Your next-door neighbors painted their house fuchsia. Your boss is sabotaging your career, and a co-worker comments on your private phone conversations from the next cubicle. Your best friend drains your energy with stories about his cat, and the people at church complain about your singing. Even politicians and celebrities whom you’ve never met curdle your milk whenever you watch the news.
But no one can grab your emotions and wring them out more than family.
The closer people are to you, the more havoc they wreak on your emotions. A co-worker might have more impact than a stranger, and close friends affect us even more. But family members can have us planning a move to a skunk farm to improve our conditions.
We can change jobs and move away from friends, but family members are in our lives to stay (and often without our consent). We didn’t ask them to be part of our family, but there they are with all their craziness.
It often happens when two people fall in love. Over time their personality differences begin to emerge. No one sees it coming, so it adds drama to the relationship. But they’re committed to each other, so they work through those issues. The relationship gets stronger and they decide to marry.
That’s when the craziness starts, because they meet each other’s families for the first time. Suddenly, they realize that they are going to be related to a group of people they’ve never met and will have to spend holidays with them. They’re not just marrying their intended; they’re joining their family too.
Those early family gatherings reinforce their fears. As they spend time with these people, they feel like they’re eavesdropping on a sideshow act from the circus. But if the relationship is going to work, they have to learn to get along with the clowns as well as the wild animals.
The closer they get to the wedding, the more drama surfaces. Both of their families have different ideas of what’s important for the ceremony and reception, and the couple deals with the stress of family negotiation. If it really gets uncomfortable, they think, “We just have to make it through the wedding and we’ll be OK. After all, we don’t have to live with them.”
That’s true in most cases. But the engagement and wedding are only a dress rehearsal for the rest of their lives. Each holiday that comes around brings expectations from all sides that have to be negotiated. It’s like when a bunch of kids are running around the house chasing each other and you think, “Somebody’s going to be crying in about five minutes.”
But the biggest stress on a couple’s relationship comes when the first grandchild is born. Suddenly, people on both sides of the family want access to the child and have their own expectations of how their grandchild should be raised. They might genuinely want to help, but they often intrude in the couple’s life without being asked.
When my wife Diane and I started mentoring young married couples at our church, we would get calls from them saying, “Can you come over for coffee sometime soon? We have something we want to talk to you about.” We could almost always guess what the topic would be based on what stage they were at in their relationship:
It’s almost like the parents on both sides say, “Well, we raised you this certain way and look how you turned out. Of course you’ll want to do it the way we did.” If the couple goes against the patterns from either side, it’s taken as a slap in the face.
You Can’t Choose Family
We can’t choose the family we’re born into. We spend our whole lives learning how to negotiate those relationships, but it’s not by choice. We relate because we’re related.
We can choose who we marry, but we don’t get to choose their family. We can try to ignore them or say, “They’re not really my family. They’re his/hers.” It’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t work. When you marry them, their family becomes your “in-laws.” Literally, it means they are “in law” (legally) your family too.
When your siblings, parents, or children marry someone, you become related to strangers because of that choice. You don’t ask for it; it just happens.
That’s what makes family drama more intense than other relationships. With other people, we know we could just end a relationship, change jobs, or move away, and the relationship is no longer there. But with families, it’s easy to feel trapped. If a crazy person is suddenly in our life by default, it changes the dynamic between us and them.
There are five characteristics that define family relationships: proximity, history, patterns, feelings, and expectations.
Proximity
The closer we live to someone, the more demands there seem to be on our relationship with them. If our in-laws live on the other side of the country, we don’t have to deal with as much face-to-face drama as we would if they lived two blocks from our home. But when they visit, they stay for longer periods of time, possibly under our own roof. They might also have higher expectations for staying in touch than we’d like.
I’ve often thought of making a plaque to put on our guest room wall with the verse from Proverbs that says, “Seldom set foot in your neighbor’s house—too much of you, and they will hate you” (Prov. 25:17). Diane doesn’t think it would match the décor.
When family members live nearby, they stay in their own house. But we’ll probably encounter them more often.
The greatest potential for drama happens under our own roof. Our commitment to our immediate family helps us get through the crazy moments, but we’re with each other 24/7. Invite an elderly parent or cousin to move in, and it gets even crazier (for both the family and the “guest”). The proximity can add drama but without the commitment that exists between immediate family members.
History
Even if our family is messed up, we grow up thinking it’s normal. It’s all we’ve ever known. Because it’s our only model of how people interact, we don’t know a different approach. Since it’s always been that way, we assume it’s OK and nothing will change. That assumption directly impacts how we communicate with family members.
A lot of husbands and wives have told us about the drama with their spouse’s family. They spend time with them and notice the communication patterns that seem unhealthy. So they take it upon themselves to try and change those patterns, attempting to “fix” something that has existed for decades.
When they’re with crazy Aunt Alice, for example, they start replaying the old tapes in their head about what she’s always been like, and that becomes the foundation for how they interact with her. They might try to stay friendly with her or ignore her or become defensive. They might keep all conversations at a surface level to avoid conflict. In other words, they choose from their own menu of unhealthy responses.
History brings us to where we are right now, but it doesn’t have to dictate how we respond in the future.
Patterns
When our kids are little, we watch how they develop. We see their interests, temperaments, and patterns of behavior. After fifteen years or so, we think we’ve got them figured out and we know how they’ll turn out as adults.
But then they move in a whole new direction. It’s not necessarily bad, just different. Diane says it’s like we write a storybook about our kids’ lives over the years, and in their mid-teens we write the rest of the book—including the ending. Then over the next few years, they tear out our ending and write their own.
Kids are human. So are other family members (yes, even crazy Aunt Alice). That means we can try to predict their future behavior based on how they’ve always been, but we’ll probably be wrong. Relationships are dynamic because people are always changing. We can’t plan our responses until we see what they say or do.
Feelings
When relationships are unhealthy, they hurt. The reason they hurt is because we care. If we didn’t care, they wouldn’t hurt.
That’s why people you care about the most can hurt you the most. A lot of people try to shut down their feelings in a painful relationship in order to protect themselves. That can be appropriate in some situations, but it eliminates the possibility of healing. Our feelings provide the fuel for working on a relationship. If we stop caring, we’ve given up on the relationship.
Expectations
Proximity, history, patterns, and feelings all lead to expectations. Based on past experience, we decide what will probably happen in each relationship. Then we believe those assumptions, and we’re taken off guard when the other person violates our expectations. It happens most with family members because expectations rise the closer you are to someone.
Survival Strategies for Families
Dealing with crazy family members can feel like swimming at night in a shark-infested ocean. You know the sharks are out there, and usually nothing happens. But you know there’s a chance of being eaten alive. Survival in a family setting requires honesty about what’s really happening, understanding several key concepts:
1. It’s not my job to fix another person.
I’m responsible for my choices; you’re responsible for yours. If I take the responsibility to make you act in a certain way, then you’re no longer responsible and you’re dependent on me to fix you.
I can’t control what the sharks do. I’m only responsible for what I choose to do, knowing that the sharks are there.
2. People can change—but don’t count on it.
When we know how another person acts, we assume they’ll always be that way. But since they’re human, there is always hope. Situations come into people’s lives that can cause them to make new choices. We can’t force them to change, but we can influence them.
There are no guarantees, however. If we count on them changing, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment and frustration. The healthy response is to:
3. Escaping doesn’t always solve the problem.
Sometimes it’s best to leave the situation. But if we don’t deal with our own issues in that relationship, we carry those unresolved issues with us. That’s why people leave a painful marriage, but yet they can’t let go of their bitterness even when the other person is gone. Years later the other person is still controlling their emotions, and it’s eating them alive.
4. We need to talk to the person, not about them.
When we talk about someone behind their back, it’s called gossip, even if it’s a crazy family member. Of course, we’re going to talk with each other about how to handle dynamics that are happening within the family. But there’s a fine line between discussing the reality of a relationship and feeding the fire of emotion.
When someone causes pain in a family, we need to decide what to do. The key is to make sure the discussion doesn’t spiral down into gossip. Healthy dialogue centers on what type of boundaries need to be set and how to respond to that person’s behavior, without just rehashing their craziness over and over. We need to focus on the facts that support our feelings.
How do we stay focused on facts? By talking to the crazy person, not simply about him. Gossip never promotes healing. Truth does.
5. We don’t want to rescue or enable the other person.
There are natural consequences in life for our choices. If we choose to stand in the rain, we get wet. If we eat too much, we gain weight. If we rob a bank, we go to jail. If we don’t feel the consequences, we have no reason to change.
Sometimes, when crazy people cause pain, we try to rescue them. A teenager spends his money on concerts and electronics and doesn’t have enough left to put gas in his car to get to work. We know that if he can’t go to work he’ll lose his job. We don’t want to see him lose his job, so we lecture him about money decisions. Then we fill his tank, hoping he’ll make better choices in the future. But since he didn’t feel the consequences, he has no reason to change.
There’s usually no need to lecture or punish. It’s much more effective to just let people feel the natural consequences of their choices.
That’s why we deal with crazy family members differently than other crazy people. They’re in our lives whether we like it or not. We can try to influence them, knowing that they probably won’t change. If they don’t, we can keep from being victims of their craziness by not taking responsibility for their choices.
We still care about them. But instead of punishing or manipulating them, we simply allow them to feel the consequences of their decisions. If they emotionally or verbally abuse others, the natural consequence will be broken relationships.
The Bottom Line
Can we change crazy people? No. We can’t force anyone to think or act differently. But we can influence them.
Is there hope? Yes. But there are no guarantees. I’ve learned that God never gives up on someone, and he’s the one who is working in their lives. We need to care about the person, trust God for what he’s doing, and avoid becoming a victim of the other person’s choices.
How is that possible? Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
If we can’t change another person, we must learn how to change ourselves.