Fathers do not exasperate your children…
I have NOT had a good past 2 days… I had a fight with one of my bosses at work that led to the threat of “big trouble” for me… I had a fight with my mom and Tom over the wedding guest list… and my stomach has been really bothering me lately…. probably due to stress…. BAH! WHY ARE PEOPLE SO STUPID!?!?!??!
Usually after a conflict, I sit back and reflect on how it went… what I did wrong (suprise, I’m not perfect), and what to do next in the Biblical way of conflict resolution… I think the most frustrating part of this is knowing that the person on the other end of the conflict (at least today) isn’t like that… They just vent and set themselves more in their position and are completely unwilling to talk AND THEN LISTEN!
My Step-dad frustrates me to no end. This man and I butt heads roughly once a month and it’s never pretty…. He can push my buttons SO FAST because he DOES NOT LISTEN. It’s not that I have a chance to speak and then he ignores me… no… I don’t even get the CHANCE to speak. In fact, tonight when we were arguing I was trying to tell him to stop interrupting me…. I was getting REALLY frustrated. As I was walking away I stopped (bad move) and tried to explain the reason I was walking away… I got out, “Tom, you don’t even listen to me… You always interrupt me without…” and he interrupted me again…. HAHAHA…. man… what can you do with that situation? If you wait longer, hear him rant, then try and say anything…. you just get interrupted again… I became even MORE frustrated and said, “YOU’RE INTERRUPTING ME AGAIN!” and pointed my finger at him… This ticked him off because now I’m apparently not respecting him again… I just walked away as he told my mom “this is bull****. I’m not gonna let him disrespect me like that…”
I’ve tried this theory of waiting with him… And this is NO exaggeration. I’ve sat for over half an hour listening to him tell me why I “have no respect” and why I “don’t appreciate” my mother… … … Yeah… right. So after 30-40 minutes of verbal slamming I usually resort to walking away while being yelled at for not having respect enough to stand and listen to him berate me… or for trying to talk back… I can’t deal with this man. As much as I’ve tried, I give up.
I love my mother dearly… and I don’t need a guy who just tried to throw me out of the house that I’ve lived in for the past 19 years to tell me that I don’t. Especially when he won’t listen to the reasoning behind my position…. what do I know… I’m just a disrespectful kid…. apparently I have no valuable thoughts or intellect to keep up with “the man.”
The kicker is that the whole thing is obsurd. It is a fight over letting my mother invite 24 guests to the wedding that she works with. I don’t know them, Sarah doesn’t know them, and they’ll cost over 380 bucks in food, drinks, and table space. That’s almost 1/15 of our entire budget! We just finished cutting names from the list and Sarah cut 14 of her guests that SHE KNEW GROWING UP! And on top of that my mom stated when we added her guests initially that “…if you have to cut people then you can cut them, but I just want you to put them on there because I’d like to invite them if possible.” Funny how it started out so nice and with permission to do what we did, but is now the end of the world… Tom says I’m “not looking at the big picture,” and that I’m being selfish and not thinking of my mother on my wedding day… Funny… I don’t remember being invited to their wedding… you know… the one with my mom in it… Yeah… they ran off to Virginia and got married without anyone… And now I’M THE SELFISH ONE! I see why some people just want to run off and elope… If it wasn’t for the ability to go live at college soon… I’d probably consider it more.
ACK! So I blew up at Tom after 5 minutes of his nonsense… (which I know was wrong) and he told me to get out…. I just walked upstairs and blew him off… Grrr… I’ve not been this upset in years.
I left my mother a note that read, “Mom, I love you and I’m more than willing to talk. But I can’t deal with Tom when he is demanding respect but won’t give me 3 seconds edgewise to say anything without interrupting me and not giving that same respect he desires, to me!” She read the note and has ignored it… go figure. I suppose she’ll sleep on it and bring it up later… once she builds up more “ammo.”
I wish she had more of a backbone… That she’d stand up for herself… But instead she lets Tom do it and he is the extreme opposite…. TOO MUCH force… That’s not only NOT productive, but counter productive. It builds resentment, anger, frustration, and walls are thrown up instead of torn down. We need one of those chess clocks that have the thing you hit… then I can talk, hit… he can talk, hit… Then we take turns like normal people… But if she had more of a backbone, then she’d not only stand up for herself and fight her own battles, but she’d stand up for ME in front of Tom… When they go off afterwards, instead of him venting to her forever, she’d have the guts to say, “But Tom, if you let him speak and listen to him, then there’d be a conversation and possibly compromise….” But no… he just stirs in his anger and she just listens… Then it all gets taken out on me…. Ah well… one more month here and I’m gone forever. Back to school, then married and away from this crap.
And in the end… I know one more thing to NOT do to my children.
Mood: Exasperated! 
6 Comments
Sometimes that’s more valuable information anyway. Will pray that your situation with your step-dad improves. It’s never easy to deal with this type of situation, but God is in control.
~Shaun
So basically… if your conversation was a game of twister…. and left hand on green was called… Tom reached out and punched you, kicked your legs out from under you, sat on your now limp body, and put his left hand down. Gotta love that.
Ouch. That type of situation would probably make me angry too, I imagine.
And not that I’m sticking up for him, but I also imagine that your step-father married your mother and not you. Therefore how he relates to you might not directly reflect how he relates to your mother. Although in an ideal situation, there is no reason for him to act like that.
Exod 20:12
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
Your mother loves this man, and honoring her might mean putting up with him. But one thing I like about the concept of honor is that it doesn’t mean, “Always agree with.” or “Take abuse from.” Hang in there.
Peace.
*sigh*…i’m so glad i’m single and SOOO glad my mom and stepdad don’t like their coworkers enough….
hope things boil over soon…
Rough Bilbo… Its a tough spot. Been there done that. Hang in there and keep trying to commicate.
Dan
If it makes you feel any better, my in laws did roughly the same thing to us, their guest list was outrageous. Here is our practical solution: 1) tell them they can have all the additional guests they want (over and above your list, which is far more important) IF they pay for them, or 2) send invitations out early and then, when you get enough people who are not attending, send out a secondary wave of invitations to people like your mom’s co-workers. This is a fair way to try to give her what she wants without tainting your day. I don’t know if it’ll help you, but it worked for us. Also, brace yourself, there will be lots of this sort of thing before the big day comes. Good luck; I’ll be htinking of you two.