My sister has cut me out of her life. Should I fight to keep her?

The dilemma It has been more than six years since I last saw or spoke to my sister. No explanations – just silence.

I am the eldest, there are three years between us and while we had differences growing up, our circumstances are similar in later life. So, what went wrong? A massive sudden temper flare-up and rage when I cracked a joke that she did not find funny, spewing out old grievances and resentments from our childhood that “came out of nowhere” and lots of tears. Despite my shock, I put it down to the menopause and believed we could forgive each other and move on, but all communication stopped abruptly.

Last year, I felt the time was right to try again, and on her 65th birthday I sent her a bunch of flowers. I received a formal, polite handwritten card back. Then Christmas came and I tried again, by which time I had discovered she is “big on Twitter”. This time it was reciprocated almost immediately, written more in her usual chatty and funny style, promising to text in the New Year.

Nothing happened, so I dipped into her Twitter feed again and saw she was having a knee replacement that month. I sent her a get well card enclosing a short letter explaining I wished us to stay connected as I did not want to become like our mum, who did not speak to her sister for 12 years and died before they were reconciled.

She replied saying she did not know whether she wanted me back in her life after all this time and would think about it. That was two months ago and silence since. So why do I find it so hard to accept her decision and let her go?

Philippa’s answer Why do you mind so much? Because whatever your relationship was with her while growing up, it worked for you. Maybe you like the idea of a united family. Maybe you get a sense of who you are from her. But I get the feeling it did not work so well for your sister. Those resentments of hers did not come out of nowhere. They came from her experience of growing up.

I think you find it hard because you do not understand how her past, of which you were a part, affects her. When she did explain the impact you have on her, it will have been hard for you to hear as she was shouting and when someone shouts at us, we feel attacked and so find it difficult to listen to the actual words being said. In addition, I think if I tried to explain how I felt about grievances I’d had all my life and was then dismissed as having hormonal trouble, it would make me angrier.

It doesn’t matter how much time passes, the body remembers what the mind might forget. You possibly remind her on a somatic level of how she felt when she was growing up. As we get older, these reactions may get stronger rather than fading away. Even if we understand and forgive things that happened in childhood, our bodies take much longer to come round to feeling safe with someone we may have experienced as unsafe in childhood. We may be able to manage polite notes, but we might not want to be in the same room as a person who triggers the reactions we had as a child.

You don’t understand why your joke felt inappropriate, but try to see it from her viewpoint. It doesn’t matter what our intention of a joke might be, it is the other’s experience of us that stays with them. As a big sister, telling her she overreacts might, at one time, have subdued her, but these days she has the power to walk away. Whatever your dynamic together used to be, it will need to change if you want to move forward.

The way you tell me the story of your big blow-up it seems to me you are playing a me-reasonable-and-she-unreasonable game, and if you want to be friends you must stop playing that game. If all your disagreements and differences throughout your lives have that flavour – of her not being someone to take seriously when she is upset – then I could understand why she is so wary of re-establishing contact. Why would she want more of being made to feel the one in the wrong? She doesn’t need that. She has people in her life, she is popular, she has followers on Twitter. These things have probably made her feel more OK, while her family of origin perhaps makes her feel diminished. All this must sound harsh – for all I know she is totally unreasonable and histrionic, but if she is, why do you mind so much if you become estranged?

If you are interested in how your family and its dynamics has formed you, you might want to invest in a course such as the Hoffman Process (hoffmaninstitute.co.uk). It might help you understand the dynamic between you and your sister better. You may even gain insights that, if shared, could begin to reunite you.

If you have a question, send an email to askphilippa@observer.co.uk
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