Gossip: To talk about someone else's private or personal business, especially in a way that spreads that information.
But with my family I have the patience of a shrew. If you step on my toes a couple of times or a couple of dozen times I can default to patience but if you do it a few hundred thousand times I wise up. The problem for me is that I almost never feel good when I do the retaliation thing even if I deserve to do it and the family member who is the target of my witty barbed witticism deserves it richly. I hate that I've developed a conscience, however weak and vestigial it might be.
One of my blood relative families has it awfully good in our material world. This is really neither here nor there and none of my concern - it certainly isn't any of my business - but they seem to think that this affords them a higher position in the human pecking order. Again, none of my business but they trot out this opinion in my presence far too often. My belief is that if you're talking about other people behind their backs then you're talking about me behind my back. I play it close to the vest with gossipers - I don't want to give them any more ammunition than I have to.
A lot of the time people that engage in mean-spirited teasing are very thin skinned about getting teased themselves. And I notice that they hide behind a veneer of innocence and tease and tease and tease, exclaiming: "Hey, why are you getting upset? I'm just joking!" when the teasing becomes too much for the teased.
I may be too far gone to do much beyond cope with these relationships.
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