a while, so I don’t think you’ll see her this Christmas. She probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but she certainly hurt the people who love her and need her and she hurt herself. But that’s the way your mother is. You’ll never know, when you hear from her, whether she will keep her promises or get you in trouble. But I’ll teach you how to be careful so you can keep in touch with her as much as possible. And maybe someday she’ll get more control of herself and you’ll be able to trust her as much as you love her.”

My alcoholic father and whiny, always-in-trouble younger brother were asshole buddies who always felt neglected by selfish, got-it-together me and they took great delight in cutting me and my kids out of my father’s will. I was angry for a long time after my father died, but when my brother reached out to me recently (he explained that he’s on medication now, although he didn’t offer to give me any of the inheritance), I was happy to meet and socialize. But now he wants my grown-up kids to be part of his one-happy-family-at-Christmas reunion, and the kids, who are now grown, aren’t interested. Their memories of him are negative but they’re not mad, they just don’t care. My brother genuinely does not understand why they’re cold to him and don’t respond to his calls or emails and he asks me to intervene. My goal is to get my brother to back off without reopening the rift.

Don’t let yourself get sentimental about a Christmas reunion. You might yearn for a re-unionable brother, but you don’t have one and never will (especially now that you’re father’s gone).

Your brother will always be a high risk earthquake zone, so don’t make yourself responsible for avoiding a rift or you’ll find yourself triggering one. His dangerous expectations could easily cause a natural disaster, no matter what you do.

Medication may have made him more even-tempered, but you have no reason to believe his attitude has changed. He’s probably following the 12-step shuffle and doing gracious forgiveness now, but then, when the kids don’t respond, he’ll think he has the right to feel wounded by your neglect all over again. Of course, he’s more likely to feel that way if you say something negative about his past behavior.

So your goal isn’t to prevent a rift, but to make sure you and the kids aren’t responsible for it; not in his eyes, of course, but in your own. Make the best of the tentative, fragile, potentially explosive relationship that you have, and that means putting caution ahead of sentimentality.

Stay calm, don’t bring up the past, and remind your brother that Christmas with just the two of you isn’t so bad. Just don’t get carried away by your fucking Christmas spirit, and hopefully he won’t get carried away, either.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement in response to his Christmas expectations (and yours). “It’s nice to get together, forget about past conflict, and share Christmas as brothers. Life is complicated now that the kids are grown and have lives of their own and we can seldom get everyone together at once, and they probably expected me to tell you that they wouldn’t be able to join us because they consider me responsible for brother-to-brother communication. I don’t pressure them because I respect their other priorities. I look forward to seeing you.”