Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Dsis Sending Herself Gifts..

92 replies

getawfmylaaaand · 01/05/2018 19:56

It’s an odd one and probably outing so I’ve name changed, im a regular.

For the last 6 months or so, my Dsis has been sending herself gifts through the post and claiming they’re from various family members and an ‘admirer’ we are fairly certain she’s invented.

This all started before Christmas. She was wearing a bit of jewellery I’d never seen before and although not my taste, she was twiddling with it and clearly wanted us to notice it so I said ‘that’s a lovely necklace Dsis, I’ve not seen it before is it new?’ She replied:
‘Oh yes it is, it was a gift’

Me: ‘that’s lovely, it suits you’

Her: ‘it was from Aunty Jane’ (names changed obvs)

Now, it wasn’t her birthday and too early to be a Christmas present. we haven’t received gifts from aunty jane since we were 15 and I haven’t spoken to her for about 15 years since and to my knowledge, neither has Dsis. It was odd, but the conversation moved on and I totally forgot about it until Christmas Day when we were all opening presents. Dsis produced a bag for life absolutely chocked with presents all wrapped in the same 3 variations of Tesco wrapping paper (I know, because we had the same stuff).

Each present was addressed from a different member of the family, none of whom had sent me a present and to my knowledge, no one else including my parents who are more closely related. For reference, this isn’t unusual. My parents and their siblings have a no presents for adults policy because we have a massive family and everyone agrees with it. It’s heen this way for 20 years.

Finally Dsis reaches her last present and opens it to reveal a £400 handbag. She gasps and reads the tag which says ‘from you know who’. She read the tag aloud, I didn’t see it and neither did DH. Obviously this invited questions, but she did a lot of ‘oh no it’s nothing’ etc until finally saying she had a ‘secret admirer’ that she was seeing and he had sent the bag.

In Jan, Dsis had work done on her house so came to live with us for a week, but the work was delayed and she ended up staying for 5 weeks.

During this 5 weeks, every other day a package would arrive at our house addressed to her. We didn’t question it as it’s none of our business, but after 3 weeks or so we were sat at the dinner table and she said ‘I’m sorry about all the packages, it’s SA (secret admirer, although we had a name for him at this point) AGAIN’. A bit perplexed we just sort of said ‘no problem’. She then went to her room and produced a huge box full or ‘gifts’ and proceeded to show us them all. It was lots of costume jewellery, clothes, bags etc. She went through them all saying ‘this is from SA, this is from aunty pat, this is from mum, this is from uncle stan’ etc etc with the majority from SA.

Anyway, long story short one day she left the packaging from a ‘gift’ on the kitchen side and the invoice that came in the package was for her credit card and her name etc and most definately sent to herself.

We had a family gathering in April where I was able to confirm she had indeed been sending herself gifts by lightly bringing the gifts up ‘that was a lovely ring you sent to DSis aunty pat’ etc etc and all of them were completely confused. I got very good at saying ‘oh no sorry my mistake, I must have gotten it wrong’ Hmm

I told DM what I’d discovered and she has no idea what’s going on either.

Is she unwell? I feel a mixture of worry and utter confusion about it, there’s no reason for her to lie to us. She must have spend ~£5k on this so far and that’s a lot of money to us and her.

Do I need to say something to her or WIBU to just go LC and ignore?

OP posts:
VanGoghsOtherEar · 01/05/2018 22:24

I used to pretend i had stolen things as a child or even bullied people because ANY attention was better than none. I now realise it was probably part of the BPD too.

MarvelleGazelle · 01/05/2018 22:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TheVanguardSix · 01/05/2018 22:29

A good friend's wife (well, now ex-wife) did this sort of thing. She had bipolar disorder which wasn't being well managed. She would go on massive shopping sprees (when manic), very similar to what your sister is doing.
Your sister sounds like her mental health needs addressing, as in bipolar or schizophrenia. Excessive/compulsive shopping is a hallmark of both illnesses.

Peakypush · 01/05/2018 22:46

Personality disorder? I had a friend from school exactly like this. Compulsive liar - really random stuff. Extravagant with money, pretended her "boyfriends" bought her lots of expensive things. It kicked up a gear when she moved abroad as she had free reign to lie about her life on trips home. Bought herself a pretend engagement ring to wear on one trip home! We never met these boyfriends - they didn't exist. She actually used photos from google of random good looking guys. She went on holiday to the Maldives and took tons of pictures but just off herself, she was there alone but had pretended one of these boyfriends had taken her Sad but she's always been this way since childhood so we're used to it. I'd worry if it was a recent thing OP...

VanGoghsOtherEar · 01/05/2018 22:56

FlyingBird With me, i feel empty inside and like a huge void. I have to do something to distract myself and few things interest me when my voids are really bad Sad

getawfmylaaaand · 02/05/2018 05:57

Thanks for sharing experiences guys, I’m really trying to understand the behaviour so that helps massively.

In terms of the short marriage, I’d tend to agree it was less about the relationship and more about the attention it brought her. The wedding was absolutely massive and cost about £20k which my parents are still paying off. They were only engaged for about 6 months so didn’t have time to save up, so parents took out a loan which Dsis was going to pay back over time. Not sure why she didn’t take the loan out herself, as far as I know her credit rating is fine although it’s not something I’ve talked to her about much.

He ex-DH was a really positive influence on her for the 3 years they were together, he’s a proper good egg. He might actually be a good person to ask if he’s noticed a change in dsis’s Behaviour as they’re in very regular contact but he’s not in her circle of friends iyswim.

OP posts:
ItsNiceItsDifferentItsUnusual · 02/05/2018 06:21

I think it's easy to brush things under the carpet - the lying about an illness, a very quick wedding and then divorce, lying about people buying gifts. Because you don't want to think badly about someone you love.

But add all those things together and actually it becomes something quite disturbing. I'm not sure how you tackle this, but it really does sound like something serious is going on.

As an aside, are your parents not Shock that they're 20k in the red for a whirlwind wedding that lasted 7 months? It sounds as though a fair amount of her behaviour has been 'indulged' to a degree, but that's not going to be helping anyone in the long run, least of all your sister.

InspMorse · 02/05/2018 06:36

This is all so sad Sad

PollySuki · 02/05/2018 06:45

Your poor parents. Why isn't your sister and her ex paying that off?

PollySuki · 02/05/2018 06:47

Could the wedding loan be the issue? Sis has a problem shopping habit which she needs to hide particularly as she should be using money to pay the loan

TheIsland · 02/05/2018 07:01

Also came on to say borderline personality disorder.
I was diagnosed with it, and had therapy for 7 years. I can now recognise when I am likely to behave in a BPD way and can change. She needs to want to change through!

getawfmylaaaand · 02/05/2018 07:11

The loan/ wedding is a sore spot for my parents yes. They want her to be happy so didn’t mind getting the loan out. They put £10k towards it as a gift but said if she wanted to spend over that then she’d need a loan. The wedding costs were insane. It all spiralled because she wanted everything she saw on Pinterest basically. We ended up with a really nice stately home hotel but she decided she wanted the evening do in a teepee, so had that extra expense which is where the bulk of the additional £10k went.

When she announced her and ex-H were going to divorce (somewhat out of the blue, we thought things were fine) mum and dad kind of hinted that they should try and make it work, and she accused them of putting ‘appearences’ Ahead of her happiness. That was the end of it.

OP posts:
icelollycraving · 02/05/2018 07:19

Sorry, I thought bi polar and bpd were one and the same Blush

junebirthdaygirl · 02/05/2018 07:27

Haven't read full post. Could ye do a family intervention with you and your dm maybe. Like they do for people with addictions or gambling. Seek some help from a support group or therapist first so ye know how to go about it. Its very sad but needs to be called before your dsis gets into more serious financial trouble. Maybe have a counselling service available or get her to talk to her GP. But your parents shouldn't pay for anything and she needs to be encouraged to pay the loan. She could sell some of her many gifts. Your dps are inadvertantly supporting her by not challenging her about the loan. Its tough but things need to be brought out into the open.

Ginger1982 · 02/05/2018 07:27

I would say her showing you all the gifts means she's desperate for you to say something? Like a cry for help? Would she not be hiding them if it was something else?

ReginaBlitzkreig · 02/05/2018 07:31

I think involving your parents might be a mistake. The relationship your sister has with them sounds a bit skewed (burying the fake cancer episode is pretty telling). When you do speak to her I think it will be important to reassure her that you love and care for her whatever she has done. You do sound like a very nice sister btw.

vgiraffe · 02/05/2018 07:38

This sounds so difficult for you. Haven't had time to read all the replies but just wondering if you would consider writing a letter to her? You'll have time to consider how to word it but also it would mean she might not be so defensive as she could be if you ask her face to face and she feels caught out? You know her best but just another option. Maybe do some research into organisations that may be able to help and include them in the letter (or just suggest GP) so that she can 'ignore' the letter but still get help if she wants.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page