SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello and I hope all of you are having a wonderful day and really getting a chance to soak up the warmer weather. I hope each of you are doing well with your relationships and hoping things get better for those of you who haven't had things going well.

I have been very busy with the whole process of site selection, in which I have to re-interview for a teaching position at another school or schools in the district, plus students have been misbehaving worse than ever, which has created extra work for me and of itself. I haven't had much time to do much of anything except work! I definitely haven't had time to have much of any social life, that's for sure. I feel like it's nearly impossible to stay on top of all of the work that keeps coming in, and now this whole job interview process too. I don't know how other people do it!

On the other hand, a recent sad event occurred in one side of my brother's family. My brother's father-in-law, who was elderly and sick for a while following a stroke, passed away. I found out about it from a group email that my brother's daughter sent out. I have already responded to her to express my sorrows and condolences. I am in the process of having flowers sent to through a flower delivery service. My question is, should I be attending the funeral too?

Truthfully, I feel extremely awkward about attending. I did not know my brother's wife's father, aside from seeing him attend a few extended family events such as my brother's wedding. Recently my brother got really angry at me because he felt that I did not buy enough retirement products from his financial advisor friend a few weekends ago. To be polite I bought an annuity, but according to my brother, it wasn't nearly enough. He said I was cheap and had wasted his friends time, and that someone without kids like me should have extra money to invest. Nevermind the fact that my brother was the one who pushed me to have this friend come over to give his finance sales presentation in the first place. Since that time, he has continued to avoid contact with me except this past weekend, when he called to tell me yet again that I am so selfish. He also rehashed a few petty things from the past. To be honest, I feel really anxious facing him at any event soon, and I also worry that I will be unwelcome.

To add to it, I feel very very behind with work. That nearly day long visit from his Finance friend really did screw me over in terms of getting me be home with my work. I am still playing catch up, and the work keeps compounding and building up, especially now that I have to revise my resume and attend all of these After School interviews for another position in the district. I am wondering if maybe I should just skip the funeral. Would it be wrong if I did? Or would it be proper etiquette to attend, since I am the sister of the deceased son-in-law? What is the normal protocol and etiquette for who should attend funerals?

Thank you in advance for any input you can provide. I have not talked to my brother yet. To be honest, I feel nervous reaching out to him after everything that has happened between us in recent weeks. I've texted his wife as I mentioned before, to express my condolences, but not yet my brother. Should I reach out? Or should I wait for him to contact me first? If I contact him, should I make a phone call or just send an e-card again expressing my condolences? Thank you again to all of you for all of your kind help.

I think you have expressed your sympathies in a very appropriate way. If you are so inclined, you could send the family a gift card for things like take-out or drop some food off for them.

While I would see my sister's husband's extended family from time to time, I did not attend any events like funerals or even baptisms. For funerals, I would send an appropriate floral arrangement, donation or card, depending on the circumstances.
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I am a stickler for etiquette, and I would say you passed muster and if you feel you need to do anything else, make a casserole and drop it off. Problem solved.

Cat

I agree with Cat.

Since he's been so cold to you lately, I personally would not attend. Especially since you have lots of work to do.

Totally agree with CAT. Perhaps a second small order of flowers for your Sister in law if you are close to her. But what you have done already is enough.

Your brother will be the only one that notices you're not there.

And it sounds like he needs a reset. This will be a delicious opportunity for him to feel self-righteous and hold more over your head. You're actually giving him a gift.

Hi Minnesota, would you please kindly explain to me more about this reset? What do you mean by that and what do you think it will do for my brother? Am I right when I interpret your message to mean that I should not go to the funeral?

I feel you have met your obligations and should not be required by etiquette to attend your sibling's spouse's father's funeral. If you were close with your sister in law or her father, that would be the only reason you should feel obligated to attend. The real questions are do you want to go to the funeral? Do you feel obligated to go due to a connection to the deceased? Or are you wishfully thinking if you just do this one thing, your brother will love you like family is supposed to? I am sorry for your situation and for how complicated sibling relationships get. Sometimes there are no easy answers when you are dealing with selfish or unreasonable siblings.

We are in another escalating covid surge, which is reason enough to skip the service. Add in the fact that your brother is behaving selfishly, petty and unkind for stupid reasons and you should have your answer. If you are hoping that attending to support him will make him start treating you with respect, that seems a very long shot. Very long.

Your brother seems toxic and maybe you should start pushing back a little. Maybe you should reach out to his wife to express your condolences and explain that you will not be able to attend but ask if there is anything she needs. Kindness toward her may be time better spent. Maybe she can explain what your brother's problem really is. It isn't you, it's him.

I hope you can stop twisting yourself in knots trying to figure out how to patch a relationship you did not break. My brother has always held deep resentments toward me and my sister, and neither of us can understand why. We have come to understand that he is just that person: angry, blaming, resentful, judgmental and cruel. We still love him, but we do not engage with him because there is no point in trying anymore. He isn't interested in listening, and he really does not care about either of us, and we have come the painful realization that he is just operating in a different reality than we are. Your brother sounds similar, nothing is his fault, it is always your fault. My brother is very jealous of my life, and can't see how hard I worked to get where I am, he just thinks I got lucky, and I got all the breaks he did not. He made his life exactly what it is, he chose his path and now he blames everybody but himself for his situation. Maybe your brother resents that he has a family to support and a relationship to navigate, while you stroll happily through life without a care in the world. (That was deep sarcasm.) He doesn't see you, and does not act like he cares for you. You give him too much consideration.

You are much nicer than I am, but I would offer him my condolences and tell him I am not attending because he is being unkind and petty and life is hard enough without the support of family. He may add your lack of funeral attendance to his list of grievances, but if you attend he will not give you the kindness you seek. You are busy, under a lot of stress and he is only adding to the list. I'm still appalled that he treated you the way he did over his friend's business venture. Did he impose on his single friends and coworkers the way he did you? Did he expect others to do what he asked of you or did he only try to take advantage of you? I hope you learn to use No as a complete sentence and feel justified doing so.

Good luck catching up with your workload, wrangling those ill mannered students and finding a position you can ride to the finish line in your career.

[This message edited by whatisloveanyway at 1:43 PM, Friday, May 20th]

Sadly you are damned if you go and damned if you don’t go to the funeral.

Your brother is angry (not sure why as you did purchase something from his friend). I suspect that he described you as a cash cow to his friend and the expectation was you would drop a bundle of $ to the FP. Maybe your brother had a monetary stake in it as well.

Whatever.

I would call your brother and if he answers, ask him if you think he wants you to attend. If he refuses to answer the phone then leave a message and request a call. Express your condolences.

If no response — do not attend unless you feel obligated to attend for his wife.

I would call your brother and if he answers, ask him if you think he wants you to attend.

I would definitely not do this. At. All. The brother has shown himself to be demanding and abusive.

I would call your sister-in-law and ask if there is anything else you can do. Perhaps one thing you can offer to do is to stay at their home during the wake/funeral. There are thieves that stalk things like obituaries to make a quick theft of easy-to-sell items. This would allow you to grade papers or work on lesson plans while still contributing.

But seriously, you've done more than enough. However, I know you will second-guess this and that is another reason why IC would be so very helpful to you to be able to draw boundaries and have confidence in yourself. I suspect that your lack of self-confidence is one of the things that gives people the impression that you are not a good educator when in fact you are. Think about that.

Cat

Good evening, I am posting an update. Thank you to everyone for the advice and taking the time to respond. At first I did not try to contact my brother. Yesterday morning he called me, so I answered, and he told me about his father-in-law passing. I told him that I'd been told about the funeral from one of his family members, and asked him if he'dike me to go. He said yes I should. After telling my friend about this situation and my brother calling me, I decided it'd be best to go to the funeral, after talking it over with a friend. She pointed out that I wouldn't have to spend all afternoon there if I didn't want to, that perhaps I could just pay my respects at the service and then skip the after funeral luncheon. I realized that might be best, particularly since the flower delivery did not make it to my brother's house due to circumstances on the floral company's end. However, I noticed a discrepancy with the location between what was in the published online obituary and what my brother told me. I called him back to confirm and he was very vague and didn't give a clearcut answer. This left me even more confused than ever! It almost seemed like he didn't really want me there. My funny friend (she's a younger former colleague, and always looks like she's having fun) said maybe my brother is "playing" me. So after thinking it over again and realizing that I was more behind than ever with my school work and grading papers for a pressing deadline later this week at work, I ended up not going. I hope I made the right decision, do you think so?

I think you made the right choice. Your brother being vague was a clear indication he has an issue with you.

Now what are you doing to prepare for the bs klsdh you may receive from him?

Because you know there will be some passive aggressive nonsense from him.

Update: Ultimately I decided not to go. Confused about where the funeral exactly was, and overwhelmed with work, I stayed home and did grading work I was behind on.

I think you made the right choice. Your brother being vague was a clear indication he has an issue with you.

Now what are you doing to prepare for the bs klsdh you may receive from him?

Because you know there will be some passive aggressive nonsense from him.

OMG how did you know? That is exactly what I've been going through! The next day, my brother called. He immediately reamed me out, yelling at me that I am such an extremely selfish person. He scolded me for pulling a no-show. He didn't care to hear any explanation. He had me feeling like sh*t about myself.

I feel like everything in my life is always damned if I do, damned if I don't. With my brother, and with everyone and everything else too. What do I do from here?

I’m sorry I was right about the backlash. If you had been ill and unable to attend I doubt he would have been understanding.

First stop trying to please your brother. You can see you cannot win no matter what you do — so stop. He has a "friend" he wants to introduce you to? No thank you. He has a suggestion on your career now that you are looking - no thank you and do not engage in the discussion.

Remove him from knowing about your personal life. Keep it light and easy. Call your SIL and ask if there is anything by you can do to help her.

Call your brother in a few days and say "sorry I couldn’t make it". Then change the topic and do not discuss it with him.

Don’t feel obligated to people.

Your post resonates with me. I was abused heavily by my older sister. Her pattern of behavior matches your brothers in many ways.

-Reams you out for looking out for yourself.
-Hates when you set a boundaries
-Pretends to know how to run your life better than you do
-Belittles you

It looks like he gets his ego kibbles out of making you small. He likey needs to assure hikself that he is superior to you so that he can feel big.

You dont have a brother, you have an abuser. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I would likely nrver have the loving relationship one would expect from a sibling.

Please consider that you are trying to have a relationship with someone who doesnt exist. The brother you desire doesnt exist in this man who abuses you.

Please guard yourself against further abuse. Cut your ties.

I’m sorry I was right about the backlash. If you had been ill and unable to attend I doubt he would have been understanding.
First stop trying to please your brother. You can see you cannot win no matter what you do — so stop. He has a "friend" he wants to introduce you to? No thank you. He has a suggestion on your career now that you are looking - no thank you and do not engage in the discussion.

Hi and thank you for checking in with me. You're right, my brother is critical of me. In fact, our parents were supercritical to us while we were growing up, but I definitely see now that they were more critical of me than him. They also gave him more than they gave me, so I wonder if that has something to do with it too. I don't think he would try to help with my job though. He has never really been helpful, only told me that I must be doing something wrong if I cannot stay on top of my job without a ton of overtime and staying late each day. He often says people have families but still manage to get home from their teaching jobs hours earlier than I do. (In fact, I just got home from work less than an hour ago. It was another late day at school, with all of these gruelling deadlines and papers to grade piling up. I stayed as late as I could until the janitor kicked me out because she needed to lock up the school. She has been getting more and more hostile with me it seems.) He also acts like my job isn't as important as his or as challenging. He acts like I have such an easy job...yeah right, let's see him spend a day in my shoes as me.

Your post resonates with me. I was abused heavily by my older sister. Her pattern of behavior matches your brothers in many ways.

-Reams you out for looking out for yourself.
-Hates when you set a boundaries
-Pretends to know how to run your life better than you do
-Belittles you

It looks like he gets his ego kibbles out of making you small. He likey needs to assure hikself that he is superior to you so that he can feel big.

You dont have a brother, you have an abuser. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I would likely nrver have the loving relationship one would expect from a sibling.

Please consider that you are trying to have a relationship with someone who doesnt exist. The brother you desire doesnt exist in this man who abuses you.

Please guard yourself against further abuse. Cut your ties.

Hi, I am so sorry to hear about the problems you've had with your sister. Some of it definitely sounds familiar to what I'm going through with my brother. It also sounds similar to what one of my friends says, the one who is a former colleague who I've been talking to very frequently over the past year. She too always tells me that he acts unhealthy to me. She calls him "toxic" and she frequently brings up what a bad person she thinks he is because of his past affair. (For the record, she's married with 2 children including a baby, and she's seemed to have a lot of problems in her own marriage, and I get the impression she suspects her husband of infidelity in the recent past, so that might be why she keeps emphasizing his affair, almost obsessively at times)

I've had a really, really bad day, one of the worst yet this school year, so I definitely don't like how my brother has been treating me like I'm in the wrong for trying to look out for myself and my own responsibility. That one girl who ruined my career by causing me problems at that principal evaluation earlier this year started to improve her behavior somewhat a few months back, but was at her absolute worst today. It was terrible. I have this really nice quality red grading pen that I use for grading papers, and students stole it from my desk at the beginning of class and refused to give it back or fess up to who did it. They keep stealing things from me and no staff ever does anything about it. I try calling the dean and writing kids up but it's at the point I think he's fed up with so many problems happening in my classroom that lately he's usually ignored me or told me I have to handle it myself. I try, I really do. I feel so defeated and mentally exhausted. Whenever they act up, it actually INCREASES my overall daily workload, EXPONENTIALLY in fact. This is because I then have to add a ton of extra documentation, write-ups, and parent phone calls to my long list of things to do. The one thing I can thank the dean and the principal for is the way they removed that one girl from my classroom, and I think they suspended her for the day. I think my principal is getting fed up and tired of the problems kids are giving too. She's finally seeing what I've been dealing with on a daily basis. Anyway, kids stole my pen and while I was looking for it so I could take attendance and take notes on the misbehaviors, that girl started yelling at me, claiming that I was falsely accusing her and that I should stop looking at her, I can't teach, she hasn't learned a single thing in my class all year, etc. Kids started chiming in and it caused a ripple effect of kids complaining and getting out of their seats and just causing chaos. Nobody ever respects me here anymore. Not that I ever had much respect compared to the other teachers in my 20+ years here, but it's been worse than ever this year. I can honestly say this school year has been the worst one yet. I'm worried what the fallout might be from this, and if this girl is going to act like even more of a torment once she returns from her one day suspension. At least I will have a break from her tomorrow so I suppose I should be thankful for that.

I’m sorry I was right about the backlash. If you had been ill and unable to attend I doubt he would have been understanding.
First stop trying to please your brother. You can see you cannot win no matter what you do — so stop. He has a "friend" he wants to introduce you to? No thank you. He has a suggestion on your career now that you are looking - no thank you and do not engage in the discussion.

Hi and thank you for checking in with me. You're right, my brother is critical of me. In fact, our parents were supercritical to us while we were growing up, but I definitely see now that they were more critical of me than him. They also gave him more than they gave me, so I wonder if that has something to do with it too. I don't think he would try to help with my job though. He has never really been helpful, only told me that I must be doing something wrong if I cannot stay on top of my job without a ton of overtime and staying late each day. He often says people have families but still manage to get home from their teaching jobs hours earlier than I do. (In fact, I just got home from work less than an hour ago. It was another late day at school, with all of these gruelling deadlines and papers to grade piling up. I stayed as late as I could until the janitor kicked me out because she needed to lock up the school. She has been getting more and more hostile with me it seems.) He also acts like my job isn't as important as his or as challenging. He acts like I have such an easy job...yeah right, let's see him spend a day in my shoes as me.

Your post resonates with me. I was abused heavily by my older sister. Her pattern of behavior matches your brothers in many ways.

-Reams you out for looking out for yourself.
-Hates when you set a boundaries
-Pretends to know how to run your life better than you do
-Belittles you

It looks like he gets his ego kibbles out of making you small. He likey needs to assure hikself that he is superior to you so that he can feel big.

You dont have a brother, you have an abuser. It was hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I would likely nrver have the loving relationship one would expect from a sibling.

Please consider that you are trying to have a relationship with someone who doesnt exist. The brother you desire doesnt exist in this man who abuses you.

Please guard yourself against further abuse. Cut your ties.

Hi, I am so sorry to hear about the problems you've had with your sister. Some of it definitely sounds familiar to what I'm going through with my brother. It also sounds similar to what one of my friends says, the one who is a former colleague who I've been talking to very frequently over the past year. She too always tells me that he acts unhealthy to me. She calls him "toxic" and she frequently brings up what a bad person she thinks he is because of his past affair. (For the record, she's married with 2 children including a baby, and she's seemed to have a lot of problems in her own marriage, and I get the impression she suspects her husband of infidelity in the recent past, so that might be why she keeps emphasizing his affair, almost obsessively at times)

I've had a really, really bad day, one of the worst yet this school year, so I definitely don't like how my brother has been treating me like I'm in the wrong for trying to look out for myself and my own responsibility. That one girl who ruined my career by causing me problems at that principal evaluation earlier this year started to improve her behavior somewhat a few months back, but was at her absolute worst today. It was terrible. I have this really nice quality red grading pen that I use for grading papers, and students stole it from my desk at the beginning of class and refused to give it back or fess up to who did it. They keep stealing things from me and no staff ever does anything about it. I try calling the dean and writing kids up but it's at the point I think he's fed up with so many problems happening in my classroom that lately he's usually ignored me or told me I have to handle it myself. I try, I really do. I feel so defeated and mentally exhausted. Whenever they act up, it actually INCREASES my overall daily workload, EXPONENTIALLY in fact. This is because I then have to add a ton of extra documentation, write-ups, and parent phone calls to my long list of things to do. The one thing I can thank the dean and the principal for is the way they removed that one girl from my classroom, and I think they suspended her for the day. I think my principal is getting fed up and tired of the problems kids are giving too. She's finally seeing what I've been dealing with on a daily basis. Anyway, kids stole my pen and while I was looking for it so I could take attendance and take notes on the misbehaviors, that girl started yelling at me, claiming that I was falsely accusing her and that I should stop looking at her, I can't teach, she hasn't learned a single thing in my class all year, etc. Kids started chiming in and it caused a ripple effect of kids complaining and getting out of their seats and just causing chaos. Nobody ever respects me here anymore. Not that I ever had much respect compared to the other teachers in my 20+ years here, but it's been worse than ever this year. I can honestly say this school year has been the worst one yet. I'm worried what the fallout might be from this, and if this girl is going to act like even more of a torment once she returns from her one day suspension. At least I will have a break from her tomorrow so I suppose I should be thankful for that.

I'm sorry. I just realized that for some reason, my post duplicated and also reposted himself many hours after I initially wrote it. I am not sure why that happened.

Hi TJG,

Thought just struck me. Son had a situation where girls sitting behind him in class were throwing pens and hair scrunchies at him, called him a snitch when he told the teacher about them copying each other's HW and have been in general unpleasant to him.

I asked him what he wanted to do about it, if I should ask the councilor to get involved. He said to do that. The counselor (who is AWESOME!) pulled a boss move and had the girls down to her office after hearing my son out. She talked to them directly about their behavior. They admitted it. THEN!!!! THEN! (this is the best part!!) She had the girls call their parents IN FRONT OF HER and explain exactly what they had been up to, DIRECTLY TO THEM!

One of the moms tried to pull the, "not MY babykins" line, but she set them straight- that she'd heard from several other students, the teacher AND she admitted it. Our counselor is the best!

Is there any way you can implement this at your school? What is your school counselor like? What are your policies like?

I thought this method was VERY effective in handling the behavior- kids couldn't spin it to their parents and their parents had no choice but to take it at face value.

Hope this helps! At the very least, could you call their parents in class room?

Hi, and thank you for the ideas. Your kid's guidance counselor sounds so smart! But in my class, I could never make calls in the middle of class. For one we aren't allowed to have our phones out during class time. For another, how could I ever scramble around to find phone numbers for 1 or 2 of 170 different kids when there's a class of over 30 kids running rampant? The parents wouldn't even be able to hear me with all the noise in the class in the background.

Unfortunately, this situation took another turn for the worse. The mom wrote an angry email to me, and CC'ed the principal and the dean. She made all these false accusations. I got reprimanded and will possibly get written up now. This will make it harder than ever to get into another school! I hate that girl, I seriously hate her. SHE RUINED MY CAREER. I swear I will NEVER give her anything but a 1 out of 3 for her behavior rating on her report card. She could change to an angel tomorrow (highly doubtful) but at this point she's guaranteed herself 1s with me for ruining my career.

can you give her a 0?