Giving PA people what they "want" (Stories!) UPDATE P27

[Shalamar]

That reminds me of when my parents stayed with us one Christmas after our first daughter was born.  They invited over some friends to come see the new baby (who was approximately one week old at the time, so yeah, my husband and I were a bit tired and stressed).  I decided to forego the nap I desperately needed and tidy up the house for the visitors.    My mother entered the room just as I was finishing up, glanced around, and said reassuringly "Don't worry about it being so messy.  Our friends know that you just had a new baby, and they won't expect it to be neat." 

[Jules1980]

He did get a Kindle Fire by saving up his money (we paid for half), but this is mostly stuff like Pop-Tarts and ice cream, with the occasional Nerf gun thrown in. I don't mind stuff like that once in a while, but if I let on that he could just buy them with his own money he'd never eat anything else!

Next birthday, wrap him up a box of Pop-Tarts and when he opens it, amazed to discover it is NOT the gift of his dreams, reply, 'You asked for it so often, and so piteously, I thought it would be what you really wanted for your birthday!'   
Oh, wait, that would be passive aggressive.
 

That would be PA, but giving him a wrapped box of Pop-Tarts along with a larger, more appropriate birthday gift might be fun.

One year for Christmas my nephew received in his stocking a box of Ritz crackers and a pack of McDonald's gift certificates since he always asked for "real crackers" (as opposed to the whole grain, seedy variety my sister bought) and daily asked for a milkshake from the McDonald's they passed on the way back from school.

Nephew was THRILLED.

My grandmother once used a big frosted flakes box (It actually held several boxes of Frosted Flakes, my aunt got it from the retail store she worked at.) to wrap my DB's gift in.  He opened it, said, "Cool! Frosted Flakes!" and sat it down.  It was an hour later before grandmother told him to look in the box.  He was DISAPPOINTED that he got sneakers and not Frosted Flakes.

[gramma dishes]

It sounds like she just wants to think she's still useful and needed.  Personally, I'm DELIGHTED when I see a little dirt of some kind or another at my DIL's and my own DD's homes but for a very different reason.  It makes me feel like I don't have to go crazy cleaning whenever they're coming to visit to keep my own house up to their standards!   

That is absolutely true, and if she handled it differently, I'd just be happy to have the extra cleaning help and feel grateful. But she usually gives my roommates a mournful look and says something along the lines of "I raised her to be neater than this. But she's just so meeeeeeeeeessssssssssssy". And then she'll shake her head sadly.

She's a hoarder. There is not a single room in her house that doesn't have piles of boxes & crap. Most rooms (including my parents bedroom, my bedroom, the spare bedroom, and her old crafting room) are so piled with boxes that it's either impossible to get into them (literally impossible. boxes have fallen against the door, so it cannot be opened), or impossible to get farther than the doorway. THAT is how I was raised.

Which is why I want to climb the walls whenever she makes a comment on my home.

Yeah, that changes everything. I'd be climbing the walls too under the circumstances you describe.   Funny that she is 'satisfied' with the mess in her own house, yet wants yours so clean and tidy and organized! 

[Celany]

Three of my romantic relationships that ended in the past few years did so because I gave the person I was dating (who turned out to be rather P/A) what they wanted.

In each case, we were having a disagreement about something that I thought was serious, but not relationship-threatening. For example, one was a case of a miscommunication: he thought I was calling him to set up where we'd meet, I thought he was calling me. When I didn't call him, instead of calling me to find out what happened, he decided that I'd stood him up. At any rate, because he was upset that I stood him up, he sent me a text, telling me that he wanted to return the stuff that I'd left at his place (toothbrush, pjs). I was confused, both at the hostility, & why we went from meeting up to breaking up. But I went along with it & made arrangements to get my stuff.

Then we talked about it, & I found out that he was returning my stuff/breaking up with me because he thought I stood him up. Mind you, we've been dating for four months at this point, I'd *never* stood him up, and the only time I ever cancelled was when I was sick. But he'd had previous girlfriends stand him up, so he had a rather...drastic reaction to thinking he was being stood up.

Once we figured out what had happened, he wanted to keep dating. It turns out, he was breaking up with me to teach me a lesson about how seriously he feels about being stood up. But he hadn't actually expected me to "accept" the breakup.

Sorry dude, if your idea of how to handle things is to use breaking up with me as a weapon, then we shouldn't be dating.

And this has happened three times in the past few years. It's a really disheartening trend.

[DoubleTrouble]

The cleaning ticks DH off because it's her PA way of saying we don't keep a clean house but I just remind him that it's a free cleaning service

But it's not free, it comes with overbearing dissaproval.

Very true.  But the recipient can decide not to pay the cost.

Agreed. I completely ignore the PA comments or just offer to get her more cleaning supplies ( ) & DH usually makes himself scarce when she's there. And frankly the things she cleans are usually what I hate to clean like the oven or the blinds so it's fine by me if she wants to play the martyr & clean stuff. It has gotten to the point where DH just rolls his eyes & moves on when I tell him what she's cleaned now (it's become a running joke with us & with my Dad) which is a lot better when it first started about 5 years ago.

Part of it comes from Mom hates just sitting around & when the boys were younger & not very interactive there was a lot of down time. These days they wear her out so much I really can't think of the last time she did any serious cleaning. Plus I usually have our house cleaners come before she arrives to do a deep clean which is becoming necessary with my boys. Have I mentioned I hate cleaning? Love our service!

[snowflake]

That is absolutely true, and if she handled it differently, I'd just be happy to have the extra cleaning help and feel grateful. But she usually gives my roommates a mournful look and says something along the lines of "I raised her to be neater than this. But she's just so meeeeeeeeeessssssssssssy". And then she'll shake her head sadly.

She's a hoarder. There is not a single room in her house that doesn't have piles of boxes & crap. Most rooms (including my parents bedroom, my bedroom, the spare bedroom, and her old crafting room) are so piled with boxes that it's either impossible to get into them (literally impossible. boxes have fallen against the door, so it cannot be opened), or impossible to get farther than the doorway. THAT is how I was raised.

Which is why I want to climb the walls whenever she makes a comment on my home.

Yeah, that changes everything. I'd be climbing the walls too under the circumstances you describe.   Funny that she is 'satisfied' with the mess in her own house, yet wants yours so clean and tidy and organized!

My parents have the grossest house imaginable.  As an example, my little sister decided to experiment with the anarchist's cookbook when she was in junior high with some friends.  She burned a hole in the linoleum of our laundry/mud room in a failed attempt to make a small amount of napalm.  She moved some cleaning supplies (that had been left on the floor) over the spot to make it look like they had leaked and done the damage.  My parents didn't discover the damage until TEN years later.  Because they had never picked up the cleaning supplies and put some boxes right over them and then just kept  layering.  Let me be clear that this didn't happen in some out-of-the-way spot.

But my parents are what can only be called "fakes."  I mean that they are so heartily ashamed of the inaction that happens when they are hit with severe depression that all their meager mental resources go to hiding it.

So when I first was living out of the house, I wasn't THAT clean.  I worked half time and went to school full time so I did the bare minimum.  They would come over and say, "I just don't understand where you got this." And apologize to my roommates as if they had done all they could to fight against my slovenly nature to no avail.  Sometimes right afterwards I'd ride home with them and they'd say, "Oh, could you clean the bathrooms for us?" And the bathrooms hadn't been cleaned since I had been there several months before.

<snip> It turns out, he was breaking up with me to teach me a lesson about how seriously he feels about being stood up. But he hadn't actually expected me to "accept" the breakup.

Sorry dude, if your idea of how to handle things is to use breaking up with me as a weapon, then we shouldn't be dating.

And this has happened three times in the past few years. It's a really disheartening trend.

But if you aren't begging them to take you back.  I think that's half the battle. 

I was once similarly disheartened at my judgment after my boyfriend called me names, threw things at me, and told me to get out of his face.  (OK, he used worse words than that.)  I just went home, bagged his stuff and put it on his doorstep and tried to get over him.  He immediately called me up to yell about how I was "calloused and unfeeling" and that "you just got rid of my things like you want to discard me." Dude, you broke up with me.  And that was after several times you said you said "I don't trust a single bone in your body."

He expected me to beg and plead and promise never to misread his mind again.  At the time I couldn't figure how I could have not seen the warning signs.  I went with a whole lot of rounds of "I suck, I suck, I suck."  But in retrospect, I realized the fact that I didn't back down or regret my decision to stay broken up showed that I was ahead of so many people who I thought were "successful" in relationships.

[Auntie Mame]

During the rare visit when my mom comes & stays, she also does that kind of cleaning & it makes my blood boil. When she stayed last year, my roommates & I had just done a really good cleaning & the only thing she could find to pick at was the dish drying rack. It had gotten a little dirty at the bottom. Which she made a huuuuuuuuge deal out of. Ugh.

I honestly would have straight out laughed at her and said, "Really, that's the best you can do?"

[JenJay]

There is someone in my life who used to turn every argument into a pity party by saying things like "I'm a horrible person, I wouldn't blame you if you hated me!" I fell for this for a long time and would immediately shift my focus from whatever I'd been upset about to reassuring them that I loved them and thought they were wonderful. Of course this would take awhile and by the time they were calmed down it was too late/awkward to get back to the subject we'd been arguing about so I'd just drop it.

I finally realized what was going on so the next time it happened (which wasn't very often) I just sat silently, staring, as the negative comments were made. Then they got quiet too, expecting me to step in and prop them up. I said "Oh, I'm sorry, was that my cue to drop the subject of X and spend the next 15 minutes reassuring you that you're wonderful? I think you know I love you and think you're a good person. Anyway, I'm upset because..." Total stunned expression on their face. I think they'd been doing that for so long, as a way of coping with/escaping from guilt-inducing discussions, that they honestly didn't realize it was happening. It happened a few more times and I'd just sit quietly and then get back to the subject at hand. Over time they realized it's not a Huge Scary Deal when I'm upset, heck they can express being upset too! We have great discussions now.

[Hillia]

I'm on my way to breaking DH of his PA-ness about housework.  He'll say, mournfully, as he watches me do dishes/laundry/vacuum etc, 'I'm just a useless lazy bum'.  I used to say, oh no honey, of course you're not.  Finally I got fed up and said, 'You know that calling yourself names doesn't relieve you of your responsibility, right?'  To his credit, he took this in and now does a lot more proactive cleaning, and will ask me what he can do to help when I'm working around the house.

[RubyCat]

My ex-husband used to pull the "I'm leaving" act.  In the beginning, I was devastated at the thought of being left alone with two small children and shame of a failed marriage.  I would cry and beg him not to leave, but he would leave anyway only to return after a few hours.  Over time, when he would tell me he was leaving, I would just reply "Ok."  The last time he left, I changed the locks.   

[BarensMom]

My ex-husband used to pull the "I'm leaving" act.  In the beginning, I was devastated at the thought of being left alone with two small children and shame of a failed marriage.  I would cry and beg him not to leave, but he would leave anyway only to return after a few hours.  Over time, when he would tell me he was leaving, I would just reply "Ok."  The last time he left, I changed the locks.   

Rubycat for the win! 

[chibichan]

Rubycat is my new HERO .

[PeterM]

My ex-husband used to pull the "I'm leaving" act.  In the beginning, I was devastated at the thought of being left alone with two small children and shame of a failed marriage.  I would cry and beg him not to leave, but he would leave anyway only to return after a few hours.  Over time, when he would tell me he was leaving, I would just reply "Ok."  The last time he left, I changed the locks.   

That reminds me of one of my favorite stories. Way back when I was in charge of a bunch of work study students at the university library where I worked. They were a great bunch of kids and hearing about their lives was very entertaining. One of my favorite students was involved with a guy who started out great but quickly started losing that "new relationship smell," or however you want to phrase it. It really came to a head when he started seeing a second girl and apparently started complaining to anyone who would listen about what a dilemma he faced, being involved with two wonderful women at once. My student cooled things off with him, because she was neither happy nor impressed, but she did call him up to try and make sense of everything and give it one final shot. The guy went into a spiel about how "You're great, but so is she, and I'm being pulled in two directions at once, and it's so hard and I just don't know what to do!" He was pretty clearly expecting my student to fight for his love.

What she actually did was say, "Let me make it easier for you," and hang up the phone. Never spoke to him again, as far as I know. I loved that girl.

[RebeccainGA]

My ex-husband used to pull the "I'm leaving" act.  In the beginning, I was devastated at the thought of being left alone with two small children and shame of a failed marriage.  I would cry and beg him not to leave, but he would leave anyway only to return after a few hours.  Over time, when he would tell me he was leaving, I would just reply "Ok."  The last time he left, I changed the locks.   

That reminds me of one of my favorite stories. Way back when I was in charge of a bunch of work study students at the university library where I worked. They were a great bunch of kids and hearing about their lives was very entertaining. One of my favorite students was involved with a guy who started out great but quickly started losing that "new relationship smell," or however you want to phrase it. It really came to a head when he started seeing a second girl and apparently started complaining to anyone who would listen about what a dilemma he faced, being involved with two wonderful women at once. My student cooled things off with him, because she was neither happy nor impressed, but she did call him up to try and make sense of everything and give it one final shot. The guy went into a spiel about how "You're great, but so is she, and I'm being pulled in two directions at once, and it's so hard and I just don't know what to do!" He was pretty clearly expecting my student to fight for his love.

What she actually did was say, "Let me make it easier for you," and hang up the phone. Never spoke to him again, as far as I know. I loved that girl.

Oh how I wish I'd had that line at my fingertips when I was in that situation in college. Good for her!

[Thipu1]

That reminds me of when my parents stayed with us one Christmas after our first daughter was born.  They invited over some friends to come see the new baby (who was approximately one week old at the time, so yeah, my husband and I were a bit tired and stressed).  I decided to forego the nap I desperately needed and tidy up the house for the visitors.    My mother entered the room just as I was finishing up, glanced around, and said reassuringly "Don't worry about it being so messy.  Our friends know that you just had a new baby, and they won't expect it to be neat."

A friend of ours had the best solution to situations like this.  Her advice was to not clean up too much.  Let the neatnik mother find something to clean.  It will keep her busy and happy.