Helping Sister while Setting Boundaries

[elle2704]

Hi ... My 31 year old sister is returning to the country after a few years away, which have been extremely stressful for the immediate family. She met and started seeing a local man while she was abroad, who was going through a recent divorce and who was also very eager to move to America. He casually proposed marriage several times within a few months of meeting her, which she dismissed as the "joke" it was. As they got to know each other better and started dating she started to clash with my father about the relationship (which is a pattern for her, unfortunately, though not for me or my other sisters - her pattern is to jump in very aggressively with men and move in etc. within a few months of knowing them - and my father is a pretty conservative guy). Long story short, about half a year later she asked my advice about marrying this man for real - which I advised her not to do, since she posed it to me at the time as "it's just so he can get his green card, we can still date other people". She did so anyway, without telling me or anyone else in my family, and only confessed after her now-husband asked her to come clean to the family. When she revealed the marriage, she told my father this boy has not said he loves her, and the marriage was just "to see how things would work for a year or so".

 

Obviously this caused some major hurt feelings, compounded by the fact that the man requested a divorce when it became obvious my family would not exactly rush to accept him. (He is a nice enough guy, but that is one heck of a stunt to pull and he recognized it would be impossible to recover from in terms of the family relationship.) She blames my father for a lot that has happened.

 

I have tried to stay away from what's going on between the two of them, but to help her I did offer to rent an apartment with her so she could move to a new city, out of our parents' house (she has yet to really establish herself anywhere for more than a few years and her "permanent address" is with my parents, until now. She had no other ideas about where to live or who to live with and very often expressed to me that she was "lost").

 

I am now getting a bit of the run-around from her. She is hoping to keep traveling even after moving in to the apartment, frequently requesting a subletter so she won't have to pay rent (I declined; I work from home and the subletter she suggested was twenty years older than me and not a good match). She doesn't know what field she wants to go into and has made no plans to get a job. I am sure she is financially stable for at least a few months, but I have made it clear that I can and will not financially support her. She understands that.

 

Six months after we signed the lease, though, she is a wreck and I am not sure at this point whether I am helping her or hurting. I am a self-contained individual who does not coddle people, so I don't think I'm in danger of enabling needy behavior by moving in with her. I want to help her to create a situation where she will be empowered to figure out and do what she wants. I am trying to convince her to avoid making decisions like, oh, her plan to cycle accross the country for three months by herself without health insurance, training, a GPS-enabled smartphone, etc. However I don't want to make her feel forced into anything - she's an adult. My philosophy is: though I am her sister, we are signing a lease together and I respectfully expect her to fulfill her obligation to pay the rent, no more no less. If she feels strongly that she no longer wants the apartment she needs to break the lease and pay whatever financial penalties are required. The rest is up to her.

 

Am I acting within appropriate limits, or is her behavior the sign of a bigger problem? If you were her, would you resent the fact that she now has a lease with a family member? Is it possible for me to be a good supportive friend or is the situation too fraught because I'm her sister? What's the right thing for me to do?

[camus154]

You are most certainly coddling and enabling her by moving in together. First it's to help her out so she doesn't have to live at home with the parents, then it's to aid in her self-empowerment and to encourage her to make better decisions.

 

Your sister is an adult. Let her go live on her own--truly on her own. Let her make her own mistakes. Let her bear the fruit of making rash and bold decisions. That's the only way she'll truly grow up.

 

Sorry for the cross-thread talk, but if I were you I'd be more focused on yourself and your boyfriend instead of worrying about your sister.