Found out my sister made out with her ex. Need help! Having a really hard time coping

This might sound weird for anyone who doesn't live in India, but it's a big deal here. So my sister came home from Italy last month for a one month visit and we spent some good time, I had a good time with her friends too and the day before she leaves, I find out that she made out with her ex (whom she broke up with because he kept saying that she abandoned him and left to study in another country while they were still in a relationship, and I would hate for her to go through that again). She told me that she was gonna spend some quality time with him, for one last time and that they'd never see each other again and needed me to cover for her, since my parents don't know about it. "You need to trust me", she said. I should've told my parents that she was going to see him. I should've done something! I'M SUCH AN IDIOT I freaked out and apologized later, but I'm not sorry about the freakout. You broke up with him for a reason! When I confronted her about this before apologizing, she said "don't you know that this is what happens between couples?!". "Well, you aren't a couple anymore, are you?!" "but that doesn't mean we don't love each other" she says.And then I see a message that says "If it doesn't work out in Italy, come back". This got me mad. Now I feel really crappy, and not because I freaked out but because they made out. All the memories that I've seen as one of the best in my life suddenly have the life sucked out of them because of this one. I don't know if this is an appropriate response. But now I can't even eat stuff she got for us, like a box of Ferrero or a bar of Lindt. Forget chocolates, I'm extremely reluctant to even eat a loaf of bread that I got for her because it was for her, or any other stuff that was intended for her or from her. I've lost interest in everything. Before this, I was thinking to myself, "I'm gonna start going to pubs and stuff and have fun with my friends(and or a girlfriend, maybe), and maybe even make new ones". Now it feels like having a girlfriend just means that her siblings and parents are more worried about her, and I don't want that since I know how it feels. I was even planning to go on YouTube to learn how to dance at pubs because when I was with my sister and her friends this time, I couldn't dance and they had much more fun dancing. I was thinking that next time, its gonna be awesome. But now it all seems pointless. I'm searching for an emoji, but I can't find the right one; or maybe I just don't know what I'm feeling. Sometimes when I close my eyes when I'm awake, I see a metal image of them making out. I feel like prying my eyes out, hoping that it would stop. So much so that I can feel a pseudo knife poking into my eyes as this happens. And I just found out yesterday, this is bound to get worse. I really need your help getting through this guys I'm really scared and confused.

It sounds like you have been conditioned to worry too much about how your sister behaves. I have noticed that in some cultures this sort of thing happens where god forbid a sister behave badly and it will ruin it for all the family. Personally? I think this is unhealthy and that your sister should be able to live her life the way she wants and the same for you too. Yes, enjoy the chocolates, watch a video and learn how to dance, learn how to enjoy your OWN life and let go of always having to think how others behave will ruin your life somehow so you don't really end up like the name you picked "never happy".

You've misunderstood. It doesn't really have anything to do with behaviour. I've been taught that my sister's happiness comes first, and given why she broke up with the guy, I'm really worried that she'll fall into that dark place again. She used to cry a lot, and wasn't herself at that time she was in a relationship with him. I hope I've clarified your suspicion.

I'm so sorry you're hurting so much, never. happy Please don't give up. I agree with what Open Eyes has already wisely said better than I ever could. Don't let your sister's relationship ruin your life, although I understand it must be very hard for you. Just try to support your sister, give her some advice, but remember that the final decision is up to her. You can't force her to do something. Just be there to support her if she needs it. That's all you can do as a good sister. I'm sure you're a wonderful sister. Most importantly, take care of yourself. You can't fully take care of others if you're not taking care of yourself as well. Don't neglect yourself! You are just as important as everyone else. You have every right to have fun and live your own life. Don't let this decision dominate your life. It's not worth it. Try to do something nice for yourself. It could even be something simple, like eating something nice. I hope things will get better soon for you. You don't deserve to suffer like this and to beat yourself up so hard. None of it was your fault. I hope you'll be able to see that for yourself. Please be kind to yourself. Live your own life. Just try to be yourself and try not to worry too much about it. I'm sure you'll feel better at some point. Just give it time. You're a strong, wonderful person. Stay strong, never. happy. Stay safe and take care of yourself. You're awesome! You're strong! You're a warrior! Please don't give up. Try to hang on. Remember that we're here for you if you need it. Feel free to PM me anytime. Let me know if I can do something to help you. Wish you good luck! Let us know how it goes. I'm so sorry you have to deal with all of this

Thanks for the kind words, MickeyCheeky. One small correction, though; I'm her brother. Heh But I still am gonna need a way to cope with this, though. I just don't know how

I think its important to take a step back and really think about if this is your problem or her problem.

What do you mean, sarahsweets?

Hello NeverHappy. I am sorry that you're having such a tough time I think it could be really beneficial for you to read about boundaries. There are a lot of great articles out there on the topic. Here's just one of many
How to Respect Other People's Boundaries

There's also another concept you may like to read about. It's called 'negative empathy.' Here's a link to a good article that I found useful in my life: Negative Empathy | Psychology Today

Your love for your sister is wonderful!! And when we love someone, we need to honor and respect their boundaries. Her choices to go out/not go out, kiss a guy/not kiss him etc are her choices. You cannot make those choices for her even if you believe they are not the best choices for her happiness. Only she can determine that. She's on her own unique path in life just as you are on yours. Boundaries are not specific to certain countries or cultures. They are important for all of us. They help us to feel respected and safe.

Please take a step back from informing your parents of her actions. Those are her private choices. If she wants your parents to know, she will tell them herself.

With regard to your coping, have you ever tried guided meditation? It really helps me when i feel anxious or confused.

She is lucky to have such a loving brother. Feel free to let me know if you find any articles which resonate with you regarding boundaries. I wish you and your sister peace and two bright futures

Hi Never Happy,
I have something similar currently going on around me in a friend's Asian family. I am not Asian but my friends is also the brother involved in his sister's unhappiness. I can see how much my friend loves his sister and wants to protect her every possible way from harm. I can also see that for this generation of Asian families - there is this "western" vs tradition thing going on every moment of their relationship decisions. Supposing that "western", as in western media images, means freedom (I'm pretty sure it doesn't but our media lead our young people to believe so.)

Anyways I see the generational conflicts and disputes first hand - and that on top of the usual growing up first relationship mistakes made by men and women.

Lots of young women in all countries make mistakes in their first relationships, become depressed by that, and then recover and go on to found happy secure families.

My friend says that to him the most important thing is that his sister can talk openly with him and her other friends about her choices and her feelings. Your sister sounds much wilder than his sister, so you may have an even rougher time ahead than he has.

Thing is: we cannot stop these family disagreements and challenges from happening, especially now that Asian families send/ allow their children to travel right across the world rather than keeping them close. Perhaps there are already some advice lines set up in your country to help deal with generational conflict - whether you are in the west or still in Asia.

If we can't stop thing happening, then humans being need to adapt emotionally to deal with them. You need to learn about your own emotional survival, you need to look at the different cultural influences in your life (individualism vs family), you make choices and you work at communicating positively with people who disagree with your choices. I am sure that your can find resources to help develop your own emotional stability either in Asian cultural/ spiritual traditions or elsewhere in our world.

After you have take responsibility for yourself, then you can stand strong like an oak and act kindly in the relationship problems of other people - being a reminder to them of what a connected, healthy human being looks like.

Lol, my response started out of care and has ended up sounding like a lecture! Sorry for that. My friend is 30 and went through many years in his 20's trying to sort all this out. We are now at last trying to put his sister in the way of sorting out her life.

It takes time, and avoiding all the nasty reactive pitfalls that families can set up for each other: stop, breathe, listen, communicate, have faith, be patient.

Saidso

PS Having fun dancing to Indian modern music is indeed awesome. You can have fun dancing and still make good decisions about your personal life. You can choose not to drink for example. It's possible to lead a good life, at the same time as making great friends and having fun....

You can be an oak tree and party without losing your awareness - just find friends who will respect your life choices, and avoid the drink/ drugs scene.

I think that we all struggle with being upset by negative influences in the culture arounds us - I still do and I'm nearly too old for wild dancing!

You know what, stuff like this is really unfair. I just don't get it. People are expected to support their siblings or friends and people they care about no matter what, but when it comes to stuff they do that may not be good for them, we should let them make their own decisions. How does that make sense? I'm the one who covered for her (she asked me to cover for her, so wouldn't that come under her list of private choices too?)when she met him trusting that she wouldn't do anything stupid, and praying that her ex wouldn't do anything stupid. Whenever she asks me a favor regarding something like this, I always pray that I die instead of anything bad happening to her. Doesn't that give me atleast some right to feel this way? I know that what I said sounds selfish. It's not fair. I just don't get it

Hello NeverHappy. Thanks for writing back. If you re-read my post, I never said you were selfish. I don't think that at all. And I would never call anyone on PC selfish..that's not a nice thing to call someone.

You DO have a right to feel how you feel. There are no wrong feelings.

You also have a right not to do favors for someone if you don't feel comfortable. If your sister is asking you for a favor and you feel like you'd "rather die" than do it, you could say something like: "I love you. And I am not comfortable doing this favor. If you need help with your boyfriend, you will need to ask someone else. I don't feel comfortable being in this situation."

I am sorry you are feeling mad and hard done by. That sounds really tough. I honestly was trying to help when I wrote to you; I am sorry if it didn't come across that way.

Here's a question: I know you love your sister and you are worried about her. Is it okay to ask what specifically you are worried about? What is the bad thing that you fear happening to her? If you'd rather not say, that's okay. I just thought maybe I could help you think it through.

Also, if you'd prefer not to hear from me again, I will respect your boundaries...just let me know and I will refrain from posting on your thread.

I wish you and your sister peace.

I understand that you want to help your sister and that she asked you to cover before but that was then. How old is your sister? As much as we would like others to listen to us, we cant control them. It sounds like she is causing you distress. Because of that it makes sense to me to take a step back and let her do her own thing. You are not responsible for her actions and if you are able to let it go you will not be feeling such distress.

Thank you for following up, SilverTrees. When I said "I know what I said sounds selfish", I meant that my reply might sound selfish; I know that you weren't calling me selfish, and I knew that you were genuinely trying to help. I had no doubts there.

When I help my sister in situations like this, it's usually because even if I don't like it, atleast one person in the family should know her whereabouts(for safety reasons), who she's with and what she's doing(I try to be as diplomatic as possible in these situations, hoping she'd tell me everything), or atleast I Thought so until this happened. I worry that if they get back together, he might hurt her(emotionally, as of now). I don't feel that I'd rather die than do it; I said that I'd rather die instead of anything Bad happening to her(or her doing anything stupid again). I remember my mom telling me that she was in her apartment in Italy alone and crying and was in a gloomy(much more intense than gloomy) mood for days or even weeks on end because he was saying "you abandoned me and went away to Italy " often. I would hate for that to happen again. I was, and still am afraid that this would happen again.

And I was afraid that he might blackmail her, emotionally or otherwise. This one sounded more appealing when I heard the words(or misheard) my mom saying "do you want to report to the police?" and my sister saying "no". And when me and my mom were going out to run some errands, she was telling saying to mom "don't tell him"(no, I wasn't eavesdropping; our rooms are infront of one another).

I knew you were trying to help, but I just had a problem with this concept of helping them and not having the right to ask them about it. Atleast that's how I see it.

I would definitely prefer hearing from you again; there were no bad feelings to begin with I hope this clears the air a bit.

I wish you good luck in helping yourself and others get through tough times

Thank you for the kind follow-up, NeverHappy. May I ask how old your sister is? I'm a bit confused. If she's old enough to travel alone to another country such as Italy, why is there a need for at least one family member to know her whereabouts at all times? Did I misunderstand? Did she travel to Italy with your parents?

I honestly don't think it's possible, even with great love and the best of intentions, to make choices for other adult family members. Children are a different story; that's why I asked your sister's age. But as children get older, I believe the parental role should be to prepare them for life as independent adults....making their own judgments and decisions.

I'll share some background here. I was raised by two extremely strict parents. They did not agree with the model of parenting which I just expressed above. They were authoritarian. I was told what to do and when and heaven help me if I disagreed or asked a question. There was no how or why or discussion. My mother believed that if she kept her children in an extremely small tightly-monitored bubble, that somehow they would reach adulthood, leave the bubble and everything would be fine. It was suffocating! I couldn't wait to move as far away as possible.

So there's that side of it, a parent can unwittingly drive away the child they are trying to protect. The other side is that humans don't learn to make safe and reasonable decisions by always having decisions made for them. Do you see what I mean? At some point, young adults need to figure out how to make their own choices about healthy eating and drinking, for example. Parents can hide away any form of junk food, candy, or alcohol but one day a young adult will encounter these things out there in the world...so they need to learn how to make responsible choices.

Another example is sex. My mother pretended it did not exist....it was not a word or consideration in the bubble she forced her children into. There was no "talk" or any form of sex education or even basic education on sexual health. So then what happened when we encountered sex later? Were we adequately prepared?

I am not at all suggesting that you or your parents are like my parents. I just wanted to provide an example, from my own life, of how trying to choose for family members can have the opposite outcome of the one intended.

If you are interested in research, NeverHappy, you may like to read about authoritarian parents and later outcomes for their adult children. There's a major impact on the child's sense of agency.

Just some ideas for you. I can tell you are very stressed about this issue with your sister. I am so sorry that you're having a tough time.

She's 25, and she did not travel to Italy with my parents. Knowing her whereabouts is a safety thing.

And about the strict parents thing, she keeps bringing up in arguments that my parents never let her go out, or never let her have a dance in high school when we were in the U.S. And I can vouch for that argument, and even empathize. But that should not be the argument she makes when we talk about something like this issue. I'm not saying she has, I'm just saying that she should have a better way to cope with that sadness instead of overcompensating. If she thinks it's fair that she overcompensate for her childhood, then it's equally fair that I yell at her all the time for no reason at all. Because she used to do that a lot when I was little, like when I was 14 or 15. But I don't react the was she does; not often, anyway. I don't wanna get into my other issues that I've already posted other threads on, but her story is similar to mine, if I had a lot of friends and trusted my own judgement at the time. Oops, sorry I got distracted.

I hope you don't mind if I P.M you sometime(you can inform me if you don't feel comfortable with me p.m-ing you, obviously), because this can of worms just opened up again when I heard my sister's voice on the phone recently. I avoided talking to her saying that her voice was breaking up. I can't even talk to her now. Before she left, I gather the whatever you call it to go apologize to her for my reaction, but now, I just can't. I wish my feelings subsided much earlier, so that members of this forum would have time to answer for other people's real problems. But apparently that's not the case.

You are welcome to P.M me NeverHappy. Peace to you

UPDATE: Okay, this is not good. My mom was on the phone with my sister today and she gave me the phone and told me to wish her a happy Ugadi(It's the Hindu New year). I reluctantly did so, and hearing her voice was like adding fuel to the fire. There was awkward silence and then i gave the phone back to my mom. I couldn't storm out of there because my parents are gonna know something's up, and she's gonna have to cover for that. I don't want that burden on either of us, especially her. Two days back, she was talking to my mom sobbing, saying that she didn't get a job; for some reason I don't believe that reason. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to burn down all the shirts she got from me and chose for me.