Doommate

Posted by fxckfeelings on July 30, 2012

From Dorothy’s mantra to the mortgage crisis, having a home is a considered a crucial part of our lives. That’s why having to share your home with a jerk is a special kind of torture; between their criticism and your own unhappiness, it’s hard not to feel like you’ll never be happy or successful until you get free of them. In actuality, however, life sometimes forces good people to live with bad, and the trick is to figure out for yourself whether it’s really necessary to leave, not in order to avoid pain, but because you’re doing what you think is best for you, your family, and your finances. Sure, maybe there’s no place like home, but if your home includes a monster, you need to think it through before finding a place like home, but better.
–Dr. Lastname

I try very hard to treat my wife’s father like family (her mother died years ago), but her dad is a hard guy to spend much time with. He drinks too much, refuses to own up to it, and (surprise!) isn’t a reliable baby-sitter (although he thinks he’s the greatest), so we can’t leave him alone with the kids. Worst of all, he’s very sensitive, so any hint of criticism is likely to put him into an “I’ll never talk to you again” mode that, I’m sure, would be hard for my wife to bear. I’ve learned how to put up with him over the course of our marriage—I basically walk on egg shells, agree with everything he says and count down the minutes until we can leave—but he recently decided he wants to come live with us, and I’m totally stuck. If we say no to him, it will hurt my wife terribly, but if we don’t say no, we’ll end up divorced, or he’ll end up dead and I’ll get the chair (ha ha). My goal is to figure a way out of this dilemma.

Nobody wants to have a broken relationship with their parents, which is why your father-in-law can threaten your wife with a shunning. Since this guy isn’t actually your parent, you see his threats to cut you off as a promising possibility.

After all, if he stops talking to you, you don’t have to put up with his demands, supervise time with his grandkids, or accept him as your future housemate. Unfortunately, you know that, even though your wife agrees with you, expressing your negative feelings about him to her will likely stir up a bunch of guilt and make her feel worse.

I applaud your dedication to preserving your family’s relationship with your father-in-law, regardless of whether he’s a drunk and/or a jerk; keeping a family intact works out best for everyone in the long run, even if it costs you some pain. That doesn’t mean, however, that you or your wife should ever let yourself be blackmailed by your need for such a relationship.

Your wife will suffer greatly if her dad punishes her with the silent treatment, but she and everyone else will suffer much more if she allows him to move into your house on his terms, in a way that violates her priorities. That benefits no one but therapists (as always, thanks).

Putting aside the issue of her suffering, ask yourself how your father-in-law’s proposal is likely to affect your major priorities. You’ve said it’s a negative in terms of childcare, safety, and limit-setting. It will also probably undermine your wife’s authority and leadership, and interfere with her ability to take a break and for the two of you to build your relationship.

Then ask yourself whether taking care of your father-in-law is necessary, in terms of what will happen to him if you don’t. You’re not saying he’s sick or broke, so it’s hard to see how you can fault yourself for saying no.

So, instead of sharing your negative feelings about him with your wife, urge her to think about what option is best for your family and whether she really needs to care for her father, given his ability to care for himself. Refuse to discuss what would make you or her happy, because making anyone happy, you or him, isn’t the issue. Insist on speaking as one manager to another about what’s best for the family you’re both responsible for.

If your wife can’t tolerate pressure from her father, you’re all in trouble. If, however, she has the strength to do what she thinks is right, regardless of what her father says, then yes, she will suffer for awhile, but she’ll grow from the experience and become a stronger mother and partner.

In the meantime, every time dad threatens to stop speaking to you, you can only hope it’s a promise that, with your wife’s blessing, will one day be fulfilled.

STATEMENT:
“I hate to see my wife suffering from her father’s alcoholic nastiness, but I accept that he can’t be helping who he is and she can’t help being vulnerable to him. Instead of trying to get her to see him as a jerk, I’ll urge her to consider her criteria for managing and protecting our family and insist on her right to do what she thinks is necessary. If he stops talking to her, I’ll encourage her to regard that as a message from his alcoholism, rather than a good father who cares about his daughter.”

I can’t afford not to live with my sister, but she drives me crazy. I don’t mean that she irritates me or gets under my skin. I mean that she goes through my things, is unbelievably cruel in what she says (she has no friends), and won’t leave me alone. She insults the girls I date, if I’m ever foolish enough to bring them home. Without a better job though, I can’t afford to move out of our parents’ condo (they’ve left for Florida) and meanwhile, I hate myself for living with abuse and see myself as a total loser. My goal is to figure out a way to escape from prison.

If there’s one big drawback to the prosperity we’ve achieved in the United States, it’s feeling we shouldn’t be poor and that being poor results only from failure. Blaming yourself for being poor is as Americas as apple pie, but it’s just as bad for you and not worth experiencing (with or without ice cream).

In reality, poor is often another word for bad luck. It can result from all the things you don’t and can’t control, like illness, a terrible economy, or a mismatch between the skills you were born with and the jobs that are now available.

We all want to believe that hard work conquers all, but that’s the biggest and baddest false hope and should be killed off, right now, if you want to respect yourself. Christ always talked about people who didn’t deserve to be poor, and he respected poor people who did the best with their poverty more than he respected the rich for what they did with their things. So if you want to know “what would Jesus do,” he’d treat you with more respect than you treat yourself.

It’s natural, when you’re feeling lousy, to count up the things working against you, like not having money, a spouse, or any better options for a roommate. I assume, however, that you haven’t let your sister’s nastiness stop you from pursuing a better job or building up a network of friends, since she also hasn’t prevented you from dating. That’s something to be proud of.

Accept the fact that your economic life sucks, but your efforts don’t. Then you’ll be ready to grab good luck when it comes along because you won’t have let bad luck define who you are. It’s the American way.

STATEMENT:
“Every time I have to return home to my parents’ condo to hear my sister rip me apart, I wonder what I’ve done wrong in my life to end up like this. The worst that’s happened, however, is that my life is hard because life is hard, and, in truth, I’m making the best of it. I don’t know when this trying time will be over but, so far, I’ve met the challenge and I’m not going to stop.”