PSA: Please Remember OP Has To Live With Her Family

PinkFridge

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 9:41 am

I really thought I started a thread like this but couldn't find it. I wanted to post a link to it in a certain thread. Oh well.

Look, ladies, when someone posts something problematic about a family member, and we're not talking about "get out of the house now abuse" but anything from quirks and idiosyncrasies to middos and beyond, please, PLEASE remember that OP has to live with her husband/in-laws/siblings/kids, etc. It is SO not constructive to call her husband/in-laws/siblings/kids jerks, contributing to global problems, people you are glad to now have notice to avoid in the streets, etc.

And not only does OP have to live with these people, but she should do so with love and respect. Our comments should not make it harder for her to do so.

There have to be kinder and gentler ways to express oneself.

Thanks for letting me vent.

SplitPea

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 9:55 am

Though I agree sometimes we need to hear we are not alone in our feelings about someone.

Totally hypothetical situation. MIL always upsets me. Dh always defends MIL and often chooses her side over me. It makes me angry and depressed. Sometimes I need to hear that I am right. That what MIL is doing is not right. That DH needs to support ME and our family and not her.

Sometimes a person needs to hear their feelings are justified. If they think a person who is not being a good person is totally okay they might get depressed with themselves.

YES OP needs to live with her husband (if she chooses to) but she does NOT need to tolerate emotional abuse or manuplitation. And I think that this is a good place to help people see that.

PinkFridge

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 10:10 am

Again, I'm not talking about the pathological.
Is it so much less effective if we don't use certain incendiary language? Really, help me out here.

Oh, and I'm a big amother defender. This isn't amother-enabled. Please feel free to spinoff if need be.

seeker

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 12:13 pm

I agree with PinkFridge; in that hypothetical situation you could say "You're right, that was not very considerate of MIL. I'm sorry your DH does not understand your perspective." And so on, perhaps with a suggestion of how to explain to DH or something. You don't need to say that the DH is a horrible person for not siding with the wife, and certainly not anything superlative because unfortunately there is enough nastiness in the world that most of these are very unlikely to be the WORST anything.

b from nj

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 12:35 pm

Sorry PF, I know the thread you are referring to & you are probably responding to my (& others') reaction to something that an OP related about her DH but sometimes ppl. NEED to hear when their loved ones are just WRONG & insulting to others b/c of their narrow-minded viewpoints. Sometimes ppl. really need to hear it like it is especially when the OP in that thread was mentioning that she was starting to agree with some of what her DH was saying.

I'm all for being respectful but when a post is highly insulting & disrespectful to me or to others on the site it is not always easy to be all warm & fuzzy.

lubaussie

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 3:01 pm

b from nj wrote:

Why does she NEED to hear such insulting things about her DH? Is narrow-mindedness worse than destroying someone's Sholom bayis? Is "insulting others" (when the comments from DH were not even SAID to anyone else besides OP and maybe the shadchan) worse than the horrible, disgusting and disproportionate (IMHO) way in which HER dh was insulted? Or better than insulting DW who SAID she didn't agree with the insulting viewpoints? Are people such babies that they have to respond to insults by some awful ones themselves?

imasoftov

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 4:13 pm

lubaussie wrote:

I ONLY went FOR blood WHEN she SAID she HAD sympathy FOR some OF HIS codswallop.

PinkFridge

Tue, Mar 11 2014, 5:14 pm

[quote=]I ONLY went FOR blood WHEN she SAID she HAD sympathy FOR some OF HIS codswallop.[/quote]

I don't remember your post but point taken.
While this was inspired by a certain thread, I think it's relevance transcends any one particular thread.
I guess that even if I was closely related to a well-dressed Eyal whose parents were divorced, I wouldn't take it seriously. FTR, I have relatives with "modern" names, relatives who dress well, and relatives whose parents were divorced. And various permutations.