Sister crosses boundaries
Ask Carolyn
Dear Carolyn: Barring changes to the laws of physics, my older sister and I age at the same rate. We are both in our late 40s, but you’d never know it. She has always been visibly and vocally uncomfortable with my choices and milestones. When I got a solo in a school musical, she threw a tantrum. When I joined debate, she cried for a day. When she found out I had my first kiss (14), shaved my legs (14), had sex (19), and went on a road trip to NYC (20), she “told on me” to my parents.
Her behavior shows no signs of stopping. When I was 28, I did a last-minute flight to Paris with friends. The very next day, my sister conferenced my mother into a call to berate me for putting myself at risk for rape and kidnapping. When I got engaged at 33, she tried to intervene. Same as when we bought our house. When I got pregnant at 36, she called me irresponsible and reckless.
My mother insists that’s how my sister shows she cares. My sister still calls herself my “co-parent,” which apparently never stops when the kid grows up. I never cared about my sister’s choices as kids or adults. Who cares what graduate school she picks? But she felt compelled to convene a family meeting to discuss mine. (“It’s too far away, and you’re not responsible enough.”) The irony is my sister’s theatrics never change the outcome of my choices.
How do I get the people in my family to “stop caring so much”? I’ve tried “why do you care/need to know?” and “this is not your business” with no luck.
One Too Many Sisters: Stop attending whatever form of “family meeting” she convenes to discuss you and your choices. End the call, leave the room, without explanation.
I wish I had a DeLorean ready for you to time-travel back to your glorious impulse trip to Paris so you could pick up that conference call and say, “Love you guys, I’ll call when I get home,” then hang up, then turn off your phone for the rest of the trip.
Instead we’ll have to settle for applying that template forward to all future attempts to meddle. Be kind and fierce and don’t bend an inch to this emotional blackmail.
And if you feel unable to do that – you freeze, you grope helplessly for the right words, you succumb to guilt, you get sucked into explaining or defending yourself - then please allow a therapist to help you break this unhealthy family circuit. Since you are part of the circuit, they needyour for it to work; they can’t berate you on a disconnected call or question you in an unattended meeting. Therefore, it is entirely within your power to opt out.
And yes, “they.” This is your mom and your sister, not your sister acting alone.
Just prepare yourself for the emotional rearing-up when they realize their usual tactics aren’t having the emotional effect on you they’ve come to expect. Search up “extinction burst” and calmly settle in for the ride.
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