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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

family relationship

46 replies

chatterbox54 · 04/07/2018 00:45

I would really appreciate some advice here.

I have a half sister from my dads previous marriage. She is 15 years older than me. She lost touch with her dad when she was young and have had spasmodic contact with him as an adult. I wanted to get to know her as a sister so we met up every so often just to have lunch. She seemed polite but not over friendly and was only ever interested in meeting occasionally for lunch. I wanted more than that because I wanted to bond with her. After meeting her three times for lunch I was beginning to get bored and asked her were she thought this was going because I did not think we were bonding as sisters. She then said we have different expectations and that if I wanted more from her then it would be best if we did not meet up again. I was shocked and wrote to her and said that I did not think meeting up for lunch every three months or so would bring us closer together and I wanted more from her so I said it was not working out and I said I will have to call it a day. I have other family that I am close to but I am wondering if my half sisters attitude to me is because of the situation with our dad and her

OP posts:

S0upertrooper · 06/07/2018 09:28

OP you sound very needy and desperate to have a relationship with your half sister. By all means write the letter but then burn it-don't send any more letters. Could you get some counselling to discuss your feelings with a professional IRL? It sounds like you have very high expectations of how she should respond. Perhaps once you have explored your feelings you might be ready to try again with your half sister?

AnastasiaVonBeaverhausen · 06/07/2018 09:32

Maybe she did appreciate it but isn't very demonstrative emotionally, didn't know what to say, needed time to process things. If she didn't want it, maybe she isn't the kind of person who feels she could say that, maybe she avpids confrontation. Maybe because her dad left her, she avoids getting close to people.
You don't know her at all, so you don't know what she's like. It feels like you ran at this with such high expectations, she didn't live up to them and now that's somehow her fault.

Namethatchange · 06/07/2018 09:41

She wouldn't say because it wouldn't cause her problems it is just inconsequential to her. You are giving her an item from someone who did not like her enough to stay in touch with her. A person who should love and protect her but who decided his needs were greater and you banging on about your poor father and what a hero he was for walking away and letting her mum have a life is irritating and deluded. Your relationship with this person was severed when your dad chose to abandon her. Now you expect her to be what you want and are trying to force her to be a part of your family when your father decided she wasn't good enough to be a part of it. She has made a life and a family for herself without any input from any of you and for you to go in demanding certain things of her is insulting. I agree with pp you need some counselling as you have needs and expectations you have no right to ask for and that this stranger cannot meet for you.

Namethatchange · 06/07/2018 09:45

Sorry OP that sounded harsh and I think you sound like a nice person and trying to do nice things but you need a reality check on how this is for her. You cannot salvage the relationship you father severed.

rainingcatsanddog · 06/07/2018 10:47

A similar thing happened to me but I'm the older sibling (15 years). We met when he was 20 at his insistence. We had chatted online beforehand and I warned him to calm down. He'd built up an excitement and enthusiasm that I did not have so I tried to bring him back down to reality. I ended up meeting him (5 hours) hoping that it would burst his bubble. He'd built up the image of a perfect sister which I am not and never would be.

Your post is all about you and your needs. You might have been ready for a full-on relationship but she might have wanted to take things slowly with the 1 hour meetings. She might not have been able to articulate her feelings because she's private and needs time to open up or she was confused and didn't have the words to articulate her feelings - especially if her words might hurt you.

Your gesture with the passport was thoughtful but your Dad's excuse about not being able to tolerate another man raising his children was totally unacceptable. Half of marriages end in divorce so there's an awful lot of adults sucking up the fact that their kids don't live with them all the time. I think that calling wife 1 uncaring and wife 2 patient is also unfair. Your Dad might have behaved better in Marriage 2 because of the lessons learned in Marriage 1.

OverTheHedgeHammy · 06/07/2018 11:25

Whatever I do or say is wrong.

Stop TELLING her about her situation, and ASK her.

You can tell her YOU'RE sorry that you were a bit too full on, and that you understand if SHE doesn't want to have a relationship with you, but that from YOUR side, you would like to get to know her better, if she is still willing to.

Stop assuming you know exactly what she does or does not feel! She MAY feel antagonistic towards your father, or she MAY feel nothing, that he's so irrelevant to her that she feels neither love or hate towards him.

You don't have all the answers, and neither will you get them if you don't stop assuming things and talking constantly. LISTEN.

Original poster

chatterbox54 · 06/07/2018 14:16

I’m not going to contact her again. It is finished. She has her life with people that make her happy and so do I. I think it’s best left like rhat

OP posts:

Original poster

chatterbox54 · 12/07/2018 05:28

Having talked this over with a friend of mine, she said that my half sister has the issue not me. She said that the half sister should not be carrying on like she has and if she had therapy to get over her issues about my dad then she would be able to fully accept me and put the past behind her especially as it was 60 years ago. She is taking out her issues of her past on me and I have done nothing wrong and my friend said if she cannot see past that and fully accept me then I am better off without her. I am not going to pussy foot around a grown woman who is old enough to know better

OP posts:

newdaylight · 12/07/2018 05:37

Good decision not to contact her again.

You're "carrying on" as much as she is. She has every right to choose who she has a relationship with and she owes you nothing.

I do have enough compassion for what she went through and want to tell her so she does not think I am selfish and this is all about me
Wanting her to think good things about you is more evidence that it is all about you.

Original poster

chatterbox54 · 12/07/2018 07:02

Hang on a moment. We all want people to think the best of us and that is why we try to do what is right ie help people in need and show them you are there for them and they can rely on you. As the saying goes.... treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. I put myself out for people but if they cannot do the same for me then what is the point of having them around. I was prepared to treat her as a sister. My friend and someone else I know are the only people who see this situation as I do and that is that she is a grown adult woman aged 70 and all this happened when she was young. If she had therapy she would realise that she cannot take her issues out on me. On the one hand, she told me she said to her sister that her sister should not be stubborn and that I am offering them the hand of friendship and she was more or less persuading her sister not to ignore me but to meet me half way. That is all good and well but then she herself is doing the same thing by saying to me she cannot give me what I would like from this relationship so perhaps we should not meet again. She very cunningly put it in such a way that I end this so called farse of a relationship but deep down that is what she wants but does not have the guts to say we should not meet again. I do not like her and am glad it is over and if it makes me look like the bad guy then so be it. In all of this I have been 100% genuine and she was just not interested. I do not like weak people. My father was weak and I am afraid to say she has inherited his weak streak. I am more like my mother who was a strong person which can have advantages as well as disadvantages

OP posts:

Yokatsu · 12/07/2018 07:49

You seem completely incapable of recognising that your perspective and feelings towards your dad are likely to be completely different from hers.

You also seem inclined to surround yourself with people who tell you exactly what you want to hear. No consideration that they are not impartial either.

The giving her a passport is weird. Your aunt is very wrong It's only a kind gesture if it is a wanted one. Otherwise it could be anything from an irrelevant to a completely unpleasant gesture. In these cases I think you might be entirely fortunate to have got a thank you.

As far as she's concerned all you actually share is a smattering of genes, and that smattering of genes might well be the part she least relishes.

It might feel good tellinghaving people telling you you are right regardless but it may not be conducive to good relationships with others

AnastasiaVonBeaverhausen · 12/07/2018 07:54

I doubt your friends are going to give you impartial advice, they are biased and telling you what you want to hear. You're really not doing yourself any favours OP, you sound worse and more self entitled with every post. Accept that you don't know this woman, you don't understand her reasons (clearly) but she doesn't want the relationship you do. And that's ok. She is allowed that. You don't have to demonise her for it or give her a character assassination (weak?? Cunning?? You don't know her). She is entitled to her feelings. She's not injured or insulted you. She's been upfront. Just accept it and move on. You are honestly sounding more and more unpleasant with every post you make.

DelphiniumBlue · 12/07/2018 08:04

You can't decide to be close to someone, or to bond immediately. Closeness grows over time, over shared experiences. You sound quite unrealistic.
And I don't get why your sister would want an old passport? It wouldn't mean anything to me, I have to say. It's just beaurocratic paperwork.
Her father abandoned her; it's not surprising that she is reserved.

Fivelittleduckies · 12/07/2018 08:09

You have very inflated sense of self OP. And a very black and white view of good and bad/ right and wrong.

Your “sister” is better off without you. Your expectations of her are beyond unreasonable

Original poster

chatterbox54 · 12/07/2018 08:34

Ok so I surround myself with people who tell me what I want to hear? Why would they lie to me? My mother had some deep family issues from her childhood which she never got over and it made her a bitterly unhappy person unable to reach out to anyone and she died a very lonely woman. As for my sister I said before we are finished

OP posts:

Namethatchange · 12/07/2018 08:39

She really has hurt your ego hasn't she OP? How dare she not want to be your sister and see to all your needs, there must be something wrong with her. She is entitled to not want a relationship with you, tell yourself whatever makes you happy, she and now MN have their own views.

Kathulu · 12/07/2018 08:59

You sound fairly childlike when you lay out the response you wanted when you first met your sister. You were strangers to each other, just because you share a smidgen of DNA doesn't mean that you were going to fall into each others arms and have a sibling bond that takes years of sharing a life and experiences together. You were so unrealistic in your expectations that you may have made her feel very wary of you and your true intent. It sounds like you surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear but life in an echo chamber leaves you incapable of understanding anyone else's point of view.

You'd only met her a few times in a very informal setting and you were bitching that she wasn't trying hard enough, she wasn't grateful enough, she wasn't what YOU wanted or needed. She's well rid of you.

Original poster

chatterbox54 · 12/07/2018 10:08

Who cares. I’m not coming here anymore and I am deleting my profile

OP posts:

Kathulu · 12/07/2018 10:22

Echo... echo.... echo.....

Arum51 · 12/07/2018 10:39

WOW...

So it's fairly easy to see why the sister didn't think this was going to work

OverTheHedgeHammy · 12/07/2018 10:49

Yes, I think that's for the best. I have a dear friend in your sister's position. I'd hate for her to have to put up with a half sister like you coming out of the woodwork. They haven't yet fortunately.

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