cranberrypie

When my brother got married, the tension in my family sky-rocketed. No one in his side of the family was involved, or in, the wedding. It was more of a wedding involving and surrounding my sister-in-law’s family. Because of the (previously) close relationship that my brother and I had, this cause quite a bit of tension between my sister in law and I, and as a result, a completely invisible relationship between my four year old niece and I.

I’ve resolved, because I don’t want to lose my brother or further fail to know or be close to my niece, to make an effort to be closer to my sister-in-law. She and I are very different, however. In fact, we couldn’t be more different. She’s very airy-fairy (and not very ambitious or driven), while I’m completely grounded and quite a bit driven. She’s extremely liberal (love the terrorists, they had a bad childhood), and I’m pretty conservative (they kill, we kill).

She also finds the need to consistently put me down in front of my family, especially whenever the topic of child-rearing comes up. I have no children, but she’s said that if I didn’t want to stay home for the entire child’s life, versus staying home when they are small and working later, I shouldn’t have children.

BUT, and here’s the big part, all of this is immaterial if me not being close to her puts any additional tension on my family, my brother, and the potentially fulfilling relationships I’d be losing out on. So, I’ve resolved to mentally shield myself from her various barbs and focus on the good to try to be with her as a human, rather than our normally adversary status.

Wish me well. I’ll be seeing her on Tuesday.

To give a brief ‘what’s what’ entry, here’s why I put this up. I have a habit of giving a lot to friendships. For example, I had this one friend who believed her birthday should last the entire month, but the actual weekend of her birthday meant every day was a party – all of which she didn’t drop a dime for.

I spent a two months calling three separate groups of friends for her, and myself, my boyfriend, and my best friend dropped over $700 for everything combined.

She meets a guy, and the change in her personality starts. Instead of actually being kind and considerate, every conversation is about her. Everything is about her. There’s zero time for any of us, except when she needs to vent or talk about her. My birthday rolls around, she forgets it. She’s reminded by my best friend, calls me, and nothing.

I haven’t talked to her in two months.

There’s a lot more to this story, but suffice to say I have a habit of committing myself to friendships with people that end up caring more about themselves than anyone else. I want to understand the difference between someone who’s worth my friendship, and one who isn’t.

I had a long talk with my boyfriend last night, and a variety of personality characteristics were discussed with regards to how compatible we are with eachother. I realized that I am happier in this relationship, if only marginally on bad days, than I was with other relationships.

Also, a key to relationship happiness for me (at the moment) is not to put too much pressure on my boyfriend to be the ‘perfect guy’. Expecting perfection all the time, especially when you don’t verbally give a list of what is ‘perfect’ (yet expect it anyways) will invariably lead to major disappointment.

So far, so good.