Adopted sisters still controlling, jealous and punishing as adult. is it adoption

[Rockofblue]

I am natural child of two loving parents who adopted my sister when I was two. From earliest years my sister made comparisons and tested my parents claiming I was more loved as not adopted. My mother believed she needed to be shown more love and mostly acquiesced to her tantrums or avoided them by privately and quietly providing to my needs never in way might "set my sister off". She manipulated all friends and family dynamic to exclude me both as child and now as adult. My mum died suddenly when we were youbg adults with young families. If I booked a holiday she insisted on bringing her kids,,if they joined a club, her kids joined same, yet she told her kids I was horrible and tried to separate mine from me.
She married and told everyone I hated her husband causing further rifts and exclusion. At times of vulnerability she has shown a warm loving supportive side but her husband once said "she's only happy when things are going wrong in your life".
Wondering if this is common where children are mix of natural and adopted. It's been 60 years but caused so much pain now intergenerationally I often wonder if enough support available post adoption as I can see why she acted out this way and wonder if it will ever change. Hard to be loved and hated at same time. It's a pattern of being fully engaged with to explosive anger and vitriol and then ghosted. I feelwe are all chess pieces in her efforts to control. My mum and older females in family were great emotional support to me as a child explaining her cruelty as adoption but now they have died I feel isolated with it as increasingly I am ghosted out of family gatherings because she claims I hate her husband and persuaded him I do. To point we have good connection if she is not around but he grey rocks me if she is.

Hi @Rockofblue

Sorry you haven't had any replied.
I have no answers or advice for you really, buy wanted to offer some support.
It sounds like a very difficult dynamic.

This sounds a bit pedantic but I hope you will understand what I'm trying to say.
Explaining her behaviour as 'adoption' doesn't give a lot of clarity about what underlies her behaviour.
I'm assuming that as you were only 2 when your parents adopted her, she was a young baby?
A lot of people mistakenly think that if you adopt very young children they they won't have experienced trauma, or won't remember. There will also be her genetic inheritance.
There is a phrase 'the body keeps the score' meaning that if you experience trauma, the memory of it never really leaves you, but remains in your behaviour and mental health. Maybe her birth parents had mental health issues or ND conditions. Maybe she was affected in utero by her mum taking drugs or drinking heavily. From your age, I'd guessing she was adopted in the 60s, so maybe it was none of that but birth mum was young and unmarried, possibly leaving her with feelings of rejection and lack of self esteem.
When you understand why she needed a new family you can maybe understand her behaviour.
Has she ever had any therapy or counselling?

Thank you for replying and insight. No therapy, I agree it would help and yes the very fact of being adopted is sufficient to cause trauma. Also I do know all her relationships are impacted but to maybe lesser degrees in similar ways. I do feel very sorry for her snd why I have ling thought the services available to foster parents should be available to adoptive parents including those of very young babies. My mother in particular "felt" the hurt of "rejection" on her behalf and I do think was reluctant to put boundaries in but instead compensated and excused any distress or outbursts throughout her childhood snd early years. I am trying not to sound resentful and my personality was shaped in ways that work for me more than against me. I suppose by 60 I had thought the repetitive pattern might have ended and never anticipate she would extend the manipulation to my own children who grew up protected from her impact on myself and other adults in the family. They love their aunt which is how it should be but if I had my time again I would have been restrictive about their contact. But I agree she you, other factors beyond adoption likely at work in her personality.

I'm sorry you're struggling. Difficult sibling relationships happen in all sorts of families somewhere, for many many reasons. Mental ill health, trauma, differences in parenting between children- all sorts of reasons. Many siblings don't get on.

Adoption often causes trauma, which causes ongoing issues, however the only person that can seek help for that in her, is your sister.

It sounds like her behaviour is having major impacts on you. I wonder whether some personal therapy for you to explore that would help? It sounds like she isn't a good sister to you, and you can't change her, you can only change yourself, and explore those feelings.

Adoption has changed in many ways, many of them for the better, but not all. However, there is much more awareness about the emotional toll that adoption could have on a family nowadays. It sounds like your mum maybe found it trickier to manage than she thought she would, and that had a significant impact on you.

It sounds like she has a need to control her relationships, and that you have no desire to allow yourself to be controlled in that way. I suspect you are looking for a root cause in the hope that you are somehow able to fix it - maybe you feel you owe it to your mum to keep trying, or feel guilty about not. However, whether she is adopted or not, you have the right to keep yourself emotionally and mentally safe, and keep whatever boundaries you choose. In many ways, you don't need to search for any more of a reason, predominantly because you can't really fix it. You can't fix her being adopted, or the childhood she had, or how she has decided to approach her relationship with you. All you can do is consider practical ways for you to minimise the harm to yourself and your family.

There are many steps between complete estrangement and complete entanglement. You might want to consider any iterations of the below

• going no contact
• going low contact
• refusing to discuss certain topics
• refusing to engage in certain patterns of behaviour
• reducing visits and other contact
• moving contact online, onto the phone or into writing
• speaking to her directly and frankly, noting what you have observed without making any judgements
• explaining her behaviour to your family and asking for their support to help her limit it

It isn't an easy task, but knowing that there are some things that at this stage cannot be changed might bring you some peace.

Thank you, I understand the pattern. I suppose their is a certain grief, and shame that I feel influencing my thoughts on this issue. Family have an expectation that I need to always fix things with her, as the eldest or because she is 'vulnerable'. She is masterful at manipulation and it's hard to accept that despite her actions I am one expected to always forgive and forget. An ally within the family would be great but around who was has passed. But you offer useful thoughts and I appreciate the advice. Actually, there is nothing for me to do now, I reached out quote frequently over last six months but have been ignored. It's painful and humiliating but in one sense a relief, I would like something like normality and civility as happened at times in the past, but guess I don't serve a purpose right now for her. I do wonder how she views it. It was not a two way argument, she disagreed with me on irrelevant thing and became hurtful and abusive before ending call and ghosting me since then. It is an overreaction and situation I wish I understood better in order to deal with my feelings about it.