I found out why I am an outsider with my family

Loneliness, Depression & Relationship Forum

Help Support Loneliness, Depression & Relationship Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

HappyYogi

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 15, 2010
Messages
323
Reaction score
0
Location
Southern CA
Not sure how much how valuable this will be to you guys but I found out yesterday why I am on the outside with my four sisters.

I am the youngest by many years and then there is them, very close in age. Since midlife they have excluded me and not given me much support and zero affection. Also lots of rejection both overt and subtle.

I think I found out why yesterday. How? I finally went to a therapist who knows my whole family. He met three of my sisters, my mother when she was live, and had a couple of my sisters as clients. He knows my family well and the issues therein.

I went to see if I was crazy in my thinking, if I had justification for my feelings since "they" always dismissed my feelings. So I went over every hurt to him, the rejection, the rudeness, the humiliation, the total dismissal of my feelings. He listened patiently. It felt very good being heard.

You know what he said? He said it's envy! Well, he wasn't blatant about it but was strongly hinting of envy (he wanted to protect their privacy). This totally shocked me because I didn't think of my sisters as this way. My sisters are more utilitarian than I in dress, in life...I didn't think they cared about the stuff I do. He said they saw my life as filled with fun (dance, expressive clothes, art, etc) as being charmed while they were dealing with the confining aspects of a conventional life! He said the most depressed women are women with small children in marriage! This is coming from a man who has been married for 37 years, that there is a lot of pain in conventional life. Of course, they don't see my loneliness. How alone I've been all these years. He said I have a very different "look", very different interests, different way of being in the world that there was some envy!

I said "But doctor, they are very successful...have nice homes, good jobs, etc". He said "it doesn't matter", there is still competition.

WOW. It gave me some relief but still the loneliness is still there. They will not be able to fill it because they are filled with envy so I still have to solve that problem. But I am so grateful for this knowledge, it explains the nastiness, sadly.

I guess the moral of this is that you don't know what is going on in people's minds. It may not be about you. It may be about them. People are troubled, stressed, insecure, and for those reasons alone, they often are incapable of being loving. Remember this as you deal with the world.
 
Exactly. My brother can be a complete ass towards me (he was just this past weekend and my mom kind of put him in his place). Sometimes I think it might be jealousy. I have a better paying job, I live on my own, I have more freedom. He'd NEVER in a million years ever admit that. He's also very self absorbed though, so sometimes I think he arrogance gets in the way. We're the same age but he's always been the bossy one.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top