kickycan wrote:dlowan wrote:It's hard actually to separate emotionally from family, isn't it? They can get under your skin, if nothing else, like nobody else ever will.
I dunno.......I used the pretend ploy with my father, sort of. I never actually said anything which wasn't true, I just never said anything about my life, except stuff like where I was working and really external things like that.
I only introduced a couple of my men to him....ones I knew could appear acceptable to him...the rest never went near him. Ditto with friends. I accidentally let drop one day, when I was 23, that I had sex. Oh my!!!! Such horror!!!
Thing is, he was such an utterly self obsessed creature that he never asked anything, except about things that he wanted to know about so he could boast to friends...you know, like marks at uni and such, so it was much easier to just avoid having him know anything about my life than it would be with a normal human being.
My sense is that your family would actually ask you stuff?
Well, we talk every week on the phone, and yeah, they (mostly my mother) always ask me stuff. I have already started to keep things from them, like for instance, the last time I quit my job, which was a pretty big thing, I kept it from them until after I got another one. I just didn't want to hear my mother tell me what I should do, and why I shouldn't do it.
Like I said, it's mostly my mother. I have also instituted a policy of NEVER telling them I have a date. Even if I go out with women who are single friends, I don't really like to tell her. It just gets her motherly instincts all up and in a flutter, and the nagging and questioning follows directly.
But the religion stuff is very hard for me to lie about for some reason. I'm not a good liar in the first place. Omitting information I can do, but actually saying something that isn't true, especially to the people who gave birth to me and raised me...that would be a pretty tall order.
Maybe I could tell her that I do believe in god (defining "god" in my head as "the universe", or "the thing that makes the world do it's thing on a daily basis, whatever that may be") in a certain sense, but I just don't believe in organized religion. That's not really a lie, is it?
But my worry is that if I ever told them I believed in god, they would go into the next phase of "Operation Rescue Kicky" and I'd have to then hear all about their church and all the wonderful people in it, and how I should really go with them when I'm home and I'd have them all talking to me about jesus and god all the time...that doesn't sound too promising to me.
Indeed.
Have you thought of a phrase to say whenever they raise the subject, that never varies? Like a mantra?
(There's a technical name for this ploy that I have temporarily forgotten)
The aim is that they weary of the conversation because you give no purchase for continuing.....
You know...mebbe something like:
"I appreciate that this is important to you, and that you are trying to be helpful to me, but this is a topic we will not agree on, and I prefer to speak about other things....." Followed by a new conversational gambit....
Another trick I used, which WAS helpful for me with my father, was behavioural intervention.
He used to verbally harass and abuse me...for hours if I let him, all quite genuinely, in his mind, to be helpful.
One day I simply said:
"Dad, I will not take your abuse any more. If you start being abusive, I will not say anything, I will not argue, I will simply walk out the door, and you will not see me or hear from me again for 2 weeks, and I will not speak to you if you contact me."
I followed through a couple of times, and he learned (had to be reminded every now and again.
I am not suggesting you phrase it that way.....but perhaps if you say to your family that you find the religious pressure distressing and it affects your pleasure in contact with them and you do not want to become angry, so you will terminate conversations with them if they persist...eg finish a phone call with your mum if she starts in...politely and lovingly, but firmly.
I dunno...just throwing out ideas....
