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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My sister regularly makes comments about how she'd NEVER sacrifice the family time etc for her or her husband to have the demanding / high income jobs my husband and I have.  Things like "well i'd NEVER want to not be the one waiting for my kids when they get home from school" or "I'd never want my husband to regularly miss dinner".  She acts like we're making these tradeoffs just to buy fancy clothes (we don't) or some other silly materialistic reason

Yet she also makes kind of rueful "must be nice" comments about all the actual upside of our choices (long vacations without having to penny pinch on them in ways that add stress, my potentially leaving the workforce for a few years, both of our retiring by 50, ability to afford housing close to our offices to not have long commutes etc)

I make absolutely no judgments about her choices, i'm happy she's living the life she wanted to, but the next time she makes some "must be nice" type comment I kind of just want to bluntly say back "yeah...it will be nice to retire at 50, thats why we're putting in the hours now. i'd NEVER make the choice to have to grind at an unfulfilling job until 65+ when I could work harder now and spend 15 more good years traveling, volunteering, spending lots of time with my kids, and whatever else I feel like doing"

I should just keep my mouth shut though......right?[/quote]

“Why would you say that?”

Every. Single. Time. [/quote]
+1 My therapist taught me this.  The other reply, the one that doesn't invite more conversation on the topic, is "Don't do that."  (they say, "Do what?"; you say, "you know what. just stop" and then continue on with something else)

The beauty of either of the above replies is that they are rote and non-specific to the situation being discussed, so you don't have to engage your brain (and all the emotions) to say it.

The other reply she taught me, although I have yet to use it, is "Did you really just say that to me?" (they comment)  "That's pretty rude."  This is a more confrontational response so I am working up to it, LOL, just practicing with the "Don't do that" response first.

But in all this, the first trick is to be super-calm-sounding, and the second trick is, do NOT engage on the facts.  Don't defend the facts.  Here is the example of how NOT to do it, which led to my therapist talking to me about the above responses.  I helped my kids start a food drive and my snarky friend said "oh, how's YOUR food drive going...etc" and I started to defend, saying my kids help a LOT on that food drive and I just help sometimes when they are in school, and she was "yeah, right," OMG I was so pissed because F***, here my kids are trying to do something constructive and she's done nothing, but slags on my efforts.

Should have just calmly said, "Don't do that.  Oh, so tell me, what happened at work yesterday?"

[/quote]

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