Dear Eric: My parents divorced when I was 5 and my brother was 3. He went with our father and I with our mother. We saw each other on holidays and summers. Both parents remarried and had two more children. There is a seven- to nine-year gap or more in our ages.
My brother and I were treated less like family and more like a resentment. Thankfully, we had loving grandparents who showed us love and created safe places for us when we were with them.
Fast-forward to today, we are both retired, have families and have done well by all accounts. We worked hard to build and maintain a relationship with our parents and stepparents/siblings. I thought progress had been made.
Both parents passed within a two-year period. Both stepparents redid their will’s writing us out of them. I was surprised. Less for me, but for my children and their grandchildren.
I am left with an angry residue of past resentments that have resurfaced. There is nothing of my parents’ I want. This isn’t about money – there isn’t much, I know. I just don’t know how to move forward. Do I ghost them? Stop calling, writing and visiting because it feels very one-sided? I have done most of the work and effort to maintain a relationship.
– Slighted Stepchild
Dear Slighted: What petty people your stepparents seem to be. They can adjust their wills in whatever ways they’d like, but it’s very telling that they didn’t make the big change until after your parents were gone. It doesn’t sit right with me. It feels callous and calculating. And unnecessarily so.
Despite the machinations with their estates, you still get to decide what you want from them. There’s a version of this where you decide that these are people who are not worth knowing. They were brought into your life at a tender moment, and they weren’t kind. It may be most freeing to say, “I deserve better than this; I’m leaving this relationship in the past.”
Alternatively, you can say, “I want to have a relationship, and this feels one-sided. What can we do to change that?” And see what they come up with. But I honestly don’t know if that’s worth your time.
Lastly, if you haven’t read Ann Patchett’s gorgeous, perfect novel “Commonwealth,” you may want to pick it up. It’s about a blended family and some of the themes might resonate strongly with you in a way that feels cathartic.
Dear Eric: My sister-in-law, who I love and have known since she was a child, recently bought two small “doodle” dogs. She brought them with her for an overnight, weekend visit.
They barked at every little sound – a person coming into the room, door opening/closing. My sister-in-law’s response to her dogs was ineffective.
The weekend with her dogs made me anxious and it was difficult for me to enjoy my visitors.
It was worse for me to tolerate as I have experience both professionally (with children) and personally (with dogs) in the analysis and modification of behavior problems. It is very easy for me to see what was reinforcing the dogs’ behavior.
My dilemma is should I not allow her to bring her dogs for the next visit or make a visit that includes bringing the dogs contingent on my sister-in-law allowing me to teach her how to address the dogs’ behavior? She does not seem bothered by the relentless barking and yapping.
– Dog Tired
Dear Tired: Though your experience is with children and dogs, it seems the behavior you most want to modify is your adult sister-in-law’s. That’s going to present a problem.
It’s fine for you to tell her that the dogs made too much of a ruckus the last time and ask her to leave them behind for the next visit. This, of course, makes the visit less hospitable as she’ll need to find a suitable dog sitter. And she may opt to just stay home. If you’re OK with that possibility and won’t resent her for it, great.
It’s also fine for you to offer to teach her a better way to handle her dogs. But making it a prerequisite for spending time with you? I can’t see how that wouldn’t cause resentment.
You have a long, loving relationship. You can just tell her that the dogs grate on your nerves and you have some tips, if she’s open to them. The oodles of doodle behavior is not reason to fuel a feud. Talk to her in a nonjudgmental way. Offer assistance but accept her “no thank you” if that’s what her answer is.
Communicating clearly, without trying to control her, will make planning the next get-together easier. And it empowers her to take your feelings as well as her own into consideration.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110.)