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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2025-04-20 04:02:01+00:00.
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/gernunda
My [26M] sister [27F] has just contacted me after not talking to me for 6 whole years. She says that she wants to meet up so that we can talk, and I’m having mixed feelings.
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions if incest, struggles with mental health, loss of a parent
Original Post - rareddit Apr 7, 2018
My sister, Grace, and I were always very close when we were growing up, and never really had any major issues with each other. We had the normal sibling rows, but nothing significant. As she was older, I always kind of looked up to her. Our mother passed away when we were young and lung cancer got my father the same year that I went away for college (when I was 19), so my sister is the only immediate family that I have left.
One day, when I was 20, Grace sat me down and said that the two of us needed to talk. She said, in essence, that she didn’t think it was a good idea for the two of us to stay in contact any longer. She said that it wasn’t anything that I did or said, and that it was because she didn’t think it was healthy for herself to continue staying into contact with me. She wouldn’t get any more specific than that, and it was clear that this wasn’t a mutable position for her. I’ve gone over it dozens of times in my head, and I’ve never really figured out exactly what she meant. The two of us weren’t codependent or extremely close: we would talk on the phone maybe once or twice a week, and would see each other maybe 2 or 3 times a month. Eventually I realized that thinking about it wouldn’t change anything, so there was really no point in trying to understand her reasoning.
Since then, she hasn’t contacted me at all (until now). I’ve had the urge on a number of occasions to try to find her, but ultimately I respect people’s boundaries and if she didn’t want to see me, then that is her decision to make.
Recently, someone left a voicemail at my extension at the company I worked for. I knew right away from their voice that it was her. She said that it was her, she knows it has been a long time, left a callback number, and asked if I could call her and we could get together and talk. I’m not quite sure how she even found me. I don’t use any sort of social media (except for linkedin), but my company lists the names, schools, etc of their executives publicly, so that might be it (which would explain why she called me there).
Honestly, I really have missed her. However, I know that its wrong of me to say this, but I’m honestly quite angry with her. She wasn’t there for me when I graduated college, she wasn’t there for me when I got my masters, she wasn’t there for me for six whole years. I really, really want to see her and maybe finally get some answers, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea.
Should I contact her back and meet up? Or would it just be a better idea to ignore her/tell her that I’m not interested in seeing her.
tl;dr : My sister has just contacted me after nearly six years of complete silence and I’m unsure of how to deal with it.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
ms-anthrope
Honestly, I don’t think I could live with not knowing.
OOP
Yes, I am pretty curious to hear her reason. Like I said I had already come to terms with the fact that thats just how things were, so I can definitely live without knowing (I already have).
[deleted]
Tell her that she should send you an email with a damn good reason why she abandoned you and not expect and feel entitled to any response
~
[deleted]
Please consider making contact with a therapist before you meet with your sister so you have a professional, trained, safety net to debrief with. If your sister has not been around for six years you might want a safe person to speak frankly with outside of your daily life
OOP
This sounds like a good idea. I used to see a psychologist a few years ago who helped me to quit my smoking habit, so It will probably be a good idea to book an appointment with her if she’s still practicing.
OOP replying to a comment and adding more info of their dynamic
“Sister is the older sibling and takes on the “mother” role.”
No. That was never really our dynamic. I never viewed her as any sort of parental or authority figure and that wasn’t really the nature of our interactions. If anything, she was my friend.
“Sister takes care of dad when he’s dying. Sister also having to take of younger brother (who is only one year younger) because guilt and family. Dad finally dies. Sister helps to take care of estate. Sister tired. Grieving. Very young still and having a freak out moment.”
The college I went to was in state (hers was out of state) and I was the one who was primarily taking care of my dad during his final time (taking him to chemo, helping with his medical arrangements, driving him to the hospital when neccesary). I was the one who primarily planned with my dad what we would do in the event of his death. Neither of us really was interested in the house, so after asking for her input (and getting her okay) I had our father draft a will basically saying that his assets (really just the house) will be sold, debts paid, then my sister and I split the net.
“Sister has never really felt like she is able to relax or have fun or be a young girl because responsibilities. Younger brother is leaning on sister still, sister is protecting him and shielding him like she always did but it’s just too much all of a sudden.”
Like I said, we weren’t attached at the hip close. I never really viewed her as my protector or anything. We would only ever talk maybe once or twice a week on the phone and wouldn’t see each other any more than 2 or 3 times a month. She’s more of a peer to me than anything. I’m sure she would have been responsible for me if she needed to be, but I’ve never been dependent on others to do things I can do myself.
“Sister goes, I need to take care of myself (for once in her life) but realizes if brother stays she will continue taking care of him.”
Our dynamic was never really one of caretaker and caretakee. If you remove the biological connection, then we were really just good friends. There was no lopsided dependency or anything like that.
Update Apr 16, 2018 (9 days later)
I did end up calling her back. I wasn’t prepared to meet her right away, so I took a suggestion given to me in the previous thread and gave her my email. I told her I would rather us email together for a while before getting together, and that she could start by telling me what happened, where she has been for all this time, and why she’s seeking me out now.
She initially sent me an extremely long email, so I’ll just provide in outline what happened. So, according to her when we were around 15-16 she began to develop some inappropriate feelings towards me. She said in the beginning it wasn’t anything serious, but she knew it was wrong. During the period in which our father got sick and eventually passed away she started to rely upon me more and more which made apparently made these feelings more intense. She felt like she couldn’t be a good sibling to me like she felt that I needed at the time, and that continued contact between us would only make things worse. So she thought it was best if we just broke things off, like pulling off a bandaid I guess. She says that she knows things might have been hard for me so she’s going to try to be honest and open with me going forward. So she admitted that she doesn’t think that she’s completely over it, but that I’ve been on her mind lately and she really doesn’t like the way we left things. Since we’ve stopped talking, apparently she’s been doing quite well for herself. She ended up finishing her CS degree and has been working as a software developer at a game development studio.
After emailing back and forth for about a day or so, I agreed to met her for coffee, and we planned to chat for 30 minutes or so. It went really well, and I was pretty happy to see her. We ended up talking and catching up for about an hour and twenty minutes, before I had to leave for a video chat I had scheduled.
All in all I think this situation is very bittersweet for me. It’s relieving to have some sort of closure/explanation after all this time, and it was really nice seeing her, and I look forward to maybe gradually including her in my life in the future. That being said, there is certainly a part of me that is very squicked out by the whole thing and would have preferred to be left in the dark or lied to.
tl;dr: Ended up choosing to contact her and see how things went. We emailed each other for a while then had a face to face at a coffee shop.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
kindasfw
What type of inappropriate feelings?
OOP
I didn’t really want to be too specific, but they were of a sexual nature. I di…
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