My sister has been ging through her divorce for ages and ages.. feels like forever, for her I'm sure longer. Anyway, she has very high expectations of people, especially our father.
Its a difficult thing to communicate the relationship she and I have with our father. He is not the sort of man who is easy with his emotions or the way in which he shows or says how he cares.
A lot of it has to do that as a younger man who didn't particularly want children got stuck with two young girls to bring up, he never quite knew what he was doing and from my perspective tried to teach us to rely on ourselves, to support ourselves. Now I've taken this in my own way however of late my sister has been taking it differently.
To boot she has also changed the way in which she communicates, forgetting that the way in which she treats our father has not changed, she has not included him in this new way of communicating.
It gets confusing huh? anyway, she actually had it out with his wife the other night (Dads wife, our step mom) frankly I thought she was blunt, that is my sister, very black and white, I'm use to her but I still need to remind her that I am not black and white.
She basically started to say she didn't want anything to do with him because he couldn't support her emotionally and morally the way she wanted. I kid you not that made me almost jump out of my chair, for me she's expecting him to change and be a different person just for her needs and whims. He isn't well, hasn't been for a while and to be honest I'm not bothered if he never asks me how my life is going so long as I tell him myself I know he's cool with that.
My sister was about to throw away a relationship with our father because he wasn't giving her what she needed or wants him to say/do or be. I kid you not it has taken me the last two days to try and open up the window's in her stuffy room so she may see that it isn't about her... that our parents are never usually what we want them to be, they probably still feel like they're flying on a wing and a prayer even with adult children, who knows the answers?? god? I also said to her that her children deserve and have a right to know their grandad, I said that I felt her impending actions of non contact were childish, selfish and completely appaling.
There were a lot of other things said, yet the one thing I think that got through to her was that for a very lovely period of our lives we had him at his best, from that foundation we have grown to the women we are today, he isn't a mind reader, he is the man he is and it would hurt terribly to know that with all of the effort he has put into being a parent, the best one her knew and knows how to be, to find his eldest daughter won't speak to him. I asked her she would feel if her eldest grew to despise her, never call her, not allow his kids to see her or talk to her. She kind of got it then, but man! its exhausting... she' suppose to be older, wiser... sometimes I really think she's immature and needs to get out in the real world. (That sounds catty but she has only had to get a job in the last year and a half, she's never worked before, she's never travelled, she's lived in the same house she moved out of to get married some 17 years ago, which is approximately 25 km from home)
How do you know when you need to really have a go at your siblings? Is there a point where you just go urgghh! puff.. go away... why do I feel so complelled to help her, to listen to her, to spend hours on the phone guiding her through terrain she feels ill equiped to handle, when she could if she wasn't so damned black and white and self centred.
Don't get me wrong I love my sister to death, sometimes though she's trying, just as I have been to her I'm sure.
