I thought I was going to have to cut ties with some family members, but instead I changed my interactions with them. I set my expectations very low and kept very firm boundaries with them. With low expectations, and preparation for their bad behavior, I didn’t get surprised or flinch whenever they behaved the way they would inevitably behave. With my boundaries, I set them very firm and just flat out told them NO when they wanted me to participate in their family dysfunction—or sometimes I’d just flat out lie and say that I would do or did do something they wanted.
1. Example—family member wants me to promise to keep a secret before they tell me something. I just say no. I say if they don’t want someone to know, they better not tell me. I also tell them that it may be the case that I don’t care enough about the secret to bother telling whoever they want me to keep it from. They got upset and whined, but now they either don’t tell me things OR they tell me and know the secret might come out. (It usually doesn’t because quite frankly I just don’t care enough to spread gossip, but I hate HAVING to keep a secret)
2. Example: My aunt gets really controlling and drove over and dumped tons of junk at my house that she dug up from several closets at my grandmother’s house. She did this a few hours before she left the country. She demanded that I not throw the stuff away, but I take this stuff to a specific charity that was very far away and hard to find. After she was back in Germany, she kept calling me every day to make sure I was going to the special charity. I told her I did it, and I just let my friends pick over the junk to take what they wanted and threw out the rest in the trash. Unless she’s a fluther reader, she’ll never know. And she thinks she “won” and it was no skin off my nose.
3 Low expexations: I know that my dad is going to go off and lose his temper for some lame reason. Instead of dreading it, my husband and I place bets about when and why he’ll lose his temper. If he goes off in some totally unexpected bizarre tirade, we get hot fudge sundaes and call it even. Then his annoying behavior is more of a game than an accident waiting to happen.
I never confronted them on their behavior, as they and several people in that family are so messed up that they have no clue that anything is wrong.