agonyaunt | Holy judgeballs

Dear Readers: The following Q&A first ran in 2014. It has been flying around the world, shared on various platforms, ever since.

Dear Amy: Every fall, my sister, cousins and a cousin’s sister-in-law have a weekend shopping excursion in our home city. We stay in a hotel, treat ourselves, shop for our children and go out for lunches and dinners. It is a great time to reconnect.

I have a sister “Wendy,” who we do not invite. She is offended to the point of tears when she finds we have not invited her. My two sisters and I are very close in age, but Wendy hasn’t been as close to this set of cousins as my sister and I have been through the years. We are all married stay-at-home moms. Wendy is a divorced, working mom with one young child.

There are several reasons we do not include her. We know she doesn’t have very much money for such an outing. She also does not have many of the same interests as we do. Her life is quite different from ours. We’re not interested in what she has to talk about. She claims to have some kind of neurological disease that some of us feel is more psychosomatic than real and which she uses to avoid getting up for church on Sundays. She also complains about her ex-husband who left her for another woman, but everyone knows it takes “two to tango” and she is not without fault. We’re all very active churchgoers, while she only sporadically attends services. Plain and simple, she does not really fit in with us.

She takes it very personally, and last year even came over to my home unannounced crying about it, which upset my children and caused my husband to threaten to call the police if she did not leave. Now she barely speaks to me and has told our relatives that I am a horrible person (even though I’ve helped her). How can we get her to understand that she should perhaps find another set of friends whose lives and interests align more closely with hers?

— Sad Sister

Sad: Let’s establish that I agree with your sister: You are a horrible person.

Obviously, you can do whatever you want and associate with — or exclude — whomever you want, but you don’t get to do this and also blame the person you are excluding for not “fitting in.” The only way your sister would ever fit in would be for you to make room for her. You are unwilling to do that, and that is your choice. But her being upset is completely justified, and you’ll just have to live with that.

Perhaps this is something you could ponder from your church pew, because despite your regular attendance, you don't seem to have learned much.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

WOW. Just...wow.

oh my - this sad sister fails on every level of being a relative, nay, of being human. I honestly cannot believe the BS she's trying to peddle to whitewash the horrid behavior, not only hers (and husband's) but also the cousins, who are at the least complicit. but mostly I place the fault on sister, who of course will never actually realize/believe that she's at fault in any way. I appreciated Amy's response, and hope to hell the excluded sister has a solid support circle of non-relatives, who'll treat her much much better.

LW, if you had stopped at "Wendy hasn't been as close with this set of cousins as my sister and I have been", I might have bought it. Sometimes someone just isn't part of a group of friends, even if they're also related, and you don't have to include a tagalong sister in everything when you're an adult.

However, every word after that added onto the "...why on Earth does the sister want to spend time with such horrible people anyway?"

p.s. "It takes two to tango" generally means the affair was the husband's fault at least as much as the affair partner's, it doesn't mean it's the *wife's* fault wtf

I'm Wendy (not literally, but man do I resonate with her!). I've been incredibly hurt in the past when my sisters (I am a middle child, but their birthdays are two days apart) have done things without inviting me. I'm also the different one in the family with interests my sisters wouldn't understand or care to hear about.

It's been... really tough dealing with my sisters. I miss the chance for closeness and in the past have often wished we were closer, but over time I've come to accept things as they are. I've found a good support group in my friends (especially over the past 2-3 years). Family is always going to be complicated for me.

Not sure why I'm writing this, other to agree with Amy's response. "Sad" sister is horrible and definitely deserved to be told as such.

Want me to mail this column to your sisters ?

I am judging Sad. I am judging so hard.

Oh dear. Is Sis not one of the Cool Kids God predestined as the elect?

I’m not sure if I have ever felt “you’re not cool enough to sit in our pew” energy as concentrated as in this letter before, and I’m saying that as someone who has been intensely judged by many Christian folks for decades.