Growing concerns about my sister

[SisterSledgeHammer]

My sister live overseas in a Western European country with husband and two children. She's been there for about 20 years and married for about 10 years.

Her DH has never really liked our family much. He used to hide it and crack jokes/masked insults but he's become more and more passively hostile towards us!

My sister over the last 3-4 years has also started becoming quite intolerant of our parents and their quirks and human failures, and has created big issues out of minor/common mistakes. She criticises them constantly.

She has now started to visit less regularly and it feels like she's retreating from our family.

My parents are so stressed and saddened.

I'm really concerned that her husband is isolating her from us.

I don't want to waffle and create a huge OP but we've been a fairly close family and had regular contact. My parents go over for several weeks during school holidays to look after their children. They're always welcomed when they visit the UK and have plenty of rooms in our parents' house. My dad regularly drives over 100 miles to Heathrow to pick them up.

She's saying they don't Skype enough but they Skype once a week and she never attempts to contact them. They don't ask this question or that question, they don't do this or that... but it's all stuff which is easy to resolve. It's like she's looking for an excuse to fall out... IYSWIM!

Does this sound like something we should be concerned about? This change in attitude towards us and retreating from the family? Could her DH be isolating her from us?

Although the user poster is, to say the least, unsupportive , they do have a slight point in that you can't just blame the bil. Especially when OP remarks that her dsis is irritated with her parents for being, well, old. My dsis got very annoyed with dm as she got older, she didn't want her to be old. That wasn't her role!

Also I think if you've been away from people for a while their changes are a bit of a smack in the face, whether they be nieces/nephews being a foot taller than when you last saw them or parents being more dithery/random.

Plus OP says her dsis is high powered or intellectual or something. Once upon a time for five minutes I had a "high powered" job. I know that I would be buzzing with a million schemes/thoughts and I had one foot in dm's front door and she'd be telling me about Deirdre Barlow and the Weatherfield One or Emmerdale etc and I'd have to attune to that. I suppose it's the same when some people get home from work to find the SAHP wittering about reading schemes and wotnot. I've been on that side, too ! (Ie the wittering side!)

Your parents’ relationship with your sister is up to the three of them to manage.

Suggest you focus on your own, personal relationship with her, and if she moans to you about your parents change the subject or ask her not to.

I can try and have a meal/night out with her when we go for half term.

It's definitely multifaceted: life stresses, kids getting older, parents getting older, us getting older ... she just doesn't seem happy. She seems stressed and anxious. Stressed and anxious and not herself. And not seeing her usual support network: friends & family here!... I'd prefer it if she said she was going to see friends in wherever rather than see us. I just don't like the level of isolation.

She has got a busy life. She has usually looked forward to their UK breaks and seeing friends & family. They often leave the kids with our parents and go off for a break on their own.

I'm not judging her on other people's personalities, I'm comparing her to what she normally is like... she enjoys the company of her friends and enjoys going out to bars and restaurants. She doesn't go out anymore or have any friends... which is fine if that's what makes her happy but she's never been the staying home type before. I'm not saying anything negative about people who enjoy staying at home... just that it's not like her!

I listen to her and empathise but it's awful to hear your parents criticised all the time. Especially when they do so much! I might send positive messages to preempt ... "how lovely that parents have child for Easter, they're really looking forward to it"

Hmm, I’ve read all the updates. To me she sounds very unhappy, and angry with your parents for getting older, which suggests to me she has reached the limits of what she can cope with. The anger and frustration that they are slower could be because she knows she can’t lean on them any more, and she also is feeling stressed about being so far away. She sounds a bit like a needy teenager around your parents, which is very common, but I would think about where this might be coming from. Wanting to feel safe ? Wanting to know she could come and live at home if she needed to ? Wanting to lean on her Mum and Dad?
I think if you feel her husband is controlling then that is likely to be true. You know and love your sister.
I don’t know how you move forward and help though, other than trying to get her to talk to you. I would tell her that she seems more distant and you are worried (without mentioning her husband) and then leave space for her to respond. I hope you can work out what is wrong.

Yeah, I think that sounds about right. It's worrying. She's so far away and there's so little we can do.

I'll try to chat with her in October. It feels so far away... and having the cousins together comes with chaos so I hope we have the opportunity to talk.

Some people don't have the patience and empathy to deal with old people and they find them annoying. But it may be that she's angry and scared about them getting old because it means they might not always be there. Or a combination of the two.

Oh xpost, sorry I'm behind.

Exactly - Vix's post.

On the one hand you're saying she's more distant, but wrt your parents she's still wanting them to come for 6 weeks every summer, she commented she would have liked to talk to them more (rather than less), and she's wanting them to Skype more - so it feels like she's holding onto them more than ever.

Unsurprising given that her hubsnad doesn't seem to do childcare. Have you ever talked to her about this?

We haven't spoken properly about her husband's laziness but she's told me anecdotally that he doesn't help out.

Whenever she goes away for work, he takes the kids to his parents' and I know this upsets her but I don't know the exact reason it upsets her.

In all honesty, I am scared to ask in case she takes it the wrong way. I just try to make myself available to her.

Omg user1499173618 you sound so much like my abusive brother in law
Well done for ignoring op.
I lost my sister altogether and my niece and nephews because of a brother in law like this. He's influenced so much, she genuinely seems to believe he's right and everyone else is wrong.
If you want to maintain a relationship then tread carefully
I challenged him too many times over his obnoxious behaviour towards me and my family and have been 'banished' from their lives. So, do sad.

Its easy to find fault with your parents .It allows you to shed any responsibility and can make your life easier.Maybe it's her husband but too often it's the easy option-she doesn't have to explain herself to her parents .Maybe she's happy but more likely she knows she's in the wrong and is too proud to admit it.

It's scary when parents get old and no longer able to do all the things they used to do. Its not only inconvenient, but a reminder of their mortality - and our own .

Do you think perhaps, that your Sister may have had some thoughts about returning to the UK now, and that this may have made her husband very displeased and angry,and so maybe caused all her stress and anxiety. But I do hope that you can have a good talk with her when you next see her.

I'm wondering if she's frightened of him, or her isolation and that's why she wants your parents to call more. I was an expat for years and I think I became very introverted overtime and lost a lot of myself as a result. I leant too heavily on my husband (who was also an expat), which put pressure on our relationship, and I think I lost perspective on my relationships with friends and family back home. When you are entirely isolated you lose empathy too. I think if you can see her by yourself you might get a better clue. She is lucky to have a sister like you to worry for her wellbeing.

SisterSledgeHammer - your sister and her husband seem to rely quite heavily on grandparents to help out with childcare. You say her DH takes the children to his parents when your sister travels, and that this upsets her. Your parents go out for weeks at a time in the summer to take care of the children.

In all honesty, that degree of reliance on grand parental assistance in a bicultural couple almost always causes a lot of tension. There are just too many different currents of behaviour/expectations going on for life to be harmonious.

It’s tricky op because there are lots of potential factors. Just work on its own could explain the stress, ditto just a special needs child , or a bad marriage. Not coming for Christmas really could just be about stress and dc getting older. Perhaps she is saving some leave to help cover next summer holiday herself?
Living away your sis may be consumed with a complex guilt when she realises your parents are ageing and combined with panic & fear when she wonders how she can manage without them and if she will be forced to ask her pil which obviously she thinks is a bad option.

I do think that when you are having good conversations when you go over that you should ask openly about some of these things. You don’t want to ask Xs parents do you? You never seemed happy with them looking after dc, what do they do that you don’t like?
You don’t seem yourself these days, is everything ok?

Definitely not your BIL. One poster definitely has their own problems and should be talking to a mirror not the op.

You say she's changed and doesn't want to see old friend so much when she visits- but I really think having a school age child with special needs and a toddler would explain that! Getting childcare, the chaos of visits, I think it's remarkable that she is still visiting as much as she does- half terms, 6 weeks with grandparents, I think you are perhaps harking back to the good old days yourself when she either didn't have children or had one (which is easier to slot round and adult lifestyle). It wouldn't surprise me if she is too tired and stressed to mega-socialized when she hits the UK. I also wouldn't be surprised if you all need to cut her some slack about coming back here- I don't think this constant visiting (so Oct and Dec if they had come at Christmas) is now viable and I wouldn't be surprised if her husband had pushed back against it and told her it was making her ill.

I agree with all you say about not criticizing the parents, but that's her business.

I think you sound like a lovely close family but the old patterns cannot stay the same, and thinking someone who lives abroad will be coming with small kids and having the same type of social life as years ago is highly unrealistic. It is normal to be tired and a bit overwhelmed with a toddler and a high powered job and she may just be trying to make her life doable.

I think more focus should be put on the fact your sister has a demanding FT, a SN child and apparently no ‘help’ from her DH at all.

That alone causes fury in women. Additionally this man sounds controlling and arsey particularly wrt family.

She’s likely angry that he keeps palming off childcare onto his parents. If additionally they do not completely understand the needs of the SN child (not saying they don’t - but it’s quite a common problem), that would add to the stress.

She is ultra dependent on in laws purely because he will not pull his weight.

Women in unequal relationships can put up with it for years, but sometimes they just snap. You see it on these boards all the time.

It may be that anger and resentment with DH are building but if they split she would have to stay in that country and she’d have even less support. So she might feel stuck.

It may of course be the opposite - that she’s fully under his thumb and that’s why she’s so high strung around him. (Even so those relationships have a high snap rate too because there’s only so much people can take).

My concern would be that she may be heading to a breakdown. You can only really offer support and be there if she ever wants to open up.