Two letters, one column

[conuly]

Link

1. DEAR ABBY: I received a Facebook message from my first cousin. In it, she apologized for not communicating for the past 10 months. It ended with, "Send me your address so I can send you a birth announcement." Abby, I wasn't even aware that she had been pregnant.

I contacted her father, who said the child was born two months ago. This cousin is not a teen or unwed. She's a professional and married. I am puzzled, not only because I wasn't told, but mainly because her message did not announce the birth, other than referencing that an announcement would be mailed.

Frankly, I'm confused and not interested in feigning sudden interest in a situation I was excluded from knowing about. I can't help but assume the purpose of the mailed announcement is a gift grab, coming months after the child's arrival. Your thoughts? -- LEFT IN THE DARK

DEAR LEFT: Heaven only knows what may have happened with your cousin. There may be much more to this story than the fact that you were "excluded." There may have been problems with your cousin's pregnancy or with her baby, which your relatives were reluctant to share. Please don't start a grudge unless you have facts that indicate otherwise. Act appropriately, send a little something for that baby, along with a supportive message, and you will have fewer regrets.

***

2. DEAR ABBY: My youngest son, age 27, has been clean and sober for two years, having survived the horrible addiction of fentanyl. I helped nurse him back to health. It wasn't easy, but he is alive today. However, with this sobriety, a new person is emerging who is critical of and condescending to his siblings and to me. He finds flaws in all of us that "disgust him," and therefore, he has chosen to no longer engage with us.

He claims he is telling "his truth" and only "right or wrong" exists for him anymore. He has no problem with hurting our feelings as that is "our problem" and he "won't cater to society's norms anymore." I come to him from a place of love and acceptance, and I tell him this all the time. He tells me I'm delusional and living a lie.

I don't know what to do or say anymore. He's willing to walk away from our family if we can't come to a place of "mutual understanding," which is HIS way. I'm about ready to walk away from him because I'm tired of his tirades and his putting everyone down. What should I do? -- DISILLUSIONED MOM IN MINNESOTA

DEAR MOM: Is it possible that in order to gain his sobriety, your son joined some sort of cultlike program? His treatment of you and his siblings is neither normal nor acceptable. If you prefer to save yourself the heartache and end his verbal abuse, you have the right to distance yourself until he straightens out.

Comments

[conuly]

1. I know this is easier to say than to do, but it makes my life ever so much easier when I at least try to do the following two things: don't take it personally, and assume good faith. If I can't do them, I can at least act like I'm doing them.

Obviously you may not want to do those things when you know perfectly well that it is personal and bad faith - but in this case, LW doesn't know that at all.

So instead of gnashing their teeth about this cousin's "gift grab" that they could not be less interested in, why not simply say "Oh, congrats on the baby!", share the address or not, and send a gift or not, and then just go about their day?

The advantage of this method is that you're not spending energy on this nonsense you've mostly made up in your head. Because nine times out of ten, it's nonsense you've made up in your head. And the tenth time... a lot of times, that tenth time also ends up resolved better and faster if you don't let it get to you as well, which starts by acting like it probably isn't intended to get to you.

(Again - this only applies in situations which could go either way! If it absolutely cannot then do something else.)

2. Wow, that's quite a jump! Yes, it is possible that Son joined a cult.

It's also possible that Son has a lot of legitimate complaints about his family which LW refuses to acknowledge. It's also possible that Son has treated the addiction but has not yet grappled with the issues that led to and contributed to the addiction in the first place. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

At any rate, if minimizing contact is mutually agreeable, I don't see what the problem is.

[magid]

Especially agree with your point 1. Why not be generous in your interpretation? I mean, being out of touch is mutual - it doesn't sound like LW had been reaching out either. So just be gracious, congratulate your cousin (who is presumably wholly sleep deprived at this point, so nitpicking wording is not kind, when they're the ones reaching out to you).

[cimorene]

I immediately thought letter 2 sounded like someone enabling or involved in some kind of toxic family dynamic and in denial about it. Definitely a whiff of missing missing reason. If son has recovered from addiction in the US it's almost inevitable that he has been exposed to concepts of responsibility and boundaries that would likely open his eyes to a wide variety of dysfunction. Add to that the correlation of addiction and abuse and trauma, and the fact that his described actions sound a lot like boundaries... and this letter looks very fishy.

[topaz_eyes]

Re LW1, in this case, given the time lag and knowing all the things that can go pear-shaped in pregnancy, I'd be willing to give cousin the benefit of the doubt.

Re LW2, unfortunately imho LW2's son is at very high risk of relapse if he's engaging in this all-or-nothing attitude and behaviour; if he slips up even a little bit, he'll probably spiral back. Some advice from an addictions counsellor about this may be useful here. In the meantime, LW2 could go low-contact if they feel it necessary, but should leave a line open, just in case.

[ethelmay]

Yes. Also "cousin" is a very elastic relationship. I have first cousins I have never even met, or met only a couple of times, with no formal estrangement involved. On the other side, we were much closer and did get some of the birth announcements, but I don't think it occurred to us to send presents. I think it would be easy for cousins who might have seen each other fairly often in childhood but not much since to have different ideas of how close the relationship was and what should be expected of it.

[melannen]

LW, is it possible that cousin announced the birth on Facebook and Facebook just hid it from you? They seem to think you already know, and it sounds like they don't really have any other contact info for you, so if Facebook was doin' its thing I'm not really sure how you else expected to be informed. I don't use facebook but I know I've heard other people complain that it just doesn't show you things you should have seen. And meanwhile I've missed learning about major cousin events because they all assumed posting to Facebook was the same as telling everyone.

Also I guess you also hadn't talked to your uncle, or possibly anybody else in the family, in that time? If you want to know what's happening in the family call your uncle every six months or so and ask for the news. (And give him your address change info). I wouldn't assume this was a gift grab as opposed to an "LW clearly isn't interested in close contact but I'd like to at least keep them on the list of people who get cards".

[mrissa]

You can help but assume, LW1. You can. Possibly you will choose not to, but it is in fact a choice.

If there's not more to LW2's story, even recovering addicts don't get to be infinite jerks. LW2 has to do a lot of self-examination to make sure this is not a "you let Relative abuse me, that was wrong, I don't think we can agree to disagree on this" situation, but if instead it's "you buy conventional bananas rather than organic bananas, I cannot speak to you"...go ahead and have the boundary that Son is not the boss of your bananas, that's fine.

[melannen]

Oh, I was trying to figure out the missing reasons for LW2, because none of my go-tos quite felt right with the specific complaints, but "You're still defending my childhood abuser" fits frighteningly well.

[katiedid717]

Re: letter 2, I wish we had more information about the son's specific complaints. Like, if this a family with a big drinking culture to it, and son is like "Hey, I can't do dinner with you for my birthday if you're all going to spend the night drinking," I honestly don't find that unreasonable - I know there are a lot of former addicts who have trouble being around any addictive drugs/substances, regardless of what their particular addiction was. Jumping straight to "has your child joined a cult?" is bizarre, and I would encourage LW to try to take a step back and try to look at sons complaints from an objective perspective to see if there's some kernel of truth to them.

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, I don't think with Letter 2 we have enough information to really understand what's going on. Some examples would have been nice.

[full_metal_ox]

The self-righteous zeal of the convert is commonplace among people who’ve made a major life change, be it weight loss or quitting smoking or going vegan or Getting Religion (or Getting Unreligion; a lot of atheists can be smugly evangelical and purity-obsessed about it.)

[katiedid717]

Another though I had after my comment was that sometimes, family members can just be shitty. I've had my siblings repeat "jokes" for over a decade that were really hurtful ("Hey, remember when you invited 40 people to your 16th birthday party and only 4 came?") - there's a chance that LW's son has also been the butt of a lot of "friendly" ribbing ("Don't let Jimmy near the medicine cabinet, he might look for the percoset from Dad's knee surgery last year!") that are frankly rude and detrimental to his recovery. But there's also the chance that he's taken a dive into "preferences = boundaries" territory too.

[full_metal_ox]

I've had my siblings repeat "jokes" for over a decade that were really hurtful ("Hey, remember when you invited 40 people to your 16th birthday party and only 4 came?")



(Image description: a header reading, “Unpopular opinion on Parenting that would get you in this position”, beneath which is an image of Flynn Rider from Tangled, with a nonchalant expression despite being encircled by threatening sword blades. Zoha (zohaaa) comments, “Insulting your kids in front of family or friends for a few laughs leaves them struggling with self confidence for a lifetime”).

[ethelmay]

The cult thing made sense to me as one possible option that might explain the rigid thinking. I know at least one person who got off drugs due to "finding Jesus" and joining a reactionary church. But jumping straight to that was bizarre.

[conuly]

It's definitely a possibility! It doesn't even have to be a religious cult, there's plenty enough "therapy" or "addiction recovery" groups that qualify.

But it's not what I'd leap to based solely on this letter, I'll say.

[matsushima]

LW1: It's been 10 months, which would track almost perfectly to the timeline of "discovering she's pregnant, giving birth, and raising a newborn," probably while continuing to work in her professional job full time through most of that - and there's, you know, *gestures at the state of the world* everything else. Unless this cousin has a history of bad faith gift grabs, probably let it go and assume good faith.

I'd probably forget to text/email my cousins in that situation, too.

[likeaduck]

RIGHT? Also...isn't a birth announcement a reasonable way to let people you don't see often know about a birth? Like, isn't that why you need to announce it?

[sushiflop]

Man there are so many things that could be happening with LW2. Son could be totally in the right and setting healthy boundaries for the first time or he could have jumped straight into some kind of far right worldview and be trying to impose that on his family, or a million things in between. I just don’t think we can say based on the letter…

[frenzy]

LW2 is such a mystery. My brain instantly went to some kind of religious program, and if they arent a true believer of their denomination, they shun them or whatever.

[conuly]

It doesn't have to be a religious program. An alarmingly large number of non-religious cults started off as therapy, self-help, or addiction recovery programs. There's some overlap in those three groups, of course, legitimate or otherwise.