DH (40) and I (40) have been together since we were 19 we met on our first day of uni. From the beginning we always said we didn’t want to rush into settling down and wanted to travel first, and that’s exactly what we did.
After graduating we spent about 18 months in South America volunteering, doing odd jobs, teaching in schools etc. I learnt Spanish (still fluent now) and we had an amazing time. We tried coming back and doing the whole city job thing but it just wasn’t for us, so we carried on travelling on and off for years.
We were very lucky financially I inherited about £300k from my grandad at 25 and DH had some money from a trust fund so we had the freedom to live like that.
We ended up getting married at 36 and had our first baby last August. I absolutely love being a mum and I’m so glad we had our son, but I’m also really glad we waited. I feel ready now and don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything.
My sister is 3 years older than me and made very different choices. She also inherited a decent amount from our grandad but chose to use it to buy a house with her ex-husband. They got married at 27 had two children, and then divorced. She’s now remarried to someone who is genuinely lovely, so it’s not like she’s in a bad place now.
But over the years there’s been a definite undercurrent from her towards me, and more recently it feels like constant sly comments. When we were travelling she’d say we were “running away from real life”, when we came back and didn’t settle into careers she’d tell us to “grow up”, and when we got married later she made digs about it being “about time”.
Even during my pregnancy and birth she was quite judgemental. I chose to have a water birth with no medication (all approved and it went completely fine), but she made comments about that and about my age which just felt unnecessary.
Recently I mentioned we might like another child and she rolled her eyes, laughed and called me selfish, saying “you and him have had all this time just having fun and now you want to take things seriously?”
What I don’t understand is where this has come from. Growing up and well into our 20s we were really close genuinely close, no big fallouts, nothing bad between us at all. That’s why I find this shift so confusing.
Now it just feels like there’s a lot of judgement from her, and the only way I can make sense of it is that there’s some resentment there about how differently our lives have turned out. She had the same financial opportunities but chose a different path, and I do wonder if she has some regrets, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
I know I’m not completely innocent (I did say years ago she could have travelled before settling down, which she didn’t like), but this feels like more than that.
My sister is far more successful than I am and than I’ll ever be. I’m unsure why it seems as though she resents me.
DH and I are settled into our jobs. I work in policy in civil service and DH is head of maths at an independent school, we are so content with our life. My sister thinks I need to be more ambitious and says I seem lazy, she is on a very high income but seems quite judgmental on DH and I.