Older people griping about our even older parents.

[Meech17]

On a lighter note, I still interact with my inlaws a lot. But the fact that I'm Windows and Android where they are 100% Apple has saved me from most tech support scenarios. My spouse handles it, because she's also Apple.

A gambit I took with my grandmother was getting her an iPhone, despite being an android user myself, and my parents/immediate family all being android users.

I have two cousins who were at the time, teen girls both with new iPhones, and I knew they spent a lot of time with our grandma, and it paid off. They ended up being mobile tech support for her far more often than me.

We're a mixed OS marriage. I have no idea if it's true, but one survey told me our relationship is less common than cross-faith marriages.

Funny enough, after living together for three years, my girlfriend finally converted to the church of Android. We're still different denominations.. Her being a Samsungist and me a Googleran, but we make it work.

 

[Belen]

Every once in a while my mother will ask me something like, "What are you doing Tuesday?" We're talking a regular Tuesday, not a holiday or something. I'll generally give her an odd look, shrug, and say, "I'm working. What else would I be doing?" No, she's not trying to see if I can take her to the doctor's office or something. She'll generally just come out and ask if she needs something like that.

Like many families in America, mine has been divided by politics. When I was growing up, mom never took much of an interest in poltics, I would have described her as apolitical beyond a firm belief that all politicians were liars and crooks, but over the last 15+ years she's fallen down a rabbit hole and it's strained our relationship. I remember saying something to her along the lines of, "It's hearbreaking to see the woman who taught me right from wrong is doesn't care about right or wrong herself."


Holy cow! I've got some problems with my mother, but she's never referred to either my sister or I as disappointments. She tells us both how proud she is of her children.

People allow politics to divide families by forcing it into tribal us vs them dogma.

Politics should not be anyone’s faith or belief system and I maintain that 90% of political disagreement is just the method used to solve the problem that every agrees does exist.

Personally, I just nod and say “that’s nice” or “I have no intention of discussing this with you” and change the topic.

Too many people are mixing identity and belief with politics.

My Dad went Fox News his last 10 years and I’d do anything to have him back. I do not care about his politics.

I understand why others make different choices but my parents were wonderful people no matter their political affiliation.

 

[Meech17]

My family doesn't really engage in politics with me anymore. My dad would occasionally send me the dumb facebook memes he found and after the third or fourth time, when my response wasn't just or probably the he expected.. and instead I lectured him, or just replied with the link to an article, he probably just felt that I was a buzzkill for taking it much more seriously than he did, so he quit it.

Lately he's been sending me a bunch of Dolly Parton related stuff.

 

[billd91]

Too many people are mixing identity and belief with politics.

Spoken like someone whose identity has never been oppressed or been made into a political football. My kids don't have that luxury. And I'm on their side. Fortunately, so is my father (to tie this back to dealing with elderly parents). But then, he never fell into the Fox News cult.

It always seems to boil down to politicizing identities and you know exactly which ones those are. There's male and political. There's white and political. There's heterosexual and political. There's cisgendered and political.

One of my best friend's relationships with his parents was extremely strained by their descent into Fox Newsland. He did not trust their sentiments around his Hispanic step children. So he distanced himself. He had to for his wife and kids' security.

 

[Umbran]

Too many people are mixing identity and belief with politics.

Spoken like someone whose identity has never been oppressed or been made into a political football.

Mod note:
Folks, there are reasons why politics is not an allowed topic, and why we ask you to not make discussions personal.

The two of you are riding down a road to more red text. Please back off.

 

[Deset Gled]

Wow, that must be quite a story. Maybe this isn’t the thread for it, but I’d like to hear it.

Of course, when it comes to major issues like this it's never just one story, eh? FWIW I didn't have an abusive childhood. But you could start with underlying issues or old arguments from when I became an adult. You could look at other major events that left rifts in the structure. You could look at the arguments we had immediately before the last one. Also, my parents have a history of rotating feuds with different branches of family, but as everyone gets older their opportunities for targets are shrinking, and now I'm "it".

But the really short version is that I actually was attempting to go lower contact, not no contact. I set a boundary my parents didn't like, and they chose escalation (again ). And while I never intended to go full no contact, it's been more liberating than I could have expected. So combining everything together, I am much better with how things are now.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

I texted my Mom this morning saying I would be late, because my doctors appointment would take around 2 hours. An hour and a half later I get this text -> "WHERE ARE YOU!!!!!" -_-

 

[trappedslider]

I texted my Mom this morning saying I would be late, because my doctors appointment would take around 2 hours. An hour and a half later I get this text -> "WHERE ARE YOU!!!!!" -_-

Well,where are you?

 

[ART!]

I texted my Mom this morning saying I would be late, because my doctors appointment would take around 2 hours. An hour and a half later I get this text -> "WHERE ARE YOU!!!!!" -_-

I've noticed with my mother-in-law that in text/message chains involving more than her and one other person, her messages/posts are either
a) non sequitors,
b) something that makes it clear she has misunderstood a previous message/post, or
c) a response to a previous message/post without referencing which one.

So, I try to only communicate with her one-on one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm almost 40. When I was a kid, I looked at technology as something to look forward to, that it would advance and improve things. I think that stopped at some point in the 2010s.

I imagine some folk still think that, though.

I think its mostly true. But that mostly is doing some heavy lifting.