Dear Dr. Reality,
I have a dilemma about managing relationships. My sister has been in an on-again-off-again relationship with a man for the past 4 years since her divorce. My family and I have tried to get to know him and give him several chances, but we have ultimately reached the conclusion that he is a self-centered jerk who does not treat my sister very well. We are not a hard group to join with, but he has made no effort at family get-togethers to ingratiate himself or get to know us. After several of us shared this perspective with her she did break up with him and move out from cohabitation with him, but slowly his name crept back into conversations until she finally made clear they were on again.
Now I am stuck with how to manage my relationship with her. Since she lives in another state I only see her a few times each year. I want to take my husband and kids to visit her, but I really do not want to have to spend time with the boyfriend when we go. Can I ban him or at least request limited contact? Is there anything I can do to get through to her about this relationship? I love my sister dearly and want so much more for her, but I know that it is her life with her choices. How can I have a relationship with her and not have to deal with her dreadful boyfriend?
Sincerely,
Sistery Mystery
Dear Sistery,
One of the great humblers is the knowledge that you can’t choose your family members’ mates. I have been wildly fortunate in this respect, but I have had enough near misses to know how vulnerable we all are. You can’t choose who takes your classes, moves next door, becomes your boss, or seeks your services. You can’t choose your children either (unless you adopt them when they’re older), but you can help create them, so you really owe it to yourself to create someone you like. In fact, pretty much the only people you can choose are your lovers, your friends, and your employees.
Before you let your sister date, you should have set up a screening service: background check, complete physical workup, and psychological testing. Oh wait, you could not have compelled her to use it.
As in all conflict resolution, we can try to understand what needs of hers she is meeting and whether there is some other way for those needs to get met. I can tell you without meeting him that those needs are not companionship and sex, so you can forget all about visiting her more often and buying her a vibrator. I know this because no one would endure a narcissist (I accept this at face value) just for companionship and sex. I don’t know, of course, but my guess is that his lack of ingratiation helps her separate from her family, and your reluctance to see her in his company is good evidence that this is the desired effect.
Why would she not want you to visit? Because you still have a husband, and kids to boot. Her boyfriend is a walking advertisement against the cult of love, family, and stability. She would rather drop out of that particular college than walk around its campus with her C average.
What to do? Strategically, you can try to break them up. You don’t break up an ambivalent relationship by insulting the guy, as you have discovered. Your insults activate her compliments. Instead, you compliment him, and this reminds her of her balancing impressions. But frankly, I don’t think he’s bad enough to justify this strategy. While I’m on the subject, you could also start criticizing your husband to her, to dismantle the yardstick that finds her wanting. (If you do this, tell him first and agree to use only criticisms he can live with.)
You can shrug, understand that life is long, take things as they come, and go on about your life. This means sacrificing your fantasy of an all-inclusive family and visiting her either alone or just with the kids, either of which makes it sensible not to include him in everything. You could visit her city with your whole family but pre-program a lot of child-centered activities that leave you only with patches of projected family time. Or you could stop visiting her altogether, which is not nearly as drastic as it sounds what with the internet and the telephone and all.
Before you undertake any solution, however, I must encourage you to ask yourself if you didn’t take a little encouragement from her divorce. I define love as the state of a relationship in which, when something good happens to the other person, you’re just happy for them; conversely, it implies that when something bad happens to a person, you’re just sad for them. This is extremely difficult to achieve in a sibling relationship. If you are harboring competitive feelings (and how could you not be), then being auntie to your children is a status of failure. Can you imagine telling her that you had a few secret moments of triumph when she was getting divorced?
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 