The Family Circus
I don't know if this even belongs here. It's not exactly on topic for my stated goals for this blog.
But he's not even close to his family. The question should be: How do I move my shitty family further out my life without anyone, especially her, feeling like my girlfriend is somehow to blame?
My oldest son spent his childhood not understanding the evil in-laws tropes. The ex was in the Army. We lived ELSEWHERE.
My mom was German and refused to teach me German growing up and I had very little contact with most of her family as a child. I married a guy who went into the army and we lived in Germany for nearly four years in my twenties and I went and stayed at my Tante Freidel's house for a week or so not long before she died.
And I learned I wasn't missing anything. It was cool to meet some of my relatives but this blood is thicker than water meme can go die in a fire. Being blood relatives isn't some magic faerie dust that somehow makes it magical and special.
You may get along better with people you spend enough time with because you get to know them better. Historically, this was probably blood relatives.
My understanding of the details is fuzzy and my parents are both dead. My dad outlived all his siblings so I can't really ask anyone about things I'm not sure about.
He apparently joined the military originally at age seventeen with parental permission to fight in World War II. He left the military and went back home for like six months and then decided being a dirt poor farmer wasn't a better life than the Army and he went back in, starting over from E-1 because he had been an E-6 due to field promotions in the war.
My sister said that he got to sleep an hour later in the military than on the farm and if they weren't shooting at you, it was physically easier work than farming. He spent 26.5 years in the Army and had told my mother he would retire in Germany like she wanted.
That didn't happen. The Army broke its promise to him that he would never go back to Vietnam and he dropped his retirement papers rather than go back, so he bought a house in Columbus, Georgia while on terminal leave (taking all your vacation time owed before you retire) and that's where I grew up.
I hardly knew Dad's family. They were in Indiana.
But go back and reread what I just said if you think that detail is because he was a victim of circumstance because the PLAN was to retire in another COUNTRY on another CONTINENT.
There was never any plan to go home again and he wasn't forced to serve.
His obituary said he spent 18.5 years overseas while in the military. And my understanding is that was largely by choice.
My dad was very talented at things that were probably rooted in being part Cherokee and he would razz people in the military about how "city boys" don't have those talents. I've never read anything that indicates farmers have those talents either. I have read tribal peoples have them.
I believe he likely lived elsewhere in part to avoid American racism over him being mixed blood.
People have all kinds of reasons they do the things they do and you can politely sweep a lot under the rug with stating completely true facts about career aspirations and this is the best college for my field and I need to go where the job takes me.
But if Dad had been thrilled to pieces to stay with his blood relatives and in his home town on the farm, he could have done so. And that's really quite common and if people have any manners or sense, they don't poke too hard at the stuff being glossed over.
In Mayflower Madame, some of their clients ACTUALLY hired her escorts from her escort service as escorts, not hookers. They had a few gay men who would hire the same girl periodically to attend family events like weddings and in one case the family liked her so much they were pressuring him to marry her and the two had to create a theatrical dramatic break up.
So those gay men kept up appearances at family events and never went no contact or started drama etc. But the truth is their families really knew NOTHING about them or their lives.
I stayed in touch with my relatives and never went no contact but I mostly lived elsewhere. And a lot of BS other people ask about online was just never really anything I had to worry about.
There are lots of options between "Enmesh my new chick in with my nutcase family and expect her to endure their garbage" and "Burn bridges and never speak to these people again."
But somehow most of the Internet seems unfamiliar with the concept.