Family

I am currently addicted to a Korean drama called Dandelion Family.  One of the main characters is a woman married to a man with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  The husband can well be said to be malignant.  He needs to control every single aspect of his wife's life: her weight, finances, daily movements, what she wears, the food she eats.  Of course, the control happens behind closed doors.  To her family, he is the perfect husband, an amazing son-in-law, a phenomenal brother-in-law.  Even while her every move is being controlled, the wife is uncertain about why she is unhappy because she cannot take apart her husband's machinations.  Finally, he stands revealed for what he is when she discovers he had a vasectomy without her knowledge.  During the eight years they were married, she desperately wanted a child.  When she tells her parents about her husband's betrayal and asks for their help in leaving him, the husband turns the table on her by insinuating to each family member that his wife has been having an affair, that he still loved her, that he would forgive her and take her back.  (If you choose to watch this drama, please do so with caution, particularly if you are suffering from any trauma in the aftermath of a relationship with a narcissist.  I found the husband so believable and creepy that it was hard to watch.)  The wife's family begins to believe the husband and encourage her to return to her husband.

I bring up my tv-watching to talk about the complicated scenario one might face in going No Contact with a sibling.  When I started having serious and continuous arguments with my sister (the multiple phone calls and emails sent to me at work cursing me out), I never sought to place my parents in the middle.  However, my sister thought otherwise.  She immediately called our mother and told her that I was treating her unfairly, that I was angry at her for no reason whatsoever.  When my mother called me, I gave her specific instances of what my sister had done: yelling at me in a bar because she thought she should dictate who I was dating; yelling at me in the street merely because I happened to fall out of step with her on the sidewalk; calling me at work to tell me I needed to quit my job immediately and get a job in an industry that she, my sister, approved of.  My mother then asked me if I couldn't apologize to my sister.  I asked my mother why I should apologize when I hadn't done anything wrong.  She answered that because I was the more compliant one, that my sister was the strong-willed one.

As the problems continued through many years, my mother eventually stopped urging me to reconcile with my sister.  Perhaps the urgency of the situation became clearer when I told her to never give out my address to my sister, that if any harm ever came it me, it would most likely be from my sister.  This is my perspective, but from my sister's side, she still urges my parents to act as mediators.  She still insists that she did no wrong.  She tells our parents she apologized ("I am sorry even though I don't know what I did wrong") but that I refused to accept the apology.  To my mother's credit, she now tells my sister: "What can I do?  You are both adults with families of your own.  Just worry about that."

My mother's neutral answer angers my sister.  My sister has written multiple times on her blog about how "weak" our parents are, how "disgusted" she is with them.  When I first read such posts about my parents, I found myself crying for my parents, sad that they were being publicly derided by my sister for no reason than for not agreeing to abide by her wishes.

After reading my sister's blog post about our parents, I lessened my tone with my parents where my sister is concerned.  I don't ask them to take sides.  I just ask them to not share any of my personal information (address, work location).  I request that they not involve themselves in my problems with my sister.  I think, too, how difficult it would be if my parents had to take sides with one or the other of their daughters.  Inasmuch as possible, I want to spare them that pain.

I also know now that they can never see my sister the way I see her.  To them, she is a dutiful, good daughter.  She has had many years of practicing image-management whereas I rarely prioritized my image.  I always tried to behave sincerely and honestly.  I do not want to change my values and lower myself to my sister's standards and appear more than I am.  I once thought my parents would someday see the pain my sister caused me, and perhaps it is disappointing to not have justice in that regards.  But I'd rather compromise with them than do what my sister did on her blog.  Therefore, I am now content to have a reasonably good relationship with them on other grounds.