Does anyone else have a bad relationship with their sister?

[SMJYellow]

About seven years ago, two of my brothers emigrated. About a year after that, my sister became upset at a brother because he's wasn't contacting home much. She read too much into it and picked it up wrong as him not wanting anything to do with the family. I tried to ease things for her and say we don't that. Maybe he's busy with work. Maybe he's working hard, long hours. She became irritated at my response as if I should be on board with her views. My sister sent my brother some bad messages and they fell out. A year he had a baby with his partner and my sister never wanted anything to do with that. She was completely unable to see her own part in their falling out, slapping 100% of the blame on him.

She used to say to me, he probably only had the kid to stay in the country. He only asked me to be Godmother to annoy her.

That was the start of our downfall and falling out. She was so negative and I gave out to her. After that, I tried to apologise but she ignored me and stuck her nose in the air.

In the months that followed, she was passive agressive and hostile towards me and dished out the silent treatment. She then began to text me abusive messages which I didn't respond to. According to her I was dead to her.

There's been years of hell from my sister. She fell out with our mother. She read far too much into a completely innocent situation and created so much drama about it. She fell out with another brother.

There's as been years of abuse from her. She keeps away from the family home and doesn't visit. The abuse if from a distance. A lot of bad messages, private calls, and a lot of abuse.

She reported a brother to the immigration authorities. She accused another brother of something else completely despicable. She's done so much bad on us, it's unreal.

She has shut herself off from the family while at the same time trying to punish us all for her hurt feelings. She's not able to cope with her choice of cutting us out. Not one of us set out to hurt her or her feelings.

The whole entire thing is a mess but it is what it is. We realize that we can't fix her. There's something deeper going on with her and none of us are responsible for it.

I spent the evening clearing the remainder of her belongings up from the bedroom we used to share. It was just so final and it hit me.

I have a sister who regularly falls out with family members; with some of us it's turned into long-term ostracism (in both directions). I have next to no relationship with her now (a two way decision).

I think she has a personality disorder (she seems to hit every trait in the description for NPD and many for asd). She had also developed an alcohol problem (which could be part of the pd I suppose).

She's had a hard time in life in many ways, again a lot of it due to her behaviour, and it's a vicious circle.

Im fine with having virtually no.contact with her, but worry about what will happen (,re the alcohol problem) in future, and feel bad for my mum - who is dressed and upset by everything, even while she tries to be stoical.

It sounds like your sister may have a pd too.

*stressed

In any case - it may not be final, as people like this tend to re-initiate contact when the need something, or get too isolated etc.

They are v stressful to deal with though - as one of my sister's said "just enjoy the break".

I have 2 sisters and 3 brothers. All are toxic. I cut off all about 13 years ago but kept one sister who moved near me. Now we have been NC for the last 3 years although I see her children. She is so toxic and negative that I can't be near her.
It's a sad state of affairs but blood really doesn't mean anything.

Yep, I have one of these. There's currently a fragile peace

Here are 2 things I’ve found to be true.

I couldn’t believe going ‘no contact’ with my only sister was even possible, let alone healthy. I struggled on with her for years. Same nasty cycle.

I now can’t believe how easy it was to cut contact, and how wildly positive it has been for me (and my dh, and kid), 6 years later.

I did it thoughtfully, with clear communication with everyone. I said that the negative cycle required two people, so I was removing myself from it. I said I forgave her for the hurt she’d caused me, but was placing a policy in place to prevent any future hurt. I kept my cool for 3 years when everyone in the family tut tutted at me to ‘stop this silly feud’. I shut down every conversation about it (with a brief smile) and made my excuses to leave if they persisted. I was a polite broken-record, and got on with my life.

Now she’s fallen out with 3/4 of the family (one at a time), I don’t get the ‘flying monkeys’. I resist hearing news of her life, and frankly I don’t think of her much at all. It’s not the deep, enduring pain I thought it would be. It’s a freedom, and feels mature and right to me. I know I did my best with her (and for her), and that walking away to live my life in peace is justified.

I used to say that if she ever came to me and showed that she’d changed, I’d hear her out. I’d like to think I would, but frankly I’m not sure I’d bother rebuilding with her. Life’s too short to risk repeating old mistakes. I’d rather make new ones!

All this just to say, at a certain point you need to get on with adulting and accept other people’s desperate desire not to join you. Even family. A few years in, hopefully, you’ll feel like I do about estrangement. Not hot, not cold, just ‘meh, it’s working for me.’

My oldest sister is a truly awful person, sounds very much like yours but violent too.

I’ve finally went NC, been so for over a year now and it feels great.

I'm NC with my sister. She's a vile person and I can't be around her. It breaks my heart because we were best friends when we were younger and I love her kids who I can't see anymore. But my mental health is better for it despite the hurt.

I love my sister, but it's very difficult to like her.
She has severe MH issues, but that doesn't give her a free pass to treat people like shit.
It never ceases to amaze me that her adult child is the most wonderful person you could wish to meet.
to all of you

I have a step sister who I was very close to growing up. We didn’t live in the same town but I’d spend a lot of time at my dads with my step mum, step sister and brother. Once we left school, I met my husband, started working, had kids, things got busy. My sister went to uni met her husband, had kids, life was busy and we kind of drifted apart. In recent years my sister has been seriously unwell, lots of operations, divorce from husband etc. My stepmum will say things like you used to be so close, send her a message etc. I feel bad but I try to reach out to her and she doesn’t reply, I’ll send messages but she ignores them. She really isn’t well at all and her mental health is extremely fragile and she’s not in a good place, but she doesn’t seem to want to try to reconnect. I don’t feel that we have a bad relationship as such, just a broken one that we can’t seem to fix.

I don't even have a bad relationship with a sister. A bad relationship would suggest some form of relationship. There is just nothing at all.

I am surprised to find that so many of rl people I have known from childhood have no relationship with their sisters. I also know some sisters who have no relationship with brothers.

It is a bit sad that one of the closest relationships are bad.

Me.

We had a highly dysfunctional childhood and she makes me bear the brunt of her resentment and anger.

She also developed an intense, deliberately excluding relationship with my other sibling, leaving me ostracised though we get on well if she is not there

She is highly strung and emotionally erratic one minute I'm her favourite the next I'm the bane of her life, though it's obvious she's lying when sucking up.

In my teens we had a combative relationship, in my 20s I went Grey Rock Technique which had limits to its success

In my 30s (now) I went "stealth NC" which is NC to all intents and purposes but with no declaration as to what youre doing, so if texts, phonecalls visits etc are avoidable I avoid and I don't engage first unless I have to; it's amazing how long I can get away with NC without anyone commenting or questioning, and far less hassle than a big "I've going to have no more contact" dramatic announcement and attendant fallout

But it's not been without issues - stepping back from her has really allowed me to see what a nasty piece of work she is - pathological really. Everything is surface, an act, a lie, a manipulation and seeing it that way frames lots of things in different lights

Friends that fall away
Constant moving or job changing (when she's been found out for how awful she is)
Lies, big and small and forgetting the lie
Can't sustain a relationship
Tries to control the narrative about herself and others in terms of how she/they are perceived
Dismisses others as inferior usually without legitimacy or basis.

I think the reason she hates me as much as she does is because I can see HER and it seems to me that most people can't and that's isolating for me and I feel anger towards the whole thing

It's slightly complicated now because of a family matter which is forcing a lot of contact short term, but it helps to detach - I try and think of her as my sisters other sister - ie someone I have to be cordial to for familial harmony but otherwise don't have to invest in

Essentially it's not just you @SMJYellow

Linnet , You say your sister's mental health is very fragile and you think she doesn't seem to want to reconnect, but maybe she wants to but can't right now.

I've seen responses on Mumsnet saying MH is not an excuse for certain behaviours. Whilst I agree that abuse shouldn't be excused on those grounds, I do believe that most of us don't understand mental ill-health. We certainly rarely come across severe MH issues.

Maybe your sister is so low that she just cannot make the effort but desperately wants the situation to be miraculously resolved without having to make any effort. I know someone with severe MH issues who hasn't the mental energy to deal with anything at all

Im nc with my two older sisters.
They were both very violent towards me growing up (along side my mum, who I'm also nc with) I was the family scape goat and used for them to unload all their stresses and negativity on to, verbally and physically.
When I left home at 15 I tried for a number of years to make a relationship happen with them all, it was a confusing time.
Part of me really wanted a 'proper' family so I guess I was trying to look past all.the bad and make that happen.. which was hard, I was always really unwelcome and just felt like I was a burden to them all.
None of them even took ownership for what they did to me, and nor did they want a relationship with me (well i think my oldist sister did but too much harm had been done by then and by that point I didn't want it) so I gave up trying. I haven't seen or heard from my sister's for a round 10 years now and haven't seen my mum for around 3, but even with her we would only see eachother once a year max and that was always me doing the leg work, she's never made an effort to get to know me or be part of my life. Too much has happened for us to ever have a proper relationship. It's just not going to happen for me unfortunately but it is what it is, I can't undo their mistake but I can move forward with my own life, I didn't want to live under their black clouds anymore.
Life is so much easier than it was back then. I feel more at peace anyway.

I have a toxic dsis and shes so very hard work. Im as lc as i can be

Just to add. With my mum it was hard to track her down.. she would change her number or move house with out telling me so I could never get hold of her.. it dawned on me that I was being ghosted by my own mother so I just decided to give her what she wanted.. and I'm so much happier for it. I wish I'd done it years ago. It would have saved so much heartache.