General Relationship Thread

Sorry, I have no bucks to give.

You could always just kill him and eat his brain.

Yeah, I think that's it, Nute and shift. It's very much a feeling of 'hey that wasn't right' even though there was no wrong doing. It's just...different. And I guess sometimes that makes me feel like I'm with someone I don't understand. But of course I don't understand someone I've been with for a few months in the same way I understood someone I was with for years. So I get these feelings of not belonging...or feeling out of place in some way. But that's just part of getting to know someone. I just haven't gone through it in a long time. Thanks for the perspective.

I've considered cooking up his entire carcass, considering it's largely made up of my food.

Relevant link:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18893_6-scientific-reasons-your-girlfriends-father-hates-you.html

Were you in sync with your ex-wife from the beginning, or is that something that happened with time and familiarity? For me, the main reason I'm with my partner is that we just seemed very compatible from the beginning, and being with her was easy. We laugh at the same things, our political views mesh, our personalities complement each other well (she's a bit of an introvert, and I'm pretty outgoing), we have similar education levels, etc.

What does Justin Timberlake have to do with this?

I know "lol cracked whatever," but fuck is that article obnoxious.

But now I will tell a story about my dad. As I've mentioned, my father is basically a wingnut these days. But if there is something I will forever give him credit for, it was that he was an excellent father to his three daughters, especially when it came to boys. He wasn't overprotective. He went out of his way to be nice to our boyfriends. He never acted like we were delicate flowers that needed protecting from pervy teenaged boys. He may have thought this, I don't know for sure, but keeping it to himself if he did was a BIG PLUS, because frankly when a dad acts all protective of his daughter's "purity" or whatever, it's creepy. And he never, ever, ever, ever, ever acted like anything besides a dude who trusted his daughters and their tastes in men.

So he may think Obama is the antichrist and liberals ruin everything (except his liberal daughters, of course). But he never thought he owned me, and never acted like the dudes in my life were threatening in any way, shape, or form to our father/daughter relationship. So thanks, Dad! You're pretty awesome sometimes.

Awww. Glad to hear there are dads doing it right. :)

My mom made a joke today about "my boyfriends." Was so tempted to drop that bombshell...

He was also very pleased we all liked sports and math and science and wanted to be nerds when we grew up. When my mother started a "girls heart science" club for her high school, it confused my father a bit, because in his derpy way, it did not occur to him that young ladies are not actually encouraged to be scientists, since he thought it would be the coolest thing ever for his daughters (and son, of course) to be super ultra mega nerds. He was all, "I know YOU wound up being shooed into teaching, Peg, but that was the early 70's!" And my mother was like, "SAD ISN'T IT." And he went " :( ".

The end!

Wait, did you drop one here that I missed?

Sometimes, I don't want to hold a lengthy debate. Sometimes, I don't want an essay-length response.

Sometimes i just want to show a funny thing. Sometimes, I just want to point at something online and say "Isn't this hilarious?" without prompting an in-depth conversation about why "nice guys" think they're so nice and obviously worth all the women's time. Especially when I state that I'm not in the mood to have said conversation. You don't go "well, I do" and then do it anyway.
/sigh

And here I was thinking we'd made progress.

Open relationship, living with both partners. It came up in another thread. :)

I think my daughter would sayvthe same about me, but it's hard, so hard. Not for any pervybor patriarchal reason but just becausebyou want them to br hsppyand not get hurt.

So tonight I went out to dinner with a friend (who was visiting from out of town) and some of his friends. One of which was a girl with whom I seemed to have some chemistry. Is it total weaksauce if I msg her over facebook to ask her out to coffee or something (having totally passed on the opportunity to do so in-person?)

Lookit you, drunky! <3 I get what you're saying, though.

I get to see my Dad tomorrow, I am totally giving him the ~biggest hug~ now.

If by least stalkery you mean only, then yes!

DOOOOOOOOOOO EEEEEEEEET

No, it's fine. Mention how much you like entering buildings through the back door in the message.

What's stalkery about Facebook messaging?

I'm guessing it's at the butt-end of the conversation>Phonecall>text>IM ranking on account of it being the most recent. It's always been an excellent way of getting low tension dates like coffes rolling to me.

We spent Friday night at my brother's house to have Christmas dinner and open presents with my mom, my brothers & their wives, and the kids. Matt came to bed at 1:30am after playing video games with my brothers. When we were driving home yesterday morning, he said "This was a lot of fun - it's nice to belong to your family."

I almost pulled the car over and hugged him. He had a rocky start with them, so it's great that he's one of the family now.

D'aaaaawwwwwwwww!

Being liked by the spouse's family and having your own family like your spouse is supremely awesome.

That said, I think I might have made enemies out of some of Mr. A's dad's family because they're quite homophobic and I'm not one to mute myself over that issue because for fuck's sake there is a gay person in that family so just get over it already ugh. But his mom's family is amazing and my mother-in-law is a wonderful person whom I get along with famously, and thank the maker that my dad and Mr. A get along because that was something I was afraid was never going to happen since dad can be sortof a hardass.

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, I'm getting annoyed. Trying to do logistics for tomorrow's festivities is terrible. It really is a logic puzzle.

-- MIL wants people to come at 1:00.
-- My sister's husband refuses to come, because he's a dick.
-- So my people are coming at 11:00, which annoys MIL.
-- They aren't staying for than a couple of hours, because they want to get back and have some family time with sister's husband.
-- The reason all the family stuff with my people has to be done Xmas Eve, because my niece spends the day with her mom and then goes to her dad's Xmas day morning.
-- My family prefers to spend holidays with just family.
-- MIL did not know this and invited a friend.
-- Now friend has to be uninvited because my family will be very uncomfortable with a stranger there.

Hm. Typing this all out, I'm getting really annoyed at my family. This would be easier if Quat and MIL and I could go to my mom's house for Xmas Eve, but my mom doesn't want MIL in her house because she's embarrassed by it. (It's half the size of MIL's and is a much older house.)

Now I'm getting really annoyed at my family. Damn it.

Family is awesome.

Family is so awesome that I've opened a bottle of champagne for myself and I'm going to drink all of it except the one glass I gave my MIL. Meet you all in the drunk thread in half an hour...

Family is the worst part of Christmas.

Maybe if your family sucks.

In the end, I have decided to stop worrying about the whens and wheres of the bf's arrival into town tomorrow.
I have also decided that any and all liquor i inhale as of right now will be out of my system by 4:30AM.

yeaaaaaaaaaaah relationships!!!

I'm honestly kind of glad I don't do relationships. Family's bad enough.

I'll drink to that.

My mother-in-law is a horrible, hateful, terrible person and I'm going to be spending something north of 16 hours with her tomorrow including helping her in all sorts of ways that will be unthanked and I promised not to drink anything tomorrow because I usually go facedown at the dining room table at some point around 1:00 a.m. and it's not because I'm drunk it's because I'm exhausted from sitting at this table all goddamned night what person wouldn't and I can't possibly spend that much time around that woman without drinking and so I'm drunk now just to get it in. And then we gotta go back for Christmas dinner and arrrggghhh!.

Family is me, my wife and my daughter. I love my mother. Everyone else can go to blazes.


EDIT: And she keeps the heat on at 82 degrees, thereby buttressing the notion that she is, indeed, a minion of Satan. Think that might contribute to the general sleepiness of the situation?

Saw my mum to exchange gifts on Saturday night and got the whole "You don't come to see me enough". I swear she is turning into my Nan (dad's mum). The worst thing is that I really wanted to meet up with her for her birthday in November but she was too busy. Now I'm getting guilted about it - this doesn't sit well with me.
This is why Dad will always be easier to deal with. We see each other twice a year and that's cool. We both agree that it'd be nice to see each other more and that life gets in the way.
I hate to say it but it will be so much easier to spend time with the rest of my family when my Nan dies, as most of my parent's weekend time is spent looking after her.
Gah.

Shorter version of a longer post I don't care to write: I get that my parents' relationship at this point is defined almost entirely by long-held grudges and petty animosity. It's been that way for nearly as long as I can remember, and I've accepted that. But holy hell when one of them decides to use me as a game piece to pursue their petty bullshit it pisses me off!

So I introduced my girlfriend to my family over Christmas. We drove to Alabama (about 9 hours each way), and we were only able to stay 2 full days (the first of which had us driving until about noon, but still felt like a pretty full day). So my mom and dad met her, as did one set of grandparents, and my sister and her family. Unfortunately, we never caught up with my other grandmother. It's pretty amazing that I turn 39 on Sunday and still have 3 grandparents!

Anyway, everyone seemed to get along swimmingly. My grandmother told me I should hang onto her. My niece described her as 'super cool'. My sister said she loved her...good start. All in all a productive trip! I just wish I could have spent more time with my family, since we had to go from place to place pretty quickly.

In familial relationship news, I just found out a few minutes ago that my aunt passed away this weekend. Not entirely unexpected - the last time I'd seen her (about ten years ago) she'd been reality show levels of obese, needing crutches to get around, etc. She and one other aunt had been the only direct family my dad's got left other than us kids, and I know he hasn't spoken to either of his sisters in over five years. I'm never certain how I'm supposed to react to things like this - on the one hand, I understand that I'm supposed to be sad because that's the proper response when a relative dies. But on the other, I'd pretty much expected to never see her or have any contact with her again and I was totally okay with that so getting the news was strange. Sort of a "Oh, that's terrible to hear, I'm so sorry... are you okay?" which is pretty much all I can feel about the whole thing. My dad seems to be okay, I think he'd been in the same place I was, coming to terms with never communicating with either of his sisters again. But it's probably different - for me they were relatives, for him they were family, at least at some point.

I think I'm just really unskilled at having any proper emotional reaction to death. All I've been able to feel about it is a detached "Huh."

That's a shocker.

Actually, I would probably have a similar reaction to a relative I hadn't seen in 10 years...I suppose it would depend on the relative to some degree, but they didn't seem very close. Also, sometimes it takes a while for the feelings to kick in. Nute just found out a few minutes ago, so it could still hit. I remember when my grandfather died, I was upset, but not crushed. I was surprised (well...we all knew it was coming because he had terminal cancer...but surprised at my reaction anyway). However, a week later, I just broke down and cried a bunch...it just suddenly hit me...hard.

Close death is one thing. People you barely knew it's hard to have much more reaction than "well shit, people dying is generally bad and some people will feel really sad"

Like, I'd have a lot of trouble coping with my mom dying. But when my aunt died I didn't really register it beyond the odd notion that I had one less extended family member that I barely knew. Simply because I hadn't actually seen them or talked to them in about 20 years, and thus had no sense of loss.

Basically: be concerned if you lack a proper emotional reaction to a close death. "Huh" is only slightly inappropriate to a distant death. The usual norm is "I'm so sorry for the loss" while thinking "huh."