Yes. My thought was that he probably didn’t want to “room” with the girls in order to have sex, but so that he/they could collectively slip your supervisions in order to get loud, talk about crude things they can’t talk about around you, drink and/or do drugs. It was still a over the top to imply that you ought to think he was a gay pedophile who posed a danger to your two children. That was a jaw-dropper. The kid has no self-respect, apparently.
The only real issues on the trip were the sleeping arrangements and who would sit in the front seat on that particular leg of the drive. He’s spent a great deal of time at my house over the years, sometimes for a week or ten days at a time, and he’s generally been pleasant to have around, which is why I didn’t think there should be any problem with this trip.
Thank you. I ask for prayers for this whole family. It’s tragic to watch it traveling down the generations despite all my efforts to get away from the yelling, screaming, swearing, animosity, and dysfunction.I’m sorry you have to deal with this, though. It is a great disappointment when you come to realize that your family does not “have your back”, and turn out to be a source of trials and not a source of support, in spite of your best efforts. I’m sure we all extend our condolences!
It does not take a personality disorder to commit the sins of rash judgment, calumny, or detraction. If one chooses to think and say the worst about someone else instead of to extend the charity required to give the benefit of the doubt about a situation about which one lacks full knowledge or to refrain from telling lies in order to make a situation appear other than one knows it to be or to know a real flaw and refuse to share knowledge of it with those who do not need to know it, then that is all it takes.I suspect a lot of this goes back to my nephew hearing them talk for years among themselves about all my supposed flaws. Nothing I can do about that. My mother has spent many years telling people all the things she thinks I’ve done wrong, and in many of those cases, when I hear the details, they aren’t even true. (Her summation of what really happened in my marriage, for example–despite the fact that even I didn’t know how bad it really was until the legal system forced him to show me our true financial situation–and my mother was not at that meeting with those lawyers seeing those statements. She just tells people I’m imagining things and that poor XH has done nothing at all!) I suspect THAT goes back to either a pre-existing personality disorder and/or the results of being in an abusive marriage herself for 50 years.
I think one of my struggles here will be resentment against my mother. My XH’s aunt banned me from her home for years and I had no clue why. When I finally got answers, they were so bizarre as to leave me wondering if her age made her unaware she’d actually been talking to my voicemail.
But my mother (see a pattern here? ) who wasn’t even there, who didn’t even know the woman, backed her up and told me I deserved it. I can guarantee I never did anything remotely like this to her. I say please and thank you to the dog, for Pete’s sake, I certainly don’t mistreat my husband’s elderly relatives.I would be disinclined to let any of them in, ever.
He’s made his bed, and she could not be blamed for letting him sleep in it. Still, this is the kind of thing that happens in families with typical levels of dysfunction, too–a “dysfunctional family” having been defined by the experts as any family with more than one person in it–and the offending party has been known to come around to a clear if not explicit admission that they were in the wrong. Sometimes they show their contrition by being particularly pleased to be accommodating to the person they have wronged, rather than having enough courage and humility to apologize outright, but I mean someone who clearly comes back with the tail between the legs, so to speak. He might try to make it up to her, in order to go back to acting decently. If she thinks it was a one-time slip of which he seems sufficiently ashamed not to repeat it, she might decide to give him a second chance.I would be disinclined to let any of them in, ever.
More time in purgatory for me, perhap. But at least it will be PEACEFUL.
Just BTW, while we can only do what we can stand to do, I doubt the strategy that puts off any of our homework load on the hopes that it will be easier in Purgatory.I would be disinclined to let any of them in, ever.
More time in purgatory for me, perhap. But at least it will be PEACEFUL.
I can tell that this really hurt you. I’m so sorry you have been continually disappointed by your family members.
Thank you. I suppose in a day or two, I’ll be able to do that. I have been well and easily able to pray for my parents. Right now, I’m still angrier than I’ve been in years.
Agreed.
I first gave him a rough estimate. He asked Saturday night for a dollar amount. I went through my credit card statements online and wrote it up for him (spent an hour doing it), stating clearly what each purchase was for–breakfast cereal, fruit at street vendor. I left it for him Sunday morning, and when I came home from Mass, he didn’t ask questions, just informed me I needed to leave receipts on the table for him and I didn’t. I pointed out that while I’m running all over NYC with 7 kids in tow and in and out of subways and buses and a full loaded car, some of those receipts got lost in the chaos. I could see where it was going, that he was going to claim if I didn’t have a receipt, maybe I was fudging on numbers and he wasn’t going to pay.
But in short, yes, I gave him the dollar amount he requested, he quibbled, I tried to cut it short, and he launched into name-calling and abuse.Thank you. I can tell how mad I still am because I first took it as a lecture that I should just hand him anything
but you’re right, he asked, I gave. He took advantage and that will be the end of it. But I will try to just remember, he asked and I gave, and leave it at that in my heart.He’s going to ruin your “reputation” with someone who wouldn’t grant you the good reputation that you already deserve. That is not the same kind of loss as ruining your reputation with someone with better judgment or someone who controls your life in some way.Thank you. I can tell how mad I still am because I first took it as a lecture that I should just hand him anything
I think part of what hurts and is upsetting is that given family dynamics, I know he’s going to give his spin on this story to my parents and his mother, claiming that I was somehow trying to cheat him and they’re going to cluck and sympathize with him and add it to their arsenal. My daughter is already on the bandwagon insisting I ought to have given him all the receipts (never mind that it’s almost impossible to keep track of every receipt in the given situation.)
The other possibility is to ask him what he thinks he owes. It is not as if he’s some HR person who won’t reimburse because he wasn’t on the trip to witness the consumption himself. He was in the car, he slept in the bed, he ate the food. I don’t see how he can disagree that he owes something. Even if he comes up with a certain number of cents per mile and some low-ball estimate of the meals and lodging he didn’t pay for, it would be something!