AITA for telling my sister “the only reason you’re trying to guilt me is because you’re not married”?
Long story alert…
I (35F) and my sister (39F) have always had a pretty close relationship. We talk on the phone 5-6 times a week, send each other funny memes/videos and we’ve traveled out of the country together several times pre-covid. However, my sister has said and done several things in the past that have been irritating and even a little hurtful. Things like, “you know I’m the favorite” (my parents have definitely shown her obvious favoritism, to the point that both people in our family and outside of it have openly addressed it with my parents), while we’ve been out a guy would try to talk to me, she would take over the conversation as to make herself the center of attention (even danced on a couple of guys) or even post old photos of me online during times where I didn’t look so great. For context, I had cancer years ago, then after finishing chemo, I battled depression and gained a lot of weight afterwards. She will sometimes post pictures from that time in my life online in birthday posts despite having much better pictures of me. I’ve asked her not to post those photos but she still does it.
Right before Covid hit, she and I both met our ex boyfriends. My relationship was terrible, we broke up, I healed and moved on. My sister decided to stay in her horrible relationship, got engaged but they never set a date. In November 2021, they broke off their engagement and he moved out of her condo. In March 2022, I met my now husband online, in March 2023, he proposed and we got married in October 2023! However, during the entire time I was dating and engaged to my husband, I tried to talk about him to my sister and tried to introduce them and even scheduled fun things for us to do while we were all in the same town. My sister would say things like “I want to be happy for you but I just can’t right now. My life is falling apart” or “it hurts to think about wedding stuff because this should’ve been me. I should’ve been first”. She would then say she barely knows my husband because I never “fostered a relationship between us all”, which was not true. It tried but she rejected it a lot of times.
Fast forward, my sister asked me if I wanted to go to Morocco earlier this year. I said sure, but she said she could only go during May-August. I was kind of annoyed because my husband’s birthday is in August and that shouldn’t have even been an option. I gave her dates I was ok with and she said she’d looked into those dates. A few days later she came back with itineraries that were 12-16 days long. I told her I couldn’t do that many days because my husband and I have 2 big trips planned to celebrate the success of owning is 8th business and us deciding to start trying for a baby this year. I said I can do 7-8 days and if that didn’t work, we can always go to France for 5 days since I know she loves to go there. She said “okay, I’ll look for a 7-8 day itinerary”.
A week later we both flew/drove home for a funeral. While at the repast, my sister brings up traveling at the table. A cousin asks “where are you traveling to next?” Out of nowhere, my sister points to me and says “she doesn’t want to travel with me anymore.” Everyone just looks at me while my sister repeats it again. I respond with “that’s not true, I just said I can’t do 12-16 days, I can only do 7-8 and you confirmed that was ok.” My sister stands up and gets a little louder and says “just admit you stopped traveling with me or doing anything with me because you got married.” For additional background, my sister traveled with her ex fiancé several times. The 4 times I asked if she wanted to travel with me while they were together, she said she didn’t have enough PTO and I completely understood. I went ahead and travelled to 3 different countries on my own (went to Italy twice on my own) and loved it! I never thought anything of it.
I told her what she was saying was ridiculous and now is not the time nor the place to have this discussion. She then went on a rant about how I didn’t even invite her to go wedding shopping or do anything wedding related with her. I said “I couldn’t do anything wedding related with you because you said multiple times that you wanted to be happy for me but you couldn’t and talking about wedding stuff hurts too much. Our parents had to tell me that they could only give me half of the money they initially promised to give for my wedding because you asked them for financial assistance only to use that money to go on 2 separate trips.” She cut me off and said “a real sister wouldn’t throw up in my face that she was getting married so soon after I broke off my engagement.” She called me selfish and insensitive.
Here’s where I’m wondering if AITA. I said “the only reason you’re trying to guilt me now in front of everybody is because you’re not married. If you had gotten married before me or even dating a guy you see a future with, this wouldn’t be an issue.” She started to cry and ran out of the room. The cousins that overheard the argument didn’t think I was wrong, they said they had always felt like she was jealous. However, my parents don’t think I should’ve said all of that and I definitely shouldn’t have mentioned how they reneged on the amount they would help out with the wedding, in order to help my sister. They said the family is now shaming them for showing favoritism towards my sister and for not “nipping my sister’s attitude in the bud” years ago. So, AITA? Should I apologize to my sister? Should I tell our family to stop shaming my parents? I don’t feel like I owe anyone an apology but I’m willing to be wrong and to even apologize for the sake of peace.