Dear Coleen
I fell in love with a boy at school and always thought of him as my soulmate.
As the years went by, I occasionally got together with him at parties, but he ended up dating someone else and I married another guy, which didn’t work out.
But I was always in love with him.
Then when I was 23, my sister got together with him and they had a baby, but split up when their son was two.
Not long afterwards I bumped into him and he asked me back for coffee.
Even then, I realised my family would hate me having anything to do with him, but I went and we started dating. As expected, my entire family went nuts and stopped talking to me.
My sister remarried and had two more children by another man, then divorced and remarried a real idiot of a drinker.
To cut a long story short, I married my sister’s ex and had three lovely children. Then, six years ago, the son my husband had with my sister died in an accident in Australia and it was a horrible time for everyone. My sister blamed my husband and me, and cut us off. The rest of my family have disowned us too.
My children and husband don’t deserve this and I can’t believe how nasty my family has been. My dad is the only one who texts me, but not very often. Should I just accept things will never change and just live my life? I know everyone was hurting, but so were we and we still are.
Any advice would be welcome.
Coleen says
It’s not clear from your letter why your sister and your family would blame you for your nephew’s death. Perhaps in grief they were just looking for someone – anyone – to blame and there was already lots of resentment brewing between you and the family after your marriage to her ex, so it was directed at you.
What happened was tragic and it’s sad that it has divided your family rather than bringing you all closer. I think there’s a lot of sense in your suggestion about getting on with your own life and focusing on your husband and children.
The thing is, you can’t control how members of your family think or behave, you can only control yourself and how you react to situations.
Tell them you understand their grief, but it’s been tough for you and your husband too, and you’d like to make peace and for your children to have a relationship with them.
Then leave the ball in their court.
For yourself, I think it would be beneficial to have therapy to work through everything that’s happened and the loss of those family relationships.
