Dysfunctional Family Bingo

It was the week before spending Christmas with my husband’s family and I was sick to my stomach. This had become the typical response when I was anticipating spending time with them. I had been dealing with their inappropriate behavior and my husband’s denial of the situation for a very long time. Each time I had to see them I was nauseous, had major headaches and had other physical issues days before. This is how bad it had gotten.

This particular week I was reading Oprah’s magazine and found an amazing lifeline in an article written by life coach Martha Beck. She explained her experiences dealing with dysfunctional family gatherings and had come up with a way to actually look forward to them. I said out loud “NO WAY!!” but was intrigued and kept reading. She described how to make a childhood game of Bingo into a sanity saving tool when getting together with dysfunctional families. I decided it was worth a try; anything would be better than sitting in a corner until it was time to finally go home.

I explained the premise to my husband and since he didn’t want to see me physically and emotionally suffer anymore, he agreed to play “Dysfunctional Family Bingo” with me. Per Martha’s instructions, I created blank Bingo cards on two pieces of paper, filling in the center square with the words “Free Space”. With an openness that we hadn’t experienced in a very long time, my husband and I came up with the dysfunctional, disturbing things that his family members typically did. I then filled in the blank spaces on each of our cards with these anticipated acts, making sure each card had the same descriptions but in different boxes on the card. Things like “Your mother will ignore our kids” and “Your brother-in-law will announce that he is invincible and try to prove it” became squares on our Bingo cards. When we had come up with 24 things to fill in the squares on the cards we decided that we would secretly mark our cards, meeting every ½ hour in an out of the way spot at the party to review our progress and to announce “Bingo” once our cards were marked vertically, horizontally or diagonally.

If this seems harsh let me explain by saying this – my husband and I never had a better time at one of his family functions than we did that day. We were on the same page because we were playing a game together and more importantly the things that would have made us upset and would have put a wedge between us became things we actually looked forward to because we both wanted to win our Bingo game. We were able to turn an upsetting day into a fun, memorable moment.

That was many years ago and my husband and I have since divorced, due in large part to continuing issues with his family, however the empowerment of that simple game of Bingo has stayed with me. It wasn’t meant to be mean spirited; it was meant to begin the process of seeing difficult situations in a different light. For that one day I looked forward to the inevitable inappropriate behavior that had made me so uncomfortable in the past. For that one day I laughed when my sister-in-law ignored me and smiled when my mother-in-law made passive aggressive comments to me. For that one day I was having fun in the midst of dysfunction, enthusiastically filling out my card in order to whisper…….BINGO!

P.S. If you can’t come up with 24 dysfunctional things to fill up a Bingo card (lucky you!), you can also play “Dysfunctional Family Tic-Tac-Toe”, filling in a Tic-Tac-Toe board with only 9 dysfunctional acts.

• Since this game doesn’t need to be applied to a family situation, what other dysfunctional situations do you have in your life that you could play the game?

• At first glance does this feel like it would help in uncomfortable situations? How?

• Who could play with you? They don’t need to be at the same gathering; you can text/call them when a dysfunctional act happens so they can fill out their pre- arranged Bingo card as well.