Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
A friend called me the most butch straight girl she knows. Am I going to have to dust off my delicate-flower routine to attract a man?
Sep 17, 2002 | Dear Cary,
My sister is a bright and interesting woman of 35. Even though I am five years her junior I have often found myself the one giving advice, which I am happy to do because we are a close family and I care. But the situation at hand requires a bit of outside perspective.
About six or seven years ago, my sister suffered a particularly devastating breakup and shortly afterward moved to Hawaii (where my brother already lived) to start a new life there. My sister hooked up with a person who became her live-in boyfriend. He is unsupportive of her continuing her education at a local college, he is a financially unstable cliché of a "beach bum," as well as completely antisocial with my family, who visits occasionally. She has given her heart and soul to his various projects, none of which earns her gratitude or respect. Over the last few years, she has almost given up and moved back to California -- going so far as to ship her car and belongings, only to stay about a week before she gets scared and goes back to what is, I suppose, safe and familiar to her. This is frustrating for my whole family, but after a lot of talk, we ultimately leave the decision up to her.
Recently, the boyfriend took a vacation to another country without even telling her he was going. That plus several suspicious "online chat" sessions with other women led her to her last straw. She decided to move back, finish her degree, and start over. Now she has been back three days and has been constantly talking with her boyfriend, and yes, folks, is on the verge of returning to him.
In my view, she's idolizing an inferior partner out of insecurity and should just make a break and start over, so that she has the opportunity at least to have a career, a normal husband, and kids (all of which she says she wants).
I'm afraid now that my anger and dismay could seep into the advice-giving, and that might scare her into returning. I've spent a lot of time coaching her to make this move forward in life, and now I feel frustrated that it was for nothing. I've also fallen into the trap of trashing the boyfriend that she keeps going back to. I've tried to get her to talk with a counselor who would be neutral, to help her sort things out -- I don't think she will.
How do you stand by and watch a loved one waste precious time in their life? Do you?
Not My Sister's Keeper
Dear Not Her Keeper,
It's painful to watch people you love suffer and make mistakes. It's especially painful when it seems avoidable, when it seems that if they only had some good advice, if they could just step back and see the situation clearly, they'd stop. But that's the trap: People screw up on purpose. They just don't call it screwing up. They call it living their life.
Maybe she sticks with this guy because she believes that if it weren't for her he'd be screwing up much worse. Maybe she's trying to save him from himself because she loves him. She could plausibly have learned that behavior in your family. By trying to fix her, you may be doing the same thing she is doing. To answer your question, your role in this situation should be one of loving but determinedly hands-off sisterhood. Yes, it is a little arrogant to assume you know what's best for her. People have to make their own mistakes. Sometimes they have to do that their whole lives. When do you give up on giving advice? When it's been given. Which means, definitely, by now at least. The same advice given over and over is no longer advice. It's a hammer. It just happens to be made out of advice.
Think about what you really feel toward your sister, the person. Don't divide her up into the sister that you love and the sister who's screwing up. It's all the same sister. It's possible, if you get really honest with yourself about it, that you are really angry toward your sister, or that you don't really like your sister that much. You love her of course, but you don't like her, at least not now. But that may be too hard to admit, so your hostility toward your sister comes out as assistance to the bad person who is screwing up, not to your sister the whole person.
It may be that you are actually quite pissed off at her for wasting your time. It may be that you have lost respect for her because of her repeated failures to do the reasonable thing. You may even feel, deep down, if you can admit it, angry at her because she reflects poorly on you.
I am suggesting that our noble efforts to help people we are close to who are screwing up can sometimes mask deeper feelings of superiority and contempt that are not so charitable. But if you can navigate through your conflicting feelings to a point where you let go of your judgments and just love her as she is, maybe you can go to her and tell her honestly that you think she's screwing up but you don't care, that you love her to death and that's all. Just tell her if she ever wants your advice again, or your help, that you will help her or give her advice. But until she asks you for your advice, you're just going to love her and leave it at that.
Then go to the Hawaii store, buy her a lei, and wave goodbye as she flies back to the islands.
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