A
male
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:My wife and I have been together since college. During that time I have gotten to know her sister well. In fact, she even lived with us on two occasions. One, when she divorced her husband and moved in with her toddler son for a few months and then later when my wife convinced her to move to California from Virginia. She stayed with us 3 years that time when her son was in elementary school. He is a special needs boy with autistic tendencies. She didn't work during either of these stints, surviving on meager child support from her ex-husband.What drives us crazy about her is that she treats us like second class citizens. Her own blog entry said that she values our friendship less because we are family and somehow that means we HAVE to relate to her versus her other friends who CHOOSE to. My wife said she has always been like this, putting her friends ahead of family. We have been very good to her and her son. It impacted us financially and was a strain on our relationship, too. However, she is the type who wants to meet us 2-3 times per year and she will never share any details of her life with us. In the last year she met a man, fell in love, and had her heart broken by him. She just told us he was a friend even though we know better. She even denied there was a relationship to her mom and dad. We are hurt by this, because we think we can offer her a shoulder to cry on and instead we feel irrelevant and like we care a lot more about her than she does us. She inquires about us mostly when she needs a favor. She won't even help out her own mom half the time, but she will take from her. She sees herself as this long-suffering Mother Theresa who is above the rest of us. She doesn't see how the things she has in life have been at least partially because of our help and she is ungrateful. She has a paid off car because her mom gave her one brand new. She is able to trav for work because we watch her son when she is gone.In short, we feel taken advantage of. Is there any way she will ever treat us like "friends" or are we relegated to being "just family?" In my family, family is most important and friends a distant second. Is that just how it's going to be? My wife and I are thinking of cutting all ties with her.
View related questions:
divorce, fell in love, her ex, moved in Reply to this Question
Share |
Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (11 October 2011): Spoilt brat syndrome. Cut ties and see if her friends will also CHOOSE to open their doors to her for 3 years.
A
male
reader, C. Grant  +, writes (11 October 2011):
 It sounds very much like what you see is what you're always going to get. If she's been this way since her teen years and she's now in her 30s, that pattern won't be changed without a very major shock to her system.
You're describing someone who is highly self-centred with a strong sense of entitlement and limited empathy. Having such people in your life often tends to drain you more than uplift you. So the loss from cutting her out will be mostly your wife's guilt about treating 'family' that way. Her call. What some us are unfortunately forced to realize over time is that "family", despite all the gauzy connotations of the word in popular culture, is sometimes a pernicious thing, just as with anyone else.
Do what's best for your peace of mind. But be prepared for some serious drama when you tell her to buzz off.
...............................
|
