Help, please: Family crap (really MPSIMS)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Need some help, my beloved Dopers.

TL/DR: I hate my sister but I’m not allowed to disassociate myself from her.

I don’t even know how to start this or how to make it cohesive and short!

My family is comprised of Mom, Dad, me and sister. My sister is the issue. She is 3 years younger than I am. My parents have been married for 56 years. I identify with my father much more so than my mother. He is the more sensitive of the two. Let’s just say my mother has NO ego issues. I do love them both very much.

Obviously there is a huge back story and years of shit that has gone on, but the most recent incident prompts my request for help.

My sister has two kids, older boy child just doesn’t keep up with his aunt or his grandparents, which is fine. My niece is 20, living in NYC, attending FIT and is very close to her parents (my sis and bro-in-law). She is also very good about calling my folks just to keep in touch, which is very sweet.

My sister is really and truly an all out bitch on wheels and has been for years. She alienated her in-laws many, many years ago and I know I should feel bad (they, too, are assholes) but I understand their feeling…although their son (my bro-in-law) is an arrogant ass as well.

My niece and sister love the Duggars. (Ya know, the show where the couple has a bajillion kids and are asshole, ignorant Christians?) Of late, in the news, one of their 400 children toured the Holocaust museum and made the comment that abortion “is our current Holocaust”. There is an active social media stormette to boycott the show. I sent this link to my niece on Facebook (creation of Beelzebub) just stating “Ms. _______________: This is for you.” Almost immediately I received a text from my sister (aka the bitch) telling me that I pissed off my niece, her and my brother-in-law and that I must delete my tagging of my niece and am not to ‘put my beliefs on her’. About three minutes later I received another text from the bitch ordering me to delete the tag of my niece and to send her a text in apology.

Me: Cannot breathe, so angry. (Please note: this is not the first time that I have received a ‘cease and desist’ order regarding items I have posted on my OWN FB wall that the bitch or my bro-in-law disagreed with on: me: liberal, them: conservative, close-minded, don’t understand what has happened with women’s rights issues, stupid shitheads.)

What do I do? I send my niece a text telling her that apparently her parents felt that I owed her an apology; I just wanted to give her some information and if she has any issues with me in the future she could ALWAYS contact me directly. I did not respond to the bitch’s texts, nor did I technically apologize to my niece.

Now, what I would really like to do is ‘unfriend’ my niece, sister and brother-in-law from FB.

However, I am a pussy (or the bigger person?) when it comes to my sister and her ‘yelling’ at me. She IS the personification of my mother and I have ALWAYS had issues standing up to my mother.

Thoughts, further questions? Thank you so much for reading and thanks for any help that you can offer. (Trust me: I can go on and on as to why I have to have a relationship with my sister (gee…could it be due to my MOTHER!!! ha, even though in my fantasy land, I truly would not. It’s on my list of things to do after my parents are gone!)

2

Funny - pretty much the same thing happened with my brother, his wife, and their youngest (really sad tale on all parts).
It ended with a letter, neatly printed on a computer, with envelope (also printed) from my brother demanding I apologize for calling his snot-nosed-bitch of a 17 yr old daughter a “snot-nosed bitch”.
That was in 1999. Have not heard from them (or her) since.
They both worked in the tiny burg’s school system, so they covered her ass. Then she tried attending college - lased about 2 months before she found out that “snot-nosed bitch” didn’t fly in the outside world.
She got married at age 28 to a co-worker at the Target for which she was working.

Can’t wait to hear of their kids.

Move on.

Our parents had died in 1989, so we no longer had to play nice for them.

3

Maybe you could start by being less of a jerk. You knew the response this would get, and you did it anyway.

4

I’ll take you at your word that your sister is an ubber bitch, but honestly, it sounds like you instigated this whole mess.

What kind of response were you expecting when you sent her that text? Did you not know your sisters feelings WRT abortion? Or did you really think your sister would see the light and think: “Gee, I’ve been wrong about abortion all this time! Thank you sis for showing me the error of my ways!”

If you know your sisters a bitch, it’s best NOT to stir the hornets nest. For your own sake.

I say this as someone who is pro choice.

5

I suspect you could have made your feelings just as clear by posting that link without tagging anyone and simply saying something along the lines of: “Some people . . .” ( a google search can lead you to directions for making a rolling eyes smilie on FaceBook)

In point of fact, your action there was pretty much a textbook example of passive-aggressive behavior, and tagging your niece was unnecessary and out of line. I’m still a little unclear about how relations are between you and your niece. If you are on speaking terms with her, it would cost you pretty much nothing to remove the tag from the post and send her a private message saying: “That was uncalled-for. Sorry, it won’t happen again.” If you do it that way, there’s no need for you to contact your sister at all.

6

P. S. also, look into seeing if there’s any way you can block your sister’s telephone number from sending you texts. :smiley:

P. S. Why the hell is the sister that you hate on your friends list in FaceBook?

7

This. You deliberately provoked your niece (and your sister), for no good reason, when your opinion was neither asked for nor wanted. You owe her an apology.

8

At least its in the right forum.

9

Don’t start no shit and there won’t be no shit.

10

This has to be a joke- You post an intentionally provocative article and tag your niece and wonder why they’re pissed? Come on. 2 things- stop doing THAT shit and I’ll bet you see family tensions easing a bit. Also your sister is not your mother, even though they share similarities. Stop playing the victim and doing ridiculous stuff like this then wringing your hands and crying “Why???”

11

Let’s see,

  1. fan of a show about devout Christians who have 19 kids
  2. gets a text link from aunt who calls her mom a close-minded conservative stupid shithead
  3. link says to boycott her favorite show because one of its stars said something stupid

WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

If you’re such a tolerant liberal, be tolerant! Quit provoking your relatives because they don’t think like you. Maybe if you tried respecting them, you wouldn’t be fighting all the time.

12

Hi all,
Thanks for the responses. I cannot tell you how much I regret this post. It shares entirely too much personal information and I am traumatized that one of my family members may happen upon it. It was posted in a moment of over-indulgence combined with a rather intense pity party I was having for myself.

I have requested that the thread be closed but the mods will not accommodate my request so can I please ask so very nicely that there be no further posts? I need to have this thread disappear as soon as possible for my mental health.

Very sincerely and apologetically,
Peace Please

13

(bolding mine)

Just so you know…if you posted this link on your own FB wall and tagged your niece, then all your friends can see it and all her friends can see it. Not cool.

If you posted it on her wall and tagged her, then all your mutual friends can see it plus her friends.

If you posted it on her wall with no tag, then just your mutual friends will see it.

If you just wanted to share an article with your niece, you should have sent it to her via private message. The way you did it really got a ton of people involved and called out your niece in a not-nice and possibly embarrassing way.

Forget who is on what side of the article and the incident therein…you made a huge Facebook faux pas.

14

I can understand wanting this thread to “disappear,” and I won’t post after this (thanks for asking nicely) - however you ought to know that a Google vanity search knows no boundaries, and even after something has been well and truly buried, a simple search will turn it up - from now into eternity. Have you not noticed the continuing rash of “zombie” threads from people doing random searches and turning up our threads from god-knows-when-ago? Nothing on the internet ever goes away, ever.

If your mental health or your familial relations are so precarious that THIS thread of all things threatens your stability, then perhaps personal or family counseling, instead of praying that your spreading Facebook drama will magically vanish, would be a more productive avenue?

15

If only.

16

I know you want this to be closed, but I think this is an extremely important point - I think you need to re-visit your idea that you can’t disassociate from her. It might be difficult, and you might have to give up some things to achieve it, but I’m confident you can do it.

17

Or if not, do what I’ve done with some of my relatives: I broke up with them but didn’t notify them. So, I won’t spend any more time with them than strictly necessary for family relations, I will pass the salt when they say please, and any personal questions from them get non-answered and returned (“so, how was your vacation?” “fine, thank you; how was yours, where did you go?”).

18

Disengage. If you live with these people, move out. Get therapy, because you’re as much a part of the dysfunctional family dynamic as they are.

It may be uncomfortable to look at yourself this way, but it’s the truth. I mean, if I were her, I’d be wondering if you were saying my mom should have aborted me. That’s some heavy shit to lay on a kid.

19

If you’re not allowed to cut yourself off from your sister, then do your best to make this relationship work and apologize. It won’t make you look weak, and maybe they’ll give you less shit.

btw, unless they know your handle on this message board, how would they find this thread? You didn’t use their names or say where all this took place. Just say your mea culpas, and you won’t have to worry anymore.

20

Okay, no. You come in here, looking for validation for your bad behavior, and when you didn’t get it, you claim emotional fragility to try and make it go away. Your sister may or may not be a bitch, but if you deal with her this way, then it’s pretty clear that you’re contributing pretty heavily to an unhealthy family situation. Before you look for all the things she’s doing wrong, get some therapy, and find out how you can change your own behavior.