My sister wrote a letter about me to the guardian.....

[FergusSingsTheBlues]

It got published. It was full of wild accusations and assumptions and was really unfair.

I only just found out.

She's pretty much permanently depressed so I cant really go mad, but I'm so hurt I really don't want much to do with her. I'm had a go at her yesterday, shouted at her for the first time ever, then ended up consoling her over a cup of tea. I always suck up this sort of thing. And we've always been really close....I thought.

To make things worse, she told my best friend who couldn't face telling me so it's double humiliation. For some reason that's made me much more upset.

I'm mortified because anybody who knows me will have read it as all my friends read the guardian....

What do I do now?

Fergus - I hope you got my pm and that explains my rather forthright comments. I was not backtracking, only wanted to explain that this is a potential reality and yes that is hard to hear. No point in me being 'nasty' or taking sides.

Anyway, as you say she's got another 40 years of life to go, this terrible family situation may have shaped her and you (and don't forget your brothers), but nothing is fixed.

Your earlier posts on here initially do come across as dismissive, as if it's all been done, tried, dealt with, you are as hurt as she is etc but your most recent posts have changed in tone. There is always a lot of projection on threads like these and it comes from both sides of the fence. I would say that you are all suffering and that as the stronger person it's just going to have to be you who works towards the healing.

Another thought, some people who suffer neglect want to be mothered and she might be wanting you to take this role on. I'm not a psychologist but I'm sure a professional would be able to work out what's happening in your family relationships.

Good luck

For those of you who think OP's sister should just pull herself up by the bootstraps and that OP should cut contact and ignore her, you really should think very carefully about the consequences that such an action can have.

as the stronger person it's just going to have to be you who works towards the healing.

No, it isn't.

There is no compulsion here.

You are not responsible for your sister.

Particularly not when she has treated you so appallingly.

You are your own person.

Your position in your family of origin doesn't have to define you forever.

You are free to walk away from all of them if that is what you want to do.

People with weird agendas have found your thread, and are going to keep trying to make you responsible for your sister's choices.

But you are not.

You matter too. You are a worthwhile person too.

Bathtime, I think I see what you're saying now - you're seeing this as a kind of abusive relationship?

I wonder whether it would be helpful to distinguish between 'responsibility for' someone and 'care for' someone? I realise they kind of overlap, but I think they do work a little bit differently, maybe?

You can accept that you can't take on responsibility for someone's choices or for their happiness, but still try to care for and support them, within whatever boundaries/limits you feel are appropriate and comfortable. (In fact, don't we all do this a lot of the time? It's only in really extreme cases that we tend to withdraw completely. I'm not criticising that as a strategy, I'm just saying there are many hundreds of options).

I realise I am over-invested in this and that everything I say needs to be assessed in light of that. The family dynamics in my case involved some serious physical as well as emotional violence well so it is a very difficult issue for me and I am sure I am not a reliable witness as a result. But what I do know is that I have been a happier and emotionally healthier person since I have been able to look at my family without anger, because I have gained a limited and partial understanding of the different perspectives, and understood that it's not black-and-white, evildoer-and-victim, but a lot of complicated people with complicated psychologies, dealing with complicated situations and sometimes screwing up! Perhaps seeing that and choosing to react a bit differently from your initial emotional impulse as a result is very, very different position from 'putting up and shutting up', or being a doormat in an abusive situation.

???

Black and white, again. I agree with your basic principles, bathtime, it is the sledgehammer approach I take issue with. That, and the insistence that it's all chip chop straightforward. Sometimes it is and has to be but the majority of the time it isn't. You may feel you want to uphold zero tolerance with every relationship, yourself the top priority at all times, but not everyone does or needs to in every instance.

You say that people are side-tracked by 'complications' - then you must mean people because people are complicated, messy, disordered - yes, sometimes abusive; relationships can be all of these. yy one has to put a full stop to eg an abusive marriage but many relationships are not necessarily as cut and dried.

to chime in with cottage: as explosive as the issue is that OP's sister could do the worst, I have had experience of a loathed exH suddenly die (accident). As much as I dreamed of him being wiped from the planet, it was a very different story when it actually happened. Theory doesn't prepare you for it. I am NOT suggesting it is OP's responsibility to make sure her sister doesn't do this, of course I'm not. There are many shades of relationship in between that could be explored.

x-post with holly

You can accept that you can't take on responsibility for someone's choices or for their happiness, but still try to care for and support them, within whatever boundaries/limits you feel are appropriate and comfortable.

But the OP is trying to take responsibility for her sister's choices and happiness.

And I'm saying that she is not responsible for those things, she can't control those things.

I think she needs to pull right back for now, becAuse this is a toxic relationship in the way it is currently functioning.

There can't be a happy, functional relationship between two people where both agree that the happiness of one is the responsibility of the other.

That is a relationship with a dynamic that is tipping into the abusive.

Taking some time to step back, reassert her boundaries, and heal her own hurt for a while is the only way I can see of reëstablishing any kind of functional, loving relationship here.

Her sister's reactions to her are full of loathing. Her histrionic pretend remorse followed by her vicious refusal to make any amends show that this is someone with a lot of bad feeling towards Fergus.

And you (and others) want Fergus to immediately return to the status quo of feeling guilt and obligation towards this person and feeling responsible for her happiness?

Just no.

I am very close to my own sister. I'd do anything for her. But she would do likewise for me. The loyalty, the care, the love is reciprocated. I stick up for her, she sticks up for me.

But if she came to hate me, to resent me to the point of wanting to publicly humiliate me, I would have to step back and figure out how to love her without letting her destroy me.

I wouldn't class this as an abusive relationship. All the same, i walk on eggshells constantly as she's really easy to offend and it's never clear why.

As an example, I sadly had a Miscarriage and was devastated. She didn't speak to me for two years because she thought I was a spoilt madam to be upset when I'd already had a child. This was pre Ivf, fertility issues etc so I was really hurt at the time. She was just at the broody stage so it wasn't like there was any secret grief to contend with. This was years ago and she only apologized and explained this to me a few months ago.

Fucking hell

This is like a huge therapy session for me, Im Really grateful for everybody's input, even the controversial posts that aren't easy to read....because I'm realising that maybe I'm not as sorted as I think. Partly I feel like I've opened a reet can o worms

to you all.

I would have to step back and figure out how to love her without letting her destroy me.

Then we're saying the same thing, all in. I don't think anyone is suggesting Fergus be her sister's wipping boy - which is what you seem to have read from what has been said here?

I'm grabbing at straws, but the 'spoilt madam' vileness , well, it could be fleas . This is a constant check I go through with people who are troublesome [but where do the fleas start??]

Whatever way, not speaking to you - for 2 years - is vile. There's no way around that. Did she apologise?

Just from your post about the miscarriage I'm not sure why you still bother with her. She's old enough to look out for herself and you sound like you are better off without her. You can't save her from her demons but you can protect yourself from her.

I'm sorry to hear about your miscarriage.

Hi Fergus. Have been following the thread but not had time to post again. That was a nice last post from you, good to hear something positive is coming out of all this heated debate! (I do agree there's probably quite a lot of projection here!)

Anyroad, there's nowt wrong wi opening a can o worms! Better out in the light of day than festering away inside...

My feeling now, having had so much more information, is that you're actually stuck in a co-dependent relationship with your sister. You've taken on responsibility for fixing her, and she's largely given that responsibility over to you too. And from that perspective, I think the best thing you could do would be to shift your focus away from her and her issues and to you and your own issues. Open that can of worms properly and have good dig around, whether that means counselling/therapy for yourself or some kind of support group like CoDA (Co-Dependents Anonymous), for example.

I imagine that kind of stuff is pretty alien to you as you've always been the strong one, the coper in many ways - but it actually takes a different kind of strength to confront your own fears and hurts, and to feel real compassion for yourself and what you went through/are still going through as a result of this very, very warped family dynamic your parents created. (Self pity is such a loaded term with such negative connotations, but actually feeling compassion for yourself is a very positive and healthy thing to do.)

You never know, if you take on some of the mantle of the "broken" one by exploring your own hurts, it might actually free your sister up to step into the coper role a bit and be more pro-active in sorting her own life out. We really do get shoved into these roles by our dysfunctional families, and you can't blame your sister for not being able to step outside her victim role if you're similarly not able to step outside the coper role and take on the victim one to an extent yourself. Does that make any sense to you?

Not that that gives your sister a free pass to treat you as badly as she has done on several occasions, from the sound of it. It's almost like she's in turn scapegoating you, and you don't deserve that, any more than she deserved to be scapegoated by your mother.

Also, if she continues to take her stuff out on you, it's like you're her safety valve, a way for her to cope with things without actually having to address the underlying issues. As well as being really awful for you, this could actually be stopping her from moving forward. The move to take control over whatever she can in her own life has to come from her, no one else can do that for her, and if you can find a way to still be a loving presence in her life while no longer tolerating being used and hurt yourself like this, she might find it in herself to take that decision to move forward for herself, to life for herself.

I know you must be tormented though by the thought of "what if it doesn't work like that", and I can see you really are between a rock and a hard place. But that brings me back to getting some help/support for yourself; that in itself can in no way be seen as abandoning her. Finding and healing the victim in yourself can only be good for both of you.

There was a lovely thread a while back by a woman whose mother had similarly favoured her over her sister, and while her relationship with her sister was positive, she found it affecting her relationship with her own DC, in that she was repeating the past by favouring one of her DC over the other, and was devastated to acknowledge that.

Obviously the parallel here is slim but it's just that this woman was not someone who would typically seek counselling, she was the one for whom life had worked out well, while her sister really struggled - but when she did do so, it was immensely helpful to her and she was able to really connect with the DC she'd previously felt no love for. Counselling is by no means a cure all and you have to be choosy about finding the right person for you, but it really can turn things around sometimes. In your case the very act of saying you are also damaged by this, you deserve support with this, could be very powerful indeed.

Perfect post, Talking.