Holidays are quickly approaching. While the ideal of gathering with friends and family is top of mind; some life styles don’t mesh.
Maybe your single, maybe your dating, married, or recently divorced, with kids.
How are you addressing family conflict internally or with your partner.
Are you staying out of family conflict?
Do you have a partner who is struggling with your family?
How are men navigating this?
8 comments
From my experience, family conflict or most conflicts come when one person tries to put their ideology on you. You should be doing this, you should be earning more money, you shouldn’t be wasting your time doing this, you should be more religious….
It really comes down to a couple of things for me. I know this is easier said than done but, I ask myself why I let that person get to me so much. I have internalized that I can only change myself and nobody else. I can’t force my opinions on anybody and whenever I try I will fail and cause an argument which is definitely not worth it. Also, why are they trying to change me, why am I engaging in the argument.
Let’s take a very simple argument, I don’t know where you are in your life but let’s assume that you’re in college. What happens if your parents tell you you should be a doctor. There are a million ways to either escalate or deescalate the conflict. My advice would be to say I’ll think about it, while not really meeting those words. If they attempt to follow up, you can say that you are still thinking about it and are not ready to voice your opinion. How can that turn into an argument?
My wife and I are partners. So I’d deal with conflict like any other kind of conflict put against me. By defending myself.
My wife is my primary family and takes precedence over any other existing family. If she is blatantly wrong I’ll correct her, but otherwise she gets my full backing in any conflict between family and her.
My mother doesn’t like my husband and I know she’s going to try and be passive aggressive in excluding him
One year on Christmas she set the table and “forgot” to set a place for my husband
I’m probably just going to tell her I won’t be bringing our daughter over for Christmas dinner if she doesn’t treat my husband with some respect
I didn’t marry a chaos seeking woman who enjoys drama, has to constantly have her own way, couldn’t navigate being around people with different outlooks, likes – dislikes (thoughts) & couldn’t act like an adult that can tolerate minor things for my benefit. That and my parents are pretty chill and so were hers. In other words, for over 15-years there has never been “conflict.”
You take your partner’s side. Never waver. Maybe you have a very private conversation with your partner (e.g., don’t bring up x in front of my cousin so-and-so, she believes <insert crazy here>), but in public you have their back 100%. No need to escalate things, and help to change the subject where needed, but you have your partner’s back.
This of course assumes that your partner has some semblance of social skills and doesn’t go looking for fights or is the source of the problems (being something that your family doesn’t accept IS NOT being the source of the problem). I don’t know what to tell you in that case. Maybe just that you chose poorly?
It all depends with the cause of the conflict. The person being unreasonable needs to be informed in a loving way (of course) and made understand how their actions reflect on the other party. It is also very important to have boundaries that either sides can respect without crossing.
My partner and I are a united front, a single unit. If there is a conflict with either one of our parents we handle it together, even if we think the other is wrong. Then in private we hash it out between ourselves if for whatever reason one of us disagreed with the other, but this is between us and not our families. (This is also because we are a queer relationship with old school parents, even though all 4 accept us we do still have to fight against preconceived notions).