"It Was The Worst Betrayal I Have Ever Experienced": People Are Revealing The Shocking Reason Why They Don't Speak To Their Sibling Anymore
Note: This story discusses emotional abuse.
Just because someone has siblings doesn't mean they have a good relationship with them. So when Reddit user u/youngGod928 asked: "Siblings who no longer speak, what caused the divide?" so many people provided their heartbreaking stories. Here's what they said below.
1."I haven’t spoken to my sister in a decade, and I don’t attend family events where she will be present. She stole my mom’s identity and racked up almost $20k in unpaid debt. My mom plays it off as a childish mistake (my sister was 27 at the time), and despite my pressing her, my mom refused to press charges. Without her help, the police just had to let it go, and my mom paid off the debt."
2."They asked my kids who are adopted to step out of a family picture 'because they are not really family.' I gave them a chance to think about what they had just said and silently counted to 10. They doubled down — and that was the last time I (or other family members) spoke to them."
3."I cared for our terminally ill dad for 2.5 years until his subsequent death and can count on one hand how many times my siblings came by or helped."
4."She lied about having cancer. I'll just never be able to trust anyone like that in my house and around my family. There's really nothing that can fix it either, and I think you need to have something really broken in your brain to do something like that, like unrepairable damage."
5."When my sister got married for the first time, she became a monster. She started treating everyone who was not her husband as if they were shit, demanding money from my parents (which they gave her, they even made me sleep on the floor so they could sell my bed and give her the money) and guilt-tripping everyone who didn't jump on the spot to babysit whenever she wanted. She started to look down on me. My parents lost everything to help her, and now they're literally broke, just surviving with what me and my uncles give to them. And my sister claims nobody helps her."
6."Both my younger sister and I were horribly abused by both parents. There were three older siblings that were wanted and were treated like gold. I moved away and was in therapy for 13 years. Both parents are dead now. She did no therapy and had two kids, one which she can't shut up about and one she can't ever mention. Two years ago, she took an inheritance that was meant for me and spent it on her house. It was the worst betrayal I have ever experienced; I did not see it coming. It still causes painful rage, but it is slowly getting better. I will never talk to her again and will never have to see that she has become what abused us both. I still feel like an idiot."
7."Our wives started a thing years ago over attitudes and shit. Slowly grew into a full-on shit-talking thing from his wife, and my wife, in her true fashion, ignored her and didn’t partake until his wife started calling her a shitty mother for smoking weed one night. They were over after the kids were sleeping for the night. She wrote a whole text letter and sent it to the family text, just vilifying my wife, only because my wife wouldn’t engage with her. My wife goes off on her. Telling her she’s an adult and if her kids are down for the night and she wants to smoke a little pot, that’s for her to decide. My brother's wife isn’t even a mom and has no place to speak about her quality of motherhood. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Anyway, my brother reached out to me and tried to get his wife’s messages across through me, and I told him I was not involved and he shouldn’t be either. Let it simmer and eventually cool off."
"This is my baby brother, so he usually listened to me in things like this. But this time, he goes to my wife’s workplace and meets her in the parking lot to give her a face-to-face 'This is what I think of you.' That was it for me. You were told we didn’t want to talk to you right now. We requested that you leave us alone about this family beef. But now you are confronting my wife while she’s alone, and you’re shouting at her to intimidate her, backing her against her car because your wife yelled at you about it. That’s it for me. I told him he was lucky I didn’t handle it physically. I haven’t spoken to him in about seven years."
8."She is nine years older than me, and in my life, I’ve lived in the same house as her for less than a year. She lived with her mom for most of her childhood. She got married at 21 or 22 years old and was what we used to call a 'bridezilla.' I was around 13 years old and was supposed to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. She was very set on a hairstyle she wanted all her bridesmaids to have, and she wanted them all done at a certain salon. The salon was very far from where I lived, and we had to be there early, at about 7 a.m. So my mom made an appointment for me to have my hair done at a salon near my house and even gave them a picture of what my hair was supposed to look like."
"The night of the rehearsal, my half-sister and my mom got into an argument about my hair, and my sister kicked me out of the wedding. Her mom told my mom that because I was no longer in the wedding, we had to leave, but my mom pointed out that my brother and dad were still in the wedding, so we didn’t have to.
Long story short, her mom slapped my mom across the face, the police were called, and nobody from my dad’s side of the family went to her wedding. As an adult, she is very close to my dad and brother, but I have next to nothing to do with her. I’ll see her at family get-togethers, but I have no interest in having her in my life outside of that.
I was still a kid, and she did irreparable damage to our relationship because of a hairstyle. All these years later, she still has not apologized for that night. What’s funny, too, is that, based on wedding pictures, none of her bridesmaids ended up with the hairstyle she wanted them to have because everyone had different types and lengths of hair. I hope it was worth it to her."
9."At a certain point, I realized every time I talked to my sister, she wanted me to do something for her — every single time. We could not chat without her asking me for a favor of some kind. She’s older than me and got into the habit of bossing me around in our childhood, I think. The straw that broke the camel’s back was our aunt. She’s in poor health, and her children aren’t taking care of her. My sister straight-up said I should be her caretaker. I told her no, for the first time in my life, and she lost her shit. I held my ground, but she wouldn’t let it go, so I eventually blocked her phone number, blocked her on social media, etc. I miss her sometimes, but I also think family should not be about how much you can use one another, and she treated me like I was her personal assistant."
10."I always thought I had a good relationship with my sister. We both moved a lot and lived in different cities, but we regularly called and sometimes visited. At a certain point, we lived in the same city, and I visited her a few times; I even remember borrowing her car for something. At a certain point, I noticed I was making more of an effort than she was, so I asked her, and she said she was just busy. We had a day planned when she would visit me, so I took off from work, but she never showed up. I called and texted her, but she didn't answer. Two days later, she apologized and said something came up, but she never said what. We made other plans, but she canceled an hour before. I got pissed cause, again, I took off from work and made arrangements. She apologized, and we tried a third time. I told her this was the last chance, and she promised to be there, but again, she didn't show up. I decided I had tried, and I never initiated contact again."
"It's now been 15 years since we last spoke. I went to her diploma ceremony a few months after this all happened where we didn't speak, and she actually didn't even look at me. Nobody in the family ever mentions this, and it's like it never happened."
11."My sister and I were really close growing up. People always asked us if we were twins, not just because we looked so alike but because we were best friends and had the same friend group. When she started dating, she’d always absorb the personality of the guys she dated. Some were better than others, but her husband was the worst of them all. He comes from a very sketchy family and has done some sketchy things. My family merely tolerated him, and we were always kind even when we didn’t want to be. They had a 3-week engagement because she was pregnant, and even 10 years later, they still deny it even though the timing of their full-term healthy baby’s birth is obvious. They have a lot of kids now, and there was a period of time when they were legally separated because he was abusing her. It broke me when she got back with him, and I told her that I would never, ever be able to forgive him for how he treated her. Fast forward, I started dating my husband."
"My sister has never made an effort to get to know him; in fact, she’s always made it a point to be rude to him and make snide remarks towards the both of us. We always just tolerated it.
When we got engaged, she was suddenly so excited and wanted to be involved in everything. I think she was trying to make up for her fast engagement and rushed wedding planning by trying to be involved in mine. She would throw out suggestions and get mad when I told her I already had this and that covered. I had told her ahead of time that I wanted all sisters in a certain color for the wedding, and I guess she misinterpreted it as bridesmaid colors. She was pissed when she showed up to the wedding and saw that my friends were bridesmaids in a different color and matching dresses. I never lied to her or tried to hide it from her that she wasn’t a bridesmaid, she just made that assumption.
She went back to being rotten and snide. Then I got pregnant, and then the fake kindness and desire to make it about her started up again. She wanted to plan my baby shower, and I point blankly told her that she was not invited. We haven’t spoken since. We’ve seen each other at family functions, but we don’t talk to each other, which I am fine with. I’ll take silence over snide remarks any day. So there you have it."
12.Let’s name all the reasons. As a kid, he constantly destroyed my things. My Barney stuffed animal was strung up with razor wire to the ceiling fan and beheaded. My huge Pokémon collection, which would’ve been worth millions of dollars today, was shredded and burned. He’s the reason my bio mom abandoned me. He started a dog fight between my biological mom’s pit bulls and blamed me, so my biological mother blamed me for the death of her dog, which is a huge reason why she stopped coming around and I didn’t get to see her for ten years before she died. He, as a 24-year-old, knocked up a 16-year-old. He tried to say she said she was older, but she looked like a literal child, so I didn’t buy it. Then, two years later, he knocked up another 17-year-old. Somehow, he avoided charges on both, but I think he should’ve been taken out back and taken care of after the first one. He tried to kill someone and is currently in prison."
13."I escaped the toxic cult-like religion we grew up in, and I am healing and doing quite well. He’s still stuck there so that already drives a deep divide between worldview and lifestyle. He wanted another shot to reconnect last year, and I granted it to him, but during a long conversation over dinner, I found out that he doesn’t view women as equal to men. His views on marriage and a married woman’s right to autonomy (nonexistent…) are slavery under a different name — a wolf in sheep’s clothing that he thinks is love. I tried everything I had in me to ask him questions and to see if he could realize how twisted that view is since just telling someone they’re wrong doesn’t often go anywhere. Once it became clear he was committed to those ugly morals, I told him never to contact me unless he changed. I haven’t spoken to him since."
Is there a particular reason why you no longer speak with your sibling? Tell us what happened in the comments below.
