Part 22: Dealing with Family Tensions

Like I mentioned in the last post, you most likely will have some family members that simply don’t get along too well. Don’t try to be a good Samaritan and try to patch things up at your family reunion. Now is no the time to drudge up the past and try to resolve old issues because it could smack you right in the face and result in a terrible family reunion.

You don’t want to do all of this planning and spend all of this money on a family reunion only to have it turn into a Jerry Springer show, do you? I didn’t think so.

The best thing to do when it comes to rifts in the family is to put those family members in situations where they can avoid one another. Obviously, you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings by “forgetting” to send out an invitation. So, unless you have a family member that simply can’t get along with anyone, don’t blacklist anyone from the family reunion.

If you are feeling concerned about the situation, be sure to communicate to both parties that the other person has been invited to the family reunion. At this point, they can each decide if they are willing to bury the hatchet for the day (or at least ignore the hatchet for a little while).

Most people will try to avoid conflict in this type of situation, so you should take steps to make it easy for a bad situation to be avoided. If you are having your family reunion indoors and will be planning specific events, helping these relatives stay away from one another should be fairly easy because you can assign seating and you can put the family members in events that are not occurring at the same time and at the same location.

If you will be holding a family reunion that is freer in nature and your family members can engage in whatever activities they wish, keeping these family members apart may be more difficult. If the problem is severe or if you have several family members that don’t get along too well, you might want to consider making the reunion a bit more formal simply so you can avoid a bad situation.