Younger sister resented for dodging parents’ care
DEAR CAROLYN: I moved to the D.C. area a year ago after a really nasty breakup and a canceled wedding. I was heartbroken and homeless after he kicked me out. My sister convinced me to move into the basement of her townhouse and share expenses with her. Though she is married, she spends every weekend at her boyfriend’s. Her husband knows, but they can’t afford to get divorced.
So, I get a job, and spend every weekend alone in her townhouse, which is filthy and in disrepair. I clean, fix things up and try to mend my broken — and lonely — heart. After two months I can’t stand it and move to a great apartment. She’s mad because I had promised to stay six months and pay rent, but the basement was not helping my mental state and she was never there.
However, the real issue is our parents, who were and are horrible to us. They have dementia and a crisis sent them to a nursing home in
May. My sister refuses to lift a finger. I drove to the Midwest three times to empty and sell their house, and I’m currently battling with insurance companies and their finances. When I tried to tell her what I was doing and needed help with, she blocked me.
I am so angry with her and my parents. Do I just cut her out completely and not update her? I’m in a great relationship now, but I need help with the mountain of paperwork and I’m terribly resentful.
— Tired of Being the Responsible Big Sister something you agreed to do, but it’s not OK for her to opt out of something she never agreed to do?
I realize elder care and the decisions around it are heavy and complicated the way rent will never be. I also realize that a kid who does the time makes it easier, like it or not, for the others to skate.
But there is a baseline unfairness to the way you’ve framed these two points of friction with your sister, and it matters regardless of the points themselves:
When you have an emotional reason to put yourself first, you give yourself and your motives a pass — to wit, “the basement was not helping my mental state.”
But when your sister has an emotional reason to put herself first — those parents “who were and are horrible to us,” on top of the awful broke limbo of her home life — she’s selfish and irresponsible and “refuses to lift a finger.”
There is an important conversation waiting to be had about what you and your sister owe (and don’t owe) your parents and (more importantly) each other — because there are different, legitimate ways for younger generations to handle significant needs in the older generation. They include everything from agreeing to collective action to leaving it to individual conscience. The latter can be especially apt when parents were abusive, as it appears your parents were.
But you can’t have this conversation productively if you go into it assuming your motives are the only pure ones — especially just after you broke a promise to your sister with significant financial consequences for her.
What you can do is choose to view your sister’s motives in the best possible light, too — the exact same grace you give yourself. Emotionally speaking, it’s the wave of a wand.
You’re doing your imperfect best; she’s doing her imperfect best. Meeting there — and not just when one of you needs the other for something — is your best chance to figure this out.