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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to think I should be able to go out with my cousin without being guilt tripped...

12 replies

bohemianbint · 09/04/2009 09:32

...by my mum because my sister didn't come?

I've literally not been out since DS2 was born nearly 8 months ago. My cousin emailed me and offered to come and pick me up on her way from work and take me out for an hour for a catch up, and I jumped at the chance as the last couple of nights I've been able to put DS2 down in the evenings for long enough to be able to do something like this. So, we went out for a drink, had a good old catch up and I came home.

Next day I've got my mum on the phone saying "your sister was very upset that she couldn't make it the other night, she'll have to go out with you next time..." and basically rubbing it in about how sad she was. Now, am I being a bit mean to go out without my sister, (who is nearly a decade younger than me) or should I actually be able to have a drink with my cousin (who is the same age as me and we have more in common) just once, just for an hour?! We weren't deliberately excluding her, I'm just completely run off my feet at teh moment, didn't really think about it and took m y cousin up on her offer - it just did not occur to me to say, "thank you very much but we'll have to invite X as well or there'll be trouble." I had the same thing when I had the audacity to go to a shop to buy something for DS when he was born because we didn't go and see my sister who lived in the very vague locality.

I speak to her sometimes but we're not really that close and the main interaction we have is her phoning up 8 times in the small hours when pissed, which doesn't really endear her to me to be honest.

Is it me, am I missing something, or is this another example of my mum being a controlling nightmare? I know it sounds a bit petty in isolation but I get this all the time from my mum and I'm starting to flag it up now and reasses where she's coming from.

OP posts:

CMOTdibbler · 09/04/2009 09:36

It's your mum and your sister being annoying. You have the right to go out with whomever you please, without having to invite people. If your sister wants to go out with you, she should phone you and organise something herself - and not go whinging to your mum either

Simplysally · 09/04/2009 09:38

Agree with Cmot .

Stumblebum · 09/04/2009 09:39

It is unreasonable, but your sister may want to be closer to you and is not going about it in the right way. Maybe invite her round so she knows you like to spend time with her too.

(I know you probably have enough to do already with a baby!)

Original poster

bohemianbint · 09/04/2009 09:46

I thought so - I dunno if it's just a habit with my mum, or if she's pissed off with me in general, but she goes out of her way to try to make me feel guilty about every single choice I make at the moment.

I have wondered that Stumblebum, but sister lives around the corner and could easily pop in every night of the week if she wanted. Meanwhile we're trying to move house, re-locate, arrange a wedding in addition to life with a 7 month old and a toddler.

Honestly, the sooner we move far away from all this crap, the better.

OP posts:

Original poster

bohemianbint · 09/04/2009 10:07

Thanks for the feedback though - mumsnet is largely responsible for keeping me sane and helping me deal with all this at the moment!

OP posts:

screamingabdab · 09/04/2009 10:15

YANBU. You are an adult, and your sister is an adult, and it is not your mum's business to orchestrate who plays with who!

screamingabdab · 09/04/2009 10:18

My mum tries it on a bit in this way, though much more subtly than your mum - she wants to know what my brother and I talk about. It's like she had to be in the centre of our relationship. I went to see my cousin recently and I could tell she was dying to know what we had talked about (I am nearly 40)

Nekabu · 09/04/2009 13:20

It sounds as though she's trying to forge a relationship between you and your sister that isn't there at the moment. She's probably worried you're not that close and reckons that, as you're moving away, it will drift further apart. I wouldn't be surprised if your sister hadn't said anything of the sort to her and it was just your mum clumsily trying to get you to see more of each other. Mine does that kind of thing too!

Original poster

bohemianbint · 09/04/2009 13:44

I wondered that, Nekabu. In fairness to my sister it was possibly my cousin who mentioned it in passing to my mum. It's just the guilt tripping that is driving me up the wall at the moment; my mum has really shown herself up to be very manipulative and downright unfair to me in the last couple of months. Even when my sister gets pissed and phones me up in the middle of the night, my mum defends my sister. My sister refused to help me out when I needed to go to hospital because she was going shopping later in the day, and my mum blamed me for not taking my son to her house, rather than giving my sister a serve for being utterly selfish. There's so many examples of her being so utterly biased towards my sister. (Who is her daughter, whilst I am not.)

OP posts:

JuxaLOTmoreChocolate · 09/04/2009 13:49

Like Nekabu, I reckon it's your mum's fantasy. She wants to believe that her two daughters are really close and makes up this sort of thing in order to try to bend reality to her desire.

OhBling · 09/04/2009 14:01

Mmm.. it sounds to me like your mum gets involved when you don't want her to and doesn't when you do. I'd recommend being more consistent - none of my siblings and I ever bitch to our mum about the others any more. Oh, we'll roll our eyes in a "god, can you believe that DB did that - that's so typical" kind of way, but we don't ask for any feedback from our parents. And we resist when they try to give it to us.

I agree with Nekabu that probably your sis said nothing to your mum. But as you've obviously got some issues with your sister, she's probably worried about your relationship and this is her (not very effective) way of trying to help.

YANBU to be irritated. But I'd say stop trying to get your mum on side when you're annoyed with your sis and refuse to engage with her when she tries to stick her nose in.

[according to my mum, my brother was very upset about something I'd done. My brother on the other hand has continued to act completely normally around me and when the subject came up, we had a 30 second conversation where I explained and he said, "ok".]

Original poster

bohemianbint · 09/04/2009 16:30

Blimey - I don't talk to her about anything, she just has a go at me anyway! I was actually speaking to her about something totally unrelated when she started on at me about my sister. I know better than to bother trying to get her onside, there's no chance.

OP posts:

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