Toxic sibling?

[2020visions]

I have been reflecting a lot recently and I just feel like my relationship with my sister has caused me a lot of anxiety over the years. I sometimes read the threads on here about people who experience emotional abuse from their partners and I relate a lot to it but in my relationship with my sister. I have a few examples which I will write here as id like an outside perspective as to whether this is normal or a bit toxic? I feel so bad as though I’m betraying her writing this because she does also do some really nice things for me and we are close but there’s another side to our relationship that does cause me a lot of stress.

Since we were young our arguments have always been very bad and I’ve always ended up apologising even when I feel like I don’t actually know what I did.

Here’s some examples of the behaviour that has triggered me recently when I have reflected:

She often gives (very strongly worded) advice on my friendships and relationships and never really has anything positive to say about them.

She tells me I’m selfish every time we argue and that I never think about anyone else even though when we aren’t arguing she says how I’m too nice to everyone and give too much of myself?

Helps and gets herself involved with my life when I haven’t asked for help and then throws in back in my face later on by saying how much she does for me

When my DD was born she came over a few times to help me so that I could catch up on sleep after my c section and I was breastfeeding at the time so I asked her to wake me up to feed DD when she got hungry as I don’t want her having a bottle and interrupting our pattern. When I woke up I came downstairs to my sister feeding her a bottle and I felt so undermined.

She always tells me she knows what’s best for me

She screams and gets physical when we fight and if I don’t back down. She has hit me, thrown things at me, forced me to get out of the car and drove off without me (we are adults now). This physical side hasn’t ever really stopped.

I had really bad postnatal depression and confided in her a lot and I remember when I was having a bad day one time she threw it all back at me saying I’m very hard work to be around and exhausting even though she would constantly call me and tell me to talk to her and that she wanted to help. This felt like such a betrayal because I felt like a nuisance in confiding in her after her saying she wanted to be there for me.

She doesn’t get on well with my mum and always asks me to find out what my mums ‘problem is’ or tell my mum my sister is annoyed at her or tell her she’s not seeing enough of my nephew. My sister won’t ever say any of this to my mum, but pressures me to have those difficult conversations on her behalf. If I don’t do it she gets in a mood and makes out ‘no one has her back’.

I just feel quite exhausted at the moment by it all and quite angry when I think about it. I often don’t say how I really feel because she cannot take criticism and would immediately start saying how I don’t see anything from her perspective and that im self absorbed and don’t appreciate anything. This has really affected me over the years and I struggle with self esteem and relationships because I do really feel quite inadequate and pathetic sometimes as a person and I feel a lot of that comes from her constant comments over the years and when we were younger.
Her and my mum always used to fight and my mum says my sister controls me but never told her off as a child because my mum couldn’t stand the aftermath of confronting her.

Like I say my sister does do nice things for me but it just seems like it’s all used against me when I disagree with something and it’s seeming to drain me quite a lot.
Thanks for reading if you’ve got this far!

This sounds really tough for you OP. Now that you've written it all down, do you feel you have a clearer perspective on your sister's behaviour and her effect on you?
Is it possible to distance yourself from her a bit? You've talked about confiding in her when you had PND and having it thrown back at you - could you stop confiding in her? (Even if this means you become less 'close').
You say she gives strongly worded advice on your friendships and relationships. Could you stop seeking her opinion or, if it's unsolicited advice, either tell her you don't want it or just blank it?
It sounds as if she does want to control the way you perceive yourself - could her own insecurity or jealousy be at play here? - but what you've written shows that you're aware of this, even if it wears you down and you're not sure what to do about it.
No simple answers I know!

I'm not surprised you are exhausted. You need to stop her treating you like this.

Thank you for your helpful comments.
I did begin paying for counselling for my PND (which helped immensely) after that comment was made because I couldn’t have her using that to get to me it just felt really cruel.
And you are right I do feel better for just being able to see our relationship a bit clearer. It is very hard because I do love her and she does have redeeming qualities and I feel like she does genuinely love me too but has her own demons that she seems to channel on to me.
Her best friend has recently returned to the UK from living abroad and they are together a lot of the time now so I do feel that has given me a bit of distance from her which has been needed. The advice is unsolicited and never asked for, so yes I suppose I do need to tell her this is unwanted.
Thank you. It feels healing to write this down anonymously because I don’t want people in my life feeling like she’s a bad person and changing their opinion of her!

You need to disengage totally from your sister and no longer allow yourself to be used as her personal emotional punchbag. You will also need to grieve for the sisterly relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

Your sister is abusive and its not your fault she is like this. You did not make her that way. Would you tolerate this from a friend?. Why have you at all tolerated this from your sister?. Abusive people too can be "nice" sometimes but that is really all part of the nice/nasty cycle of abuse which is a continuous one. She is probably also quite plausible to those in the outside world.

You do not mention your dad here; is he in your life now?.
What was your sister like as a child towards mum and dad and vice versa?. What does your mother now make of your sister?. Look closely at the family dynamics here.

@AttilaTheMeerkat
Thank you.
I don’t know why I tolerate it. I think over the years I lost all sense of what is normal for a family dynamic and I believed for so long that I was a shit person and I was selfish so I was always on some sort of constant pursuit to prove to her that I’m not a bad person and that I do care about her feelings. It’s to the point where when I split up with someone who I was quite happy with (who was a mutual friend of mine and hers) because she refused to talk to me properly whilst I was with him as she decided didn’t like him. Now we have split up she is best of friends with him and often goes out for meals with and couples evenings with him and his new partner and my brother in law.
I feel like it’s actually impossible to not have her in my life because I would be being cruel by reducing our contact. Even writing this I can see how much she’s made me doubt myself as a person over the years.

My dad wasn’t interested in us as children. Saw us twice a year. My mum was depressed and getting by but my sister and her would often argue and my mum would frequently disappear from the house for hours on end and switch her phone off because she couldn’t cope with the confrontation. I find my relationship with my sister more powerful because she was also like a mother figure to me as a child when my mum would disappear or be working loads of hours.

2020visions

re your comments:-
"I feel like it’s actually impossible to not have her in my life because I would be being cruel by reducing our contact".

" I think over the years I lost all sense of what is normal for a family dynamic and I believed for so long that I was a shit person and I was selfish so I was always on some sort of constant pursuit to prove to her that I’m not a bad person and that I do care about her feelings".

Who made you believe you were a shit person and were selfish (infact you are neither of those; your sister?. Or was this mindset borne of your parents?). Why do you think this, where did that mindset start with you?. Are you under pressure from your mother and or wider family to continue contact with your abuser?.

Your abuser does not care an iota about your feelings and putting yourself at all in her path harms you each and every time. Your boundaries here re her are way off beam and she is taking full advantage of this. She sees your kindness as weakness and to such people that is never tolerated. Abusive people can be "nice" sometimes but this is part of their nice/nasty cycle of abuse.

You would not tolerate this from a friend and contact with her does your physical and mental health no favours at all. She's already cost you one boyfriend and how much more of your life are you going to waste on her?. The fact she is your sister makes no difference; she is still abusing you and she does that too because she can. You absolutely need to remove your own self from her life; her actions should have consequences for her. What you have tried to date with her has not worked; another approach is badly needed. It also will not do your child any favours for he/she to see you as their mother being so disrespected and otherwise abused by their aunt.

"My dad wasn’t interested in us as children. Saw us twice a year. My mum was depressed and getting by but my sister and her would often argue and my mum would frequently disappear from the house for hours on end"

So sorry to read that, none of that was your fault either. Your parents in their own ways let you and for that matter your sister down abjectly.

Its no justification or excuse for how your sister is treating you as her sibling but your sister looks like she was cast in the parent role to you when that should never have happened. She was in no way equipped to do that. Your dad was not around or interested and your mother was depressed and presumably did not seek or want to seek the help she needed. Her idea was to work all hours and run away from her problems. Home life for both of you as siblings was therefore difficult to say the least.

My advice is to go low contact. Say you are busy/working/out when she calls. Stick to safe topics. Do not confide. If it helps, view chatting to her in the same way as you view chatting to an annoying neighbour. Neutral topics only. Don’t hang around too long.

The easiest way to distance yourself is to creat physical distance between you. That is not easy but is sometimes necessary. Can you move to an area further away?

Very often those who share our childhood take a superior, lead role in our adult lives too. You were both emotionally neglected growing up. Very often those who appear ‘stronger’ are the very ones who need counselling most but lack the self awareness to realise it. Acknowledging it would also mean admitting they are not without fault. It’s much easier to point out the problems of others.

Why do you care more about her feelings than your own? Why is she more important?

I don’t know why I care more @Nanny0gg and your question is very important. I have been shamed so much by her over the years for doing anything for myself to the point where any boundary I put in place feels selfish and I question myself.
I just don’t understand why she’s like this toward me but not really anyone else. She has friends that she’s known for years who love her and a best friend who adores her - which makes me again question myself and think of it’s only me she’s like this toward - then am I the problem.
Shit has hit the fan today because I stuck up for myself when she asked me to confront our mum about a problem that my sister has with her. She shouted at me in front of our children, her son started crying and my sister threw her drinks bottle at me and snatched the food away from my DD that she and my nephew were sharing. I remained really calm and asked her why she thought that was appropriate and to stop speaking to me with so much aggression. Her justification was ‘because you have just fucking wound me up so much’. I have since received messages saying she’s cutting communication with me because I can’t handle life, I’m a psychopath, I’m gaslighting her and I’m ‘stuck in a negative cycle’. It’s really awful. I’ve been broken this afternoon but I finally realise this is it for me I think. I can have this level of manipulation any more. She makes me feel like I’m going insane every time and I’m furious that she treated me that way in front of our children.
She told me she doesn’t need this level of toxicity in her life.
I can’t understand her behaviour.

Sorry for the typos I’ve just noticed a couple.

I wouldn't try and understand and I wouldn't be the go-between with her and your mother.

She's given you a get-out. Take it and don't get drawn back in. She's obviously capable of controlling her behaviour, she's just choosing not to.

She's now not just treating you badly, she's treating your child badly.

She says she's cutting communication with you? Thank goodness. . .

She sounds vile and abusive.

Her behaviour in front of the DC is just awful. Just block her and enjoy the peace!

She is emotionally abusive and physically violent. She is possessive, intrusive, overbearing, controlling, volatile, manipulative, has no boundaries and is triangulating some weird RS with your DM.

Don’t waste too much more time trying to understand her - switch your focus to emotionally protecting yourself from her specifically and building up your boundaries, resilience and sense of self that she has crushed and which were already significantly deficient due to your inadequate parents. You could do with some professional help on this. This is really important for the parenting of your own DC as much as for yourself because if we didn’t have the right role models/blue print and were injured by poor parenting then we can’t possibly know how to get it right and we need support.

Emotionally disconnect from her. Every negative toxic emotion she triggers in you is sensed and absorbed by your DC. They are even now witnessing DV - this is considered child abuse by NSPCC. Your “normal” is v off kilter because of how you were raised - so you need to emotionally disconnect from her in your head and put in v definite physical boundaries to stop this abuse of you and your DC.

She's dumping a whole pile of her own shit on you; she might be lovely to everyone else in her life, but hides the negativity that we all have ... until it comes to you.

A bad mental habit that's become hardened and gradually she's gotten worse.

If there is hope for any contact in the future between you, you need a good long break from her and some mental strengthening to handle the crap.

She fundamentally thinks she's behaving OK because when you challenged her, she got aggressive and mildly violent .. I assume she didn't throw the drink hard! But if she was really willing to be reasonable, she'd have stopped and thought, not become aggressive.

All that stuff about you being a psychopath is almost certainly rot, given that she says you are too giving and nice to everyone else. There's an inconsistency there that doesn't add up, and likely the inconsistency is within her not you.

Agreed with ssslou - this is tricky stuff and talking to a trained professional for a time might help.

Please please get yourself out from this. Low or if possible no contact. At all.

A lot of your feelings and lack of confidence is due to having grown up in an abusive relationship.

My scenario is very similar. I have nothing to do with her now.

I was lucky enough to be offered counselling, which wasn’t perfect but made me make time in my life to work though it. I have grieved (and still do at times) for the relationship I cannot have. I feel bad for my mum. It’s been shit. I’ve questioned myself and felt like I must be awful so many times.

BUT

A few years later and my life is SO MUCH better. On paper it’s worse, but I’m more confident, happier and have boundaries.

She’s an amazing, kind, funny and interesting person in many ways, And I’d love to have a relationship with that person, but it’s not possible. She is not going to (I don’t think she’s capable of) change.

She has profound issues from feeling the need to parent me growing up (I was a small child too - it wasn’t a fair position for either one of us to be in). She is very messed up (it’s taken me this time to realise she’s the messed up one not me), consumed by jealousy. It’s a deep seated darkness as she calls it herself - where she must ‘win’ - and the only way that can happen is for me me to ‘lose’. That’s on every front. Relationships with friends and family, being stable, jobs/pay, home, the lot. And anything good in my life causes her rage. Anything where I won’t be controlled by her any more (she controlled me growing up) gives her the rage.

Look after yourself. She is not going to.

(Oh and by she’s not going to, I don’t mean she should look after you, but more that she may not be able to behave in a way that isn’t toxic towards you ).

Hi OP,

I got really scared when I read your post as I thought someone had written in on my behalf! Your story is incredibly similar to mine.
I'm nearly 50, and when I turned 40, I had a brain haemorrhage. I lay in hospital thinking that if I survived, I'd push people away who caused me pain or ansgt. I tried to withdraw "gently" that didn't work. She became even more aggressive about my "absence" and how I never made time to call her. Or wasn't where she needed me to be : at home.

So I finally told her that I thought she was rude, and a bully. She got extremely defensive and then cut me out of her life for four years. In the end I had to apologise to her for standing up for myself!
Eventually she came round and has been sporadically cold, then nice. Repeat.

I'm now nearly 50 and am sick of it so I'm literally having the bare minimum contact.

Toxic siblings can be just as harmful as abusive partners or parents.
Please remove yourself permanently and write an assertive letter to her explaining you will no longer engage in her destructive, hurtful behaviour.