Don’t Prepare for a Lightning Strike— Lessons from a Therapist

My therapist is basically a personified “life quotes” book. I often find myself scrambling for a pen and paper during our sessions so that I can write down a phrase he said. I feel very lucky to have access to a therapist, let alone a good one.

Last week during our session, I was telling him about what I was planning to do for Thanksgiving. This was a topic of significant anxiety for me, because the plan was to go to my wife’s sister’s vacation home in the mountains (see photo below). It’s a very isolated, fancy cabin that’s two hours away from where I live, may I add. My wife’s siblings and their partners, our nieces, her mom, and others were also planning to be there.

If you’re lucky, you may be confused about why Thanksgiving with your in-laws sounds like a total nightmare in the making.

Well, they’re not the warmest people. In the *five years* I’ve been with my wife, the people in her family have hardly made us feel welcomed, loved, or cared about as a couple.

Unfortunately, my wife has always been made to feel like the odd one out in her family, so it’s not shocking to her that they make me feel the same way they’ve always made her feel.

Let me attempt to put this into less words than I am. My mother-in-law once said to me wife, “I don’t not like her,” regarding me. I’d like to think this phrase, more than anything, explains why I feel uneasy around all my in-laws.

So back to that week’s therapy session. I was expressing my anxiety around the fact that we’d decided to do Thanksgiving at the mountain house. I felt like we were invited out of obligation, not because anyone actually wants my wife and I there. And let me just add- these people haven’t really done anything that’s considered outwardly hateful. It’s just the micro-aggressions that have added up over the years. It’s the lack of interest in our personal lives, it’s the way they speak to us, and other subtleties.

Sometimes when you’re on the receiving end of micro-aggressions, it can feel worse than one big, explosive act of hatred.

It’s them referring to my wife as “Aunt” in front of the kids, but not doing the same for me. We’re married, for Christ’s sake.

It’s the weird no-hug greetings and the general lack of displays of love.

It’s the fact that no one seems to give a shit about how I’m doing, despite the fact that my mom died this year.

It’s the fact that all of the interactions make it feel like we’re all just distant aquaintances at a 10-year high school reunion.

Any time I see any of my in-laws, I’m essentially waiting for them to disappoint me.

It sounds awful of me to do this to them, probably even unfair.

I was just hoping to be embraced and loved by them and it’s been really depressing for that expectation to flop time and time again.

But even still, they’re just people and I should try and accept them where they are. They’re not going to change if they’ve always been this way.

Doug (my therapist) heard me out with all of this, and totally validated this “coldness” I feel from all of my in-laws.

He then asked me with a father-like tough-love-kind of tone:

So hypothetically, what happens if any of your concerns come to life while you’re there?

“…Well, I’d get really irritated,” I responded.

And then what?

… I don’t know.

Nothing. Nothing devastating will happen to you. Don’t prepare for lightning to strike.

When I tell you this was ground-breaking for me to hear, I’m not exaggerating.

At this point I realized that my expectation of things has become much worse than the reality that usually plays out around my in-laws, especially when I’m preparing to see them.

I’ve acknowledged that I really wanted a different outcome for myself. I grew up in a very touchy-feely family where the phrase “I love you” was common. It’s literally the opposite situation with my in-laws. And I feel sad for myself. Doug’s point is that it’s a waste of time for me to keep putting my energy into this. They won’t change, and they probably don’t even realize how they’re affecting me. It’s how they grew up, and it’s how they’ll always be.

Thanksgiving happened, I survived, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

And, a little bonus nugget: Almost everyone referred to me as “Aunt Michelle.”

Until next time: Don’t prepare for a lightning strike.