Hi Al:
I need some help before the Thanksgiving holidays. My sister recently married a guy who is kind of obnoxious. We live relatively close but don’t often see each other except on special occasions. Whenever we see my BIL at family gatherings, he always has to be the center of attention and dominate the conversation with his crackpot rants about how you have to own a gun to protect yourself when the “have-nots” rise up and start killing the “haves,” as he calls them. He never comes out and makes racial slurs, but I know that he is a bigot by the way he describes the have-nots.
You can’t give another point of view, especially one that’s against his, because he just starts talking louder and faster to try to overwhelm you. Everybody tends to stay away from any topics that might set him off. My parents want to keep everyone happy, especially my father who is always pleasant and restrained toward the guy, so he and my mother just act like nothing is wrong.
On top of this, my BIL is overweight and is making my sister heavy too. My sister used to be slim and fit, but is starting to lose her figure and attractiveness because the extra weight puffs up what was a very pretty face. Maybe I sound like a snob, but everyone in our family—my sisters, brother, and parents—is healthy and in good shape, so when I see my bulky BIL —a common, loudmouth boor—turning my sister into someone like him, I just want to pull her aside and ask, “How can you take him seriously? Don’t you see how he is making you fat and stupid?”
Even though he is a relatively well-informed person, I just can’t get over how he looks and talks like someone who is ignorant (he mispronounces words and uses some incorrectly). When my siblings and I were growing up, our parents always taught us to be polite and tolerant of people who are different from us, but I’m getting fed up with this fathead and what he is doing to my sister.
My husband thinks he’s a jackass but thinks I should just relax, have a drink, and not let him get to me at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and various other family occasions. How can I tactfully say, “Shut up, and stop making my sister fat and stupid like you!”?
Fed Up
Dear Fed Up:
From your letter, I am guessing that you don’t spend much time with your sister’s husband and, consequently, not much with your sister, either. The point is that he might not act like a loud-mouthed boor when he is alone with your sister and actually might make her happy. Hard though it may be for you to understand, imagine, and accept, your sister apparently loves this guy enough to want to be married to him.
You don’t say whether your sister shares his points of view. If she does, have you been able to talk rationally about subjects on which you and she disagree? Do you two get to spend time alone? Maybe you and your sister could work out together. Does she seem uncomfortable when he takes off on one of his tirades? How does she seem in general? If she seems to like her life with him, then how you feel about him really is beside the point.
Maybe you can change the way you feel about him if you consider that he might feel intimidated by you and your family (consciously or not) and be trying to prove that he is in your league. I’m not saying that he has an inferiority complex, but he could just be uncomfortable around intelligent, articulate people who disagree with him. In his loud-mouthed, boorish way, he could be trying to prove to you and your family that he isn’t a loud-mouthed boor.
At some point in my life, maybe when I was a kid in church, I remember hearing a sermon about love that stuck with me. The gist of it was that loving the lovable is easy but that loving the unlovable is what really counts if one wants to give someone a fair chance. This might be a charitable view that you can try at family gatherings, especially around Christmas, as part of the “peace on earth, good will toward men (and women)” spirit of the holiday.
For the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, take your husband’s advice, follow your parents’ lead, and think of your BIL as comic relief at a time that often creates stress. Then be thankful that you don’t have to find him lovable more than a few days out of the year.
Got questions about life? Love? Parenting? Work? Write to Whit’s End, an advice column by local husband, father, teacher, coach, former executive and former Marine Corps officer Al Whitaker. Send your questions to whitsend@baltimorefishbowl.com
Al is absolutely right with his advice. I’d even insist to your BIL and parents that certain political or social issues not be brought up during these dinners. You can approach this in a polite and collegial manner.
If that doesn’t work, try showing up to the holidays with lots of Royal Farms Chicken. He may eat enough that he’ll fall asleep after dinner and you won’t have to listen to him.
Thanks, Rod. I like the non-confrontational approach. Even better, start feeding him as soon as he arrives. It’s the same strategy used in Akido, one of the martial arts that takes the opponent wherever he wants to go.
I have hosted Thanksgiving for many years at my house. My strategy for dealing with guests who have not so great social skills: retreat to the kitchen and start washing dishes. NO one wants to be a part of the greasy mess that is the post Thanksgiving kitchen. I really like the RoFo chicken idea too. And the thought that the BIL is intimidated
You shouldn’t have to retreat to the greasy mess, planetmom. I agree with you that the RF chicken sounds like a coup de grease.
OK, but what do you do if the objectionable material put forth by a guest or family member is really beyond the pale? What if it’s the kind of thing that you don’t want to even SEEM to be a party to–like something explicitly racist or sexist, so much so that to ignore it seems to be tacitly accepting it? If your kids are there watching you react, and you’ve always taken pains to teach them one set of attitudes (acceptance of homosexuality, say), and someone drops a bomb (using an anti-gay slur), how do you reconcile your parenting responsibilities and self respect with hesitation to publicly call out a guest?
To In the Mix I would say talk to the kids about how the relative feels different from you about the topic and that you don’t want to embarrass that person by challenging him or her in front of others. Then encourage your kids to talk to that relative privately about how they feel about the subject. If the person is a guest, only the former applies. In addition, you might also explain that guests and older relative deserve a deference that doesn’t apply to peers, especially in the case of objectionable, public pronouncements. In short, they can disagree without being disagreeable.