Over the holidays my brother drove into town from another state. He did not call me to tell me that he was coming, he called our parents and told them he was coming, weather permitting. When my mother told me, I conveyed to her that we already had plans for people to come and stay at our home so it would be very rude of me to leave my guests to come to her house, which is only 20 minutes away, but that they would be welcome to come to our house. We have a home in the mountains that he's never seen and we had lots of snow as well.
He never called me when he got to town, and made no effort to contact me to come visit. I later found out that rather than make plans to see me and my family, he and his family went sight seeing. Keeping in mind we had not seen each other in nearly two years.
I was extremely upset and when I called him out on it he said I was playing the victim and I should have reached out to him that it wasn't his responsibility!
I find his response utterly confusing because when we (my husband and I) have traveled to another state where we have family spread out all over we make it a point to contact all of those family members and let them know when we will be there and do our best to make arrangements, even if it's only for half a day, to see our family while we are in that state. We don't call one family member and let them know we're coming and expect them to relay the information to everyone else, and then expect everyone else to call us to arrange for us to come visit them.
Am I completely bonkers?
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Normally that is how it works. However, there are some people who just don't think they need to make any effort at all when it comes to family. It almost appears that it goes deeper than just coming to the state and not notifying anyone he was there.
Life is too short. Just write it off to the season bringing out the crazy in everyone and move on. This is how life long grudges start and that is bad for all. Call it a draw and try again if you want to have a relationship.
I agree with Pghgirl that the more you think about and especially talk about family or any disagreement the more prominent it becomes in your life.
What I'm writing is just as a 'bystander' and does not reflex on you or your problem so I hope you will not feel that I'm really answering your question. I just hate to see families have hard feelings and distance themselves due to an incident that I feel sure neither one anticipated and most certainly did not plan.
I hope you will be forgiving and consider this incident as a misunderstanding and try to make good plans for a future visit.
You also need to understand that if your brother wrote to ThriftyFun about this experience - from his point of view - probably some of the responders might think that he was maybe in the right and that you should have made more of an effort to visit them since they were family and had not seen each other for 2 years.
All I'm saying is that complex situations with families can be more hurtful and may linger longer than the same situations outside the family because, as a general rule, you cannot just 'write off' family where you may be able to just move on from others and leave them out of your life.
Who is really at fault? or right? or rude?
This answer would probably change with who is telling the story (how do your parents feel about all of this?) and maybe even how many times they have told the story.
How good a relationship have your families had in the past? Do you talk often or keep each other up to date on what is happening in your families? Do you exchange pictures of events - such as your new home - or other family events? Do you and your sister-in-law or your husband & your brother have a good relationship?
These are the types of questions (and more) a family counselor might ask if they were brought into a situation like this. Probably some of the questions would have a good response but maybe not all.
Also, has your brother's family been to this area before? Maybe his family had a lot to do with where they spent their time as this seems like a short vacation for them. Did the grandparents go site seeing with them? If not, were they offended that all the time was not spent with them?
There are just so many things that could have affected everything that took place so I hope you can put it behind you and consider it was not intended to be hurtful - just his family's way of doing things.
He was rude. Some family members are like that. Do no feel bad about this.
You are correct! I'm assuming that everyone involved are adults. He was wrong, now with his family in the middle. Hopefully next time he learns!
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