Tricky relationship with half sister (very long, sorry)

[LindorDoubleChoc]

My parents divorced when I was 10 and my older brother 16. A few years later my dad married a woman 17 years younger than him (I call her my step mother) and had three more children, a girl then two boys.

I am 15 years older than my half sister and had a very different upbringing and childhood to hers. My father had made quite a bit of money by the time she was born and he was also blissfully happily married to my step mother, so she and her brothers had a lot more materially but also a very happy and stable childhood, both parents in good mental health, utterly devoted and supportive.

Whereas I spent 8 years living with an extremely depressed and later alcoholic mother, who was on her own and just not coping and very dependent on me as a sort of mini therapist.

I am trying to maintain a relationship with my sister (she's now in her 40s and me in my 60s) even though we've never been spectacularly close. But she does not want to think about or acknowledge that our dad was pretty hopeless from my pov, I was to all intents and purposes left to get on with it, and his happiness did come at my expense to a certain extent.

She finds difficult family situations stressful - there are other issues in her family, with her mum and her two brothers - and she doesn't want to talk about them either. She has said that it makes her depressed and she can't talk about it.

It's not like I want to talk to her endlessly about these issues! I just want one honest conversation and for her to know how I feel about my dad (and her mum to an extent) as they wrote me and my older brother out of their wills. Quite apart from the more obvious day to day indifference and inequality.

That's fine ... but does it mean I ought to really leave it and not make an effort? I can't see the point in being superficial about it, I have enough superficial relationships with the rest of them. I suppose I feel as the only female sibling she might have enough emotional intelligence to understand, whereas the brothers absolutely wouldn't (two have Aspergers and one is estranged from the family entirely).

Don't know what I'm asking. I suppose I accept a relationship on her terms or pretty much forget it?

If you can’t accept a relationship with her where you ‘need’ her to know your feelings about a man about whom she has none of the same feelings then, yes, you need to forget it. Or because you love her, you can accept that she has had a different experience of the same person, let her experience stand for what it is. It’s not wrong, it’s just different.

But you haven’t raised it! Can’t you just say it’s great you had a more involved version, I think we really missed out. It’s also painful to know he didn’t include x and me in the will so maybe we can just avoid talking about him?

That’s something you didn’t mention in your OP, you focused on the neglect, you didn’t mention any love. Your father may have given you nothing else but he gave you a sister you love.

Yes, you could have the conversation. But maybe speak to a therapist first about how you approach it? Two reasons why I think this would be a difficult conversation and probably strain the relationship, in your current mindset:

1. You talk about her golden childhood with her father being blissfully happy with his worshipping younger wife. Yet she has one brother who is estranged from the family and another who I assume is neurodiverse to the point it causes some emotional or social issues for her as you use the term “Aspergers.” Maybe childhood is something she has happy memories of compared to a more complex adulthood? You would be asking her to take on a huge psychological adjustment to see her beloved father through your abandoned eyes. She may not be able to deal with it and that could leave you feeling abandoned all over again.

1. The last line in your OP is very all or nothing: “accept a relationship on her terms or nothing at all.” That feels very sad and fatalistic. If you love her, and she loves you, then she probably would be open to hearing about how unhappy your childhood was.

But perhaps there is a way where you have a conversation which is less one sided. Not just you telling her about your trauma, but being curious about each other’s experiences and recognising that things may be more complex than they look from a very understandable position of deep hurt.

Finally the legacy and being written out of the will is a real betrayal by your father and the only issue on which she may have some power to change things for you, so don’t reject the thought of carefully opening that up. Although the conversation could be very difficult, there is a chance in it for some healing.

I think that all too often women are expected to take on emotional labor, and this seems to be the case here. You’re putting more on her than you are your brothers, when it isn’t the responsibility of any of them.

You feel the need to tell her, but she doesn’t feel the need to hear it. That’s her right.

She is unlikely to change her opinion on your joint father because her relationship with him was just that - hers. It had nothing to do with his relationship with you. You cannot expect her to think poorly of him any more than she can expect you to think better of him. She isn’t the person that can give you what you want here, and she’s told you that.

You’re flogging a dead horse. She’s not interested. And that’s her prerogative. .Just leave this.

o she and her brothers had a lot more materially but also a very happy and stable childhood, both parents in good mental health, utterly devoted and supportive.

in the next breath you say she finds family situations very stressful and that it makes her very depressed

As a parent you’re only as kind as your least closest child thinks you are. It’s not like maths where things get averaged out. Your neglectful parent doesn't magically become a little less neglectful because they didn’t neglect one of their other children. I would argue that your dad has been neglectful with your half sister seeing how this situation was always going to come; you and her being left with mutually exclusive experiences and it didn’t matter enough to him to do anything to prevent that disconnect after he was gone.

i’d ask the stepmom along the lines of why did dad cut me out of his will, did he not love me at all? and see what she says.

maybe get counselling to get over everything. youve had it tough. your stepsister doesnt want to know your story because itll spoil her perfect picture of her dad. it doesn’t diminish what you went through though.

In the absence of your dad, your stepmum is the one you actually need to talk to about this. The adults in your life are the ones responsible for this situation. My dad did similar (I’m the younger one) and I’ve had my entire life of my half sister hating and resenting me for things which are entirely out of my control. I am appalled at how differently we were treated, I’ve said so loudly many, many times. I will vary the will myself because they will not agree to do it (which absolutely blows my mind, I have repeatedly asked them to split it between me and my sister - it goes to only me). However, although my dad is and was the dominant force in their relationship, as an adult I’ve made it abundantly clear to my mum that she also bears responsibility for how my sister was treated because she was a young adult and they were fully grown actual adults. There was no level playing field.

Your (justified) hurt and anger is at risk of being projected onto the wrong person. Your sister doesn’t owe you an ear or sympathy - her dad, who she loved, is dead. She doesn’t want or need to acknowledge your version of him. He’s gone and all she has is memories and mourning. Your stepmum though, she does. She could have positively impacted your life or insisted that your father did better, and she did not.

That is my take on it, as someone who’s been in a very similar situation but on the other side.

It's something she doesn't want to discuss. It wouldn't be fair to push it.

Maybe you should tell her about the will. She might understand why things are they are. A great dad wouldn’t cut his kids out