A realization about my uBPD sister and self-love

[Our abuse recovery guide]

I was talking to my therapist of two years last week about my high-functioning, but uBPD younger sister and my belief that her deep hatred of herself is the reason why she sabotages relationships.

I told my therapist how there have been times she's referred to very close, long-time friends as "losers" or "boring," ignoring their great qualities (like kindness and loyalty) because they aren't "exciting." I always thought someone being unexciting was a weird reason to dislike someone, but my therapist suggested that perhaps this is more about rejecting the healthy person outright because on some level she does not believe she deserves happy, healthy relationships, so she rejects "good" people before they can abandon her, which is her fear.

Realizing her self-hatred has distorted her worldview so terribly that she has never been able to distinguish "boring" good people from "exciting" narcissists and other drama kings/queens, was an eye-opener for me. I never understood why she couldn't make connections but she's the one rejecting anyone who might be a good friend or partner to be hurt, over and over, by "exciting" awful people.

The only reason I think she "liked" me for as long as she did was because I used to be "exciting," in that I used to have a lot of turmoil and drama in my life that was self-inflicted due to my illness, but I've had my stuff together for at least more than a decade now and I think the last straw for her was when I found I had nothing to complain about anymore after I met my partner and fell in love. I'd been financially insecure for years, but my career finally corrected that. I'd been single since my divorce two decades ago, and this relationship has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. Because she's always been a little competitive with me and I've always felt guilty for being "our mother's favorite," we've been in this push and pull for years, and after our mom died in 2018 and her divorce in 2021 she's been in a steady decline as she's grown angrier and more entrenched over familial drama that happened 30 years ago or more. All the drama boils down to our parents being too hard on her while also being not present for her emotionally. Our dad was home but not involved, and our sickly mom became less of a presence as well, expecting her to "grow up" when she was 9, making her feel unwanted and abandoned. Add that to my dad favoring our eldest sister and our mom favoring me, and you had a mess ripe for self-loathing.

I'm a strong believer that if someone doesn't love themselves it doesn't matter how much you love them back, they aren't capable of loving you. They don't even know how. It's been hard accepting that my sister is sick, but I have accepted that this is beyond my control and her current estrangement from me (her choice) is also beyond my control. I just have to accept it and hope that maybe, someday, she has some introspection and reaches out.

[LonelyOnly77]

I was talking to my therapist of two years last week about my high-functioning, but uBPD younger sister and my belief that her deep hatred of herself is the reason why she sabotages relationships.

I told my therapist how there have been times she's referred to very close, long-time friends as "losers" or "boring," ignoring their great qualities (like kindness and loyalty) because they aren't "exciting." I always thought someone being unexciting was a weird reason to dislike someone, but my therapist suggested that perhaps this is more about rejecting the healthy person outright because on some level she does not believe she deserves happy, healthy relationships, so she rejects "good" people before they can abandon her, which is her fear.

Realizing her self-hatred has distorted her worldview so terribly that she has never been able to distinguish "boring" good people from "exciting" narcissists and other drama kings/queens, was an eye-opener for me. I never understood why she couldn't make connections but she's the one rejecting anyone who might be a good friend or partner to be hurt, over and over, by "exciting" awful people.

The only reason I think she "liked" me for as long as she did was because I used to be "exciting," in that I used to have a lot of turmoil and drama in my life that was self-inflicted due to my illness, but I've had my stuff together for at least more than a decade now and I think the last straw for her was when I found I had nothing to complain about anymore after I met my partner and fell in love. I'd been financially insecure for years, but my career finally corrected that. I'd been single since my divorce two decades ago, and this relationship has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. Because she's always been a little competitive with me and I've always felt guilty for being "our mother's favorite," we've been in this push and pull for years, and after our mom died in 2018 and her divorce in 2021 she's been in a steady decline as she's grown angrier and more entrenched over familial drama that happened 30 years ago or more. All the drama boils down to our parents being too hard on her while also being not present for her emotionally. Our dad was home but not involved, and our sickly mom became less of a presence as well, expecting her to "grow up" when she was 9, making her feel unwanted and abandoned. Add that to my dad favoring our eldest sister and our mom favoring me, and you had a mess ripe for self-loathing.

I'm a strong believer that if someone doesn't love themselves it doesn't matter how much you love them back, they aren't capable of loving you. They don't even know how. It's been hard accepting that my sister is sick, but I have accepted that this is beyond my control and her current estrangement from me (her choice) is also beyond my control. I just have to accept it and hope that maybe, someday, she has some introspection and reaches out.

[LonelyOnly77]

FYI: Some background on my sister and me...

Both of us are in our 40s and have mental health issues, although my Bipolar disorder was diagnosed back in 2005 and I took that diagnosis seriously, doing the work of rebuilding my life after a traumatic divorce. My sister has been diagnosed formerly with CPTSD, depression, and anxiety, but often ditches therapy when she's not "in crisis," so they never get too deep, and nothing ever gets resolved. I started to think she had BPD years ago, but she was so high-functioning that I dismissed it. I also feel like she may have body dysmorphia and adult ADHD (everything academic or work-related is hard for her even though she eventually succeeds), she also has serious control issues and takes them out on her own body. She's very athletic and fit but hates her looks and has disordered eating habits.

My sister and I were super close for more than a decade after her only child was born, but recently she became estranged from the entire family, cutting us all off. I know why she stopped speaking to our father and eldest sister because she told me (when she was still speaking to me) that she was upset over them being "too nice" to her child's father (her toxic ex) at a band concert. I don't know why she cut me off though other than she likely felt she couldn't NOT talk to everyone else and still talk to me when I'm still close to the rest of the family with no intention of ever walking away from them.

My sister is very accomplished (three degrees, good job, homeowner, a wonderful 12-year-old son, etc.), but has never seen herself that way and when we were still speaking she was stuck in a loop about how much more accomplished I am and how she was the "dumb one" growing up. (I rent and have only one degree, but I have a much more prestigious C-suite-level job. Also, she was/is not "dumb." She just had a harder time in school because at the time she didn't value reading, and again, may have ADHD.) My sister also "hates" her looks and body, routinely putting herself down as not attractive even though she dresses provocatively to play up her looks and is very beautiful.

Where she has consistently struggled has been in maintaining healthy relationships. She attracts narcs, including her child's father and, years later, her ex-husband who she recently divorced. Both relationships were toxic, full of fighting, sometimes physical. Both exes — who are degenerates — are still "obsessed" with her and stalk and/or harass her despite her largely being no-contact with them. She has no close friends, as, again, she attracts narcs and those relationships always implode after a year or two. She dislikes most of our extended family (largely for superficial reasons like "Aunt So-and-So is nosy" or cousin such-and-such is "weird.") She had deep issues with our 82-year-old father because he can't/won't acknowledge what a nonfactor he was in our lives as kids and how that affected us. Me and our older sister have accepted our father is flawed and forgave him years ago. Outside of this, he's a wonderful grandfather to her son, his only grandchild. And even though she isn't speaking to him, her son spends every weekend with him.

With all those fractured relationships, I was her only friend, according to her. And now I'm nothing because she cut me off.

That said, thank you for reading. I still and will always love my sister, but she's chosen to make this love a one-sided one, and that hurts sometimes. So I just have to remind myself this is the disease talking and she has to want to change to have the peaceful, drama-free life she claims she wants.

I get sad because I'm afraid since she's so high-functioning, she'll probably never change and spend the rest of her life bitter and isolated. (We had a few relatives like this too. They had no one and it was pretty sad when they became elderly.) I know she wanted more for herself, but because she lacks introspection and self-love, she may never get it.

It's just a tragedy.