Greivances

I am kinda cross right now.  Two things yesterday pissed me off.

Firstly I heard from my Sister that the spouse of a second cousin told my niece that he did not think we were really family.  I have a theory about families and how they grow outwards, how you need to make or find your own because with time, you will slowly find yourself on the outside of your family. 

Our Dads were cousins, they were close and formed a good friendship which kept the family tie nice and strong.  For the offspring, the family tie is lessening, we have shared childhood memories but have gone on to make lives with include each other very rarely.  But we still have that shared common root and I for one have good memories.

The spouse always struck me as being arrogant and pompous but now I know so for sure.  I didn't think they overly liked us and had definately gotten the feeling they looked down on us.  Now I know for sur and that the ties between my branch of the family and my second cousins are being unravelled, in large part because of the spouse.  My sister and the second cousin have always been good friends although more recently they have seen little of each other.  They could have picked up that friendship anytime they liked but the presence of a disapproving spouse makes that unlikely...

It is interesting seeing this process in action because I can clearly see it embedded in my family tree everywhere I look.  I have a family album which shows how close my Great Gran was to all her siblings, even when they became older.  How close all the cousins were, but yet I do not know a single one of these offspring.  I have never met any of them.  My Dad has childhood memories of some of them.  But where they went, who survives, who had children is not known to us.

I have a female family friend who had two brothers.  Following an unsucessful marriage and no children she increasingly finds herself on the edge of things.  Her two siblings have had spouses and in one case a second spouse too.  They have children and grandchildren.  When there is a family occasion, making room in the house for their own offspring takes higher precedence than dedicating an entire room to their spinster sister.  Few people can afford houses with that many bedrooms!  She did not grow her own family.  She makes the most of mine though, but even that is getting more tricky as my parents get older.

Anyway, why would you say such a thing to a teenage girl who clearly believes she is family?

The second thing to annoy me is S.  I know teenagers take things like money for granted.  I know they can be selfish and thoughtless or annoying.  S's Mum and Dad were pretty bad with money when they were together and ran up a few debts.  Being the man, F's name went first and so when they split he got landed with them.  Ten years later and we are still paying it all off.  When we first got together we were also paying child support but as time has passed inflation has made these debts a little easier to bear.  But I never got any use of the fancy things I get to help pay for.

Well F pays for them, but of course F having no money affects me.  The first few years we were together, we were pretty poor and we still don't have a huge amount of money.  We both work and have alright jobs but not great jobs.  S's Mum and Stepdad clearly have more money than us and S is used to having the combined might of two sets of parents and two sets of grandparents.  He never goes without, not that he should have to, but he has far better gear than us and I don't think he even realises it!  But also because S lives with them, they get all the government assistance with things like tax credits.

So my sister is a single mum who receives no assistance from her ex and is only able to work part time and she is down here on holiday for a week.  F and I are only able to spend the bank holiday weekend with them and evenings after work but S is expecting to stay with them some nights.  He knows from last year that my Sister can not afford to pay for him or feed him.  He earned an awful lot of money the last few weeks and then went on a shopping trip and spent an awful lot of money. 

Last night he told us he didn't have much left and I am really cross.  We have paid for a couple of expensive days running aorund and have paid for everything for him which is fine but he has arranged to stay with my sister tonight and I have no idea who he is expecting to pay for him to go places.  My sister has National Trust membership so she and her kids can go places for free.  I think he is lying about how much money he has, hoping to hang on to it and not have to pay out for things.  As far as I am concerned if he is with my Sister he needs to pay for himself and if he can not then he can not go and stay with her.  He has seen them and had a couple of expensive days out and we can not afford to pay for him to do more.

Even just petrol is not cheap.  Just runnign him to and fro has probably cost us £20 before we even got to meet up with the others. 

But at the same time my own attitude makes me sad.  My parents still pay for me to do things and they even pay for F too sometimes.  They know we can not afford thigns and they have more money than we do and they wish to see us and help out.  I guess there is a huge difference between helping out and supporting a life of luxury and certainly they have always said no to us when they could not do things.  I also worked and paid for things myself.  If I arranged to go and do things with my friends I had to pay or ask them for money.  if they said no, I couldn't go....


Argh!!!!