Posted by:
mango
(
)
Date: November 28, 2019 01:33AM
I am reaching out to get some advice on how to proceed with my sister. She arrived this morning to spend Thanksgiving weekend with me. It originally was supposed to be a couples weekend with her, her husband, my wife and me. I had been estranged from sister and my entire family for the last decade. I saw my sister for half a day back in June when she happened to be visiting the city where I live for work, and she brought some of my childhood items that my mother had asked that I wanted. From that meeting with my sister came the idea to get together for Thanksgiving.
Over the past few months we have had inconsistent contact. I also reached out to her husband to get to know him, but my sister never reached out to my wife. Also, my family has a history of being very unwelcoming and hostile to my wife. I've been with my wife for fifteen years. My wife was initially open to the visit and starting fresh. But it had not played out that way, and she got upset and no longer wanted to meet with them. When I met with my sister and her husband (by the way this was the first time I met him in person) today I took them around to do tourists things, but I hadn't informed them about my wife not coming. I guess I wanted to see how my sister would respond. I got really upset because she never once asked where my wife was or what she had been up too. I feel I should know better, but I felt duped. Also, the whole time together felt awkward and uncomfortable for me not only for not acknowledging my wife, but because there is all this unresolved tension and problems between me and my family and we are going around having a tourist experience as if everything is okay.
I'm not sure how to proceed. I don't want to spend the next few days with them acting like everything is normal. I feel like saying that this trip was a mistake and that they should go do activities on their own for the remaining days they are here. I also do not want to go along and make them think the trip is fine because I feel they will go back and speak with my parents and other siblings, and then they will think I am now reuniting with everyone. My sister and several other family members are no longer active in the church, but my family still acts like a cohesive unit and anyone estranged from them like me is seen as a lost sheep. I feel they want to sabotage my marriage because they feel my wife is the reason I no longer have contact with them when in reality what started the fracture in our relationship was them doing several things to me that I feel were a huge betrayal.