Nonchalant sister frustrates brother

READER’S QUESTION: My only sib­ling is a sis­ter. As her brother, she has a habit of extreme tar­di­ness, espe­cially dur­ing our vis­its or when send­ing a gift, which makes me feel like an after­thought ver­sus a val­ued rel­a­tive. She lives in Man­hat­tan, has sev­eral uni­ver­sity degrees and a high income. When I call her, she is always ail­ing with some phys­i­cal issue or has other oblig­a­tions, so our con­ver­sa­tions are short and infre­quent, espe­cially since she does not call me. Is there any hope this will improve? MARIANN’S RESPONSE: Unless you and your sis­ter are teenagers or young adults, it is doubt­ful that much will change with this sit­u­a­tion. Since she has an “uptown exis­tence” and you reside sev­eral states away and don’t see each other reg­u­larly, true dia­logue and express­ing your frus­tra­tion to her is unlikely. Many years ago, I met a ther­a­pist who had the motto of: “Any sit­u­a­tion, no mat­ter how bad, could always be worse.” Many times, when I have encoun­tered some­thing that seems unbear­able, I think of that wise woman and her words of grat­i­tude for your bur­dens ver­sus some­one else’s. What you are encoun­ter­ing with your sis­ter is one of those sce­nar­ios where it could be so much more bur­den­some than her seem­ing self-centeredness. Pos­si­bly you could be sad­dled with a “dead-beat” sib­ling who is always seek­ing finan­cial assis­tance from you or uses money woes for ongo­ing enabling and sym­pa­thy. Next sce­nario, you could have a sis­ter with addic­tion issues who has sev­eral way­ward chil­dren whom you might feel oblig­ated to seek cus­tody and become their par­ent. And finally, I have sadly lis­tened to the nar­ra­tive of a friend of mine who has an only sib­ling bat­tling the demons of schiz­o­phre­nia, which has been ongo­ing for many decades, and needed highly super­vised care for much of his life. As this men­tally ill brother has aged, his severe diag­no­sis has become worse, which is not unusual for the course of this dis­ease, along with now hav­ing the onset of demen­tia. The emo­tional and finan­cial toll for this friend has been beyond descrip­tion. Schiz­o­phre­nia is truly the “mother lode” of all men­tal ill­nesses and not one I would wish upon any­one or their fam­ily. From the descrip­tion offered, your sis­ter is quite self-centered and has a few char­ac­ter­is­tics of poten­tially hav­ing a histri­onic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der. This issue is much more female-dominated ver­sus nar­cis­sism, which is pri­mar­ily male-based. A woman with histri­onic traits is self-absorbed, seeks atten­tion in any sit­u­a­tion, wants to make an entrance by being tardy to almost every func­tion, and seems to have more than their share of med­ical mal­adies. This per­son, even though they seem to have con­fi­dence, is quite the con­trary. They are seek­ing a level of self-assurance and are approval-hounds fish­ing for com­pli­ments and atten­tion to boost their ego. Hope­fully, few of us will ever expe­ri­ence this level of immer­sion into the person’s psy­che, which usu­ally is empty and in tur­moil attempt­ing to “fill that emo­tional void” as men­tioned in my col­umn last week. The other side of the gen­der scale is nar­cis­sism, which is pre­dom­i­nately male-oriented. Those who suf­fer from this per­son­al­ity trait have a sense of grandios­ity, believe they are des­tined for great­ness and “above the law.” Pro­fes­sional ath­letes and politi­cians who seek atten­tion, fame and for­tune are the biggest offend­ers and most likely to be nar­cis­sis­tic. Whether one is histri­onic or nar­cis­sis­tic, either trait is the oppo­site of some­one being intro­spec­tive, self­less or hav­ing con­cern and empa­thy for oth­ers. And finally, my last words are to be thank­ful for your sis­ter despite her faults and real­ize that every­one has lim­i­ta­tions, with no one hav­ing that per­fect sib­ling we all desire. Con­sid­er­ing her obvi­ous intel­lect, she lacks com­pas­sion and is far from being the sis­ter we all wanted, por­trayed in many 1970s tele­vi­sion shows. Dur­ing this Lenten sea­son, find hap­pi­ness in what you have in your life ver­sus focus­ing on what you lack. Even though I am an only child, after hear­ing about so much sib­ling strife, I am for­tu­nate to have avoided those sis­terly and broth­erly pit­falls, even though at times hav­ing a sib­ling would seem to have less­ened the angst of growing-up in soli­tude as a solo act. Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Wednes­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Halley Miller on Mar 5 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.