u/L3SSYAL

My younger sister regularly complains about having no friends. It’s to the point where, whenever I make plans with my friends, it’s a huge spectacle where she rolls her eyes and has a very obvious “if I can’t have friends, no one can” attitude. However, there have been many, many times where I’ve really wanted to say “how do you not realize why you don’t have friends?”

The reason behind that is the way she treats me and my mom (her family), strangers, and just how she acts overall. She can’t take responsibility or accountability for anything. She refuses to learn from her mistakes and try to act like a better person. She leaves messes all around the house and trash on the ground, then gets mad at anyone who tells her to clean up. Whenever me or my mom is upset or had a rough day, she never does anything to comfort us or even show us she cares. She just sits on the couch and stares at her phone while me and my mom are emotionally and physically there for each other. She’s incredibly judgmental and rude and goes around making comments about strangers to me, calling them “fat” or “cringe“ or “ugly” or anything else. Not to their faces, but nonetheless. She’s incredibly entitled and has no concept of how money works despite having a job. If something is expensive, she’s just like: “yeah, so? Get it for me.” She argues with me and my mom on literally everything and regularly calls us stupid. Most recently, she got into a fight with my mom because my mom said we needed to be eating more leftovers as to not waste food because we have medical bills to pay. My sister‘s argument against this was “I don’t want to.” Emotions are a complete annoyance to her unless they’re her own. She doesn’t care when anyone else is sad, but expects everyone to care when she’s sad.

The most ironic thing is that she regularly tells me how I should act around other people. She insults me and says things like: “nobody will want to be friends with you if you do that. Why do people want to hang out with you?” The things I’m doing when she says that? Trying to teach my mom the Cotton Eye Joe dance or having harmless fun in public that, yes, some people might call cringe. Now I don’t deny that I have flaws too and it contributes to how she treats me. I can be controlling and demanding and act like the parent when I shouldn’t, especially since my dad’s passing. But personally, I’ve been working on it in therapy (among other things), and I feel I’ve really improved. My sister, meanwhile, refuses to work on her own behavior and has to be forced to by my mom. I’m also aware that people can act very differently around their family vs. their friends. However, if someone treats their caring family and strangers in public this badly and also happens to have no friends, is it really just a coincidence?

In so many of these moments (they come up pretty often), I feel the urge to say “you treat us like this and you wonder why you don’t have any friends.” I haven’t yet because it feels like it’d be out of line for me to say (that would be my mom’s job or someone else’s), but I’ve been thinking it more and more often. Would I be the asshole if I told her that she shouldn’t wonder why she doesn’t have any friends when she treats the people who are around her so badly?

TLDR; My sister is a judgmental asshole to strangers and her own family and then wonders why she has no friends. Would I be the asshole if I told her that she shouldn’t wonder why she doesn’t have any friends when she treats the people who are around her so badly?

I’m 17 years old and an incoming high-school senior. My mom (52F) has recently been having a lot of health anxiety/anxiety in general. And I mean a LOT. It’s understandable, considering how my dad died five years ago and she’s single. It’s hard for her. But every single day, she comes to me to vent about her stuff. I love her very much and I understand her pain so much to the point where it’s impacting me physically. I don’t feel hungry anymore even though I know that I am, so I force myself to eat, but everything tastes the same: like rot. I constantly feel like I need to throw up. I never stop shaking. I wake up dozens of times in the middle of the night and can’t do anything but sit in the bathroom trying to relax enough to sleep.

Here’s the thing: a lot of this is, obviously, my problem. My mom can’t control her anxiety. It’s a me problem that I can’t control how I feel around it. But what’s hard is I can’t help her. At all. The only way for me to help is to listen and there’s nothing else I can do for her. She has very few friends and is quite depressed but can’t start an anti-depressant for another three months bc of another medication she’s on. I may have convinced her to try therapy, but it comes at the cost of me no longer going to therapy so we can afford it. I’m willing to do that for her, though.

However, yesterday, I finally set a boundary with my mom in the gentlest way possible. I told her during lunch that while I loved her so much, I wouldn’t make my life small for her. I’m going into my senior year of high school and I can’t afford to focus every ounce of my energy on her. She told me she understood (she never said she’d respect the boundary though), but was also hurt and said it made her feel like a burden. She told me that she feels that’s what love is: making your life small for someone else and doing everything you can to make them happy, even at the cost of your own wellbeing. Something tells me she learnt that was what love was because that’s how her relationship with my dad went. She put herself in a box to be what he wanted and it was never good enough. She’s been through a lot. She deserves a partner who loves her above almost everything else. The problem is, I can’t be that for her, and trying to be is really hurting me and not helping her enough to be worth it.

I felt really bad after talking with her yesterday and still do today. So, essentially, what I’m asking here is: am I the asshole for setting that boundary with her and making her feel like a burden?

TLDR: My single mom is dependent on me, her 17 year old child, for her mental well-being. I set (what I think was) a gentle boundary with her and she said she understood but that it made her feel like a burden. I feel more like her burnt-out partner than her child lately and it’s really hurting me physically and mentally and I feel it’s not helping her enough to be worth it. Am I the asshoel for setting that boundary with her and making her feel like a burden?