Toxic ageing parents & sibling favouritism

[wonderingwonderingwondering]

Hi all.

Please bear with me. I'm struggling a lot at the moment and feel I'd benefit massively from an outsider view of things. This is also quite a complex situation. Sorry it's so long.

38f, middle child of three daughters. I grew up in a "well to do" home with a mother obsessed with academic achievement and outward success; a father who was emotionally absent and the less dominant parent. Older sibling fell down a well of deep mental illness in my teens and that caused major trauma to the family, to this day she has never recovered and has spent 20+ years in/out psychiatric facilities, she's now in part-time residential care. Mother minds her for half of the week.

I left home at 18. Parents took the view I was the "quiet", "capable", "independent" one and I basically was more or less forgotten about then; I can count on one hand the amount of times I was visited by parents in these 20 years. I got my degree, worked hard in different jobs in a very competitive industry, moved abroad several times, changed industry, worked up a corporate ladder. It all looked "great", but in recent years therapy has taught me that this was a time of extreme loneliness, depression, anxiety, undiagnosed ADHD, eating disorders, toxic romantic relationships...there was a lot of pain. I'd see my family once or twice a year.

My younger sister became my mother's focus in my absence. She lived at home til mid 20s, was funded through 2 college degrees, including one expensive medical degree that parents remortgaged the house to fund. My mother has lived vicariously through her for decades now. Every time I go to visit, or receive a phone call from my mother, it's a one-way monologue about sibling's escapades, her latest partner, the latest house she's bought, etc. She knows minute detail about her life day-to-day. Sibling bought a home recently. I visited that home at the weekend and she talked about how our father was doing a garden makeover and all of the light fixtures, mother came every week to clean the house, cook her meals, do her laundry. My parents have visited my new home in a different city just once. Never helped in any way like that.

I got married recently. When I got engaged I knew, thanks to therapy, that any expectations of my mother would just hurt me. I asked nothing of her, shared little info, went dress shopping alone, planned without her involvement and let her come along and have her "Mother of the Bride" moments on the day. She offered no compliments, no words of support, she criticised my speech and I heard from guests afterwards that she complained that we weren't having a religious ceremony. Neither of us are religious, but she is devout.

The final straw came for me at the weekend. After my wedding, I had a surgery for endometriosis and the recovery has been more difficult than anticipated. I've developed further health issues that have wiped me out recently. I also recently quit my corporate leadership job, as it wasn't helping the health issues and alongside wedding planning, dealing with ongoing infertility, myself and DH decided I needed a break and financially we'd be fine for a while. I yielded to pressure to visit my parents this weekend, thought they might want to see our official wedding photos, ask about surgery...but the experience became entirely about my younger sibling and her new boyfriend, who joined us for dinner and breakfast the next morning. They talked new house, mortgage rates, gossiped about sibling's friends and patients...No questions about us, the wedding aftermath, my surgery, my post job life, etc. I sat at their kitchen dinner table and felt like a ghost, like the three hour drive by my husband was a total waste of time, like we may as well not be there. I felt like a neglected child all over again.

I'm 38 years old and I can no longer tolerate being treated like this. I actually feel like the chronic stress of their neglect and favouritism has contributed to my health issues. My husband can't tell me enough that my mother is "not a mother to me", is "more interested in how things look than how you are". The recent hardship in my life have made their lack of interest in me and over-investment in younger sibling more intolerable than ever.

I just don't know how to proceed with these people, that are supposed to be family but who treat me worst than a stranger. It's also important to note that they are ageing, in their 70s and cognitive decline has set in. There will also be much to consider with care for my complex needs sibling in the next few years.

Can anyone relate? Does anyone have parents or a family dynamic like this? Can anyone provide insight, or examples of how you dealt with your own family dysfunction? Is No Contact the only way to have a happy, healthy life now?

TLDR: I am the middle neglected child in a toxic family system that includes sibling favouritism, a sibling with special needs and parents that are ageing rapidly. I don't know how to proceed in this dynamic while protecting my peace.

Hi all. I hope everyone's doing well. Something's been on my mind lately, related to my family, and I wondered if anyone here had any particular views on it. I hope you don't mind me posting again like this.

I've not been in contact with my family since last posting, except for sending a birthday gift and wishing her a HB, which she acknowledged by text. My father tried calling again last weekend, but I had a friend over and didn't call him back. I'm finding a desire and comfort in space at the moment, and just focusing on my physical and mental health, doing a lot of yoga, walking, and sleeping mainly.

I've been thinking a lot about my sister though. The younger one who is my mother's Golden Child. The one who is enmeshed and talks about an entirely different, supportive, involved and interested mother to the one that I get. I miss her at the moment. I'm realising I never would call or text; most of the time it was her that would be in touch, sharing updates on her life, asking how things are with me. In recent months she was good with supporting me: when she found out I left my job due to stress, she validated that was the right idea, and that not telling our mother was also the right thing to do. She got it, she supported me. She also really showed up for me at my wedding a few months before that - she was a bridesmaid, and she met the whole thing with a lot of joy, excitement, on the wedding day and days around it in particular she was good at being a buffer between me and my mother, telling me I looked amazing, really cheerleading me. I guess on reflection I'm realising that meant so much especially because I never got the same thing from my parents, my mother in particular. She'd tell me not to mind mum, she's just old-fashioned etc. Her excitement, joy and energy really was so important and so special to me around that time. She also was incredibly generous financially, so generous it almost made me uncomfortable. She is incredibly generous financially in general.

But I've had time to really think about our relationship and why I'm so reluctant to call, to connect or tell her things. And it's a few reasons.

1. She can be very self absorbed. I've got decades now of coming back to the family home and feeling like I'm an extra in her life. Often I'd be coming back from abroad, or from a busy life with a stressful job and my own stuff going on. And I'd not be asked about any of that. It'd be one-way monologuing the way my mother does. The asking questions, being interested is such a recent thing, it's hard to trust it although I have appreciated it. Usually I'll know great detail about her job, her friends, her love life, lots of gossip and all of that is amplified by my mother, who is obsessed with her. I've gotten used to this dynamic where it's almost like being in high school, with the two of them gossiping away, my mother obsessing over every detail of her life, as I sit beside them, silent. It's been a huge contribution to my feelings of being invisible, not being a priority, not mattering, and my low self esteem over the years.
2. I noticed this one a lot in recent months with the wedding planning. The contrast of her relationship with my mother and the support she gets, really jars me. She'll drop things like "mum says this" or "mum and I were doing XYZ", "mum wants me to do ABC" so casually into conversation and it's so isolating and upsetting to me. It makes me feel like an orphan, in the presence of a sibling who gets all of the support, interest, attention, presence from a mother that stopped noticing or caring about me decades ago. It's like salt in that abandonment wound. It was particularly pronounced on my Hen, to the point where even my best friend noticed it. She mentioned how weirdly close she is to my mother, and how strange it is that my sister doesn't even think at all about what my relationship is like with the same woman.
3. This is a really hard one for me to admit to, but I feel a lot of jealousy of my sister and that makes me feel like a shit person in her presence. She's got this lucrative career thanks to the financial support my parents gave her, she makes an incredible salary, has this big house that my parents have been helping her to renovate, now she's met a guy and I know from how she's talking she'll be pregnant with him soon, and that child will become Golden Child 2.0 and knowing how unimportant I'll feel again but also devastating that will be as I struggle with my own fertility issues already haunts me. I find it difficult to impossible to feel happy for my sister, and I don't like being a person that feels that way about anyone. Despite her flaws, she's not a bad person, and she's been able to show happiness and support for me that I struggle to return,and I find that plays massively into my tendency to avoid her.
4. She puts me on a pedestal, always has. I feel like she looked up to me as a kid, even more when our older sister got ill, that pedestal intensified, and it makes me so uncomfortable. She's emulated some things with me over the years - she'll buy the same clothes as me, same makeup, befriend my friends, lose weight when I lose weight, more recently I've seen her follow my example in relationships, which she's always struggled with - weirdly she's now dating a guy from the same city as my husband, with the same job. I begrudge it in a way. Because I've always had to figure everything out for myself, with no family support, and then play the "happy families" game as if my reality is not real, while she got everything from my mother - and then see her benefit from my hard work too, in a twisted way?? It's a messed up thing I know, but it's also resulted in her gushing about me to her own friends etc over the years, and I've never felt the same way about her and I guess I feel guilty for that. I want to feel proud of her, happy for her, to admire her etc, but I just...can't. I feel like so much of what she has, has come at the cost of what I never got.

Despite all of these complications, in the last few weeks, I've missed her, I've felt bad for knowing that she probably is taking things with my mother personally (as I know my Dad will have shared our conversation about favouritism with my mother, and she's enmeshed with my mother). And I guess the reason I feel bad, is that I know the favouritism is her fault. I do wish she could see things from my perspective, but it's not her FAULT that my mother is so unfair in her treatment of us, and I guess I really wish I wouldn't have to lose a relationship with her too, because of this.

Sorry this is so long-winded. I guess I'd love to hear of others' experiences with their siblings, especially the GC - is a relationship ever going to be possible? Is it ever worth it for me to attempt an honest conversation with her, or is that just going to cause more pain and trauma?

Thanks guys x

I can totally relate to everything you say. I’ve struggled with the same thing over the years. At times I really really resent the golden child sibling and wonder how they are so blind to the fact they have and still are treated completely differently (and their children treated so differently from mine). How can they not see it and feel bloody awkward about it?!

And then I go through stages of feeling bad - none of it is their fault, it was all created by my narcissist Mother.

I think my situation is slightly different in that my GC sibling lives far away, so they aren’t in my life very often, so I can bury my head in the sand about it quite often. We are very different people and lead very different lives, so I don’t wish for a better/closer relationship. I see them once or twice a year and I’m pleasant and I just choose not to say anything or rock the boat. It’s an easier life for me to stay low contact and to just be pleasant when I see them.

Sorry that’s not all that helpful to answer your question I’m afraid, as you would like to have a closer and better relationship. But didn’t want to read and not reply - I totally understand your struggle with this though. X

Thanks for sharing @Hollietree. It really helps to hear others' experiences, as it makes me feel less alone. The pain of favoritism and these narcissistic family dynamics is so isolating, and it can feel so deeply personal. Like it's MY fault, that my mother doesn't love me the same. It's validating to see that actually this is a pattern that all families like this go through, and my feelings are somewhat normal.

I'm so sorry you can relate to all of this too. Did you ever long for a closer relationship with your GC sibling? Were you close as kids? Did you ever have a conversation with them about the different relationships with your mother? I feel as you do - it's just so confusing to me that my sibling has never thought about how my mum treats me. Even after seeing me getting upset a few times in the lead up to my wedding. She even tried to blame me / insult me for not inviting my mother to the dress shopping - which I knew at the time was not "normal" but also the only way I was going to enjoy it - but no part of her questioned that? It was just "our poor, ageing mother". I just don't get how it's so invisible to her.

I think what's hard about it too, is that we both lost our older sister to mental illness. That was a trauma and deep sadness for the both of us. And so this relationship feels even more crucial because of that - for practical reasons in terms of what we'll have to do to care for that sister longer term, but also, emotionally, as we are the only two children that lived this same experience together. I feel a grief for the inability to talk about it with her - as she's taken my mother's toxic positivity, rug-sweeping, "we are so lucky" approach and even gotten emotionally volatile in the past when I've tried to share my own pain about it. I just feel like to give up on her, is to be robbed of so much more than my older sister, and now my mother. I guess that's where the desire for some sort of relationship comes from.

It’s really hard isn’t it - I didn’t think I would be here in my 40s and still dealing with the scars of this! At 18 I broke free, moved away and thought I could leave it all far behind…… but it still creeps in. The feelings of what is wrong with me, why didn’t they love me, what is so special about my sibling that gets them this special treatment. As an adult I still feel deep rooted unworthiness. That poem is so true “they fuck you up your mum and dad!”

The only thing that’s worked for me in my personal situation is going low contact with my parents and the GC sibling. Maybe it’s protecting myself short term, but sweeping problems under the rug?! I’m not sure.

Sometime I wish I could go NC with my mother but I know it would just throw a grenade on the whole extended family. So I see her once or twice a year.

I think the difference I have is that I have another sibling, who was also badly treated and rejected. We talk and talk and talk about it. We are a close little gang and support each other, share the unbelievable stories when we do see our parents. I guess that’s why you pine for a relationship with your sister, to have someone to talk to about, to have an ally. Do you have friends/a partner who you can talk it all through with. Talking helps so much - if you don’t feel you can do it with your sister, maybe someone else who knows all the people involved.

Thanks Hollie. And wow - that must be so healing for you to have an "ally" family member, as you say. I'm so glad you have that, it must be so validating to feel so seen and so understood by someone you grew up with. Though it's awful that another sibling was scapegoated like this. What kind of relationship does your sibling have with your family of origin?

We have a lot of similarities in our background too - I left at 18 as well, I threw myself into my life then, and I've done some incredible things career wise, life wise, that nearly make my head spin to think about. But it feels like now as I approach 40, the legacy of that childhood is really hitting me. Repressing it all. stopped working, I guess.

My husband has really been the catalyst for me. He was the first person to really "see" the family dynamic as I experience it and validate that my feelings were normal, what was happening was real. He's pretty happy-go-lucky and has an amazing way of "managing" my sibling, in that he'll slag her off in a joking / warm sort of way, but also advocate for me with her in a way that probably has enabled a better relationship between the two of us. But I guess his experience with a loving, healthy family makes him somewhat limited in his understanding of my trauma from growing up this way. He's incredibly supportive, but I guess he doesn't quite get why it's so hard for me to "accept them as they are" / understand and be ok with the fact that "your mother will never change" / "you don't want the same relationship with your mother that GC has - she's not a mother to her either, she's a gossip partner and an enabler".

Sometimes I feel as though my older sister would've been that "ally" I needed. The trauma of what happened with her has wiped a lot of my childhood memories of her, but what I do remember is a quiet, gentle kid that came to my rescue sometimes, stood up to other kids for me, that kind of thing. It's a devastating thing to think about, but I do wonder sometimes if a part of what led to her mental illness is being my mother's first scapegoat :-(