Oh, thank you for this!!!
My DNA, and too many days of my childhood, reek of chronic complainers.
Energy vampires.
Never counting their blessings, never praising anyone for a job well done.
Thankless, bitter, angry, negative people--
--- but they were "my" people and I would love to time travel to Sunday dinner in the early 1970s with all of us at the table, cold complaining grandma, melodramatic spinster aunt, stoic grandpa who learned early on to Put Up and Shut up - back in the day he dished it out, in spades, and in German, and in public, or so I'm told, but at some point he found a lip zipper and we five sisters never EVER witnessed him verbally abusing his wife and daughter. Or anyone else. At what point did he learn that, and why have I not mastered it yet - The Mortification of Silence!

Why do I love them and miss them even as I curse the negativity that seems so strongly entrenched in the blood, in the depths of my soul .... ? They were awful. They were my family. The only family I knew.

You make such a good point about MANNERS.

It is simply good manners, good etiquette, to be a pleasant conversationalist vs a chronic complainer.
In Jane Austen novels I kept coming across this idea that someone is "agreeable."
No, it didn't mean some passive idiot politely agreed with anything and everything in order to be liked.
Some people just have to refute or dispute everything or One-Up everything.
Oh for the manners, the polite society, of those Regency era novels.

I grew up with Archie Bunker on "All in the Family" -- a comedy, popular in the 1970s -- I grew up seeing Archie's wife, daughter, and son-in-law cheerfully and calmly tolerate all his insults. We all politely listened to our grandma's complaints and our raving aunt's monologues. Somehow I internalized the idea that FAMILY could be ridiculous but we would love them and be polite to them anyway, and always.

Took me far too long to grasp that what's funny on a TV sitcom (think: Golden Girls, not Archie Bunker) is NOT amusing to people in real life. "Be yourself," they keep telling us, "your real self," but I've learned nobody wants the "real" us, the opinions we hold, the values we would wish others to uphold.

You are so right, @honeydue: it is NOT our duty to invest hours of our lives listening to the complainers. Let them vent to their tiny circle of co-dependents.

Thank you again for a timely and much needed post!