Sister lies about how much help our parents give her

[horseyhorsey17]

It's not so much an AIBU as a WWYD in my position. Me and my sister are both single mums with two kids. She lives near my parents, I don't. I work full time, she's never held down a job for more than six weeks in her life. University educated, clever, attractive, personable - but there's always a reason why she quits the job and then has a few months off. Last time it was because her boss was a paedo (she didn't have any evidence for this, it was just a 'feeling'.) The upshot of this is that my parents give her a lot of money. They 'loaned' her a lot to buy her house (which they won't get back) and they have to pay her mortgage most months. They don't want to but my mum is a soft touch as far as she's concerned, in fact probably she's the reason why my sister is the way she is. They also do loads of her childcare. I live miles away and don't get any of the same treatment, but I'm not really bothered (that's why I live miles away) but what does bother me is that my sister tries to gaslight me about this. I struggle to speak to her on the phone as it always come back to how hard done by she is, and how terrible mum and dad are, and how they're rich and why don't they give her more money. I just found out yesterday that they bought her a new washing machine as hers packed up. My last conversation with my sister was a couple of days ago and that wasn't mentioned at all. She also says mum and dad don't help with her childcare, but every time I ring them, her kids are at their house. It's just a really weird dynamic. I think she's on the narcissism spectrum and she definitely does try and manipulate people - perhaps unintentionally - but just wondered if anyone could shed light on what is going on here, and what if anything, I should do? I've never said to her 'I know they help you loads, stop lying' because I know it would lead to WW3.

I also worry a lot what's going to happen when my parents die (as they're in their late 70s now) and she becomes my problem! When her kids leave home and she doesn't get those benefit any more, how is she going to finance herself?

I’d be worried that down the line as your parents get frail she might try to take advantage of her proximity to them and end up living in a property with them which she will have manipulated them into putting in her name.

Your Dad sounds quite astute, have a conversation with him about boundaries and helping her to launch herself into adulthood ( very late) which would benefit everyone.

Not going to lie - I also have concerns about this.

I think my dad has written a watertight will that takes care of this. But if he dies first and my mum is left, she will be really vulnerable to manipulation by my sister.

I voted YABU because, while your concern/feelings are totally reasonable, I don't see why you couldn't just casually, lightly and nicely respond "oh what about the washing machine?" or "oh aren't your kids at their house now though?" Isn't it far more effort to make a whole MN thread about how much of a mystery her mind is? Her answer will at least give you some insight into how she thinks, even if it doesn't make sense.

I totally get that some people are so touchy they're like nuclear bombs and you have to tiptoe around them. But it sounds like you both are on fairly good terms so I don't see why you couldn't risk a single casual and light question, just to see how she responds.

Oh it's the nuclear bomb thing. It would be can open, worms everywhere. I just don't have the emotional headspace to deal with that stuff. She loves drama and lives for it - I hate it.

I understand your concerns OP, it sounds very stressful. There are 2 suggestions I'd make:

Firstly, if you feel able to, and as some others have suggested, have a calm conversation with your parents about their finances. Ideally do it in person and make sure you're not seen to be attacking your sister or they'll feel obliged to defend her. Make clear you want to ensure they are looking after themselves and ensuring they can afford any care they might need in old age. Encourage them to think about themselves and reassure them that they've provided for their family and are not responsible for you and your siblings any more.

Then I would take a huge step back and focus on yourself. Have a serious think about why you still feel responsible for your adult sister, and find ways to absolve yourself - counselling might help. And set out ways to manage your relationship with your parents and sister that doesn't get your dragged into the drama. Sadly you can't have a closer relationship with your sister because her behaviour is too toxic. So you need to develop healthy boundaries that you are comfortable with.

You can't change your sister or your parents, but you can change the way you engage with them. Good luck

I completely understand how stressful this is..I am the problem solver in my family. I wonder if you have always been cast in this role? The pressure of feeling like you need to 'look after' your family and fix everything can be overwhelming.

Its really hard to take a step back and look at our own families objectively- particularly our role within them.

I would gently suggest that its not your job to set boundaries for your parents. They are adults who are perfectly capable of saying 'No'. They have clearly enabled your sister for years and years. They chose this. Its for them to deal with the consequences of their own actions. Do not allow them to vent at you about the situation or dump all their emotions onto you regarding the situation. It's going to be very, very difficult but you need to tell them its not appropriate for them to complain about the situation to you. Really they are the only ones who have any power over the situation.

As for your sister... you need strong boundaries with her. She is clearly either fundamentally dishonest or completely deluded. Frankly it doesn't matter which. She will continue to leach off your parents intil they either say stop or die. When that happens she is absolutely not your problem. Fight the instinct to 'fix' anything and learn to bean dip.

E.g 'gosh that sounds hard....bean dip?'. 'Yes life seems unfair for you....bean dip?'

Its easy to give this advice and incredibly hard to action. I am really sympathetic but if you can do this you will save yourself years of worry and emotional pain

I've never said to her 'I know they help you loads, stop lying' because I know it would lead to WW3.

^ I'd bring it on. I could not stand the lying. As a minimum I would have to say "I'm no longer prepared to listen to you moan about our parents." If you don't live near her and she ends up in a financial hole in her 60s you don't have to be in contact anyway.

Do not allow them to vent at you about the situation or dump all their emotions onto you regarding the situation. It's going to be very, very difficult but you need to tell them its not appropriate for them to complain about the situation to you. Really they are the only ones who have any power over the situation.

^ this goes for your sister too.

Thank you, this is good advice. I have actually done a lot of this - this is why I don't live near them. I have my own life with my own kids in a different part of the country. I am a self-sufficient person!

I suppose I am thinking about this now as I'd like to move further away in a few years time, when my kids leave home. Maybe to a different country. But I am also worried about moving so far away from home as my parents get more vulnerable, and my sister loses the benefits she gets and therefore becomes more financially dependent on them. Maybe I shouldn't move away. I don't know. Argh!

I have a sister who was (is) just like this. My dad passed away when we were little and my mum was fairly well off really. She bankrolled DS for YEARS, I didn't get the same and wasn't bothered but constantly used to tell mum she was not actually helping DS as there'd be no-one to do it when mum was gone and DS wouldn't have the tools to live her life herself, she never took responsibility for anything.

Mum never listened and then unfortunately died unexpectedly young, DS was 30 and has never recovered. She struggles to hold down a job, flits from flat to flat, has exhausted all friendships and family ties bar a couple. This was all 10 years ago. I've not spoken to her in 9 years. She came to stay with me for a few months after mum died (that is a thread in itself) and I cut her out of my life after that, no way was I picking up that mess 💐

This is great - thank you.

Yes, I'm definitely seen as the practical problem-solver in the family. Actually I've had my own sh*t going on, but everyone in my family is always like 'you're so strong, you're so good at coping' which means I'm just left to get on with it.

Also I really do struggle with understanding what's actually going on here. IS my sister fundementally deluded or dishonest? I don't actually know. She's more than capable of lying to my face, while looking me right in the eye, as has done it on multiple occasions! But I don't know how she justifies this to herself as I think in her head she really is the hard-done-by tragic heroine of her tale. Maybe I shouldn't care, but this has obviously fundementally affected my ability to have a relationship with her and I am sad about that. But whenever I let my barriers down, she immediately lets me down in some way.

This sounds like a foreshadowing of my future!

She's not gaslighting you, she's just a plain, ordinary liar.

That doesn't make it any easier to stomach, but you are lucky in one very important respect: you're not especially arsed about not receiving the same financial & childcare support as she does. This is a great asset, & one you should be proud of - without it, you could be eaten up with jealously & bitterness.

I also worry a lot what's going to happen when my parents die (as they're in their late 70s now) and she becomes my problem!
What's up with assuming she will become your problem?
That can only happen if you allow it to.
If, once your folks have gone, she turns to you for help or cash, you just say no. Tell her that she's spent decades telling you she got nothing from your parents, so you don't understand why it's any different now.

When her kids leave home and she doesn't get those benefit any more, how is she going to finance herself?
She'll find some mug of a bloke, of course.
And IT IS NOT YOUR PROBLEM. Stop telling yourself it is.

As to how you deal with it in the now, I'd be tempted to just take the piss.
Every time you ring her & her kids are being taken care of by your parents, act incredulous & demand to know how that happened, as she insists she never gets childcare. Ask how on earth she's been so savvy to afford a new washing machine without a job. Tell her how much you respect her for paying her own mortgage month in month out with no help from anybody, How you admire her for changing jobs so quickly & managing to live solely on her earnings for months in between. Lay it on with a trowel - it might make you feel a bit better.

You are driven to understand why she is like this, in part because you are looking for a fix. I get it, because I am also the "coper" and the problem solver in my family.

The thing is, you'll never truly be able to get to the bottom of why it happens, you just need to accept that it does and then detach yourself from any belief that you're responsible for it.

I personally wouldn't be calling out the time your parents spend with her kids because I think it would start a lot of drama that would bring you right back into the mess. Simply "bean dip" as a PP suggested and accept that sadly you're not going to have the close relationship with your sister that you'd like.

You CAN back off.

Don't let your inheritance be your mother's enabling & enmeshment..
Look at how it's costing (I don;t even mean the money) your dad.
Think about his peace of mind, & how he;d hate for you to have to live with the burden that he has to.

It's clear that it's your mum driving this dynamic.
You don't have to.

If you persist in feeling this way, I suggest you take that feeling to therapy, & find out why you feel you deserve to have your life blighted by your feckless sister.

Your parents have created this situation. They have enabled her for decades.

So you can care about their wellbeing, but they clearly don’t as they’re not willing to change.

I would love it if she found some mug of a bloke! That would be ideal (not for the bloke perhaps, but for the rest of us!). I've tried hard to steer her toward rich older men but she has terrible taste and somehow manages to pick chancers who end up leeching off HER (and therefore also my parents). There's always drama going on there. We've literally had to photoshop some of her exes out of family photos!

Thanks everyone so far - it's really useful for me to get some external perspective on this.

I definitely do need therapy!

What the actual fuck?

Your solution is for OP to fund her sister's kids through University? 😂

Also loving your assumption that her parents have sufficient cash to fund trusts or annuities. (Only on mumsnet eh.) Far more likely to eventually sell their house to pay for their own elderly care, & have nothing left to leave to their children.

The kids do also have a dad who isn't short of money so he can sort them out through uni etc. (Ongoing drama there between my sister and her ex, it's been over 10 years since they split and they're still at each other's throats. He thinks she's a lazy so and so who should get a job, she says he doesn't pay her anywhere near what he should be paying. I have lost the will to have the same conversations about this that remain unresolved and unchanged after TEN YEARS).

Why do you think you want to be closer to her?

You have very little in common. I imagine a week in close proximity would have you tearing your hair out. She's a user, a liar, & a fantasist who thinks nothing of pulling you into her falsehoods about her life.

You seriously need to stop worrying about how grown adults conduct their lives & finances. You are self-reliant - keep it that way, & when your sister turns to you, tell her to hop it, because YOUR CHILDREN COME FIRST & any surplus you might be lucky enough to have earned will be for their benefit, not hers.

In all honestly, I can't even cope with one night in close proximity.

I struggle as she says I am the only person in the world she really cares about. Me and her against the world. I KNOW she is - again, perhaps unintentionally - manipulating me. But it plays into the sense of guilt/responsibility that has been drilled into me my whole life.

You can’t change her, and you can’t change your mum. You also can’t change your dad in his lifetime.

So either don’t talk to her at all, or laugh every time she starts whining about them and refuse to listen. What does “WW3” look like? Just a whiny-arsed sister you can ignore.

The only action that might be worth taking is being totally blunt to your dad that you think your sister will get all their money if he predeceases your mum, so could he change his will to leave directly to you / in trust to you with lifetime interest to your mum if property.

It’s a really tough one, at the end of the day it’s only your parents - and specifically your mother - who can change anything. Your worries about the future and inheritance etc sound valid. Your dad could write various assets in to trust, rather than just leaving them to your mother.

Sometimes the hard thing to remember is that you can’t change people. All you can really control is your own boundaries. To what extent do you let this impact you, do you let it change your plans of moving away, do you get sucked in, do you start bailing her out too. You’re in control of that, but you need to empower yourself to take a step back, see the whole situation and make sure you have that control.

Of course she loves drama. Narcs feed off it.
She also has plenty of time to concoct drama, not needing to work.

Why force yourself into a corner over it though? So what if she goes off like a bomb? Clean air & sunlight is a powerful disinfectant for subterfuge & bullshit. What's the worst that could happen, if you just calmly tell her to stop lying to you?
She shrieks at you? - hang up or walk away.
She stops speaking to you? - great. No need to torture yourself by meekly accepting her bullshit then wasting hours of your own time seething in frustration.