my way and the highway

[metaphortunate]

A friend of mine just wrote me for advice, citing that I am the expert regarding family members being disappointing letdowns.

I don't usually think of it that way, but…maybe I'm not just being a drama queen in that I am sad and/or stressed whenever I think of my family? Anyway, I suggested that she take a look through the Captain Awkward "families" tag. But she has two kids under four, so in case she didn't get half an hour to herself in front of the computer before Christmas, I summed up all of the good Captain's advice:

1) use your words to ask for what you want
2) but you can't change other people, so
3) if people insist on being jerks, you have to decide whether it's worth it to you to stick around.

And it's good advice. I've used it myself a lot. But it's very, very culturally specific advice. It's very America Right Now advice, where if you don't like the situation, fuck off somewhere else. There are a whole lot of situations you can be in where you cannot leave, where you have to deal with people. Sometimes people in those situations write in to the Captain, and she tells them to start organizing and planning so that they can leave as soon as possible.

And that's good advice. I've used it myself. There's a reason I live halfway around the country from my birth family. But…I can't help thinking that I'm at a stage in my life where I'd also like to hear advice about what you can do when you can't get away. Or if you don't want to get away: is there really nothing else you can do? I'm not saying that would be better advice; I'd just like to see more than one perspective on the matter.

Comments

[kore]

Because, well, it pertains - and even pertains to situations where something is being done that is damaging and bad, and the "use your words" is not necessarily going to get you what you want (and if done without serious finesse can end up with things getting a lot worse), but is not so egregious that it balances off, say, cutting all contact with someone who raised you and is otherwise very important.

I like Captain Awful a whole lot, but it's sometimes clear to me that the commenters and maybe even CA have never been in a situation where "use your words" is just going to make things a lot worse, and then it becomes a kind of frying-pan-fire dilemma of, Do I just take this shit like I have been all my life, or do I risk setting off even bigger fireworks by not going along with it? Especially since there's that "change BACK" reaction where a lot of people, when faced with different behaviour, will do their almighty best to make you return to the status quo.

[recessional]

I tend to think of "use your words" as a kind of defensive tactic in and of itself, and so like most defensive tactic it has its good points and bad points. On the one hand, it can totally make things explode; on the other hand, it's that sort of step that means that you've taken away one layer of potential self-justification from your opponent: they can no longer claim any ignorance about what you wanted/didn't want/said was okay.

(It's also personally something I have to do before I'm "allowed" to be too pissed off at someone/whatever - if I haven't actually SAID that X, Y or Z was a problem, I'm out of line expecting someone to read my mind, the same way I'd consider them out of line if they expected me to read mine. Ergo, if it's not a big enough deal for me to use my words about, it's not a big enough deal for me to sulk about, so to speak.)

But yeah, like all tactics, it's one I use either when it's going to work, or when I have to.