CHRISTIAN PARENTS of ESTRANGED ADULT CHILDREN Community Group
Estrangement makes it difficult to talk about with family, friends, neighbors and church members. Christians are NOT immune to broken families. Talk about your experiences with those who know how you feel and get positive support through your Christian faith...."In these last days difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self...disobedient to parents,...
Hi all. I've been thinking a lot about how the personalities in our family affect our estrangements. Very simply put, my DH and I are introverts - we need time to ourselves to recharge. Two of our EC are introverts and our third is the only extrovert in the family. Extroverts desire social/personal interaction to recharge. Our extrovert ES is the one who continues to badger us with his grievances against us. We choose not to speak to him for the time being because he was becoming so hurtful and damaging with his words. However, he is trying to find ways to get to us still. He has involved my MIL, who is also an extrovert. Neither of them are respecting our requests to be left alone about all of this for a time. They bulldoze all boundary requests like they did not even hear them or don't think we mean them. Somehow I think they just can't imagine that we would get peace of mind this way - or they don't care. We've made ourselves clear as we can possibly be. My FIL and my parents never push us to talk about the ES/EC. My FIL told my MIL to "stay out of it" she admitted, but she just can't seem to. After the 5 hour conversation marathon with her and her sister on Friday, when I thought everything was worked out, and, once again thought she was clear on us not wanting to discuss this, she emailed us twice at 1:30 a.m. Sunday morning! I was up and saw these emails come in - once again I was so upset that she didn't "get it" and I couldn't sleep of course. DH phoned her in the morning and had a stern word with her. I could tell she was ticked when she said she was "clear" now that we don't want any more emails about this. This is starting a whole new issue with her now and that is exactly why I asked our ES to leave her (and all grandparents) out of it!
Introverts and extroverts live together in harmony in most families (I assume!) and our extrovert ES did bring us love and joy in the past, but conflict resolution with him has always been intense. We are just too exhausted now with time and age to keep up the level of interaction he seems to require in conflict. So we drew boundaries, which he continues to break. Others have been discussing boundaries on other threads here. It takes some thinking to come up with reasonable boundaries to start with, but then when nobody respects them, what can you do?! We are asking for these boundaries (specifically: ES leave our parents out of the issue at hand with his gf - communicate daily about anything else with them if they/he wants! and MIL please not email us about this issue). We think these boundaries are small and very easy to abide by because all of these parties concerned live thousands of miles apart and NEVER were communicating on even a monthly basis until now! Our EC and MIL would go months and years without emailing or speaking on the phone. Suddenly they now must!???
Anyhow, I don't know where I'm going with this! I feel like I'm in a losing battle just to carve myself and DH some peace of mind - we need it! Health and welfare are on the line. We're getting too old for so much stress. And it is making us want to go to the extreme of our personality type and cut ourselves off from all of them. I am at the place where I feel like I won't reply when I hear from any of them - which makes me the one furthering estrangement and starting it with MIL. But knowing their apparent need to hash everything out to death, they will just find a way to get to us anyhow. All parties concerned here are Christians claiming to be serving the Lord. I don't even know what to make of that last statement! Baffles me. Lately I am just beginning to think we are communicating in totally different languages with ES and MIL due to being so different in our personalities.
I don't have any conclusions here! Maybe I'm just wondering if there is a secret code word or action between extroverts that would say "Back Off" that sadly I just haven't learned by this stage of life! For most of my life everyone has accused me of being too nice. After taking on teenage orphans, I had to toughen up and I don't hear that "accusation" much anymore. I think I'm being clear in my boundary requests - is there another secret to this?!!
Introverts and extroverts live together in harmony in most families (I assume!) and our extrovert ES did bring us love and joy in the past, but conflict resolution with him has always been intense. We are just too exhausted now with time and age to keep up the level of interaction he seems to require in conflict. So we drew boundaries, which he continues to break. Others have been discussing boundaries on other threads here. It takes some thinking to come up with reasonable boundaries to start with, but then when nobody respects them, what can you do?! We are asking for these boundaries (specifically: ES leave our parents out of the issue at hand with his gf - communicate daily about anything else with them if they/he wants! and MIL please not email us about this issue). We think these boundaries are small and very easy to abide by because all of these parties concerned live thousands of miles apart and NEVER were communicating on even a monthly basis until now! Our EC and MIL would go months and years without emailing or speaking on the phone. Suddenly they now must!???
Anyhow, I don't know where I'm going with this! I feel like I'm in a losing battle just to carve myself and DH some peace of mind - we need it! Health and welfare are on the line. We're getting too old for so much stress. And it is making us want to go to the extreme of our personality type and cut ourselves off from all of them. I am at the place where I feel like I won't reply when I hear from any of them - which makes me the one furthering estrangement and starting it with MIL. But knowing their apparent need to hash everything out to death, they will just find a way to get to us anyhow. All parties concerned here are Christians claiming to be serving the Lord. I don't even know what to make of that last statement! Baffles me. Lately I am just beginning to think we are communicating in totally different languages with ES and MIL due to being so different in our personalities.
I don't have any conclusions here! Maybe I'm just wondering if there is a secret code word or action between extroverts that would say "Back Off" that sadly I just haven't learned by this stage of life! For most of my life everyone has accused me of being too nice. After taking on teenage orphans, I had to toughen up and I don't hear that "accusation" much anymore. I think I'm being clear in my boundary requests - is there another secret to this?!!
Peace is very important!
Introvert vs. extrovert -- good analysis you have all made.
CanadianMother, courtesy and respect are exactly what I was asking for but conversations with and emails from ES just kept crossing that line. That is why we are taking a break from him, until he can speak to us more respectfully. Now I need to do the same with MIL too. I don't know why it is so difficult for some people stay out of a conflict.
Norske1 - It is really a blessing that your family is supporting you in this. Many of ours are but the couple who are not are really beginning to do damage and make the situation worse. I am tired of dealing with the interfering nosey parkers. All they do is gossip with what they find out.
Reading about Extroverts and Introverts is helping me understand our situation a little better.
I read once that because we introverts are sensitive to the emotions of others, high drama and high emotions of others drain us as we tend to empathize to much and actually feel the emotions of others in addition to our own. Introverts need daily quiet time alone to recharge their batteries on good days, so bad days we need it all the more! Where as extroverts need the stimulation of people and drama to charge their emotional batteries. Extroverts need people like an introvert needs to be alone, so they have to interact with others especially in times of stress and high emotions! A dysfunctional extrovert will therefore need a lot of validation of their experiences and feelings by others (triangulation) to feel they are justified in the feelings they are experiencing, which then makes them feel secure in their decisions and reactions to things.
I have read a lot of books on personality disorders and dysfunctional behavior, but the book that always stands out in my mind because the title is so true....Crazy makers - how to get along with difficult people by Paul Meier!! I would highly recommend the book as it gave good advice on how to deal with the "crazy making" of others in our lives.