ng to pen an e-mail to one of my brothers. Should I send it or not? The thing is, it will probably backfire, he will probably deny everything, but I'd like to think we can be open about our thoughts and have an "adult" relationship. My sense is we can't.Using Transactional Analysis as a framework, this is how adult (age-wise) relationships between my (birth) family have worked:
1. Women are "children" in the transactional analysis sense, both abolutely and in relation to men.
2. Men are "adults" in absolute terms, and "parents" in relation to women.
3. The men like this relation vis a vis women, and might even feel less "manly" if the relationship were otherwise (e.g., "adult" to "adult").
4. I think my mother liked her position (although it's possible she didn't always like it).
5. I (a female) don't like it.
6. Growing up I didn't understand that women were supposed to be like "children," in relation to men especially.
Here's the e-mail so far (name's omitted):
***
I just wanted to say something in follow up to yesterday's interactions. I understand that you only want to help and you think you have my best interests in mind, but I really want to live my own life. You didn't need to send me your reserves study, because I already understood the issues and I really can take care of things on my own here. I don't want you and [our other brother] to be so intimately involved in my life. I'm an adult and I really can make decisions on my own.
I think this family is sort of too insular and dependent on each other. In situations like this you only need to express the basic issues and then you can step back. I don't want you to try to keep harping at this kind of thing, because it's my life and I'm going to live it as I see fit. Again, you are not my husband and don't need to keep at it and at it and at it trying to muscle your way into my life - that's how it feels, so no matter what your intentions, so please step back. If you don't know how to relate to me in any way other than trying to always help me, then I'm going to have to limit our relations, meaning limiting interactions between us, which I don't really want to do.
After so many years, I hope you understand my personality enough to know that I like my independence. If you don't know how to give advice and then let me make my own decision (that is not harp on it) and can't find some other way to relate to me other than on the basis of always just wanting to "help" me, then our relationship is going to be very rocky. I need to be very blunt about this to make sure you understand, and to be very honest with you I'm not sure you'll understand anyway.
In the current situation I have issues to keep in mind that I don't expect you to understand and it may not even be any of your business what some of the issues are. I don't agree with everything you've done, but I don't keep harping at it. I don't even go around saying that you made your bed now sleep in it, although there are things I could say that about both you and [our other brother] in that regard (as well as both of you being able to say that about me too). But do I go around butting into your business saying, oh, no you need to do thus and so? No, I don't, I let you live your own lives. If I disagree strongly enough with either of you, I just step back and let you live your own life.
As far as I see it, trying to help me can have different purposes, as to why you might want to keep helping me. Besides the possibility of just plain and simple trying to help me, taking a helping role might help bolster your self esteem or perhaps increase your standing in the family. But this basically is happening by trying to make me look somehow less than you in one way or another. That is, your self esteem is bolstered so long as your relationship with (certain?) others is a certain way, and/or your view of ideal family relations is hierarchical, so you have a need to position yourself so you don't come out at the bottom.
This ignores the male-female issue. You, [our other brother and his sons] can go ahead and have our male bonding thing, that's fine with me. But you leave it there. I am not accepting your attributions of female expectations, and if your bonding explicitly or implicitly means that there are different expectations for me as a woman and/or my role in the family is defined mainly (or completely) by my gender, then I opt out. So now is the time to make these things clear.
And before you get all huffy about these things, you should just know that there some people who understand the gendered aspects of our family relationships, people who have come to this understanding on their own.
It's been quite a while since I've dated much and my health precludes the likelihood of this happening much in the future (not that I necessarily want to date anyway, because I'm rather happily single), but my experience is that many men don't understand a middle ground; either they want an all-out relationship with a woman (i.e., dating vs. friend; "going together" vs. casual dating, etc. ), or they want no relationship at all with her. In our case, it would be something like, you-the-helper and me-the-needy or no relationship at all. You have to come out on top or there's no relationship at all. That's how it feels at this end of the relationship.
This is how I foresee the future relationship between me and you and [our other brother] : The only way I will see you again is by my coming to Seattle. It's possible I could never see [our other brother] and the boys again, but if I do or if I see you in a situation other than my coming to Seattle it will be under the circumstances that you are more powerful than me, such as in a situation where you are "helping" me. This is unacceptable, and as things stand, I see my options as either opting out of the family or accepting being strong-armed into a "needy" position vis a vis you and/or [our other brother].
I should send this to [our other brother] too, but the context is yesterday's interactions about the condo. I'm not going to tell you all the issues involved in my decision making about the condo, because I don't expect you to understand and also because I want to live my life. I appreciate your advice about the condo, but you've started overstepping your bounds. There's nothing more I need from you regarding the condo, including setting things up. You've got a lot of good skills and knowledge, and you shouldn't need me to tell you that... unless you're insecure. So, let me be and if you want to help someone, go find a place to volunteer your services. I'm putting it like this because 1) you don't seem to know your bounds as to how much help might be appropriate, and 2) I think you don't know how to relate to me apart from "helping" me.
Before yesterday's interactions, I was sort of thinking that you could come down here at some point to just relax. But now I'm thinking that might be a pipe dream, for several reasons. 1) You're more likely to go to New York, where you'll have more fun and it would be better for you in the long run to maintain those relations, and 2) if you came down here it would not be to relax but to help me and maybe also relax some. In any case, you don't need me, although you might need [our other brother] and the boys. The need between you and [our other brother] is probably mutual.
***
He won't be able to accept this. He will protest vehemently about my assertions here and he will only be able to accept an all or nothing relationship - meaning our relationship is parent-child (with him as the "parent") or we don't have a relationship. The same is probably true for my other brother, mainly because of his vulnerability with his boys and living on his ex-wife's turf in small town America. Otherwise the other brother would be more able to have an adult to adult relationship with me. Also, we have major disagreements that he can't risk blowing up through closer contact.
Should I send this e-mail or not? Or should communicate these sentiments but in a different way? If I don't communicate them things will just go on as they are, which I can't accept either. If I just step back he may well not let the issue drop and insist on continuing to play the "parent" role, especially since this is an area where he is knowledgeable (it's his profession, after all). I don't know what to do, so I think I'll sit on it. If it persists, maybe I'll send it.
***
Post Script:
This is what happened yesterday: In the morning my brother e-mailed me a copy of the reserve study where he works. Later, after work, he called me en route to an appointment to discuss it and also, apparently, to underline that the information in the report is confidential.
First of all, we'd already hashed this out and I had told him (more than once, I believe) that my last condo had a lot in reserve, although I no longer have copies of those summaries we got at our annual business meeting. I had absolutely no need to have that information from my brother as I already understood and had people (a lawyer, financial adviser) here who were likewise concerned and we didn't need his involvement at all.
I hope you see how degrading this could be - it's basically telling me that he doesn't think I can make a decision like this on my own.
First of all, it's my life and I'm an adult and able to make my own decisions. My value structure and priorities are also my own and I am under no obligation to divulge them to my brothers. While the financial considerations in my decision are important, there are also other issues at stake, and whenever my brothers weigh in on anything it is actually, as it always turns out, more for their benefit - to serve their interests - than it is for my benefit and to serve my interests. For the immediate time it may look like it's for my interests, but it always turns out otherwise, and I've been down that road too many times with my family.
But usually if I stand my ground, that means I'll just be isolated, although dad was probably the one who was least likely to act this way in the family. Dad's helping me might have included a desire to minimize fallout from anything to do with his work affecting me, but he wouldn't isolate me. Mom could isolate me, but this was probably at least in part due to being in a weak position herself and not knowing who to believe or if she believed me there would be a great response from the other family member (depending on what the issue was).
I hope you can begin to see how I'm in a dilemma about who to name as benefactor(s), who to have power of attorney (in case I become incapacitated), etc. I just would like to have straight adult-to-adult relationships with family members, but the more of these things you add to the mix, the more there is the problem of inequality of power and if power is a significant issue in relations, than these issues (naming of benefactors, etc.) are not an insignificant ones. Also, I think in this kind of scenario - how my birth family functions - naming someone a benefactor is tantamount to saying I'm willing to play the child in a parent-child relationship with the person named my benefactor. I would also add that I am no one's benefactor, power of attorney, etc. So it's very much stacked against me, and virtually my only recourse is getting out or just accepting it and somehow playing along. This is what I did in Vienna and was told at the end my my main mentor that I was like the little school boy who, when he was sitting down in response to the teacher's demand, said that he was standing up on the inside. I think it's hard to keep this conflict up indefinitely, though (disagreeing but going along anyway).
So then my choices, basically, are 1) to opt out of the family (maintaining my beliefs & values and have thought-action congruity), 2) maintain relations and continue to deal with these issues but try to maintain my independence of thought (maintaining my beliefs & values and have thought-action incongruity), or 3) just give in (adapting my beliefs and values and have thought- action congruity).
I can think of a myriad ways any of these could play out and it might be possible to partially do any of them, but that's dependent on whether my brothers (the other parties remaining in the family) agree, because relationships are usually not unilateral ones. I'm skeptical that there's anyway to combine these 3 options, as I'm having a tough time thinking of how that could happen. The place where there might involve some variance is when you consider that the other party(-ies) could also opt for either 1, 2 or 3. In this case if we all went for option 3, we'd all be willing to relate to each other as adults and deal with these things on equal terms and in a respectful way. Respect, I should mention, disallows bullying, use of any type of putdowns, inequality in relations, not taking the other person seriously, etc. Let's just say that it would be a major miracle (think parting of the Red Sea) for all parties to take the third option in relation to each other. Maybe my brothers relate to each other this way, but they don't relate to me this way... which I theorize is because I have a vagina. (Sorry to be crude, but that's really what it comes down to, although that's not to say that's the only difference between us.)
