Not because I do not have many - on the contrary. So much, that somehow it was implied: if you communicate with all your great-aunts, uncles, aunts, four brothers and sisters - life is not enough. Therefore, I had a rare opportunity to take advantage of this abundance of two or three favorite cousins and cousins, uncles and aunts. In other words, I got the right to choose - something that, according to the unwritten law No. 1, you lose, gaining the title of relative. But how to live with relatives in one apartment?
Once my aunt came to visit my friend. For an hour the guest criticized everything that caught her eye. Criticism was presented in the guise of kind advice, with a sweet seasoning: "I want the best." For example, she strongly advised the niece to make another, better layout in the apartment. Given that the girlfriend just finished repair, the advice sounded either as a mockery, or as a badly camouflaged message: "Everything you did is no good". In the interval, the lady told the bloodline that she had walled up the walls with wrong wallpaper, bought the wrong plate, the wrong napkins and, of course, misplaced them on the table. I do not know what caused the woman to do this - poor upbringing or a desire to assert herself? But when the door slammed behind her, I knew exactly how my friend felt, as if she had been spat from head to foot, forcing me to smile sweetly. "I will not invite her any more!" She said sharply. I fully supported it ...
However, half a year later, the law suddenly got a follow-up. The story of a bad aunt came up in a general conversation. "That is, how, you will not invite her? - the familiar was struck by the ending. "She's your own aunt." "But my aunt behaved very ugly," I stood up for my friend. - "So what? - I did not understand the argument familiar. "She's an aunt." My mother-in-law, when she comes to our house, behaves even worse. But what can I do - she, the mother of her husband. Educated him without his father, except for him, she has no one. We have to endure. "
Then I also formulated the unspoken law number 2, which told how to live with relatives in one apartment. Relatives have the right to offend us because they are our relatives. Mothers have the right to spoil our lives, because they are our mothers. And these rules seem so unshakable to many that even an attempt to put a question mark in the end will seem blasphemous instead of a point. And yet it is worth trying ... Is the high rank of the mother gives her the right to spoil the family life of her child? Does the rank of a relative deprive a person of the duty to be correct and polite? And, finally, do family ties give people the right even not to love you openly?
Only exchanging forty (!) Years, my friend took a strong-willed decision and stopped communicating with her father. "It's not in him," she explained. "In his third wife." She always defiantly did not love me. Of course, she did not call, did not beat ... Unfortunately. Then I would immediately leave. " Almost 20 years old girlfriend had to sit with her on holidays at the same table and listen: "Oh, what a lovely blouse you have. What kind of firm? Did you buy it in the bazaar? Poor ... Does your husband earn so little? It's not lucky, you're not lucky with him ... "or" You were not in Vienna? What a pity. That's how life will pass, and you will not see anything. After all, you are no longer a girl, you have wrinkles in your eyes. " "You know, I'm really not a girl," said a friend. - I'm tired of going to visit them and listening to how they humiliate me for the general illusion of a nice intelligent family. If my father wants to see me, we will meet in another territory. "
When I was still living with my mother, a relative came to visit us (not one of the most beloved ones). After a couple of days, we noticed that things were disappearing in the house. Not expensive and valuable - a magazine I put next to the armchair, intending to read in the evening, a horn for shoes ... The guest did not steal - he simply took them without demand, took them with them and did not always return them. The magazine was forgotten in the trolley bus, the horn is lost ... The peace-loving mother tried to persuade me to close my eyes to it. I broke down on the map of Kiev - the usual scheme that you can buy at a kiosk for a few hryvnia, but very expensive for me, because during the research trips around the city, several routes were drawn on it. I urgently needed it. And after discovering the loss, I told the guest everything. He apologized. The incident was over.
The other day I read an anecdote . "The schoolboy is writing an essay. "Unfortunately, moms, dads and other relatives get to us at that age when it's almost impossible to correct their bad habits." Smirking, agreed with him. But not until the end. Sometimes we do not try to do it. We are just silent and tolerant, slavishly obeying the law: "Well, what can you do? It's the same (mother, mother-in-law, cousin, uncle)." But if I were silent in the case of the map, my relative from the column "not from the most beloved" would move to "those who should not be communicated with." After the explanation with him, we parted normally, and later he often visited us again. Yes, he acted impolitely. I, in the opinion of my mother, too. "What can you do? You were not brought up in the pages, but I'm at the Institute of Noble Maidens," we agreed. But our impoliteness helped us to remain friends.
And I refuse to recognize the unspoken rule number 3. Better politely to hate relatives than, not giving a damn about politeness, to talk to them frankly and to establish relations. Because I know from experience - it's possible! And with moms, and with aunts, even with eighty-year-old grandmothers you can agree - sometimes you just need to talk to them with the same simple words that you would tell your friend.
Is it worth politeness to tolerate unambiguous impoliteness? Especially if the situation can be corrected? If silently clenched teeth, we ourselves do from close legitimate executioners? "Probably," the friend added, "if I rebelled at once, at the age of twenty, and refused to go to my father's house, he would have understood: something is wrong. Now he did not even understand why I suddenly rebelled. "
I will not lie to you - sometimes from trying to talk heart to heart, nothing happens. You should lift the visor of politeness and say: "You're not right" - your close one hurriesly hides behind inviolable, like a wall, the unofficial rules we built. "Relatives have the right to offend us because they are our relatives." From which it seems as follows: to relatives you have no right to take offense (at least, for a long time). Moreover, it makes no sense, because, according to rule number 1, the choice - to communicate with them or not - you still do not have. And often the family refuses to admit their mistakes, compromise, or even burden themselves with elementary courtesy to us exactly as long as they believe in its inviolability. Once they believe in your right to choose, how things change. My friend did not communicate with my aunt for about a year. Then they again came together. Nobody told anyone anything, but as if by magic, my aunt turned into a pleasant, secular woman. Maybe she just did not want to lose her own niece. Or maybe the blood relationship still exists and the unspoken one also reaches us. I want to believe in this ...
For there is another paradox. In our time, when the patriarchal families have remained in the past, the three bondage rules of relations with relatives are also explained by the fact that we ... forgot the good old patriarchal relations with relatives! It's one thing when a family is a single mother and her adult son, to whom she explained: "I have sacrificed everything for you, and, except for you, I have no one." And quite another, when close to fifty - native, cousins, cousins, but feeling themselves a common kin! And you can choose from them those who fit the spirit and the sign of the zodiac. And if you need help, and the husband is busy - you just call your uncle or brother. And the harmful stepmother is a small misfortune, if not three, but twenty uncles, aunts, cousins, and cousins sit at the feast at the table. You just sit at the other end of the table with those who are dear to you. And even if one day you can not come, no one will accuse you of betraying family traditions ... In this kagal this will not be noticed!