Guilt-Tripping

Oh my God, you guys....first, let me apologise in advance for this entry, because its going to come across bitchy and mean, and even a tad ungrateful, and you're all going to be like 'Well, I wish I could sympathise, but you're just a cow' but no, no, no, honestly I am just decompressing, you see, this weekend I went to Germany with my boyfriend and his parents, and even though I know them well, I still cant be completely myself with them, and I also can't turn around and scream at my boyfriend that his parents (who he is VERY close to, but also, because of his Jewish-Catholic lineage, feels permanently guilt about not being close enough to) are driving me batshit-crazy, and I haven't had a chance to catch up with my girls yet and bore them with this so, well, I'm just going to vent at you lot and please bear in mind that I really am very fond of my 'in-laws' (and they seem to like me), and that I did not spend the whole four days in a grump, and, and, gah...............

...so, now, The Most Annoying Moments....

1) After a loooong morning sightseeing, the in-laws finally turn their attention vaguely towards lunch. It is between half two, and three in the afternoon, and I am feeling faint. Boyfriend is also grumpy with hunger, and, I can sense, turning uncooperative. Taking charge, I march them through the streets of this quaint medieval town, pointing out possible eateries. Everyone's getting tetchy - all around us, restaurants and cafes are closing for the afternoon, boyfriend wants 'a proper meal', I need to pee, we've been walking for around five hours, and his Mu is, not unusually, peevish about something. We stop for some time to examine the menu of a fish restaurant, which has tables free, looks reasonable, serves sandwiches, salads, and hot meals, and, most important, is RIGHT THERE. I can't seem to get any real feelings on this from ersatz-Ma & Pa ( literally, they just sort of look at it and say nothing). So - unwilling to press my views upon people neither blood-related to, nor voluntarily sleeping with me - we walk on. After another five minutes of fruitless searching, Pa pipes up. 'Do you know what I feel like?', he burbles, 'A herring sandwich.'

NGGGGG!

I bite back the temptation to screech 'A what? A herring sandwich? Herring? Of the fish family? Of the genus piscinus, known to live in the sea? Where oh where might we find one of those?'. Instead I tentatively murmur, in my most self-effacing and non-strident manner 'Oh. Well, did you, I mean, not like the look of the fish restaurant we just passed? Because, well, I mean, I don't know, there's no guarantees, but they might do a herring sandwich'. 'Fish restaurant?' he asked, for all the world like a less-together version of my last-stages-of-Alzheimer's grandmother, 'What fish restaurant?'.

2) I feel EVIL for this one, its not even that bad - what it really reveals is that, just because his mum isn't exactly the same as mine, she rubs me up the wrong way in certain situations (its a real problem I have - just because I think my mum and dad are great, doesn't mean that things other parents do differently are wrong. Or even if they are, it doesn't really matter!). We drove past what looked like a pretty bad pedestrian/car accident - saw the woman on the ground, being attended to. Obviously, it was really horrible, and we all stopped talking for a bit. And then, came the cliches: Life is so fragile....just so fragile...Isn't it cruel.' etc. etc. Life's fragile, eh...gee, you think? Tell me more about this life can be cruel opinion you've got - I've never heard anyone say anything like that before.

You see? It's not that bad, I'm irrational I know. It just bugged me. I was also bugged when she mentioned how she hates people that are 'on diet's (well, lucky for you you don't need to be on one), and when she used a whiny little girl voice that is NOT cute in a woman of 55, and when...oh, its no good, the guilt is too much. Ok, moving on....

3) On our final night - during which almost no time, other than sleeping, has been spent not in a unit of four - I inform my boyfriend that I have put in enough family time and deserve an hour with just him, at the village pub, between returning from sightseeing, and dinner. Hoorah - he readily agrees.

We go to his parent's room to let them know we're going out - or, as Boyfriend puts it 'break the news' (yes, I know, ominous, ain't it). As soon as we tell them, Ma starts mocking the plan (as we'll probably go to the pub a quatre after dinner as well) but that's her way, so whatever. But THEN, she says 'Why not see if the wine cellar [cute little single producer wine businesses, that let you taste their wines in small quantities, very common in this part of Germany] in the village is open. If it is, give us a call, and we'll all go there instead together'.

AARGH! Can you believe it? Surely even the most thick-skinned monster-in-law would understand why we wanted to go to the pub on our own, and would have the sensitivity not to demand to be included. I mean, really! Am I crazy, am I crazy in the head to think that? Truth be told, I was so flabbergasted that I just smiled, hemmed and hawed and scuttled out of their room, and outside the hotel before I either weakly capitulated, or said something rude (ha! as if - it would only be the former). I don;t know what Boyfriend said to them, but - thank fuck! - we went to the pub, and they did not join us.

SO! Do you think I'm awful? I do! Writing it down makes me feel HORRIBLE - I am going to post this, but I might not leave it up for long. Although. I would say I love them, I do spend a lot of time in my head complaining to myself about them and their slightly controlling relationship with their son. I thought writing it down would make me feel less bad, but I feel worse! Hey! Perhaps I should write about it whenever they irritate me - then instead of being pissed off with them, I'll despise myself. Problem solved!

Comments

[Sarah]

LOL, you're not *that* evil. I mean, at least you didn't bite their heads off every time they offended you in some way (I know, you probably did mentally, and yes, a saint wouldn't do that, room for improvement etc., but still, not bad).

Re: #1. I'm usually the food-focused one, and I will happily lead the charge into a restaurant if I sense too much hesitation going on. Luckily for me, most of the people I travel with either understand and anticipate my need for food (e.g., my husband) or share it, so I'm set.

Re: #2. I kick myself for this one all the time. There are a couple of people I work with who will spout banalities and trite sayings for any occasion, and the aggravating thing is, I really think they believe in what they're saying. They're being sincere! It makes me feel awful for despising them for saying such beat-to-death things. Still working on that one.

Re: #3. I hear about this sort of thing a lot, but have only rarely experienced it. Is it possible your boyfriend's mum has largely forgotten what it's like to be unmarried and courting, for lack of a better phrase? If she's used to being around her husband day in and day out, for years, her desire to socialize may have blinded her to the realization that a young, romantic couple needs some alone-time while on vacation. My mother is normally amazingly shrewd about all things concerning the relationships of her children, but even she's slipped up on this one once or twice, and I think that's the reason. Really, your boyfriend ought to be the one to stand up to his mum on things like this (politely, of course).

Well, that's my 2 cents. Did you try any white German wine, and did you like it? ;-) Oh, and here's something I'm curious about: if you don't believe in God, why do you use the expression "Oh my God"? You're not alone, I know tons of atheists who do that, I've just always wondered why.

[Sonetka]

Nah, not that bad; I think we all go through it. It wouldn't be too great if you were snapping in their faces, but you're not - you're snapping on your blog, which is the appropriate place for such things anyway :).

And I fully sympathize with the problem - my in-laws are fantastic, raised great kids, I love them, but my father-in-law is, like Sarah's coworkers, addicted to platitudes. He just isn't very good the verbal end of things, for a lot of reasons (though he's a friggin' genius in biology, which I barely got through two semesters of) and often ends up saying things that don't come out quite right, and this drives me unreasonably nuts. (I remember after I got pregnant - after 9 treatment cycles and a horrifying number of both drug injections and dead embryos) he said something to the effect of "By the way, if you feel you can't do this again, it's completely all right with us if you want to adopt your other children." I know what he *meant*, which is that he and my mother-in-law are supportive of our adopting and won't be second-guessing us - which is great - but the way he said it, it sounded like he was officially giving us permission to consider the possibility. Granted, on the offensiveness scale, it's not even a patch on the classic "Just relax" but it irritated me a lot, and I feel bad about that, since I know he didn't mean anything bad by it.

[Sonetka]

Ugh, sorry for the all the typos in the previous post (ironic, considering I'm supposedly the verbal one!) Way past bedtime out here.

[Jenny]

Thanks guys! Am amused, Sarah, to see you are as intolerant of cliche as me (which is silly, because I'm SURE I use them all the time - just different ones!). IT just makes me want to shout out inappropriate things like 'No! Death is sweet release!' when they start in with the 'life is fragile' crap.

I did drink a LOT of white wine (also a lot of German beer) - the red wine in that area is rightly called 'rotwein'. Bought home a couple of bottles of nice dry Reisling. It's a great area - every spare inch of land is covered in vine, and they were all turning autumn colours. And the producers literally do want you to knock on their doors and try. However - I've decided that white wine definitely dries my mouth out more than red - if I have it at lunch I'll feel parched all afternoon. Still, you can't complain - the bottles we bought were yum, and about $5!

Re: 'Oh My God' - totally a verbal tic - I'm aware of the contradiction (!) but I'll never stop saying it - it's very *expressive*! Do you say it, or do you try not to?

Sonetka - Bloody hell , talk about not having a way with words - your FIL must permanently have his foot in his mouth. On the old 'infertile idiocy'scorecard, that's a pretty good one.

And I'm so sorry you have gone through so much - to resort hypocritically to cliches, life is BLOODY unfair.

[Aitch]

Wow, I think you have every right to gripe. In-laws can be so...Wrong sometimes.

[Sarah]

I try not to say "Oh my God", and mainly I succeed. I substitute with "Gosh" and words like that... I occasionally slip and either mentally or verbally utter a profanity, but I do try hard to not take my Lord's name in vain. :-) I admit though, I do say "Good Lord" on occasion, which is probably just as bad. Memo to self: stop that! ;-) That all being said, I think there are times when "Oh my God" would NOT be taking God's name in vain, but it depends on the seriousness of the matter at hand.