Ahh, family. Can’t live with ’em… and can’t live with ’em.
While being one of the greatest and most fulfilling parts of life, family can also be one of the most toxic and infuriating. For some reason, being around family brings out the worst in us as well. As soon as we’re back around our parents, we cease to be the functioning and capable adults we are and instead become our teenage selves, reacting with exasperated vitriol to any attempts our parents make to guide us. Our parents simultaneously return to acting as if we’re still living under their roof, frustratedly overstepping in their advice on our lives. And it’s the same with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents; those relationships likely haven’t had much chance or time to progress as our lives have rapidly changed around us, so our interactions regressively take place through to the same neural channels did when we were much younger and less wise.
While we don’t often immediately have the same history with our in-laws, this often repeats itself, and we can find ourselves indefinitely in the same state that we were when we met them, while a death-by-a-thousand-cuts experience drives us into increasingly irritated interactions.
This guy shared how the history between himself and his brother-in-law had turned sour and how bad-faith actions from his brother-in-law had soured their relationship, culminating with the events they shared in his story when he got even by ruining the couple’s wedding photos.
