Blognonymous : Family Woes
This post was submitted to me within the ethos of Blognonymous. This author suspects that you might guess who she is but asks for discretion. She has chosen to request the use of the anonymity of Blognonymous because her husband reads her own blog.
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You'll probably work out who is writing this, to be frank I'm not writing it at mine because, as the old sayng goes, walls have ears - and Blogs have Facebook Walls that certain parties have access to.
I'm at a stage, at nearly 30, where I have choices to make, and none of them are easy. I have certain ideas of life and how it should turn out- not that I'm talking big houses and designer shopping, but just general stuff which makes life go one way or another.
Me and my partner, we've never had a perfect relationship - but who has? We have had lots of different things get in the way of what should be a good relationship. Recently its been better, and Ive no doubt we love each other a great deal. But we just seem to have stages where we are fit to destroy each other. I think we're both passionate people, in different ways.
After such a long time, 12 years in fact, or close to, you'd think we'd be on the same wave length. But we're not.
My other half has two fundemental issues which affect us all. His ridiculous over-closeness to his family, and his drinking.
His whole family love a good drink. Thats cool, if that's your thing. But it's not mine. I'm crap at drinking - I haven't always been but after 2 children in the space of two years, plus all the rest of the crap of late nights, breastfeeding and not getting chance, I'm drunk after a few glasses. It's also my attitude that after a certain age, what fun is there in feeling like shit in the morning, when you have two hyper pre-schoolers to look after, and they really are't going to lay off if Mummy has a hangover.
But this drinking thing. Well, for five years I told them, all of them, from experience that their brother was having probles with drink. But sorry to say I felt like, as long as it wasn't their house he was drunk in, or them and thier partners he was being abusive to (even telling my daughter to tell me to f-off after I told her it was bedtime), then it wasn't an issue for them. He sat on my newborn when he was on the sofa. He left a cup of sobering-him-up coffee on the edge of a table then atched as my daughter poured it down herself. We left him indoors with the two of them whilst we had an important meeting - he was sober when we left. An hour later, I came back to find my daughter peering from the front door window like a home alone child, and could hear my son screaming in his cot from the path outside. On walking indoors, he'd found a bottle of vodka, and dived in. Anything could have happened.
But was it in their house? Did they have to go upstairs to avoid his vitriol? No. So did they intervene? No.
Thankfully, events over Christmas (me flatly refusing to have him in my home after 5 years of spoilt Christmas days) led to them suddenly waking up, seeing how bad it was.
My partners problem is he flatly refuses to argue with them. It was his Mum's last wish that they didn't row. So, now if they take the piss he wont say a word.
Unfortunately, that often means I'm frustrated and well, he sadly doesn't have the same qualms starting on me.
Its his sisters second wedding soon, and what started as a small affair has turned into something tor rival Catherine and William. 7 bridesmaids, countles guests, all in posh setting. Lovely, if you like that sort of thing.
I am terrified. She has a way where I always feel uncomfortable around her. We once had an almighty one-sided row where she shouted at me as I sat and let her. I'd just had my son, he was ill, I wasn't really my usual self. I was on the verge of a breakdown.
I love his other family- even the brother is nice when not drunk. But me and this sister, although polite, well, we wouldn't be mates if I wasn't with her brother. She doesn't get my blogging, I bet I'm the butt of much diresion (she's that sort of person). She's having two Hen nights - how do I know? Because she happened to mention the family hen night she'd booked and who was going. She must have seen the look of upset on my face when I wasn't on this list of family. Apparently I'm going to the "other" one, but even that I haven't been formally invited to or given a date or place.
She constantly talks over me, which I find rude and a clue that she finds me irratating.
I really dont like being in her company. I've tried.
Then there's the fact she asked me, in January, what I'm wearing for the wedding, taking place at the end of July. Who, apart from the bride, plans that far ahead? She thinks I'm that useless, she told me she was taking me out to chose something for me. I'm nearing 30 for christs sake. So an event I was grudgingly looking forward to, if nothing else but to see my daughter as a bridesmaid, I now feel like if I wear the wrong thing, well, God help me. I am shitting myself. I don't do dressed up, I'm comfy in jeans, so I'm not confident at dressy clothing- I've been to one wedding in my life and to be fair, you could have turned up in jeans and my mate wouldn't have cared.
So now, we're arguing about this poxy wedding, and he wont see that I have cause to feel how I do, even going to the stage of accusing me of being "ill" again. Nice.
No, I want his opinion. But instead, it all kicked off the other day because he'd been drinking, and in the end, he stprmed out, falling drunk throught he door at 11. We didn't speak all the next morning.
I just don't know what to do anymore. I want to get married, he doesn't and has no intention of. Not something I knew when he told me "wait until you're 25. Then you'll know for sure and I'll do it". I'm 30 next year and still no ring. My kids have different names to me. I have no rights. I dont think it was fair to lead me on, I would never have settled down and had kids if I thought he was going to take this stand.
I'm so upset, angry, and feel bullied and backed ino a corner by this family and its attitude. I'm an outsider, my views dont count.
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