Time to acknowledge hurt

Dear Amy: Two sisters in our extended family have a broken relationship.

When they were young their parents brought foster children into the home.

The eldest foster child was a boy in his early teens. He began sexually assaulting the younger sister, who was 8. The abuse continued for at least four years. No one in the family was aware of it.

Fast-forward 20 years. The abuse was revealed, and the older sister said that everyone needed to forgive the predator. She opted to keep him in her life, like a brother.

The victim no longer trusted her sister; their relationship was never the same.

Now the older sister feels rejected by the family because of her continued support of the predator.

She still feels that forgiveness of the predator was the best course, and she can’t grasp the depth of her younger sister’s hurt.

Sixty years have passed, and the entire family is still clouded by this disloyalty.

The older sister feels like she’s the victim, due to the palpable rejection she feels from everyone in the family.

Is there hope after all this time that trust can be reestablished? How should they make amends?

They are now senior citizens, and both sisters could benefit from each other’s companionship and love.

Fractured Family

Dear Fractured:

The older sister seems to have spent all of her compassion and forgiveness on the man who sexually abused her vulnerable sister. Where is her compassion, forgiveness and understanding toward her sister, who suffered as a child — and might still suffer?

The older sister does not have the right to claim victimhood, but this might be her way to try to paper over her own guilt — and perhaps win sympathy as a way back into the family fold.

Unless childhood trauma is addressed in a therapeutic context, it will continue to hurt and divide family members.

Both of these sisters are locked into intractable positions. Nothing will change unless they are both inspired and motivated to honestly state their truths.

The sisters may need to return to the painful events of their childhoods and rebuild from there. A family counselor could try to mediate a detente between the two. If you are able to bring them both to the table, you’d be helping to forge a new path for your family.

Dear Amy: Do you think it normal (or wise) to meet your Facebook friends?

My husband arranged a dinner with a “friend” he met on Facebook through one of his news sites. He’s not happy that I didn’t want to attend this meeting.

He arranged a dinner with a member of his fraternity from college. I attended only to find they did not personally know each other!

My “friends” on Facebook are people I know.

To randomly collect friends with whom you have no personal link seems desperate and unwise.

Concerned Wife

Dear Concerned: Any time you connect with a “stranger,” there is some risk involved, but meeting people you’ve gotten to know online is a natural and positive impulse. I’ve done so many times.

Meeting a fraternity brother is not a “random” meetup. This is connecting with someone with whom you already share some realworld commonality.

This is neither desperate nor unwise. It is actually oldschool “networking.”