95 Percent Of Opinions Withheld On Visit To Family

hahaha, it's funny cuz it's true. i never read the onion anymore, but this headline really stuck out for me:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28852?utm_source=infocus

"No one in my family really gets my worldview, so I find it easier just to smile and nod and agree with everything," Wilmot said Monday. "When I'm with them, I tend to be a lot quieter than when I'm hanging out with friends."
Wilmot, who grew up in Kalamazoo and now lives in Chicago, described the visit as "seven hours of self-censorship."

this really hit home too:

"Once you let go of the need to express your thoughts to your family, you suddenly feel much lighter," Wilmot said. "You just float along blissfully, finally liberated from the burden of having any presence at all. It's sort of like getting to return to the womb. Which is way more enjoyable than trying to explain to a tableful of Celine Dion fans why you can't stand her."

i remember the first time i tried a zen-like approach to a family gathering and it was so liberating. the path of least resistance, you know? just letting everything drift by. just nod and be agreeable. sometimes i forget and i get baited into arguing about something completely stupid and generally i end up looking like a raving lunatic and i kick myself later. but for the most part i've got it down. this goes for work and casual gatherings with people i don't know well too.

how much of your personality gets submerged around family? (course, i guess it depends on your family...)

I'd say it's more the reverse with me! We're a pretty forthright bunch all around.

yer lucky!

Yeah, I am and I try not to forget it. I'm one of those people who really looks forward to going home for Christmas, what can I say.

there is nothing worse than trying to be honest and "real" with a close family member and seeing that look on their face that sez: um, i don't really need to know all this.

in my experience, anyway.

best to just stick with the weather as a topic!

I suppress some sarcasm – it's nearly always taken seriously – but otherwise I'm totally myself.

don't get me wrong, i love being with my family and maria's family for the most part. cuz they are my family and they love me! but it's just easier to let things go and be generally agreeable. i used to get so hot under the collar and cranky. i don't know why. i would regress into the sullen teen i was for so long.

We avoid politics except when we discuss history.

all those wasted years of trying to explain to my father why he was wrong for liking Don Imus...

I've mentioned this before - my dad's a BNP supporter but luckily this doesn't come up very often since I only see/talk to him about once a year anyway. Was moaning about this with a friend on Friday night - her father also voted BNP at the European elections recently. We need a "racist parents" support group to join.

My mum's side of the family's not exactly progressive either for the most part. Don't think they'd go that far though.

I just ignore Dad's copies of The Weekly Standard. I read The Corner far more often than he does, so we're even.

my dad's a libertarian, so i usually avoid discussing politics these days

We're like Ned's family. We get together and spew. Most of the times we have shared opinions, but there are strenuously bumped heads as well. Sometimes I have to recuse myself before the bloodflow begins. Like, to give one example, if my mother, for the fifty millionth time, starts getting all outraged by the performance of classical opera in contemporary dress.

I generally tell her she's being asinine, why shouldn't they mix it up once in a while. AND IT BEGINS.

Scott, you should be there! You could join the FITE!!! Lance that sullen-silent-inner-teen like a suppurating boil!

Ha, that sounds exactly like what I do every time there's a family gathering. I'll avoid talking about anything serious and just enjoy listening to them arguing on topics about which I'd better keep my mouth shut if I don't want all of them to turn on me! It's like everytime they're talking about a movie they enjoyed they'll turn to me and ask me if I liked it and I always answer something nice but vague so as not to get into an argument about it.
Politics is the worst though, I just go into total silence when the subject is brought up.

maria's family likes to argue and talk politics and that can be fun, but even then i often feel like a bully when i argue with them and i'll get that holiday shameover feeling when i think about it later. and i'll vow to just compliment people's pies and be nice next time.

you're never a bully - good to shake things up, otherwise we just have the gospel according to NPR/NYT

"I hope you saved some Turkey for me"

i don't want to turn into this guy (my other fave onion headline today):

Awful Man Offers Witty, Acerbic Take On Everything He Sees

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/awful_man_offers_witty_acerbic?utm_source=a-section

I can relate to the "shameover" thing. I often feel like a bully when I'm arguing with my mother. She's 90 years old and losing a lot of her faculties, but the cussedness is the same-old same-old and I rise to it every time.

talked to my brother last nite on the phone, we're all gonna meet at my sister's place on July 4th and he was like the opposite of this thread, saying he was all ready to wind up my sister w/his rant about the "health care industry" and how its bankrupting corporate america or something like that. our sister's a doctor though interestingly my brother's eldest daughter is just now finishing nursing school. he's a fucking crank and cynic who doesn't really believe in anything but likes to argue (and also gets pissed off/offended easily). fun times! so yeah I try to hold back my opinions.

growing up our family was a debating society, my mom was the most opinionated person on the planet. the older I get, the more I try to hold back.

haha this is totally me, none of my family really share my interests.

Recently we went out for a meal and my step father brought up the topic of how he thought Terminator 2 was better than the first. I just couldn't hold my tongue and spewed out (something similar anyway)

"NO WAI MAN YOU ARE RONG. TERMINATOR RULEZ. ARNIE AS A BAD GUY WAS THE TITZ",

later as we drove all the way home I sat in silence and couldn't help but feel that I'd crossed some horrible line.

I've always felt a responsibility to change my family's viewpoints on things they were wrong about. I know that's such an obnoxious thing to say, but since I got out of the conservative religious life, it's hard not to see the situation as having pretty clear "right" and "wrong" sides. It's a lifetime project, though.

I guess they think they're Christ's missionaries in the world, tasked with living by His example so that non-believers will see a difference in them, and I feel like I'm the Modern World Embassy camped out in Crazyland, trying to show them how SIMILAR we are.

It is working, at least. Slowly, but that's b/c they have to be exposed to an idea enough times that the shock value/strangeness wears off, and then later on something will trigger them to think about it again and realize they now find themselves on the OTHER side of the argument and THEN I WIN, I mean, they win, because they have just made their world bigger than they thought it was. Phew.

that's encouraging. i finally gave up debating catholicism w/my dad when I realized how GUILTY he felt deep down because I left the church etc etc

whether one can stand celine dion = world view

it's really too bad I didn't tape some 'discussions' w/ my Reaganaut dad.

personal low point: going off on my mom for reading and liking the bridges of madison county. oh god what kind of monster had i become? that was one of the last straws. from then on my mantra before a trip home was: BE NICE.

My mom prob feels something like that guilt over my leaving Christian life & society, but if she wants to inflict needless guilt on herself, that's her choice and I tell her so. I'm so much happier now, I would hate for anyone to feel bad about my progress in the right direction...but if they do, it's only because they don't want to recognize the facts that are right in front of them: namely, that I'm happier and healthier and still EXACTLY THE SAME PERSON they used to know and love, so obviously the sky didn't fall and I'm not turning into a creature of darkness and evil impulses (any more than I was already).

My mom was never going to be NORMAL normal but when she became one of those scary women who like Sarah Palin, it was like she was not the same woman who gave me educational books full of African folk tales and Cesar Chavez: Top Dude biographies etc when I was little. Our entire family SCREAMS the house down over political stuff; my uncle and older cousins are lefty, everyone else is 'center-right'. The only common ground is Not Wanting To Be Told What To Do, By Idiots.

The only thing I tone down around my parents is the dirty jokes.

^

in many respects I censor myself less in front of my family than in front of other peeps

"Father, I heard a euphemistic enjoyment of carnal activity today with reference to the humorous faculties which you might find amusing."

"Do go on."

(20 minutes later)

"...and then they all lezzed up."

"Wonderful. Pass the peas."

idiot dad repository

My trips home have recently flipped entirely, so that my dad now takes a position purely to wind me up. The slightly concerning thing is that so much of the time he gets my beliefs totally wrong - what he thinks I think about Israel/Palestine, for example, is pretty much the opposite of what I actually think. At least that's a subject I have some interest in - it's just weird when he poses as a controversialist on a topic nobody cares about. I guess I should look on it as good practice for having teenagers of my own.

hahaha u guys all know the article is making fun of the guy too rite?

...

just sayin

In the Onion? No wai.

my recent fav: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/nations_girlfriends_unveil_new

that one might be my alltime fav.

lol "get normal soap"

My trips home have recently flipped entirely, so that my dad now takes a position purely to wind me up. The slightly concerning thing is that so much of the time he gets my beliefs totally wrong - what he thinks I think about Israel/Palestine, for example, is pretty much the opposite of what I actually think. At least that's a subject I have some interest in - it's just weird when he poses as a controversialist on a topic nobody cares about. I guess I should look on it as good practice for having teenagers of my own.

― Ismael Klata, Monday, 22 June 2009 14:41 (3 hours ago)

^

Dad pre-recession: predictably-annoying-but-harmless conservative old dude

Dad after losing everything in the stock market: rants at length and top volume about The Mass Media is Lying, Politicians Collude with Corporations, the Whole System is Corrupt, etc., all of which I'm too stupid to ever have suspected

you guys can all have my folks: we've never once in almost 30yrs broached the topics of politics, world events, history, religion or anything even approaching controversial.

or music or movies or books

lollll the picture of the mom and daughter is making my day

my mom and i don't talk about social issues because her Catholicism and my rejection of said Catholicism don't make for very nice conversations.

my dad and i talk a lot about politics and whatnot, mostly because he's growing more liberal as he gets older and it is easier now.

just1ne yr parents and mine would probably get along famously, then

i even found myself WISHING my family would get into fights on thanksgiving when all of the extended family would get together

yeah it's kind of sad, our conversation extends only to:
weather (a popular topic)
intra-family bitching
the latest trouble my bro is in
my mum's job
my parents' car

and i basically haven't talked to anyone in my extended family for years

ok but i have to be honest that i actually LOVE talking about the weather, and i'm always afraid people think i'm smalltalking them but i just LOVE IT

ramz you would get along famously with my nana

i've been sending her happy b'day text msgs every year for 10yrs and without fail the reply contains a reference to the current weather situation

I withhold more of my opinions when it comes to my wife's family - with my immediate family I'm pretty much 100% myself, we're all ideologically lefty so politics is no big deal. If someone's into some movie or music I hate I don't have any qualms expressing my feelings, but there's no need to be insulting or combative about it. But with the in-laws its a different deal - in a way I feel like it'd be rude for me to really lay into various topics (and besides one of the other in-laws already does that for me, so mostly I can just let him do the fighting)

the problem is grandma-- she is an old-school UN-groupie peace activist, and while i respect her passion immensely, her black-and-white view of many cultural and political issues never fails to make me leave the room to cook or smoke a cigaretter.

she also has a similar thing going on as Beth Parker's moms: she is always asking me questions like, "Why don't people make beautiful art any longer?" or "Why don't people write poems that I can understand any longer?" or "Why would anyone listen to contemporary music?"

as anyone who knows my posts can imagine, IT DRIVES ME FUCKING INSANE. at this point i find it insulting, even, because of her implication that most of what my friends do and most of what i do is garbage. of course, she's in her mid-80s so a sort of weird cultural nostaligia and pining for the 'good ol days' is somewhat understandable. still makes me want to punch her in the face sometimes.

mostly because otherwise, she's so goddamn smart.

as far as extended family goes, my mom's side is all a bunch of loud, funny, argumentative Jews so basically no subject is taboo and everyone wants to have the last word and usually there are laffs as well as the occasional hurt feeling. My dad's side of the family is different, but they also never really all get together in the same place, so its not an issue.

omg ramzi!

me and my mam talk about cooking or gardening

me and my dad talk about things like timetabling and travel arrangements

me and my older sister talk about bands she likes that I have never heard about

me and my younger sister sometimes talk about books but mostly just babble incoherently

I generally think people who have opinions about things are total assholes, particularly if they speak really loudly.

xpost at that point, probably not much you can do but grin and bear it, i guess.

movie discussions are always somewhat uncomfortable - i was the film major so i get asked about if i've seen anything good recently, and don't have it in my heart to explain who eg pedro costa is or why i hated a movie that they liked. we find occasional harmony though - my dad likes john ford and gary cooper

i like talking to both my parents but have never felt related to anyone in my extended family. like, i don't even withhold opinions because nothing i have an opinion on comes up. a lot of the time i just chill with my aunts and talk about food or cooking.

i don't even withhold opinions because nothing i have an opinion on comes up.

^^haha, this

my in-laws are also a different story: they're very politically and culturally aware, but my MIL is the most pro-israel person you'll ever meet and will basically not stand for anyone even mentioning that palestinians are humans too. i also have to censor my language around her because as a special needs teacher she gets pretty upset by words like 'retard' and 'spazz' which i tend to normally use a lot.

xp otm

i've been sending her happy b'day text msgs every year for 10yrs and without fail the reply contains a reference to the current weather situation

― where we turn sweet dreams into remarkable realities (just1n3), Monday, June 22, 2009 7:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol lol!

tiarnan <3 i love small-talk

i haven't mentioned to her yet that when i first moved here last year it didn't rain for 4 months - that will REALLY freak her out. she's too old for that kind of talk.

for real! the worst people are people who want to have serious conversations
xp

lol just1n3 being all, 'And i was like, 'This is retardo montalban'" and her MIL being like, "OOOOHH NOOO BITCH"

lolz last time we were at their house we were talking about something and went to say 'retarded' and paused eversoslightly on the re and said ridiculous instead CLOSE CALL but my hubby totally caught it and gave me a look that just about made me lose my shit

ti4rn4n, that's the prob with the grandma! we'll be talking about family stuff or food or some old story about something funny that happened, and all of a sudden she'll say something like, "Isn't it terrible how we're killing all of these people in Iraq?"

mom and dad and i will be like: o_0 .

and she'll just keep on talking.

"Why would anyone listen to contemporary music?"

oh man one thanksgiving with maria's family i fell for the line: "why would anyone watch horror movies?"

i should have just let it sit there like the turkey on the table! but i went on and on like an idiot getting a complete blank stare from the questioner. hoo boy.

i still have the ability to be perverse while drunk though. last christmas i told everyone that we should have a christmas tradition movie that we ALWAYS watch every year when we get together. i made everyone watch Dario Argento's Opera. hahahaha! that was funny. nobody lasted long.

sometimes I lose the run of myself like that tho Table, yesterday my sister and dad were talking about sport and I was all "did you see the iranian soccer team wore green Mousevi bands in the world cup qualifiers?" and they were all o_o and back to what they were talking about

LOL at Argento!

My family is basically ok to chat about anything. My Dad is really interesting if you get him talking about sport, history, or music, but he has a tendency to make assumptions about my political opinions based on some student stereotype, which became redundant about 3 years ago when, I you know, stopped being a student (not that I even then had any interest in studenty No Logo style handwringing politics then anyway). As a blustering finanical dude he doesn't really have time for political nuance, so I stay off politics.

With my Mum the game is not to mention any topic for which Margaret Thatcher could be brought into the conversation, not matter how tenuously, as she loves the Iron Lady and will quite happily shoehorn her into any conversation in order to try and prove her point. It is kind of her own personal Godwin's Law. This is deeply irritating and strange as otherwise you wouldn't characterise her as being right-wing: in fact if you can avoid making her think of Thatcher then it is quite a trivial matter to get her to agree with most liberal viewpoints.

She also is very annoying to watch tennis with (a particular issue at this time of year) because she always expresses her disgust every time a player misses their first serve, on the basis that as professional sportspeople who serve a lot they should hit them in 100% of the time. For me this is a quintessential Mum-as-non-sports-fan opinion, which has a charming, naive logic to it, but is infuriating at the same time: you can explain that there are more factors involved in serving than a mechanical "I must get this ball in" mindset until you are blue in the face, but it won't wash. This puts me in mind of my dearly departed Grandfather, who you couldn't watch football with on the basis that every 30 seconds he would point out that "in my day, players could shoot/pass with both feet". There is obviously occasional merit to this viewpoint, but not if expressed with alarming regularity and not if it is the one opinion that you have on the whole sport.

Other than that though it is basically fine. Over here at the moment, all sides of the political debate are largely in agreement that politicians on both sides are scum and need to be strung up, so this is a plausible fallback position in most political discussions. Also our relatives and in-laws are less likely to be religious fundies, or in fact religious at all, which I am eternally grateful for.

"in my day, players could shoot/pass with both feet"

If he meant "at the same time" then that's impressive!

we shun the crazy ones so the rest of us can have real conversations.

I guess that should have been "either" rather than "both", but you know what I mean!

I have to say that I am lucky: my family is small and we don't bother seeing our weirder cousins etc. They are also accustomed to a) discussing things b) having disagreements/arguments about culture without getting overly upset. This is in contrast to my partner's family, which is so intimidatingly huge that it is difficult to remember everyone's names, let alone their occupations, interests and political opinions. They are also of the type that gets upset if you don't like a movie or something that they do.

Also both my parents and my sister are pretty big nerds, so we can just talk about Star Trek, or fantasy novels, or the Wire, or something in lieu of other conversation.

My trips back east to the parents' house have been documented for years on here.

Let's just say that it took them less than 15 minutes after picking me up from the Knoxville airport last December to declare everything Al Gore said about global warming to be bogus and based on bad science.

see, that's the problem with my family: no one has any interests, therefore we have nothing to talk about. altho i should give props to mum for being surprisingly supported and interested in our small press.

It's not nec. that we don't have anything to talk about, it's just that most of my parents/suburban relatives' political views are repellent, so those aren't mentioned or quickly sidetracked by me.

Pop culturally, we still have books and movies and whatnot to talk about.

yeah, i will say that despite the fact that i've had to explain exactly what i want to do for a living to them more times than i can count, they still support the fact that i'm doing it

this thread is my life today

aunt & uncle came in today from colorado and first thing they did was start complaining about obama and talking about seeing glenn beck live.

OTHERWISE, it's nice to see them!

my mom used to be a lot more prim and proper about "bad words" and "dirty jokes" - but after 20-something years working for farmers, she's loosened up a lot.

I get on fine with everyone as long as we don't talk about racism, drug use/addiction, asylum seekers, immigrants, Europe, sexual orientation, politics, etc. I'm slowly training myself to count to 10 and bite my lip but last year everyone came to ours for Christmas dinner and I had to pull the "this is my fucking house" routine to get them all to stop going on about whatever the latest bullshit "scandal" involving brown skinned work shy gay foreign junkies was.

My last trip went uneventful until I decided to keep my daughter, who had a fever, at their home as opposed to going on a trip with an overnight stay. Yikes. The shit hit the fan in a big way. But it was over by noon the next day. For a split second I thought: why so angry, it's not like I am the worst daughter for wanting to keep my kid at home and rest. hah

That's funny, all you people and your religious family conflicts. My whole family (Catholic) criticizes the church all day long and I really like the church and I am liberal.

I'm from a long line of lapsed Catholics who occasionally act Catholic when it suits them. A relative was once bemoaning Millions of Pounds of Taxpayers' Money Being Wasted on Building Mosques and how "they wouldn't spend that money building chapels for us!" and I'm like "They could build you your own personal chapel and you wouldn't fucking set foot in it!"

^Football Catholicism amirite?

Classic "Till death us do part" there.

My mother is not Catholic but says that in the emergency room, EVERYONE is a Catholic.

^Football Catholicism amirite?

Aye, pretty much :(

Hahaha am not even Catholic but I agree Rangers suck on principle.

The quality of discourse with my father is much better now than it used to be -- over the years, we've progressed from shouting, to the smiling and nodding Scott describes, to occasionally being able to have an intelligent conversation about subjects on which we disagree. Maybe we realized that the two of us yelling about climate change doesn't affect the planet much.

The elder in-laws, on the other hand, get the full smile/nod treatment anytime the conversation veers toward politics or social issues. Usually we manage to chat peacefully about the Braves or his latest gun purchase.

My mom and I meet in the middle on super-populist stuff like Beyoncé and Seinfeld and The Departed, so it generally works out better than the dude in the article or scott.

Most unfathomable time I really wound up a parent - I was watching Aston Villa v Arsenal with my dad at Christmas. Villa, at that point soaring high in the table, came back to draw 2-2 with a couple of really late goals. I was punching the air in delight and my dad went utterly mental. It turned out that after years of taking an amused but essentially disinterested view of footy, he'd recently become a massive Arsenal fan, and on top of this viewed my cheering as a deliberate provocation