So, one of the reasons why I wanted to start posting again is because of something in my romantic relationship that I can't quite get over. It's crucial. Like in a relationship deal-breaker kind of way.
Long story short, I have a problem with his relationship with his sister, and this problem has spanned over the entire course of my relationship with the dude. She is someone I would describe as emotionally immature and inappropriately needy of his attention, and long ago it got to the point where I couldn't fully enjoy my relationship with him because of it. We've been together for 3+ years and have moved across the country recently, and although the situation is much better now, I still feel deeply wronged, hurt, and just flat-out angry about it all.
Of course, a story like this needs to be told the long way, so if you're so inclined (and I hope to Dog that someone is, because I really need some advice about this), make yourself some tea and enjoy part one of this fucked up situation.
Fucked Up Situation With Boyfriend's Sister, Part 1.
(Cross-posted from
Help Me Harpies: Three's a Crowd with minor changes.)
The sister is one year younger than me (22), and until September, all three of us lived in a small college town. This is the first time I’ve been in a serious relationship, and it’s the same for him. The sister has never had a boyfriend, developed bulimia a few years ago and currently takes medication for depression. She’s been on the upswing for a while, however, and she is very social. Her parents live 5 hours away, she has a pretty good therapist from what I understand, and needless to say she has a wide support network of friends and family. In fact, one of her five roomates that she's known since high school has also experienced an eating disorder.
Their sibling relationship and her individual actions have been a big issue throughout the course of my relationship with the dude. At the beginning, when I only saw him on the weekends, she called him constantly. Like 1 to 3 times a day. Since he worked from his computer (damn lucky programmers), he could go anywhere during the day and used to meet her three or four times a week at Starbucks while she studied. I originally met him at a salsa dance class, and eventually she started coming to class, too. The dude did martial arts, and I became interested and started taking classes. So did she. All three of us began to see each other about every other day, during which she was super clingy around him and exhibited behavior that suggested she was competing with me for his attention. Like coming up and pushing him when he was talking to me, or trying to pair up with him in the salsa class. She would sigh loudly if we displayed couple-ish behavior (which was not very often b/c we’re both really shy, btw). One time, the phone rang three times the hour before salsa class because she wanted to know whether or not he was going. Stuff like that.
As the dude and I got closer, I started to become more aware of all this and inevitably more bothered. She seemed to depend on him for every single thing, big and small, and he happily picked up every phone call. He reinforced her dependency on him and didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. In the beginning, he never saw a conflict between his relationship with his sister and his relationship with me, and he never seemed to be bothered by her competitive behavior in public. It began to feel like the dude was not only my boyfriend, but her stand-in boyfriend as well. (By the way, I mean “stand-in boyfriend” strictly in the emotional sense. I have never suspected anything sexual going on, and believe me, if I did, I would have already been gone.)
When I asked for Harpy Advice on this (see link above), PhDork pointed out that those "you're not important unless your important to a man" messages in our society may explain partly why the sister felt threatened by me, and I totally agree with that observation. I'd never had a serious boyfriend before this relationship, and believe me, I can completely relate to the constant desire for a boyfriend, and even the need for attention from guys that I couldn't/didn't want to date. However, the difference is that most people are mature enough to understand that a person who is not her boyfriend should not be expected to act as such,
especially when that person already has a significant other. But, because of her history, and because it was a family member, she acted as if she were entitled to have a boyfriend-like relationship with her brother.
For a whole freaking year I said nothing. I felt guilty because of her circumstances (bulimia, depression), because it’s his SISTER, and because admitting that I felt threatened and bothered by the whole situation made me feel like a huge Jealous Controlling Bitch. I tried hard to befriend her, thinking that if I was super nice and took an interest in her life, she'd warm up and cut it out. But, she didn't. It all became too much and eventually I did start trying to talk to him about it.
Long story short, it’s been a huge fucking struggle. Two years went by with only a handful of conversations that didn't end in a complete emotional meltdown. He didn't see anything wrong with her constant need of attention from him, or with the fact that he encouraged that behavior. For a long time he stood by the notion that our relationship should have absolutely no effect on his relationship with her, which implied that the sibling relationship indisputably came before ours. Over time, however, he stopped picking up her multiple daily phone calls and passively discouraged her competitive behavior in public. He didn't hang out with her as often, and she eventually stopped making comments like “ughhh you guys are so obsessed with each other!” However, initially he made it clear that he was doing it for my benefit only, and not because he actually thought those changes were necessary. It wasn't until the last 4ish months before we moved that I actually felt like we were a team, and that he was truly committed to making our relationship work.
But, even during those last months, little things still did happen, and we still had a huge fight about it once a month, probably, until we moved. I wore me down to the bone, and about six months before the move I started thinking things like
right now I would be considering breaking up him if it wasn't for those set-in-stone plans to move. Getting out of that college town served as a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel for me at that time. In hindsight this was probably naive, but I just kept thinking that if we could get the hell out of there, away from her, we would be okay. Other than the whole sister situation, we've had a pretty solid relationship and still don't really have major disputes about anything else. At that time, part of me still wanted to give us a chance. And, even though he'd pretty much acted like a huge asshole about this whole thing for the majority of our relationship, I did have a lot of empathy for him because of the fact that his brother had developed schizophrenia about seven years ago. That was a highly traumatic experience for him, and I can understand the need to protect his sister and do everything he can to ensure that he doesn't lose another family member to a debilitating mental illness. I am very sympathetic. However, that kind of reasoning has also significantly hurt out relationship, and me. It's one thing to care for a family member who is in trouble, but it's definitely another thing to enable the dependency of a family member when she's been out of the trouble zone for quite some time. Am I wrong to think this way?
As the moving date got closer, her passive-aggresive subtle jabs at me became more pronounced, and one night she said, "fuck you!" to me while she was drunk. It's true that I was teasing her, but I had teased her about similar topics before and had never endured that kind of reaction from her. When I later talked to the dude about it, he made excuses for her behavior. That hurt to no end, and it reinforced this fear I had that he would never, truly stick up for me in the face of his family.
We FINALLY moved away and spent a transition month at my mom's house, during which he was going to go on a family vacation to visit his grandparents. Originally I was supposed to join him, but at the last minute I backed out because I couldn't endure another week and a half of her.
The good thing is that we agreed that he needed to talk to her about sibling boundaries and about what is and is not appropriate behavior. I know it was a lot to ask, and I am very grateful that he agreed that it was necessary to say something explicitly to her. In spite of all of the shitty things he's done, this is the one particular thing that gives me the most hope for our relationship. I don't think he ever really touched upon how she acted towards me, but he
did make it clear that she needed to give him space in social situations, to not call or text him constantly, and to not do things that are more couple-like than sibling-like, like feed him pieces of food with her fingers (ugh, this particular one made me seriously cringe). From what he said, she didn't put up much of a fight and seemed to take it fairly well. But, because all three of us haven't spent any significant amount of time together since then, who knows.
You'd think that, after a change of scenery and a major confrontation out of the way, I'd feel loads better. In some ways, I absolutely do, but anger from the whole thing still simmers not far below the surface. More on that later.