https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/4otfnk/boundaries_are_made_to_be_overstepped_clearly/After reading this, it triggered another memory. I'm not sure if I had mentioned the memory before or not. This situation took place not long after I moved away from home and was living on my own. (This was during the 70's and gas prices were horrible!)
One day, I get a phone call from NWomb-Donor asking me what I had planned for a given period of time. (Yeah, warning flags and red alert klaxons are going off as soon as I heard that question.) I told her I wasn't sure yet as I had some school projects to work on and I asked her why she needed to know. She goes into this spiel of how she and her unmarried sister wanted to go visit "Aunt So-and-so" because they were "SO CONCERNED" about "Aunt So-and-so's" well-being, etc., etc.
(Uh-uh! I call bull$hit on this!) To give some background, "Aunt So-and-so" is NOT related by blood. She was formerly married to NWomb-donor's brother and they divorced before I was born. I had NEVER met the lady and wouldn't recognize her if I bumped into her on the street. For YEARS, EVERY SINGLE TIME the name of "Aunt So-and-so" was mentioned, NWomb-Donor would spit and curse her name and begin gossiping about the latest dirt she heard from her brother. This hostile gossiping continued until about December 1973 when my uncle, NWomb-donor's brother, shot and killed himself. Without NWomb-donor's brother, the source of the "dirt" came to a screeching halt! My gut was telling me that NWomb-donor was looking for an opportunity to get fresh "dirt" to gossip about and wanted to use me to get it! Oh! Hell to the NO!!! To add to all of this, "Aunt So-and-so" lived several hundred miles away so this would NOT be a short or cheap road trip by ANY means!
I commented that we needed to calculate all the costs of the gas, plus food, lodging, etc. and divide it three ways...NWomb-Donor would pay a third, the unmarried aunt would pay a third, and I would pay a third. NWomb-Donor got PISSED and started yelling at me about how DARE I ask for that because "WE'RE FAAAAAAAMILY!" (Yeah! Right, B!TCH!! How CONVENIENT for YOU!) I shouted back: "Have you seen the prices at the gas pumps lately?!? I am NOT eating the ENTIRE costs for a several hundred mile round trip to go visit somebody that I have NEVER met!" NWomb-donor said she would talk to the unmarried aunt and get back to me. A little while later, I get another phone call angrily telling me that the proposed trip has been cancelled and she slams the phone in my ear!
I went back to what I had originally planned to do to begin with and let her stew in her own juices. Saved me a lot of aggravation by saying "NO!" I didn't realize until decades later that I had set a boundary and stuck to it.
