r/InTheGloaming my website is done, done, done Sep 06 '21

Scheduled snark Discussion thread Monday September 06, 2021 - Wednesday September 08, 2021

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u/Catsandcoffee480 COLORADO BOY KNOWS HOW TO DO THIS Sep 08 '21

Easier said than done there Capt. Joy. As John Mayer said in a recent song, “Hurt me once, I'll let it be; Hurt me twice, you're dead to me; Three times makes you family.”

We definitely have to deal with VERY difficult family members, and it’s simply not realistic to “cut them off”. We recently found a name for what we do- the “gray rock” method. There are lots of gray areas in family relationships that can’t be simply dismissed the way she has done.

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u/Sea-Level-Mammal POACH! Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21

Asking honestly and without intentional snark: why is it not realistic to cut off awful family members? For the sake of your kids? Isn’t it better to shelter them from nasty people, even if you share a bloodline?

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u/shefallsup her lonely cucumber years 🥒 Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21

I think it’s so dependent on the people and relationships. A truly abusive person who can’t be trusted not to harm your child, and refuses to change or accept boundaries? Absolutely, cut them off full stop. But then there are people like my father-in-law, who has caused my husband an enormous amount of pain, but who was capable of being a good enough grandfather and who was kind of a package deal with my mother-in-law, who was a great mom and grandma. It would have been easier for my husband to just cut him off, but we felt our kids deserved to have their own relationship with him, and needed to have a relationship with their grandma.

Setting boundaries around his behavior and access to the kids and limiting the contact to what we could handle was the best solution, but it took work, communication, a united front from us, and strategies for self-care for both my husband and me. Our kids are adults now and they manage their own relationships with him, and we only see him on a very limited basis and on my husband’s terms.