Silenced for my abused past and left out of family photo

[Fuchsiarose]

So, my younger sister (who I always used to have a close relationship with) has recently reconnected with our two older siblings (eldest sister who has always blamed me for her ex-partner sexually abusing me in their flat when I was 14) and brother (who violently harassed me and sent me death threats when I inherited from our dad and he didn't), which has deeply upset me and has reopened a lot of trauma and wounds for me.

Younger sister put a card through my door a few weeks ago saying that she wanted to make up with me, but only if I was prepared to 'move on' and not talk about my problems. I responded to this in a message, saying that I couldn't heal without discussing my issues and being supported through them, which she has completely ignored.

I have now just discovered a photo that has been posted on FB because two weeks ago, for the first time ever, all three of my siblings, their partners and all their children met up and came together, without even telling me, inviting me or making any attempts at reconciliation. I was left out, as well as my husband and our two children. To be the only sibling excluded has devastated me.

My mum is livid about this and she got into a text argument with my younger sister, calling her out for refusing me the chance to talk about what I am going through. Within the messages, my sister sent my mum a photo of the inside of the card she wrote to me (revealing that she had photographed it before giving it to me, as if she was only doing it as some kind of 'box-ticking' exercise so that she could show other people that she had made the gesture, which is clearly an agenda and not coming from the heart).

Am I being unreasonable for not bowing down to my sister's terms and conditions?

@Fuchsiarose I’mreading these messages and thought I agree with the thrust of them I don’t want to underplay the betrayal that you are likely feeling in all of this. I have been there. In my case the family member who abused me is still in the centre of the fray with my parents and I have been pushed out what I had supposed was a decent, close family by their behaviour, including by another sister who was also abused. The damage my family did to me in their psychological warfare effort levels of carpet sweeping was enormous. People who, like you said, I should have been able to rely on and trust showed me with their behaviour that I couldn’t. There is a lot of narcissism at play in these behaviours. It is horrendously damaging to the scapegoat. But it is the reality of what you are facing, really you are going to be participating in your own abuse or walking away. They will make the family work like a liquid lava reforming around you whatever you choose. Families are complex often very dysfunctional groups. I would say dysfunctional families are more common than heathy functional ones in lots of situations and abuse is one such circumstance. It thrives where their is emotional neglect. Outgrow them and their behaviour and find a better support group and move on.

It's up to her who she has a relationship with and you can't control that. Why would you want to be in a photograph with a man who has caused you 'trauma' anyway.

It sounds like she was trying to have a relationship with you but doesn't want to constantly discuss your problems which can be very draining if it's non stop. You're obviously making her feel uncomfortable if she's gone as far as to write to you about it.

Yes family can be supportive but it has to be offered not expected. Enjoy a nice relationship with your remaining sibling and find someone else to discuss your issues with, perhaps your mum? It's quite self centred to say you can only 'heal' if you constantly talk about yourself and receive support from everyone, not everyone has capacity to support others.

I can see both sides, OP, and I'm very sorry for what you went through.
Did you have therapy in your own right? Or did you think that your healing would come from talking it through with your family? Realistically, I don't think the latter will happen.
I know it seems unfair that your sister wants to reconnect with a shiny 'new you', who is over her problems. But I can understand her stance too. She's probably had years of this dominating her life and just wants to move on.

Sweetheart, you have been massively let down and traumatised by bad behaviour in the past.

People are not rational , they are emotional. They think they have good solid reasons for their behaviour. Your younger sister has needs and experiences you don’t understand, just as you do.

They can’t process your perspective because it clashes with their reality. The same for you.

You can only control yourself. You need to choose whether to accept them for who they are, flaws and all, or whether to manage without them.

Don’t let the past control your present and future. Reset and decide what you want. Relationship with younger sister regardless of her seeing her other siblings, or not. Then move on.

My family have complicated relationships. I’m clear that I won’t get drawn in or choose sides. I take them all as I find them. I don’t trust them, but I don’t reject them either. Some of them feel I’m unreliable because I don’t reject the people they are rejecting. So be it.

I understand you have every reason to be upset about the past.

But you feel out with your sister because she reconnected with older siblings that you feel hurt and traumatised you.

Sister reached out to you to try to make up with you, you said you weren't interested unless she is willing to listen to your trauma and support you in it.

So she decided she didn't want to, met up with the siblings and now you're devastated at being left out.

You made your feelings clear. Your sisters feelings are clear. I don't see why you're so devastated about being left out of a family reunion you didn't want to be part of anyway.

I don't see why you're so devastated about being left out of a family reunion you didn't want to be part of anyway.

That is a very black and white way of looking at this. @Fuchsiarose does’t want to meet with family as they are because they are betraying her but she wishes they weren’t betraying her and that she could meet up with them. There is a hugely complex set of emotions going on here for @Fuchsiarose I suspect. No one just finishes relationships with family and goes oh grand now I’m totally fine with that. Human beings do not work that way.

You can not make your sister give up her relationship with your other siblings to prove her loyalty to you, that's not how it works.
You can choose to go no contact, but you can't make that choice for others

I haven’t actually discussed my problems with my younger sister for two years! I have held it all inside. So where you are getting the idea that I am ‘constantly talking about myself to her’ or demanding that she stops seeing my siblings, I don’t know! My relationship with her since then has involved me being amicable with her while she parties the night away with my abusers and posts it on FB, which I do not confront her for, but I do keep my distance which is why she wrote the (now public) card. I have maintained a dignified silence throughout all this and that is exactly what is eating away at me inside.

I haven’t said that I want to make my sister choose her relationships! She can do what she likes and I am not trying to change that.

However, it still hurts to see your lifetime best friend having drunken nights out with them and partying the night away when I still don’t know if my brother is going to kill me one day and my older sister still blames me for the child sexual abuse I suffered. I am hurting. That is all.

Your sister has betrayed you, is a paedophile enabler, and you don't deserve this further abuse and gaslighting/pressure. She should feel ashamed of herself, but is, instead projecting all the shame she should be feeling onto you. You owe her nothing. You owe none of the enablers anything either. That includes your friend. That friend has betrayed you as well.

You owe it to yourself to protect yourself from this toxicity. Don't let the energy vampires suck you dry. It must be so painful to be subject to this pointed behaviour. If you can bear to, block everyone involved, so you don't have to see any of it, and take extra good care of yourself while this is going on. You deserve that. Glad you have your Mum looking out for you.💜

Thank you so much. I fully accept that my younger sister (she is/was the best friend I am referring to) is entitled to embrace whoever she chooses in her life, but when it’s people who have treated me with such alarming violence and hatred - worthy of police involvement - it does hurt me like hell to see her out on the town with them having a whale of a time.

And on top of that, when I express that I would like a heart to heart with her to tell her how I feel (after two years of holding it in), she bluntly says no thank you. THAT is what causes me so much pain.

That is a huge betrayal. I had it from a brother I was once close to. It is such a difficult experience to overcome but in the end I actually said what I needed to say (via email because I was done with hearing their grooming/gaslighting), I am not a believer in maintaining dignified silence, and some of the people I spoke to understood what I said and others cut me out. Perfect, I knew exactly where I stood then and acted accordingly. I think it is very very difficult to recover and go along with the toxicity. It is incredibly damaging for yourself. I think you address the grief if you can and step away.

I'd let her go OP. People are strange.
I know someone who has 2 daughters. One of the daughters was raped by the other daughters husband. All proven etc. She stood by her husband and blamed her sister for "luring" him.
This daughter still doesn't understand why her dad and sister don't want a relationship with her! I guess in families some find it hard to have loyalty to one side even when awful things happen. Look at the parents who stand by their paedo/murderer children.

So actually OP why are you sad to be left out when you wouldn't want to be around your older siblings?

I am sad because of being hated for positions that I was put in by other people in my younger years, like being kept in my dad’s will and being sexually assaulted by my sister’s 30-year-old partner (who was also a policeman and father) when I was a child. Yet it is me who is the outcast of the family.

And now my children are watching all their cousins together while they too are excluded. I wouldn’t have wanted to be part of that photo with the way things currently stand, but it still saddens me to see their solid unit forming while they kick me to the kerb and sweep my trauma away under the carpet.

The only person I can recall who did that was Lucy Letby. It came out at her trial and everyone found it very concerning.

It’s really complicated, @Fuchsiarose

Is your brother dangerous, or was he venting in a vile way when he was upset about being left out of his dad’s will?

Why was he left out? I am sure there were reasons but it will have been very hurtful. People do lose their tempers in those kinds of situations.

None of us understand the family dynamics, so can’t really explain anything except in terms of situations we do know about- which may be quite different. A man in my family has, in anger, said and done some awful things. The family has moved past it though, and patched things up. It’s not my place I say they are wrong to do so.

He was left out (as was my older sister) because they never got on with him. Huge personality clashes and they hadn’t spoken for nearly 15 years when he passed away. Me and my younger sister always had an extremely close relationship with our dad though.

When I inherited, my brother began harassing me to give him the money and I then received a series of hate emails ‘This is not a threat, it’s a promise. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day, I’m coming for you, etc.’ He has not spoken to me since and has never apologised or retracted those threats, so as far as I know, they still stand.

YABU, the past belongs in the past, keep holding on to it is not helping you clearly. You were asked and you declined unless it was on your terms. YABU to be upset over something you declined.

Do you have a therapist OP?

It sounds like you need some help working through all of this trauma. I don't think your mum or sister are the right people for this.

God that's horrific. I can't believe your little sister is seeing him and your sister. I would just back away from it all.