Stop talking about yourself in Testing.... testing... 1, 2, 3...

Yes the title is directed towards everybody on this site! Stop making entries about yourself and your life like it's a book all about yourself... haha jk

There's givers and there's takers in life, and those of us who do both. My sis-in-law (SIL) is definitely a taker. ALways has been, always will be. My wife is a giver, so helping her tolerate my SIL's ways has been funny. Frustrating too but entertaining

So my wife has problems with her mom (actually it's just the crazy mom having problems with everyone), so the MIL hasn't been around since our son was one week old (9 weeks now). Being a new mom is not an easy adjustment, especially when you're doing it without your own mother wanting to be around. But she's been strong and made it through it. Now SIL caught wind of this recently (because we don't air our dirty laundry, although she wishes we would because she's drawn to drama, haha) and called my wife to talk about it

SIL's form of comforting is telling my wife, "Omg, I don't know how I could've done that without my mom. She has been such a huge help in my life. I seriously cannot imagine going through anything hard without her, she's always been there". Yeah.... that's not helping someone whose had a lifetime of family problems, haha

Here's the thing: when somebody is trying to open up about something to you, your job is to listen and that's it. It's not an open invitation to talk about yourself and your struggles. It's not the start of a bitch session. Kind of an opposite pissing contest where you keep trying to one up someone else in the "how life has f*ed you over" contest, haha. Especially not an invitation to talk about how great your life is in comparison. Not many people realize this. It's actually rare that somebody doesn't immediately flip any comment or conversation into a story about themselves they feel relates

Anyways, to continue with SIL. My cousin and his wife are expecting. They already have one daughter, and they hope (especially the wife, she has been proclaiming) this one is a boy. Then the traditional American family is complete! So far, between my cousins and my brother and myself, we've compiled ten kids. It's been an even 5 girl, 5 boy split. However one of those cousins is in the Air Force and is stationed in Germany and another cousin moved out of town. So out of the 6 kids growing up together here, it's 4 girls to 2 boys. My son is only 9 weeks old, so my nephew is really the only boy running around at these family get togethers

So basically everyone in the family is hoping it's a boy. And the mom is proclaiming she knows it's a boy, she could feel it. She did afterall correctly predict that first one was a girl. Yesterday they got the news: it's another girl. The mom was not excited. My wife called to congratulate, but she could tell the mom was a bit down. My wife kept a positive tone though to try and make her feel better

What did the SIL do? Well on the Facebook post that announced the news, she wrote, "Aww man (her son) really wanted it to be a boy, but he still has (my son) anyways. Lol congrats!". Yeah... that's another case of making it about herself and neglecting the feelings of the person they're talking to. She knows how enthusiastic our cousin would be about having a boy, not a good time to point out that she's not. A simple "congrats" works perfectly! I'm telling you she's drawn to drama

moral of the story: I don't always air dirty laundry or talk bad about others... but when I do, it's on Prosebox

Have a Nice Day!