The question My sister and I are in our 60s and retired. During our teenage years and 20s we were close. In my late 20s, I lived abroad and returned with my now wife. There have always been cultural differences between my wife and my sister that my sister does not make allowances for. My wife can be very direct.
In her early 30s to mid-50s, my sister experienced an abusive marriage ending in divorce. She couldn’t have children and a business failure left her insolvent. She still bitterly resents those 20 unhappy years as a wholly undeserved waste, whereas I have reached retirement with my family, marriage and finances intact.
We have a holiday cottage and have had many happy weekends there with my sister and mutual friends. Earlier this year, while on a walk, accompanied by an even-tempered friend, my sister and I argued about my adult daughter’s upbringing. Although strong views were exchanged, it lasted five minutes and contained no hurtful language. My friend agrees it was a minor incident.
I emailed my sister suggesting we meet to smooth over our contretemps. She replied with a torrent of vitriol, demanding an apology for my “bullying and aggression”. She refused to meet up. Her description of the event doesn’t match either mine or my friend’s. She has told others, including our daughter, that she hates both my wife and me.
We have since issued a Christmas invitation, but it has not even been acknowledged. Should I accept that our relationship is over?
Philippa’s answer If you are not going to do anything to make amends except wait for her to come round, then yes, you could accept that your relationship is over.
We can each have different experiences of the same incident. What seemed minor to you and your friend obviously gave your sister a more charged reaction. I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong, but she had a very different experience to you – this is what you are not acknowledging.
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There has probably been an accumulation of you and her experiencing the same things differently. For example, you may experience your wife as direct, your sister may experience her as rude. She may also think, why should she be the one who must make allowances for cultural differences? The disagreement on the walk was probably some sort of last straw. It seems she doesn’t feel seen and understood by you. I’m not saying you don’t understand her – you may, or you may not – what I’m saying is that it looks to me like she may feel that you don’t consider her point of view, nor take it seriously. Or perhaps you deny that her experience of the situation is relevant. In other words, she may feel you don’t “get” her and she is frustrated. If you want to resume friendly relations with your sister, you need to let go of being right and of her being less successful than you.
I don’t know if you are consciously aware that you seem to want to be seen as better than her, but it leaks through in your email – why mention she had an unsuccessful marriage with no progeny and a business failure and that you didn’t? It feels to me that by mentioning this you wanted to prove that you are superior to her and possibly that your word is worth more than hers. I hope I have the wrong end of the stick about this, because if my hunch is right, it isn’t surprising your sister wants to stay away. I wondered whether you were trying to give me the impression that your sister is bitter and crazy, and you are the sane one. If you rarely validate neither her experience nor her feelings, then it might well be driving her mad and would explain why she wants to stay away.
What can happen in families is that siblings are assigned roles – The Sane One, The Dreamer, The Crazy One, The Clown. Sometimes people don’t mind the roles they are assigned (or assign to themselves) and sometimes they may feel limiting or just downright horrible. Maybe she doesn’t like the role you’ve assigned to her now, maybe you are thinking of her as the bitter unsuccessful one and perhaps you do this because when you compare her to yourself it makes you feel better – but this is at her expense. Sometimes siblings have a hard time seeing that their brother or sister has matured and still treats them in the same way as when they were teenagers. It can feel restrictive.
Be honest and question yourself. Have you been adopting the role of The Superior One around her? She experienced you as aggressive and bullying even if that was not what you intended. Feel and see things from her point of view and apologise for the upset she feels you’ve caused. And wouldn’t it be nice if you could achieve this before Christmas?
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