My husband and I have been called for a dinner at his parents’ house; this is odd as we only get invites to birthdays etc. and there is no birthday that we know of. We agree to go because we want to work towards peace in the family. Our time out is over and we still want to talk about things with them that still bother us so this seemed like a great chance to do that.
We pull up to his parents’ home and notice that his brother and sisters cars are both in front of the house so we are really starting to think we forgot someone’s birthday. When we walked in it was almost like walking into an intervention (like you see on TV); everyone was sitting in the living room watching us walk in.
We walked in, apologize for being a few minutes late because of the traffic and ask what’s up? This is where the fun began. They started in on us for all the family tension; when I say us it was all about my causing stress but we both got the brunt of the conversation. Apparently although we had been on time out with his parents’ they decided to bring the siblings into the problem. We had tried hard to keep the relationships separate so we could have a relationship with his siblings at least. Looking at this room we know knew that we were not going to be able to keep things separate. Why did they ambush us like this? All we wanted to do was talk to his parents’ about the things that they have done or said to us over the last few years that hurt us. Is it wrong to bring up issues to clear the air? Apparently in this family it is. They said they would not talk about any of the problems we had they just wanted us to listen to what their issue with us is. They think that we are just trying to keep things stirred up and never solve anything; this could not have been further from the truth. I wanted peace but I believe we have a right to tell people if they do or say something that hurts us without worrying about getting put in time out again.