My sister is dating another abusive partner.
Her last two marriages were abusive and very stressful for the entire family. The first one intentionally impregnated her and manipulated her into a lot of debt and then when things got too stressful he just left the country and would randomly crop up trying to take her daughter who didn’t know him to disney land or somewhere outrageous and far away. We were all very understanding and did everything we could to help support her financially and emotionally.
The second one was worse. Very physically violent and extremely self centered and destructive of property. He dented my car because he was angry that my car was nicer than his. He would intentionally start arguments and fights at christmas and other major holidays. He guilted my sister into getting back in touch with our abusive father which also caused a great deal of family distress as he has been in prison twice for trying to kill our mother so we rightfully cut him off. If it was merely her talking to him that would be one thing but her husband gave him our contact information and addresses putting us in danger. I wanted to keep my daughter and pregnancy a secret from my father. But he found out and started harassing me and my daughter. My daughter was very scared and fearful as she’s never seen a grown man behave like him before.
I paid $2000USD to assist my sister with lawyer fees because he falsely accused her of a crime when she divorced him but she only tried after finding out he was abusing her children. My mother and other sister also gave her over 1k to assist with lawyer fees. The false charges were eventually dropped but it was upsetting to say the least.
Now she is in an abusive relationship with another man who is at face value very nice and charismatic. But he already has shown huge red flags. I can see why she chose him as surface level he seems like a huge upgrade in her eyes. A “good christian man” as our family is always pushing on the women in our family. Walks around with a bible. Has a nice formal tone of voice. Does all the nice american things that american people eat up like hand shaking and saying things like “God bless you.” and quoting scripture. But he also has very problematic opinions about women. For instance he wants my sister to “take it easy” and quit her very successful nursing career of 15 years because she is a mother who needs to look out for her kids needs. And he wants her to be a stay at home mother and let him take over all the financial affects including getting access to her bank accounts and mortgage.
I’ve tried talking sense into her that this is another cycle of abuse. She won’t listen to me and just says “you had it easy because you got lucky and met a nice guy when you were 18. Not everyone can get lucky like you.”
So I’m flabbergasted. I don’t know what path this is headed down but it’s clearly no where good. It doesn’t help that I’m younger so she’s less likely to listen to me. Which means I basically have to plead with mother and older sister who also have blurry boundaries around men.
I’m exhausted. I love my sister and despite the money I will say she’s done many things over my life time to help me when I was in financial trouble that has more than made up the money I gave and even if she hadn’t I would do that all over again because I love her and I care more about my sister than money. But it’s hard watching her make the same mistakes over and over again. I don’t want to be in constant turmoil and I don’t want to see my daughter harassed by violent men again.
Would I be being unreasonable to distance myself from her? It kills be inside to do this. Before the men in her life we got along so well and had such a lovely sisterhood. But after she put my daughter in danger to please her last husband I realized this isn’t just about me anymore…. when we are alone it’s just like when we were kids again. We laugh and joke and have such a great time… I miss the way she was before her kindness and funny personality were crushed by these horrible men. But it’s almost as if she is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
What should I do? I’m feeling really lost…