I only see my family at family events. Naturally these include Christmas and most of the birthdays that crop up throughout the year. But also we tend to have the odd get togethers throughout the year if I feel like it.
It probably totals around 15-20 meet ups per year, depending on what is going on.
I do not live in the same town as my family, but around 60 mins away by car.
I have found it difficult to increase this number of meet ups, because I don’t particularly rate my own parents. I had an unhappy childhood. I keep contact for the sake of my own children. I want them to have a fairly robust extended family experience, free of drama and family feuds. But I also maintain a distance and I don’t allow unsupervised overnights etc.
My siblings are 13 years younger than me and we don’t share the same father. They have echoed some of my issues with our parents in the past but overall they seem to have a better relationship, albeit one that I think is unhealthy as they spend almost all of their time together.
I believe that my family is enmeshed and that I am “on the outside”. By choice. I’m sure they’d subsume me if they could. Given this pop-diagnosis of mine, I have always dismissed the amount of time that they all spend together as not normal and not ever wondered whether I am too much in the other direction.
At family gatherings, I do acknowledge that I am usually the last to arrive and first to leave. But other than that, I think I put in a perfectly ordinary amount of face time by any functional family’s standards.
However, my family disagree and after a family conference this week (without me, obviously) have decided that they would prefer I sling my hook permanently. And so my sibling has sent me a long and vicious email, signed from all of them, calling me a “bitch” and telling me to do one because I don’t see them enough as it is. Enforced estrangement. Apparently I am also being removed from my parents’ will.
One reason cited by sibling is that I have only seen their almost 2 year old 10 times (they have apparently counted) since the child was born. I mean, they were born during the lockdown, so give a girl a break.
To be perfectly honest, although I do feel understandably upset, I won’t be held to ransom and I am more than content to accept their new terms. Seems a shame though. Although I’m not convinced my kids will be missing out, as no one in my family remembered their birthdays this year. 🤦🏻♀️
What does everyone else think?
15-20 appearances at family functions per annum… yay or nay?
Naturally, I do NOT think I am being unreasonable. But as you can probably gather from my tone, I have always taken a less than enthused attitude towards my family and I’m sure it shows so, in a way, they probably have a point.