In the Rearview Mirror of Life, It's Always Easy to Spot the Asshole

I spent the holidays with my daughter visiting family in Wisconsin. My brother and his family -- who live in Los Angeles like me -- were also visiting. We spent Christmas evening with my father, my sister, her boyfriend, and her adult sons -- the home where I grew up filled to capacity with a big talkative group eager to reconnect at a holiday, instead of a funeral or some other sad event.  

During this visit, I spent a lot of time with my sister-in-law preparing meals and helping organize the daily activities of four loud, but happy kids. I get to see my brother and his family a lot in LA, but rarely do our Wisconsin trips overlap as they did this year. My brother's wife -- a lovely, warm person who grew up in a foreign country with a relatively low divorce rate -- was friendly and gracious with everyone, even the troubled members of my extended family. Genuinely interested in each one, she made every one feel special and included, because she thinks of *my* family as part of *her* family, which is, of course, the way it should be when you get married. 

I was struck by the stark difference in attitude toward my family between my brother's wife and my ex. When I was married, I took no pleasure in going home for a visit accompanied by my ex, and would sometimes visit my family alone or just me and the kid. It was easier to go without him. He was such a judgmental asshole about my family, I would spend much of the trip with an annoying knot in my stomach from the constant mid-level anxiety surging through my body. 

With the clarity of hindsight, now I can see how my ex *never* embraced my family as a new, larger part of his family. He always seemed to think of my family as "not enough" -- not educated enough, not sophisticated enough, not socially graceful enough. Gallingly, he seemed to take the most troubled members of my family and unfairly compare them to the most successful and well adjusted members of his family, conveniently forgetting that he too has some f*cked-up ones.

Like a roommate in a snit who puts masking tape on the floor to divide a shared bedroom, my ex was always careful to draw a line between what he thought of as his and what he thought of as mine. It's hard to be part of a union, when one of you is always marking his territory. If that's what I wanted in marriage, I would have just gotten a dog. At least the dog would have been happy to see me every day.