Need suggestions on how to tactfully handle a difficult situation

Parent Cafe
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<p>Up front, I’m emotionally charged about this issue, and am sure it will hinder any choices/words I will use, so I need some objective observers and advice.</p>

<p>Family history… I’m the youngest of four, and only girl. Sibs are 16, 13 and 9 years older than me. Have always treated me like the baby sister, and I always obliged. Last fall, during the campaigns (I’m also the only democrat, but the sibs are varied on the republican continuum), after receiving some unsolicited emails from one brother (the most extreme sib), I decided to reply with an email in which, for the first time, I felt like I stood up to him and expressed who I was. I also asked he not send these any more (I did get a few more).</p>

<p>Late summer, his oldest got engaged and we were told it was a ‘parent’s’ only affair, which was fine, as we live 1000 miles from them. Two weeks before the wedding, the daughter decides she wants to start adding guests to attend the ceremony at her parent’s place, and I get a phone call with an invitation saying my other sibs will be there. However, the weekend is the one before my D1 is scheduled to move cross country, and with the stock market crashing about the same time, I had some hesitations on dropping that kind of money for a last minute air ticket… it was really during those initial couple of weeks, when we didn’t know if this was going to be the second great depression, we’d just watched our portfolio drop 20%, and I was panicking. So I chose not to go, explaining why (daughter’s move and money). Oh, there’s also the issue that I work weekends, and would have had little notice to try to switch that around. So the wedding took place, and a week or so afterwards, I posted on my niece’s facebook, a congratulations, with regrets I couldn’t be there, but I looked forward to getting the announcement so I would know where to send a gift (she had just moved out to Long Island for her first year of residency). Knowing how busy she was with the new job, demands, etc., I assumed it might be a few months before I got an announcement. The holidays came and went, and I kind of forgot about it (probably would have pursued it further if I’d not gotten anything by March or April). Last week I emailed my brother to ask him for some information regarding the funeral for his son (who died in a car crash almost two years ago), as I was preparing to conduct a funeral service. He had told me after the service that he would make a copy of the DVD and send it to us as my daughter had sung at the funeral. Anyway, he now denies having anything (which is fine), but then in his email, he lambasted me for almost thirty years of what he considers selfish, brattish, ungrateful, rude behavior on my part. This is obviously a long standing issue between the two of us that began the year we lived in his town, and he basically acted like we didn’t exist. When I was on bed rest with D2 and didn’t know if H would be able to be at the hospital with me when she was born because we had no one to care for D1, he was no where around. Anyway, there are stories upon stories of this… it’s a long standing needle in my side. When I showed the email to a couple of friends (I spent most of that day crying) and my husband, they all said it sounded like a 25-year old girl who keeps track of every ‘generous’ thing they’ve done and expect it to be repaid. Another person assumed the email was written by a woman (he kind of wrote it in third person), then when told it was a male, asked if he was gay. </p>

<p>So the gist of the email came at the end, when he called me out on not being at the wedding, nor sending his daughter a gift. His excuse was, we pulled this thing together in five weeks (although no one outside the parents were invited until two weeks prior) and there were no/will be no announcements. I guess my niece had told her dad about the post I left on her facebook, that I was looking forward to an announcement so I could send a gift. And truth is, I really was… I was happy to spend several hundred dollars on two other nieces who have been married (one had a big ceremony, another had private/parents only who then sent out announcements). </p>

<p>My niece should not suffer for whatever old skeletons are in the closets between my brother and me, although based on his email, I can now only imagine what he has said to her about me. And while I’d be the first one here to say, there’s always another side to the story, the things he has accused me of, really resemble revisionist history. For one, he says he ‘opened up his home when we had no place to live.’ In reality, the year we lived in the same town, we were invited to his house twice, once for Thanksgiving, and the invitation didn’t even come through him or his wife; my mom had to tell me we were invited. We had a lease on an apartment the whole time we were there. Anyway, these are the kinds of things he’s criticizing me for, and now I guess my not sending a gift has sent him over the edge and he felt it was appropriate to call me on it.</p>

<p>I have not responded to his email, nor probably will; my friends have suggested it will do no good. He has a vision of me, based on some childhood experience and chooses to reinforce it with his perception of events. But again, I don’t want my niece to get caught in this. But I still don’t have an address for her. I can send a message via facebook (a private one), but I’m so emotionally charged from this experience, that I don’t trust myself to not to try to sabotage it. So I need suggestions on how to best ask for her address (and apologize for assuming it would be sent to me via an announcement) and try to restore any reputation I might have left with her.</p>

<p>edited: just posted this and saw how long it was… sorry!</p>

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<p>Let me reply teriwtt by saying how sorry I am that you have to deal with this. You sound like my clone, as I have had these type of sibling “issues” for decades with one sibling in particular. I have ignored these same types of emails from him while twisting myself into knots and dwelling on them for weeks (months?) He has cursed me in these emails, told me that I’ve never appreciated him, talked about stuff from long ago, etc. People have told me that he is the one with the mental illness which needs to be treated. I also have a niece in the middle, albeit much younger than your niece, and I am sad to say that she has suffered by not seeing her cousins except in the most unusual of circumstances, perhaps once every couple of years.</p>

<p>I might try to contact your niece privately on Facebook and just ask for the address in a very light-hearted manner. Explain that you realize that a lot of time has passed and rather than waiting for a formal announcement, you would love to send her something if she will pass along her address. Make it short and sweet. :)</p>

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<p>"I’m very sorry to hear your feelings towards me. </p>

<p>Could you please send me DD’s address so that I can send her a wedding gift?"</p>

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<p>I think you are correct in trying to preserve your relationship with your niece. There are two things to consider: 1) if your brother is this much of a jerk with you, he is probably a jerk in the same way with everyone else, too, and your niece will have seen it playing out or will in the future, and 2) the best way to appear as the person you really are in her eyes is to bypass him and deal with her directly in the way you normally would. So send her an email and ask for her physical address, then send her a gift. Do not refer to her father.</p>

<p>And I would consider responding to your brother’s email in the following way: 1) start by saying that you are sure that he realizes that people usually have different perceptions of events, but that there are some accusations in his email that you simply do not wish to let stand; 2) refute his inaccuracies point by point; 3) say that you wish to have an ongoing loving relationship with him that is based on mutual respect and consideration. Send it to him. And then forget about it. If he approaches you, and you can establish an intimate relationship, great. If he doesn’t, don’t let him get in the way of your other family relationships, and treat him pleasantly and politely if you meet at family gatherings. </p>

<p>You can’t change him, and you should not allow his issues houseroom in your head. But you don’t have to be a doormat, either. Silence implies assent.</p>

<p>One last thing: make sure that what you write to him is something that you would not feel ashamed of if others see it.</p>

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<p>Teri, I’m so sorry you have to deal with this. I have no advice, just sympathy.</p>

<p>I’m also the much younger, fifth child. With my mother being ill, I recently had occasion to gently explain to her that her other children, who were either gone or absent, by the time I was old enough to be sentient, aren’t truly my siblings. And they aren’t. They haven’t lived with me since I was a very small child, I didn’t grow up with them, don’t have shared experiences and don’t have a relationship with them.</p>

<p>Last year, I sent my sister a Howler email that shot at her everything I’ve saved up for years. Funny that the catalyst was her child’s wedding, too. That email was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, we have had no contact since, and never will again. I feel so free and weightless now. The child getting married was my Godchild, whom I loved with all my heart. I thought, prayed and finally realized that it wouldn’t be possible to have a relationship with him because his mother controls access and, frankly, he didn’t care enough about me to have a relationship that required effort on his part. So I emailed him, told him how much I loved him, how much he meant to my life, and acknowledged that I wouldn’t hear from him again, but that’s what had to happen. I did not send a gift for his wedding.</p>

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I respectfully disagree. If the father has this much animosity built up, you can be sure the daughter has, at least to some degree, absorbed a negative point of view of her aunt. Also, if the brother IS that much of a jerk, he will make things very difficult for his daughter if she maintains a relationship. It may not be worth it to the daughter, and she probably shouldn’t be put in that position.</p>

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<p>Oh, I don’t know about that… silence can also mean “I won’t be engaged by your bad behavior.”</p>

<p>teri, ask niece directly. She’s an adult, and you no longer need to go through her parents to establish a relationship with her, so don’t.</p>

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<p>I’d deal directly with your neice and ignore him for now. However, you might tread carefully on the announcement point. The charitable way to look at it is that they may not have planned on the expense of announcements. Or the etiquette of announcements (which seems obvious to us older folks, but not so much to the younger generation) may have escaped her. Or if they were just so disorganized that they didn’t even get the wedding planning together until the last two weeks, and announcements just seem like an overwhelming extra step, that could also explain it.</p>

<p>I would not bring up the announcement again. I’d swallow my pride a bit (if it were me) and just drop her a private message saying that time got away from you and you realize you haven’t sent a gift yet, and ask for her address. Maybe get her e-mail address, too, so you can communicate more directly with her going forward if you want to. I wouldn’t assume the niece has absorbed all of his bad feelings (for example, my dad HATED his stepmother, but I didn’t have any big issue with her).</p>

<p>I’m not sure an e-mail to him refuting his points will do any good. People get their version of history in their heads, and it is pretty darned hard to change it. Your best bet in the long run might be to just build on your relationship with your niece and other family members (if he bad mouths you around them and they have a good relationship with you, hopefully they will tell him he is being a jerk). So I’m in the camp of building up other family alliances and ignoring him.</p>

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<p>I agree about contacting the niece directly for her address. I would avoid implying that she should have sent you an announcement. Just apologize for not sending a gift sooner.</p>

<p>I suspect that what your brother thinks is that your reference to waiting for an announcement is an implied criticism. And be honest, why didn’t you just ask her for her address in the first place? Why would you wait several months for the announcement, rather than getting the address and sending a gift right away? This certainly doesn’t justify a diatribe reaching back into history, but if you wanted to make peace, you could simply apologize for not sending a gift promptly.</p>

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<p>Could you possibly get her address or phone number from another family member?
I feel for you. I come from a large family. I have one sibling who is estranged from most of us.</p>

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<p>Apologize to your niece and send a gift. There’s got to be some way to get her address without involving her father.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t respond to the email.</p>

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<p>so much good insight so far… keep it coming.</p>

<p>One more piece of information - all three of my brothers are successful enough that, by comparison, my H and I live in poverty (and believe me, we are upper middle class). However, over the years (and I do realize this was our choice in moving away from our families of origin) travel to see family has been an incredible financial strain on us (four tickets, and now several times last minute fares for funerals, etc.). For many years we never took family vacations because we couldn’t afford them and see family. One of my brothers has made one trip to see us, that didn’t require business. The other two have been up here for business, but never extended the stay for a visit with us (although we did meet them for dinner… oh, yea, we were accused of not even reaching for the check at one of those dinners). Also found out this brother has been in Chicago for business and never let us know he was here. </p>

<p>Anyway, I feel our monetary sacrifices have been much greater than theirs to keep familial relationships going, but again, it was our choice to move away. This brother has indulged his kids with anything material they pretty much wanted, so I know the cost of announcements is not an issue had they wanted to send them.</p>

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<p>It’s possible, but I think that most intelligent young people of that age tend to have stepped back from their parents and have a bit of perspective. In any case, T lives at a distance, so if she wishes the niece should be able to maintain a cordial relationship with a distant relative without thrusting the evidence under her father’s nose. </p>

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<p>That is a message that is rarely heard.</p>

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<p>Most of all, the refutation is for T to get it all out of her system, and not spend time running through it in her head as she lies awake at night. As I said, there should be no expectation that HE will change. But also, if there is to be any hope that they have a relationship in the future, it needs to be based on mutual respect, and she will not achieve the basis for that by allowing his scolding to go unchallenged. He’s not the authority figure and she’s not a little kid. He needs to learn that if they are to progress at any point.</p>

<p>Oh, and re the announcement: many people do not send them, as it can be regarded as “asking for a present even though I didn’t invite you to the wedding.”</p>

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<p>hunt - I guess I’m going by other similar situations where there was a wedding, but very private and small, so announcements were sent out afterwards in order to let people know of the wedding, and it also serves as an annoucement of where they’re living, etc. I truly thought there would be an announcement, and that’s why I didn’t ask out right. This is the first time I’ve known someone so close get married (even if we weren’t invited to the wedding) and not send out some sort of announcement.</p>

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<p>zmom - you DO get it. Yes, by the time we have any substantial memory of our childhoods, our sibs were out of the house. I can’t tell you how many family get togethers we’ve been at where the conversation revolves around people and events that I had no part of (or was too young to remember). Frankly, it becomes boring, and they can’t understand why I don’t remember so-and-so.</p>

<p>We have nothing in common, yet I’ve tried to maintain relationships with my sibs, in order that my daughters might have a sense of where they come from. They do get along with their cousins when they see each other. </p>

<p>I remember one time, one of my sister-in-laws (probably breaking an agreement with my brother to stay out of family stuff) telling me how poor my brothers are about communication. I know that over the years, my mom tried to pass along the role of communicator to me, because I think she knew if I didn’t take it over, I would lose touch with my brothers. In recent years (since her death), it occurred to me that, communication is a two-way street, and if they valued me as a sibling, and really wanted to know who I was as a person, they had to make some effort. Every now and then there seems to be a break through, but it has now been since last summer that I’ve spoken with the other two brothers. When my first niece got pregnant three years ago, I didn’t find out about it until she was seven months pregnant. At least now, we’re friends on facebook, so I knew as soon as she was pregnant with her third. But that’s what it’s boiled down to. I stood up for myself, and refused to be the only one taking the initiative for relationships, and this is what it has come down to. I’m seen as the selfish one.</p>

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<p>It is, admittedly, a subtle message; it often takes people a while to catch on that that is the message being sent. When their tactics no longer work, they have to find a different way to get engagement.</p>

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<p>True, Owlice, but this person does not seem to care about engagement. As Woody Allen said in the movie Manhattan: "With Nazis, baseball bats are better. " :D</p>

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<p>We have a dysfunctional sib too (there sure seem to be a lot of them!). </p>

<p>I wouldn’t reply by e-mail. There is way too much chance that it will end up cut and pasted into something you didn’t actually write and will have another life being forwarded around to “prove” his point.</p>

<p>As for your niece, you said residency, so I’m guessing it is medicine of some sort. Contact her and say that you’d love to send a gift but that you can’t do this without an address. If she would prefer you can make a charitable donation in her and her new husband’s name to a favorite charity or one related to her field of medicine. If you don’t get a reply from her, just do that online and have the thank you sent to her e-mail address.</p>

<p>Then, clean them all out of your head and look forward to spring.</p>

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Oh yes I do get it. I am in my 40s now, with children a house and a husband. They know me as a child of less than five because that’s when our relationship ended and that’s how they treat me. I am not that child anymore. I’m smart, interesting, kind and sometimes funny. But my siblings don’t know that and don’t care to. It took me years and an amazing husband to help me stop yearning for them to get to know me. Which they aren’t interested in doing. I don’t say this lightly, but sometimes you have to let it go. I’m glad that I did. In my personal situation, I have no relationship with my siblings or with my sister’s kids, but my brothers’ kids and grandchildren are a joy in my life. I hope your niece can be more mature than my nephew and forge a relationship with you separate from her father’s. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t, and don’t blame her.</p>

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<p>T, even though they are your sibs, sounds like there is some other boorish behavior going on. So no announcement doesn’t surprise me. </p>

<p>Regarding the expense of traveling, it is amazing how little regard those with money have for those with less… You are under no obligation to explain yourself to them on this topic. </p>

<p>Just an FYI, ex-H and I had a falling out with his sister many years ago (over her wanting me to be a surrogate mom for her, long story). And after a few years, it sort of blew over. Some family events occurred when we had to be together, and we just… ignored it. Can’t say we were cozy after that, but civil. Replying to his e-mail prolongs a debate you may not want to have (and may send him running around to other family members drumming up support for “his version”). This tactic may not work for every family, but some issues just aren’t going to be resolved no matter what.</p>

<p>Gotta ask, as the only girl and youngest (me, too), could there be underlying jealousy? Parents often DOTE on that little girl when she finally arrives, much to the dismay of the older brothers. The roots of this are probably so deep (and so not your fault) that you are powerless to fix it. If you refute one point, he may just switch to another attack.</p>

<p>So I’d clean up what I could (the gift), and leave it. But don’t avoid him, just show up at the next family gathering like it never happened. And don’t lose any sleep over it… sounds like this is his problem more than it is yours.</p>