Venue Control, and Questions Presented

[Starboard Song]

This may be a Common Behaviors topic, but I don't know. Maybe it is general to Cluster B PDs, maybe it is a special tool of PD parents. Maybe it is my own private treat to deal with.

My wife and I are 3 1/2 years NC with her parents, and I still too often read over the founding documents of our estrangement: a series of increasingly brutal and unhinged emails and letters, for her parents are deeply anti-social and do not speak when they can write.

This is what I've noticed. They like to have a home field advantage. They want to control the form of communication, and the questions presented.

If you call when they aren't expecting it, they say "we will not be doing this over the phone!" If you are being intrasigent at a distant, they want you to come to their house. If you propose a visit and say why, they challenge you to affirm principles: either this is true (they are right), or that is true (you are evil), which is it? And when -- in response to a long tirade of accusations -- you indicate that everyone should meet to set the record straight, they fall back to a couple of yes-or-no questions that everyone has already agreed to. When I repeatedly suggested, at our last meeting, that MIL should attend, FIL was strongly insistent against. It only came out late in that conversation that it was because she was still full of hate and rage.

It is increasingly clear to me now that they always want a real life discussion to be structured so it is no less threatening than the experience of rattling off a high-dudgeon letter to the editor from the privacy of your secluded office.

So either they pick the place, the people, or the topics. And they frame the discussion in advance, usually into a silly binary choice of some of sort, and really: it is not a fair coin.

Maybe this is a parents thing, the PD version of authoritarianism.

I dunno. But as I brace for a spring campaign with these people -- for our paths are being forced to cross -- I will never allow such conversation framing and control again.

[SunnyMeadow]

I feel the rambling letter-of-doom and them wanting the home field advantage is a common behavior. My uPDmom is the same way. She can't handle anyone not agreeing with her, her not being right?? Not happening. She will fire off the letter to show how right she is.

I'm sorry you're bracing for a spring campaign.

[Duck]

I hope the spring campaign will be held in public places. Will that be the case? I think it is much safer. Then, there are people around and when things go south, you can drive away.