Dear Feathering:

The first part  of  your recent post reads very reasonable  to  me.

I will quote and give you my straightforward input on the second part: “My relationship with my parents has its difficulties… my  mum is terrible  at listening and quite  passive-aggressive. I’m trying to gently bring out the problematic behaviors  into discussion. I have decided  to cut ties with my sister again… she’s abusive and  very aggressive. She’s unwilling to take responsibility for her behaviors so change is impossible. My relationships with mum and dad were strained growing up- but my relationship with my sister was the worst.. she held me up at knife point on more than one occasion”.

My input:

1. The easy part, do end contact with your sister because she is and has  been “abusive and very aggressive” toward you and is “unwilling to take responsibility for her behavior”.

2. I figure your sister probably suffered like  you have from your mother’s aggression (there is aggressive in “passive aggressive”) and expressed it in an active way, so she became aggressive, not  passive-aggressive. You suffered from the same and carry on your own version of expressing your anger that was built during  your years with your mother’s aggression.

Your mistake, the part of the recent post that is not reasonable, regarding your mother: “I’m trying to gently bring out the problematic behaviors into discussion”, bring  those up to your mother, that is. This will bring  about waste  of time and  effort on your part. Your mother remained aggressive for all the years of you and your sister growing  up, not changing while witnessing your sister holding you at  knife  point, not changing while the two  of you suffered visibly, so I don’t think she  will change now.

Not only will this be a waste of your time and effort,  but your time and effort will not go where they should and so your relationships with men and others  will continue to suffer from your anger and there will be no healthy, loving relationship for you.

Adult children are very, very.. very resistant to the idea  of  giving  up on their parent, still waiting, still trying forevermore to fix the relationship, to fix the parent, so to finally have the parent that was needed all along.  Futile.

anita