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Dear Caught in the Middle:
What a pain that your parents
put you in the middle. It sounds like waiting for them to grow
up and make it easier for you to have a relationship with both
of them is not going to happen. You’ll have a better chance of it
working out if you take the bull by the horns and stop their
bulls--t before they start up with you.
Write them each this
letter:
“Dear Mom and Dad
(reverse the order depending on whom you send it
to):
I am writing to both of you because I don’t have the
confidence that I can speak to either of you without it turning
negative and becoming counterproductive. I have done my best to
visit each of you for the holidays since you got divorced, but it
usually deteriorates when each of you resent my visiting the other.
Both of you will ALWAYS be my parents and I will not allow either of
you to make me take sides against the other.
In order for me to look forward to and not dread the holidays, this
is what I have decided to do--- every year, I will alternate
spending Thanksgiving with one of you and Christmas with the other.
It makes little difference to me which holiday I spend with whom.
If you want to reverse the order one year, the two of you will need
to talk to each other and arrange it. And how you figure it out is
none of my business.
If either of you starts pushing me to dislike the other, I will not
listen to you and may even consider not visiting you when it’s your
next turn to have me. I think it’s a sad commentary on my
relationship with each of you if we have nothing better to talk
about besides how rotten my other parent is and I will no longer go
along with it. So we need to come up with some other basis for our
relationship, which I think is long overdue.
I’m not doing this to punish either of you. I’m doing this because
I love each of you even if you can’t stand each other. I don’t want
to start trying to avoid seeing both of you for the holidays, but I
need each of you to help me. This would be the best Christmas
present you can give me.
Love,
(your name).
P.S. Since I’ve
already agreed to spend Thanksgiving with mom, I’m going to visit
dad for Christmas (which is what we already had planned anyway).” |
