My Story - this is my first post so it's quite long...

[TaniB88]

My sister is 11yrs older than me and even though she has always had mood swings, we were deeply bonded until she hit a series of traumatic events in her life and began to change dramatically. She went through a serious brain surgery, our Mother passed away, her daughter became addicted to meth and then her husband passed away, all in a period of a few years. At first, she acted out dramatically, spending erratically, sleeping around compulsively, smoking weed, having relationships with convicts and lashing out at everyone and everything she cared about. (Now this is a woman who is a successful professor, well liked in the community and was married to a highly esteemed cancer doctor). I no longer recognized her, it was awful. She became so abusive to me during this time, using guilt management, manipulation, jealous rage, put downs to me, my loved ones and our other family members that I cut off the relationship for about six months. She blackmailed me with threats to ruin my relationship and frankly terrified me.
Over the next, few years, she slowly began to return to her 'normal, previous self' and our relationship began to heal but the traits that I have since learned are those of people with BPD remained quite strongly. Over the last six years, I have put it down to the fact that she went though so much and is obviously jealous of the fact that my life is good and my relationship resembles all that she lost and has not since found since her husband's passing. She can't be truly happy for me because she sees I have all she wants, yet she is still in a relationship with a man 30yrs her junior with no real means or direction in life. 3yrs ago, I went through cancer and survived. She changed and became very loving, supportive and apologetic for her behaviour towards me over the years, acknowledging how much damage she did, but again, the BPD behaviour remains, less often, less dramatic but enough to cause me constant anxiety, braced for her response to anything I say that doesn't meet her expectations. She guilt trips me saying I don't spend enough time with her or her kids and we are 'family'. She manipulates me and says inappropriate things about our own family members. The ripple effect of this and the reason I am on this message board is that my beloved fiance who I have been with for 12yrs has had enough and asked me to make some tough choices. He is gun shy of marrying me when my sister causes us so much unrest and me so much worry. He is worried she will come after us for money (which is another thing she did when she spent all of her inheritance from our Father's death and came asking for some of mine). I am tired, so tired of her, the love I felt has drained from my heart and I feel nothing but deep, dark pity for her now. We had an incident recently that caused me to set boundaries once more and we have not spoken for  a week. I feel so free, I feel so happy, I feel confident, un-burdened and I wish I could just not ever speak to her again sometimes. I want to continue to set hard-consistent boundaries moving forward to protect myself and my up coming marriage. I am seeking a therapist but also would love to know others are out there who can understand. My fiance would like to me cut ties altogether and I am afraid to lose him if I don't or can't. Thankyou for taking time to read this and I look forward to hearing from anyone who feels inspired to help. 

[nomodrama]

hi TaniB88,

I can total relate to your story. There are others on this board who have been working on the same issues you describe, they will write hear soon I just wanted to get this WELCOME to you and you have found the right place! Those other I feel have more knowledge about communication and they also directed me to read all the Tools on this board.

My 13 years older sister is a person with BPD.  I relate and empathize with your story. It is so hard but once I came here and did reading (and see my own therapist) I feel so much better.
I just went No Contact a month ago. It is difficult but as I read here about FOG and understand I cannot change her and practice ideas like Radical Acceptance.
It gets easier. Cutting off contact with a family member is pretty extreme but sometimes I feel like you ave to save yourself and your own life. It is a transition. you could also try limited contact but not sure if she blackmailed you it might not be worth it to keep in contact with anymore. My story is long, I think you can click my name to see my posts, I had some similar stuff going on.

Best wishes to you and know you found the right community!

[nomodrama]

My sister is 13 years older than I am (not 13 years old, she is 62 i am 49).

[Harri]

Hi and welcome!  I am so sorry for all you are going through.  That is a lot of stress to be dealing with.  I am very pleased to read that you survived your cancer!     On top of everything else, it seems almost overwhelming to me.

As you read from nomodrama, you are not alone.  We all have a family member with BPD or BPD traits we are trying to cope with in one way or another.

No contact (NC) is one tool that some people use here to help them while they heal.  It is best to combine NC (if that is what you choose to do) with learning other tools and strategies that will build your confidence and ability to deal with difficult people without them consuming you or changing your inner peace.  It can be done also even with limited contact (LC) or any degree of contact in between.

I imagine your finacee is concerned about what your sister will do but also about how this all affects you and ultimately him.  The thing is, you need to decide what level of contact is appropriate for you.  Certainly consider his needs as well.  I am just not sure that choosing NC because that is what he wants is good for you (if that was even in your mind... I might be over-stepping here.  apologies if I am).

If you can share a specific incident or two outlining what you and your sister say to each other, we will have a better idea of where to start with offering tools.

In the meantime, settle in, read and jump into other threads.  We all work together here to help each other.