Annual Family Arguments.

[EmpressOfTheSofa]

I’m such a mug.

I hosted Easter Sunday yesterday, my parents, two sisters, one BIL and then me, adult DD and her boyfriend and my DH.

Over dinner S1 asked DD what her plans are. She just turned 19 and is finishing college, she’s had a bumpy ride after failing her first year and then only doing six weeks of an apprenticeship. She’s about to gain a BTEC in art and works in a pub. I couldn’t be prouder.

DD said for now she will pick up full-time hours in the pub. S1 went off on a massive rant about how hospitality isn’t a career, there’s only a small window to choose a career before your life is a waste. Hospitality is for losers and thick people who can’t do anything else.

I manage a cafe and was a pub manager before that. She left school with no qualifications and worked her way up through various office jobs and now earns £££ in HR. She’s single, for context.

I pushed back and said I didn’t have a ‘career’ until my late 30s and that’s ok. She cackled and said I still don’t; and my life wouldn’t be worth anything if I didn’t have DH (he has a proper job, you see).

I tried to keep it light, laughed it off and took the dog out. But I’m still furious. And everyone just sat there! Including DH.

There is a common theme with her of mocking my job, she told me a few months ago that my qualifications aren’t real (I did a L3 apprenticeship and got distinctions across the board,) as everyone passes it and it’s easy. I was made to feel small and stupid for celebrating it. But now she’s come right out and told DD that she’d be a loser if she worked in my field as well.

I’ve woken up today with it all going round in my head. I’m angry and embarrassed. I’m off to work in a bit in my shit job that isn’t worthy of respect. I’m trying to laugh it off but it has got to me. DH says everyone just thinks she’s a mouthy idiot but I’m the only one who ever challenges her nonsense and I come out of it feeling awful.

Anyone else have a ridiculous family dynamic like this where it’s acceptable to put someone down to this extent? I think I’m done.

I worked in hospitality on and off all my life

many people have this view, they’re the same people that “expect” good service and complain at the state if the industry. An industry that is extremely important to the economy and has suffered since brexit and covid saw an exit if many of the workers

dont let your sister live rent free in her head

next time tell her HR is where you go if you’d not survive in the recruitment industry in commission targets

next time tell her HR is where you go if you’d not survive in the recruitment industry in commission targets

Absolutely this! Or similar. Give as good back. What a bitch she is.

I think your DH is right, recognise that everyone else sees her for the mouthy idiot she is and don't feed into her drama. She is probably saying most of what she is because she sees the reaction it gets from you.
Nod, smile, give her a non-committal, dismissive response to shut her down and talk to someone else.

I know it's not easy, my DF and I had a similar argumentative relationship (though minus the personal insults). But you just have to try hard to ignore it.

Hey @EmpressOfTheSofa I'm sorry that you've got rude rellies. You took the trouble to host, then they were horrible to you. That's not nice, and it's rude.

And you know what, that's on them. Your career is nothing to be ashamed of, In fact it's something to be proud of. You work in a demanding profession, under immense strain sandwiched between demanding customers, commercial pressures and recruitment nightmares. You are responsible for health and safety, training, food hygiene (and not killing people with dodgy food which is rather critical), running teams, scheduling, accounting, ordering, stock management. The list goes on and on. It's not a doddle to work in service industries and anyone that thinks it is, is deluded.

Hold your head up high and if you ever invite them back (I wouldn't) tell them to fuck off if they start again.

Hope you have a a good day today 😊 and remember that they are dickheads and have to be with themselves all day every day, you only have to out up with them occasionally. They have to be with their dickhead selves 24/7. Imagine the horror of that!

I’d have asked her to leave and not come back. Of course hospitality is a career.
Alternatively I’d have got nasty and said “Bloody Hell, it’s a good job you never bred, we don’t need your kind of envy and prejudice in the bloodline!”

Don't invite her round again. What's the point. She's your sister and she treats you like this so why would you bother with her.

I’d be furious and I’d be telling her why and also that if she can’t be nice she can’t come back

Why is her being single required context?

Think your dh is right. Everyone else in the room knows she is completely out of order and making a fool of herself. Completely ignore her as she loves the fight so having it fall on deaf ears will not satisfy her.

But l would be slow to ask her back especially

picking on your dd at a vulnerable time in her life as she makes decisions for her future.

Had she drink taken as it sometimes brings out the obnoxious side in people?

Because she said I’d be nothing without DH’s job.

Why do you keep inviting her when she behaves like this and makes you feel this way?

It's not obligatory - just don't have her over again.

Honestly this is why I feel like a
mug. Things will be good and I think I can host a nice time and then she’ll make me feel small AGAIN.

Did you ever see that Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train, where two complete Strangers meet and decide to swap the murders of annoying relatives so they wouldn't get caught?

I often think that at holiday family events, mumsnet should run a 'swap me out' service where we exchange each others families and have a grand time telling other people's relatives they're acting like arseholes whilst sitting at thr dinner table and smiling sweetly.

Re-label your sister like Peter Kay's uncle knobhead. She's that insecure relative who has to tell other people how shit their lives are. Just think how unhappy she must be deep down to do that.

Limit contact to once a year and secretly run a bitch bingo card with your DH that you can chuckle about afterwards.

You're giving her too much power and letting her live in your head. Take it back and limit her impact on your life.

On repeat "why do you continually need to put others down to make yourself feel better? Is everything really OK with you because your behaviour says otherwise?"

Call her out every single time untim she gets the mesage.

So I did call her out, and said you’re being really offensive about my career and DD’s choices. She said ‘I’m only trying to help DD, I don’t want her to waste her life’. I said so are you saying I’ve wasted mine? And she said yes; you’d be nothing without DH.

She says DD has to get a job in a big company with prospects to climb the ladder. I said yes, she can do that in hospitality, there’s more to the sector than just front of house work. She poo pooed that and said well they don’t employ bar staff to do head office jobs. Well, they literally do. Most of the HO team in my last company had done just that.

NO ONE at the table apart from my DH has a professional job by the way. So she was putting everybody down really but specifically targeting hospitality. Other sister works in commission based sales (but I think that’s ok because it’s an ‘office’ job).

I honestly don’t know why I give her the headspace. She has also said I look ridiculous taking a £500 handbag on the bus, that she wouldn’t be seen dead driving a Ford as they are cheap (parents have a aka, we have a Fiesta, sis has a Kuga…she has a BMW). She’s a fucking snobby idiot.

Honestly this is why I feel like a mug. Things will be good and I think I can host a nice time and then she’ll make me feel small AGAIN.

So just stop. You can still see your parents and your other sister - but you're under no obligation to spend time with anyone you don't want to.

Easy to say, but I just wouldn't invite her.
She sounds nasty.

Well that's your christmas card list shortened.. Honestly op just keep her away. Dna doesn't mean she gets to abuse you in your own home or at all.

• She's that insecure relative who has to tell other people how shit their lives are. Just think how unhappy she must be deep down to do that.

she’ll make me feel small AGAIN.*

The trick with people like this is to get clear in your own mind that they do not really have any power over how you feel, unless you give them that power.

Don't give her that power

She is only jealous of what you do have, jealous and insecure.

Imagine how she would feel if you smiles indulgently at he, as the toddler she is behaving like. You are happy with your life, you have a job you enjoy and are good at, you ah E a lovely DH and family.

Why would you care how she tried to needle you. Smile indulgently at her and do not rise to it. Pinch you thumb between your fingers to remind yourself to just smile and give no other reaction

I promise you she will hate being ignored so much more

Good luck. You are doing so well, don't let be undermine you.

So does S1 never go out to a restaurant, never stay in a hotel? I doubt that very much. Probably the first to complain if a place is short staffed and service is limited or slow.

Don't invite her again, please tell her why.

She is massively jealous of what you have OP.

Don't invite her anymore. Or if you do and she does it again just smile and roll your eyes at everyone else and change the subject. OR give her a head tilt and say 'are you ok? Because you don't seem like your ok'

While your sister is clearly a twat don't say this. No-one would swap a career in HR to be a rec consultant, which is a very shitty job. People usually make the jump from recruiter into HR, not the other way round 🤷

Well done for sticking up for yourself and your DD. She sounds dreadful. I wouldn’t invite her again. I’d be disappointed at no one else pulling her up, particularly your DH. That’s very hurtful. And as for her snobbery, ignore! Interestingly, the more money I’ve had in life, the less I’ve been interested in new phones and flashy cars. It’s like a weird reverse psychology thing. I know I could buy them but I don’t need to prove I can to anyone!

She’s very desperate to big herself up at the expense of everyone else, isn’t she?

I wonder why?

Don’t let her be the centre of attention. Ignore, change the subject, grey rock. And where possible, don’t invite her. You don’t have to have people who put you down at your table. If she asks why no invite just tell her calmly that she put you and your Dd down and you it spoiled the occasion. And don’t rise to the wailing and gnashing that ensues. Just shrug. “You said what you think, I said what I think”.

Just look at all the supportive comments you’ve had on here most saying your sister is insecure and quite possibly also jealous. You have a lovely family and a career to be proud of. If you’re happy in your life then you’re winning her comments are irrelevant.

Keep contact to a minimum and just ignore her digs because as much as we’d all like to deliver perfect put downs in these situations, it rarely works that way. It is possible to grey rock, ignore comments and change the subject. Once I’d perfected this with a difficult family member I felt a sense of serene satisfaction after every event where they’d tried and failed to get a rise out of me.