saying goodbye

One more post for the day (on a roll, huh?)

Recently I left a group I have been in for years. I got to the point that seeing interactions/non-interactions was a negative experience to me. Let me emphasize: to me. It's all about my perception and what I could handle. Individually, they are fantastic women. Even as a group, just wonderful. But the particular dynamics weren't something I could handle in my life at this point.

I didn't want to leave in a huff of drama, like I have seen others leave email loops. The melodramatic good-bye posts are often really a ploy to get others to beg them to stay. So I just quietly left, figuring nobody would notice/comment for awhile.

What was there to say? No matter how I say it, it would seem like an accusation. Ya'll aren't meeting my needs at this point and I would like to move on instead of trying to live in the past and recapture the golden years. But that reads wrong, since (as the old break-up line says) its not you (all), it's me. It's my lack of the social ins and outs that other women seem to have. It's my fear of asking for help while intensily longing to have very close connections. I don't expect anybody else to meet my needs as I often don't even know what my needs are.

I just wanted to leave while leaving was a strength for me. While I was doing it for the right reasons, to decrease the negative feelings I have. The only problem, is because I have seperated myself so quietly, and I already have a habit of not reaching out, I fear that I have cut myself out of their lives completely rather than just this aspect of it. And par for the course, I don't know how to fix it.

THAT Family

You know, the one you marry into. How many mother-in-law jokes there? There must be a reason for all that. After almost ten years of marriage and moving thousands of miles away mainly to get away from the in-laws, I still don't know what the answers are.

Is it just because you're used to your family's way of doing things? Is it because they're used to theirs? I don't know, but it can sure make for some tense situations. And even more so if either family is even slightly disfunctional.

My father-in-law drinks. He called one night shortly after we were married, drunk as all get out and proceeds to tell my husband what a lousy son he is. He's so loud I can hear him and I'm just sitting next to my husband in bed. Horrified, I say "Well, you should tell him that's he hasn't been much of a father either." FIL hears that and starts in on hubby "Slap your bitch and tell her to shut up." Of course hubby refuses to follow FIL's advice and hangs up. FIL calls back, I answer, refuse to put hubby on the phone and hang up. FIL calls back and tells me I do not hang up on him (what- who was paying the bills at that time? ME) CLICK. what followed was some serious ranting into our answering machine and a few garden variety threats thrown in.

Now. What in this man's life made him think he could verbally abuse ANYONE, much less his only child? My father drank too. Even at his worst he would never talk to any of us kids the way FIL talked to hubby that night.

So, is it just a difference of upbringing, or does marrying into a family really create these problems? I contemplate this on an island thousands of miles away from my in-laws. I chose to move here mostly to get away from them. And as homesick and as lonely as I am, the mere thought of being near them again holds me from moving back. I'm in no rush to go through the stress they put me through.