TELL ME ABOUT IT
Dear Carolyn: So I have come to the sad conclusion that my aunt hates me, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I went to live with my grandmother, her mom, after losing my parents. My grandmother is and has always been very good to me. Losing my dad was very hard for my grandmother, but she has been able to rally and be a great parent to me.
Whenever my aunt visits, she continuously criticizes me. My room is not tidy enough; I am just like my dad (lazy, in her opinion); my grandmother does too much for me; and on and on. I know I am not perfect, and I do try to be considerate of my grandma, knowing she is older and needs help, but I don’t think I am slobby or hard to live with. I am away at college most of the time, and yes, I do sometimes sleep in when I come home for holidays, and sometimes grandma does do my laundry, but not because I won’t do it myself. She literally takes it out of my room when I am sleeping even though I have asked her not to do it.
It really bothers my aunt though, and holidays are tough because her griping makes me sad, and she criticizes my dead parents all the time. Grandma tells me to ignore it, but it is hard. Do you have any advice?
– Sad
I’m so sorry for your losses.
Your aunt may dislike you, sure, but there are enough other emotional shadings in a family tragedy to suggest you might be missing a bigger picture.
You talk about your grandmother’s difficulty in losing her child, aptly, but I think it is safe to say your aunt also suffered in losing her brother. What you see as criticism of your parents could be your aunt’s dysfunctional way of reckoning with complicated feelings about her brother and his death. We generally understand that people grieve hard for people they love deeply, but in a way we grieve harder – messier – for people toward whom our feelings are mixed. Not everyone softens with grief.
For that reason alone, I think there is something you can do to ease the tension with your aunt (but only if you feel up to it, of course): Instead of seeing her as someone who dislikes you, reframe her as someone who dislikes her place in the world as she now knows it.
And from there, envision her as someone who has not reckoned with these bad feelings well enough to recognize where they come from or to stop herself from dumping them on everyone else.