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How to regain respect and increase social power with a family member?
I have a cousin who will be staying at my place for the weekend soon. The last time he stayed with us (me and my husband), he overstayed his welcome and had several negative interactions with me, which left a sour taste in my mouth.
The way I see it, he doesn't respect me enough and I want to regain my social power and enforce my boundaries with him. Since he's family, I don't want to cut him out or do anything drastic to sour the relationship - I want to see what can I do to build on the relationship in a way that he'll show more respect to me?
Below are examples from our past and recent interactions, which I'd love to get your advise on how to handle in the most power-savvy ways :)
- He often communicates only with my husband when he wants to stay at our place. When that happened once, I did call him out in a joking manner by saying "Hey, how come you didn't tell me that you wanted to stay at our place for a few more days? I can totally veto your request to stay at our place , you know that?"Â This coming weekend, he reached out to my husband only and asked if he can stay with us and did not reach out to me at all. Granted he tends to confide and talks to my husband more - that I don't mind. But when it comes to things like staying at our place, it's the bare minimum that he needs to let both of us know since we are both his hosts --> Â How do I let him know that it's not okay to do that moving forward? It seems like my comment from last time didn't have any impact at all.
- One time, we were in the middle of a conversation about a political topic, I made a comment about my perspective and he completely ignored it and proceeded to build on my husband's comment, which I felt very disrepected by. I wasn't aware of Power University then so my reaction wasn't great lol -->Â What would you do in this situation to call out his rudeness ?
- He stayed with us in our place, which is a suburban area that is close to a more urban and 'cooler' part of town. One time, during a conversation with our friends about where he would stay if he decided to move to the area permanently, he said that 'yeah it'd be sad to stay in this area - OUR area'. Mind you, he chose to stay at our place because he could save on money instead of paying money to stay at an airbnb to stay in the 'cooler' part of town --> How would you respond to this to surface this irony without agreeing to his frame that our area is 'sad' ?
Yeah, this guy seems to be a bit unpleasant towards you.
And it's not only asshole behavior, but also bad and ineffective social strategy since in many couples women have a strong influence over their husbands and household decisions.
Some options for you:
- Go from joke to serious tone: if he didn't get the message with a joke, you can consider telling him straight. Such as "hey, you're family and we want you close, that's the first thing. And I think we can be close while respecting each other. Last time I made a joke, but I also meant it seriously. Since I also live here, I'd also appreciate if you communicate your wishes with me".
- Demeaning your place: I'd personally would have expanded and give him rope to make the nastiness even more obvious, while also denying the frame.
For example: "Sad? What do you mean sad. We live there, it seems quite happy and great to me"
Let him expand on his nastiness, and then you have several options, from the vulnerable one "it hurts me to hear you call our place sad" to the more confrontational one "well, when it was free, you still chose to stay in the sad place of town"
3. When he ignored you, what did you say?
There's a host of possible solutions there.
The first time, I'd have let it slip probably and then proceeded to act higher power and more assertive, and may be slightly ignore him right after to even the scores. If that fixes it, no need to do anything else.
