My sister moved house without telling us

[OliveIsMad]

I got a text from my sister today to say that she’s moved house and here’s her new address. Hadn’t told any of us that she was moving house or even that she was thinking about it.

She does this all the time. She didn’t tell any of us that she was pregnant until she was about six months along — she just turned up one day with a bump and was like, Oh yeah, we’re having a baby lol. And when she had the baby, she didn’t tell us until the next day when she got home from the hospital. None of us even knew that she was in labour. She literally had a whole baby and then told us that she had given birth THE NEXT DAY once she was home. And we barely see the child (now 2) and my own mother has only held her granddaughter a handful of times. Bear in mind that my sister lives about ten minutes away. (The new house is also ten minutes away but in the opposite direction. I only know this because I had to Google the address.)

You know how I found out that she ran the London Marathon? I found her participation medal in her car. Turns out, she’d trained to run a 5k, then trained to run a 10k, then a half marathon, then a marathon. Took her two years. None of us even knew that she could run. Hadn’t thought to mention it.

She gets promoted or changes jobs, buys a new car, goes on holiday and we only hear about it weeks, months or even years later. She mentioned in passing once that she’d been to Australia. It was YEARS ago. She went to fucking Australia for like two weeks and literally none of us knew.

I tell my parents everything. We’re extremely close. We’re doing up our kitchen at the moment and I’ve run every single decision by my mum, she’s seen every paint sample, every fabric. I told her that I was pregnant the day that I found out. My other sister is also like this, although she still lives at home so partly it’s because of proximity. But my big sister acts as if she doesn’t give a toss about any of us.

I’m so sick of her gatekeeping absolutely everything in her life and not including any of us. I get that she’s big on independence, but there’s being independent and then there’s just being a bitch. If she thinks of us at all, it’s as an after thought.

Gah. Rant over.

I personally find it bizarre that you’re a grown adult but run every decision about a new kitchen by your mum. Unless she’s paying, it’s decisions for you and a partner if you have one. A man who did this would be crucified in the comments for not cutting the umbilical cord.

She doesn’t tell you (your sister and parents ) stuff because she’s a grown adult with her own opinions and she doesn’t want her life decisions like moving house to be a family (your parents, you and your sister) discussion. You call it being extremely close but others would consider it extremely enmeshed and unhealthy.

She doesn’t keep “secrets” because she doesn’t care. She is confident in her decisions and doesn’t want to have to discuss it in great detail like you do. She also can’t tell one of you because as you say, you all like sharing gossip with each other. If you (your parents, you and your sister) could keep a secret then she might have confided but I suspect that she sees your relationship with your parents as very unhealthy.

She sounds like a brilliantly fun person! - like she is just wonderfully casual about life, rather than extremely private.

I do get that it is a bit strange to be uninformative to that degree, but I lost sympathy a bit with your remark about her gatekeeping her own life.

Have you asked her why she does things this way? I would find it more intriguing than infuriating.

I’m a lot like your sister. For me, the more information I give my family the more it tends to be weaponised against me. They will try to discourage me, undermine me etc. I’ve no way of knowing whether that’s the case here because I don’t know you or her or any of your family. But I am curious about why you feel you need to know this stuff on your timeline rather than hers. It seems to bother you a lot that she has these boundaries and this need for independence, and I do think it’s worth reflecting on why that is. Do you need to feel she depends on you in some way? Are you angry that she doesn’t need your approval/help/opinion? Do you perhaps envy her independence a little? You can’t change how she is. But you can change how you respond to it so that you don’t become so upset/angry.

I'm confused as to why she isn't allowed to gate keep her own life? It's none of your business.

I don’t think she’s private, I think she’s secretive on purpose to make herself seem mysterious and interesting.

I’ve spoken to her about it and she said that she’s not as close with us (“us” being me, our younger sister and our parents) as we are with each other and has never felt that way and always felt like the odd man out, even when she were kids, which is absolute BS, we were very close as kids. We were always a very close family and I don’t get why she’s pretending otherwise. She also has some personal issues with our mum and dad that have been blown way out of proportion to the point where she’s basically saying that she has “childhood trauma”, which again is nonsense, we had an extremely happy childhood.

Ahhh, you're the golden child and she's the outcast, you refuse to see it because you had a very different childhood to hers. It happens all the time.

Your attitude towards her speaks volumes, as does her just living her life and you saying she just wants to seem mysterious and interesting. It's not about you.

It's making me think about how I was with my dad in the last decades of his life. I absolutely hated picking up the phone to him, and while we were talking my mind just went blank when I tried to think of any family or personal news to tell him. I was polite and superficially kind but secretly felt cold. kept the conversation going by prompting him to talk about himself.

I think the reason I behaved like this was a very pervasive anger towards him which was permanently unexpressed. I didn't want to give him anything of my real self, so I just did a sort of minimal roleplay of affection.

What was your family life like growing up OP? Any sources of hurt or fury?.

EDIT: Sorry, crosspost. I see that you have spoken to her about this and that she does have some sense of hurt. I don't think you can say that what she says is BS. You see things one way; she sees things another way.

She told you how she feels and you describe it as “absolute BS”. She confided in you about how she felt as a child and you don’t believe her. It is entirely possible for two people to have different feelings about the same set of circumstances. She protects her privacy from people who have proven to her that they don’t believe her. It seems natural to me.
You sister doesn’t enjoy your company and doesn’t need you or your parents. She is just minding her own business. And that gets right up your nose.

Oh I see, this is a reverse.

Seems she had a different experience to yours growing up.

You come across as very bitter, jealous and dismissive

Her childhood and your childhood were not the same. She was raised by different parents, younger less experienced parents. As the eldest they will have made mistakes with her but not with you because they learned from previous mistakes and changed how they did things. It’s not the same at all.

You sound like a family with no boundaries if you think you’re entitled to know every detail of your adult sister’s life in blow by blow detail as it’s happening

How many years age difference is there between your sister and you?.

You cannot stare you all had the same childhood experiences as its simply not true . Her childhood experiences are far different to your own but you are not respecting that.

Why? It’s touched a nerve hasn’t it.

You ignore and or otherwise minimise the red flags re your parents because you are enmeshed with your mother. Minimising her experience as you are doing will not endear your sister to you.

Oh gawd, I have the opposite problem, my sister has zero interest in me. She couldn’t get enough of me, my help and money (I’m slightly older) prior to her marriage. Her DH is lovely and even he gets slightly embarrassed how she tries to just rush our calls. They live 3 hrs away and when I’d visit BIL would be so sweet and chat and bring me up to date with all that had been happening which was always surprising as my sister would never tell me anything and my presence seemed an inconvenience.

Anyway, eventually it was too hurtful to be ignored the way I was and as she had zero interest in what I was up to, I just respected who she now was. There’s a saying isn’t there along lines of ‘when someone has made you feel unwelcome, never darken their doorstep again’. So I did after many years of trying.

Re your sister, I do wonder if she’s just sort of protecting herself since she has confided issues about trauma and childhood unhappiness and you have strongly rejected her experience. Perhaps she no longer trusts any of you and feels more in control only letting you know of life events imminently or afterwards. It’s a a shame either way that she seems so isolated from the rest of you and also that you call her a bitch seems a bit harsh.

It’s also possible to have different childhood experiences with the same parents so I would be less dismissive of what she says, if you actually do want to have a closer relationship

This 100% - OP has absolutely no insight into the fact that her sister’s childhood may not have been perfect! or that they weren’t really that close!!

You don’t get to prescribe how your sister feels or acts - she is doing it for a reason!

Sounds like none of you actually ask her anything about her life at all. Are you all just talking about yourselves?

It sounds like your family is so suffocating that she’s gone the other way to escape from it.

I am exactly like your sister and my sister is like you, I really don’t think anyone is that interested in my life, I certainly find it exhausting listening to the minute details of my sisters life that I really couldn’t care less about

Yes, this exactly. When she does tell you about herself you immediately claim the authority to discount her words completely. That was something else that my dad did. Only his perception of our family life had any truth in it at all as far as he was concerned, and thinking about it, this may well have been part of the reason for my putting the shutters down. Why open up to someone who discounts you?

OP, do consider that quite a lot of people, perhaps even most people, would struggle to trust someone who was this dismissive of their feelings. As others have suggested, the fact that you had a happy childhood is not proof against your sister’s trauma. Respectfully, you do seem very disdainful of her. It would be worth considering whether that disdain is one of the things that have caused the lack of openness you describe.

I'm also with your sister on this. The amount of over-sharing you do makes me feel claustrophobic... and I wouldn't be surprised if it all gets repeated to extended family, neighbours and friends. She's probably had personal stuff spread far and wide by you and her mother before and wants to keep certain things private.

Sharing isn’t compulsory even for family. She tells you things she wants you to know and that’s ok. It’s unlikely it’s an act as some stuff you found out by accident what did she gain from that?
She doesn’t view you as close and shows that in her behaviour. You need to accept it

She’s just living her life. It literally doesn’t impact you.

You sound nuts