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Spending time with my nephew: getting tasked?
Hi,
Here is another social dynamics that I feel I have been a victim of. I had a not so good relationship with my sister. To punish me, she passively-aggressively prevented me to see my nephew for a long time. As I grew better in communication, I talked with my brother-in-law to tell him how important for me it was to see my nephews and how much it hurt me to feel excluded. I told him that it had nothing to do with my sister. He understood my perspective and I could see more often my nephews thanks to him.
Now, as my sister saw how I was taking good care of her children and also I made some efforts towards her, our relationship improved. Now she answers my messages and calls as before she was refusing to take my calls: no calls for too many years to count. So it was passive-aggressive to the max, and yes this was emotional abuse. Now, things are getting better and I can see my nephews almost when I want.
Today, I saw one of them because the parents wanted to clean the house. I brought some sweets as I always do as I learned how to do it to please her (her love language is gifts). So I spent the afternoon with my nephew and it's all good. However, after that she sent me a text to thank me to have taken care of him so they could clean the house. So that made her happy. And also my step brother proposed me to come to my town next time to visit, 1 hour away.
After a bit of context, here is my question:
She frames it as I am rendering them a service, is it like she "tasked" me? That's how I feel because last time I came to visit, they wanted me to help them to make a video. So I'm happy to be part of the family and to give a hand, but it feels like I'm allowed as long as I make her happy. They don't ask questions about my life, etc. So it's quite imbalanced relationship where I give a lot and get little.
Any advice?
As you guys can see I got myself stuck in several bad social dynamics due to lack of leverage, emotional intelligence, low self-esteem and being too submissive.
It does sound like she framed the interaction as tasking, yes.
When she said "thank you for taking care of him", she left outside the emotional side, and only frame the interaction as you doing a favor.
It's not an aggressive form of tasking, but it's a subtle and harmful frame because it negates the emotional side of the relationship.
But this might also be bad communication from her side.
My parents used to do it too, saying "thank you for calling us", or "we appreciate your calls, we're always happy to hear from you".
As if I were doing them a favor and not that I also wanted to hear from them.
Then I told them to stop thanking me because I was calling out of pleasure to talk to them, and if they kept saying "thank you", it felt like I was doing them a favor, which didn't reflect the true emotional bond of our talks and which felt jarring. I was calling them because I wanted to. They got the point and I've never heard a "thank you for calling us" ever again.
To her message "thank you for taking care of him", I would have replied something like: "It's my pleasure. Don't thank me for what I want to do. I do it because it's a pleasure staying in touch with the family and spending time with my nephew. Welcome back home and see you soon :)".
Keep in mind that if your sister is touchy, that message in text form might be misread, so you might want to say that in person, instead.
The good thing is that by saying it, you change the frame to one where family ties are about caring and exchanging. If she accepts it and understands it, it might improve the overall relationship.
Great! I answered "my pleasure", but the rest of your sentence is what sets the right frame. Exactly, the previous frame was harmful because it was too transactional in my perspective. Great example, by the way.
Thank you very much, I'm grateful to you for helping me on this one! Very important to me as you can imagine.
