May 24th, 2015 at 01:09am
Oh Katie, I'm so sorry. :( Both about your father in law dying and your friend going on about a video game. Sometimes people think when someone they know is going through a hard time, that maybe they'd rather not talk about it or want to be distracted and other times, people are just clueless and don't understand that it can be upsetting. And apparently he's in the second category and can't tell that his talking about video games and books isn't what you want right now.
If you don't want to talk to him right now, you're not being an asshole. You're going through serious things and sometimes when people go through serious things, it's hard and pointless to listen to such trivial things. Maybe try telling him (if you're still talking or do so later and it happens again) that you'd rather not listen to his video game talk.
Once again, I'm so sorry about your father-in-law. That has to be so hard for you and your husband. I hope something somehow works out for you two so you can visit him.
<3
He asks how I'm doing plenty. It's not that he doesn't care. It's more that...I have a hard time relating to him right now, because the stuff that's on his mind feels so petty to me right now. And it's not fair to minimize it or act like he *shouldn't* care about it, I just...get frustrated easily over it because I wish things were that simple for me, you know? But you might be right; it may just be that he wants to try to keep conversation light as a distraction.
@ DarkestStorm
I don't think he's clueless necessarily? I think he just gets caught up in stuff. It may have been that he wanted to distract me, and it may have just been that he was so absorbed in this game that he didn't realize I didn't really want to talk about it. But yeah, I did end up kind of talking to him about it and he was really understanding. I think we will be able to visit my father-in-law--at any rate, we've got plans to--it's just a matter of figuring out how the hell we're gonna pay bills afterwards. We've got a GoFundMe up which is basically how we can afford the trip at all, but we'll miss two weeks of work too and that'll be rough on the bills.