Fair (Family) Compromise

Posted by fxckfeelings on December 5, 2011

People often think of their workplace as a family, but what’s more true and less acknowledged is that a family is a workplace, albeit one in which you have a deeper investment and more casual Fridays. In any family, money is love and love is money, and you can’t disagree about money without its getting personal, so don’t let it. Maybe you can’t stop the hurt when you feel short-changed by someone you love, but you can keep it from spreading by keeping your feelings to yourself and remembering your most important priorities before you negotiate. You’ve got too much to lose to endanger your job security.
–Dr. Lastname

I trust that my sister will be a fair executrix for my father’s will, but I often feel out of the communication loop because she’s closer to my other sister, and I’m often the last to know about her decisions. When I’ve shared my feelings about this in the past, she’s just gotten testy. Recently, I wondered why his will had not put in a special bequest for my daughter, because he’d once expressed that intention, so I asked my sister whether she could get hold of an earlier will and see whether the bequest had been there before and then taken out. She blew up at me about how I didn’t trust her, and couldn’t see why it was such a big deal. My goal is to get her to see that my request was legitimate and to keep me informed.

Nothing has more potential to damage a family dynamic—not a long car trip, adultery, a coming out here or there—like a dispute over a will.

If somebody feels screwed, cheated, or in any way shortchanged, blood ties will get bloody.

Luckily, you trust your sister, so that eliminates the most common source of conflict. Unfortunately, you’re now creating conflict in an extremely fragile situation where it doesn’t need to exist.

When it comes to wills, you have broader goals than getting inside the loop or having your feelings understood. For one thing, you can’t get inside the loop; it’s an old loop, and if you’re not inside by now, just trying to get into it will turn it into a noose.

For another, you haven’t stopped to ask yourself whether there’s any point in being inside the loop. If your sisters are closer with one another than with you, then so be it. Even if you don’t have a loop of your own, theirs doesn’t seem so inviting.

Ultimately, it’s more important for you to consider what your goals should be at the time of your father’s death. It’s natural for the pain of his loss, or impending loss, to make both you and your sisters testy. Given how the situation is an emotional landmine, choose your priorities carefully.

Unless you’re mercenary, which I assume you’re not, a few dollars doesn’t matter. And, however much you were deprived of love by one family member or another, your bigger interest now is in keeping things peaceful. If you need love, get a dog, and if you’re still desperate for that loop, take up crochet. If you want to keep your life free from sib-wars that will enrich lawyers and therapists and cause years of pain, however, your goal is to keep the peace (and keep your mouth shut) while helping your sister settle the estate.

Accept the fact that your father’s death may leave you with feelings of emptiness and perhaps resentment at decisions that should have been made differently. Death forces acceptance, or else, and acceptance is necessary if you’re going to pick up the mantle of leadership and help your family survive this trial intact.

STATEMENT:
“In addition to mourning my father, I can’t get over the feeling that I’ve been unfairly pushed aside in my family. I’m confident, however, that I haven’t deserved such treatment and my job, therefore, is not to react to family feelings, but to take pride in my own identity and make the best of a transition that passes leadership and responsibility to me and my sisters.”

I love my husband and he’s a great father, but I can’t stand the way he wants to mess with our house. It’s an architectural masterpiece that got left to me by my parents, along with their collection of old American antiques, and I want to pass them on intact to the next generation. My husband doesn’t have the same reverence for the place that I do, and wants to put in some of his own furniture and repaint rooms that really don’t need it. I want him to be comfortable but I’m not going to get rid of beautiful antiques or waste money on repainting rooms that were recently painted. My goal is to get him to understand how I feel about the place and to back off of unreasonable demands.

It’s hard to accommodate two loves, your home and your family, without someone taking it personally. It’s like a strange love triangle between you, your husband, and interior design.

So long before you get to talk about specific compromises, your husband is going to resent playing second fiddle to a sofa and you’re going to feel he doesn’t care enough about you to support your love of architecture and your family’s traditions.

Try to fight those feelings by presenting the problem less personally. Sure, it’s normal to feel under-loved and misunderstood, but that discussion will go nowhere, as you already know, and communication on that theme is a bad idea.

Instead, ask your husband for a list of specific changes that would allow him to feel at home. If you can’t stand listening to his ideas, and are too likely to blurt out your opposition, then ask a decorator to serve as your intermediary/mediator. As any decorator would tell you, their real job is often family therapy.

If you like, make a list of what is most important for you to preserve, and then sit down when you’re not feeling too tired or stressed and take a look at your husband’s ideas. Don’t think of them as demands or impositions or threats to the family legacy, just ideas. And while you’re at it, cost out the alternative of living separately. Some people can afford such arrangements, and the exercise gives you a concrete Plan B instead of an unthinkable insult.

Or you can pass your priorities, together with your husband’s, to the designated decorator/family therapist and charge him/her with the job of preparing compromises that might allow both of you to feel at home. At least, if that doesn’t work, you would both hate the decorator.

Remember, people can love one another very much and still not find a way to be at home with one another. In retrospect, that would become a key criteria for you in any future partner search, as it should be for everyone. One reason you move in together is to find out whether you can both feel at home in the same (historic) house.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling my love for my husband threatens my tie to the old family home, but I’ll try to keep my fears and needs in check, and my mouth closed, while I try to find a compromise. Then I’ll know I’ve done my best.”