It was like being on a reality TV show, but without the cash prize at the end.

Every family has their ups and downs – their little spats etc. Matt’s family however likes to confront. They argue, they call people out for their “offensive” comments or actions and then the screaming begins, then the tears and that’s just too much drama for me. I’m not used to it.

I don’t see why they can’t be like my family and just swallow the hatred and the pain along with a few pieces of cherry pie and call it good. Sure our insides might slowly rot from bitterness but at least we never make a scene or talk about things like “emotions”. There are no tears at my family gatherings, no screaming matches. Just avoidance and lightly veiled disgust – and quite frankly that’s the way it should be.

I won’t go into specifics about what went down, but something was said, it was misconstrued, feelings were hurt, tears were shed, accusations were yelled and all in all it just wasn’t pretty. Thankfully neither myself nor my husband were involved in this particular dispute but when it happened it was pure chaos. It was like an episode of Survivor or Big Brother or something. The first order of business was to duck and cover so as not to be pulled in. We then gathered info from the sidelines to determine what the dispute was. Then it was all about strategy. We weren’t about to get kicked off the island – oh no.

We determined that our best strategy was to avoid the two main perpetrators, commiserate with the rest of the island on the topic of the dispute but in general to stay completely neutral so as not to bring attention to ourselves.We watched as alliances were made and broken and I think we did a pretty good job of staying out of the crossfire. We’ve survived this episode and hopefully gained immunity from attending the next tribal council.