My sister needs to control my relationship with other family member

[Fuckedoffat48b]

I don't really know how to word it. I come from a fairly dysfunctional family. Mother is v controlling (bordering on covert narc) and everyone dances to her tune. I have two sisters, one is very much the golden child and I am very much an 'identified patient' type.

After years of therapy and having my own family I am now able to deal a bit better with my family and see them without getting too upset. Some of the controllers have backed off, but not my golden child sister.

Recently I arranged to meet up with my other sister to meet her new boyfriend. We arranged this separately to my GC sister and it was in the middle of the working week when my GC sister should have been at work.

All was fine until GC sister demanded to know when and where we were meeting, other sister told her, and GC sister and tried to change the arrangements (so we were meeting at her new house which she wanted to show off). In the end we met where we were originally supposed to be meeting, but GC sister did come along, in the middle of her working day!

I feel like my GC sister seems to feel that I need to run my plans past her and I am pretty upset she behaved this intrusively over a meet up with my other sister. She wasn't even pretending! There is a family narrative that I am 'not a good big sister' but she is, to our youngest sister and I feel she feels she has a right to dominate any relationship between me and my other sister. Similar things have also happened when I have arranged to meet cousins and other family members; she gets a whiff of it, invites herself along and makes it on her terms which others allow her to do.

What do I do? Who do I speak to? The youngest sister who lets her get away with this shit (she was very agreeable to my GC sister trying to change plans) or the GC sister? Due to family dynamics any conversation I have with GC sister will be proof I am mad, bad and horrible at worst, and petty and immature at best.

I would ignore your gc and concentrate on the younger. Not necessarily to meet up, but just general chit chat, take an interest, be a positive influence in her life.

When you see an opening, bring up some of what you know. What a narc is. Golden child and scapegoats. All without pressure on her to act on that information. Just make her aware of the dynamic.

Keep suggesting meeting up and if the gc keeps inviting herself the pattern , along with your information, will slowly open her eyes.

Unfortunately I would think it would go well with the younger sister if you say this is this and we now need to shun her.

But I would also suggest you don’t give either of them much information about yourself that can be used against you.

The thing is any kind of interaction I have with others in the family she manages to worm her way in to. That is the problem.

My sister can be a bit like this too. Not trying to control relationships per se but she hates not to be involved and controlling a situation. For example, I wanted to organise a day out for my Mum. We both really like history so it was based around visiting some sites we are both interested in. Trip came up in discussion when my sister was there and she is interested in joining us but thinks a spa day would be much better- organise your own day out!

I'm sort of a victim still of a bad relationship my mum and I had in my teenage years. We clashed on a lot of things and I was always in the wrong because mum and sis are similar and mum always talked to her about me and so I couldn't ever win. Sis always in the background£ shaking her head over me etc etc. This has hungover into adulthood although mum and I get on well now.

One Christmas after she was married my sis decided the done thing was to alternate PILS one year parents the next. So as far as she was concerned we could see my parents on the day she didn't. Except we wanted to invite my parents every year, and invited sis and her husband too, knowing that parents might choose to go to sis instead. This really didn't go down well with her and when I complained to mum she was sympathetic to sis as she couldn't understand the problem, why can't we just go to sis's house too? Until I told her (which she didn't know) that we hadn't been invited. So we would look like we were sulking at home rather than not be 'allowed' to host.

It is a control issue and I'm aware of the irony that my behaviour around her has become more controlling in pushing back against her trying to takeover.

I have had to work really hard at setting my boundaries. I have to be careful not to get angry either as this is seen as me reverting* to type and they just dismiss what I am saying. She tries all sorts of fake wheedling ways to try and persuade me to do things and I just consistently refuse and tell her I don't want to. She is not so far gone that she doesn't want to preserve an appearance of reasonableness.

I find phrases like 'It's not your choice', 'That doesn't work for me', 'why is it so important to you when it is my xxxx?'

Not really sure what you can do when someone else's choice comes into play. In your example of her wanting* to meet at her house I would say, 'Why should we all change our plans? If you want to see people at your house you'll have to plan something else another time. We've arranged it all now' and be really firm about it.

Thanks for your post hadwe . Are you me?! This is exactly the dynamic with my family down to the sister 'head shaking in the background' if I ever have a disagreement with my mother, and the fact that if I get angry with them pissing all over my boundaries I will be accused of 'reverting to type' and dismissed.

I have also worked very hard at boundaries, but this is so completely brazen it is quite hard to know where to start. I did get 'my way' over the meet up with my younger sister, but my younger sister was very up for changing plans so it would have been me appearing petty.

I admire how sympathetic you are to the reasons behind your sister's behaviour though.

Cunts of a feather flock together, I'm afraid.

If there are any members of your extended family who give the impression they're eager to join you over in the black sheep pen, then get them onside, then leap the fence together, and never speak to your bunch of toxic arseholes again.

It took me over 40 years to break free from my mum's bullshit. Thankfully my sister and I have stuck together and we've both cut off pretty much every member of the extended family (which is not that big - under a dozen cousins, a few aunts and uncles.) I'm mildly sad that some of them could have chosen to follow suit but haven't - but that's their choice and I can't make it for them.

The mild sadness is far, far outweighed by the blessed relief of not getting sucked back into her maelstrom of drama and negativity.