The Vine: May 20, 2008
Sars,
Help me.Please.I need to know what to do about my sister.I’m scared for her, and in the meantime, she’s driving me nuts.
The background:she’s in her mid-twenties; she’s always had a conflicted relationship with my mother (my sister was a difficult adolescent; my mom was depressed in those days; the two of them are very, very alike); she started dating at fifteen and since then has had maybe a year as her longest span between serious boyfriends.
She’s always been very stubborn, and very secretive about her feelings and sometimes her actions.We used to be close, but distance (I moved to the other side of the country) and her disinclination to talk about her life or feelings with me have come between us.
Anyway, so she’s dating This Guy.Has been for about a year.He’d been a friend of hers for a while, and I had met him at various events, and thought he was all right.Initially, after they started dating, I still thought he was all right: he seemed to be paying attention to her and listening to her opinions and to realize how amazing she was, which is what I look for in the men my sister dates!
The next time I was home and interacted with them, things were not so great; he was acting like almost all of the men she has ever dated: he was Right About Everything, and what he said was the Way Things Should Be.He also snapped at her about doing a task, and got into an argument with my mother (which, to be fair, my mother contributed her share to).
Since then, I’ve spent a little time with the both of them together (because any time that we have as sisters, he has to be included in), and he’s back on his good behavior, but I’m really disturbed by a lot of changes in her.
First, she argues with my mom a lot — more than she has since she moved out — and the observations she makes have little basis in reality (she says my mother spent a whole party yelling at her in front of her friends, which didn’t happen — I was there, so I know first-hand; there are other examples).
More alarmingly, she has nearly erased the word “I” from her vocabulary — every activity she does is “we.”She used to be interested in a multitude of things: art, martial arts, playing music, a foreign language that she speaks, tech news, books, video games. Now, she has dropped all of those activities, except for going to the gym with Boyfriend, who is acting as her personal trainer; she has a new desire to become a bodybuilder.He’s also in charge of regulating their diets and nutrition.
She’s spending a lot of time hanging out with Boyfriend’s Friends, who are high up in a local subculture scene; she’s recently ditched all of her old friends, claiming they’re “shitheads” (having met them, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but it still worries me that she is no longer talking to anyone who was friends with her before they started dating).
She is also developing his food allergies — she gets sick to her stomach, and he tells her that it’s X food (he has several intolerances), and therefore she now claims to be intolerant of X along with him.
The last time I was in my hometown, we went out for an evening.She was very concerned that I meet and like her new friends (the ones high up in the scene) — Sars, the one guy she was most eager to introduce me to doesn’t shower.She also was acting incredibly tentative, trying hard to assure me that everyone I was meeting (for 30 seconds, in a club) was really nice, very eager to run up and show that she knew them, and…again.It didn’t seem like my smart, beautiful, stubborn, ass-kicking little sister.
The other part about this, the part I haven’t told my parents because I can just imagine the explosion, is that I suspect she’s in a 24/7 BDSM relationship with this guy.They have a fetish photo of them that they have framed and hung up in the house, and they joked about it with me the last time I was over to spend time with her (she is collared and leashed, on her knees, gazing adoringly at him).
She has also been wearing a chain underneath her underwear for at least the last several months — her jeans have ridden down once or twice, and my mother spotted it, and then I did.I asked her about it; she said it was “just a belt,” so she’s not willing to talk to me about it.
I’m not ideologically opposed to BDSM, just — all of me is screaming, NOT WITH THIS GUY.He has too much to prove, he has to be Right all of the time, and she shouldn’t be getting lost in his ideas of who she should be.
She doesn’t even look happy, that’s the kicker.She told my father that this is “the happiest she’s ever been,” but she hardly smiles anymore.
I’m just not sure what to do.I feel like, intentionally or not, this guy has driven her away from everybody who used to be her friend; he’s also managed to alienate my entire family, down to my grandmother. And she’s turning into a female replica of him.
I don’t feel like I can talk to her about this — I talked to her about her last boyfriend, once, but she just told me I was wrong about him, and that was that.I’m pretty sure that it would be a horrible idea to express how fully I don’t like this guy, and might drive her further away (because, of course, I can’t possibly understand).
My parents and I are trying to keep lines of contact with her open, to be polite about him (although we none of us can really manage congenial), but we just don’t know what the best thing to do is, and the stress of it all is wearing on us.
If this were an acquaintance, I would have walked away by now; if it were a friend, I could hash it out, safe in the assumption that she’d at least listen to me.But it isn’t, it’s my sister, and I love her, and she has never listened to me, and I don’t expect her to start now.
Besides, every time I call her, it’s on speakerphone, and he’s in the room.
Looking for a strategy, or at least some tactics
Dear Strat,
The crux of the problem is in this sentence: “It’s my sister, and I love her, and she has never listened to me, and I don’t expect her to start now.”
Boyfriend sounds like a controlling tool, but I think the real issue here is that you think of your sister as, in your words, “stubborn” and “ass-kicking,” and that’s…not really who she is.Which she has repeatedly shown you, by dating one guy after another who’s Right About Everything, bosses her around, et cetera.
In other words, your focus, from what I can tell, is on getting your sister back to who she really is, a woman with opinions and friends and so on and so forth, but…I don’t think there’s any “back to.”I think this is who she is.
Not that she can’t change, or do better than these dudes; not that you should just give up on her.But you need to direct your first strategy at yourself, not at her, and it needs to involve accepting that your sister, as much as you love her, is an adult who has made certain choices, and may not live up to your hopes for her no matter how dearly you hold them or how much better they seem to you than her hopes for herself.
You can certainly talk to her in a general way about the relationship, and express to her that you want her happiness, but if she’s not happy, she should confide in you — you’re there for her.(You should also make it clear that you would like some alone time with her, in person and on the phone.Putting you on speaker is childish and unacceptable, and about that, you need to put your foot down pronto; if he really can’t bear for her to have a conversation he can’t hear, well, tough, because it’s a privacy issue for you.)
But you need to decide whether it’s more important to express that you think Boyfriend stifles your sister, or whether you want to continue fostering a close relationship with her — and it doesn’t really sound like it’s that close right now anyway.It sounds strained, and like you don’t respect her.Telling her straight out that, while you don’t judge her, you think Boyfriend is bossing and isolating her; you don’t think his friends are any big whoop; and you support her right to engage in BDSM, but you hope she’s maintaining some boundaries with the guy, because she seems unhappy and on edge — yeah, she may play the “it’s me and Boyfriend against the world, YOU DON’T GET IT” card, but maybe she needs to alienate the entire family in order to get it.
Or, as I said before, maybe there’s…nothing to get.Maybe your sister actually is this somewhat immature, easily-led person.I know it’s hard to accept that possibility, or to let go of her, at least a little bit, if it seems evident that she’s always going to choose the guy over the family.
But whether you bite your tongue about the guy, or get in her face about it and she cuts you off, the best tactic for you and your parents — not to influence your sister, but to keep from driving yourselves bazoo with this — is to try to get right with the idea that who your sister is may not be who you want her to be, or think she is.
Hi Sars,
I have a fashion-wedding-etiquette question for you and your readers.The short version: is it still considered rude to wear red to a wedding?
The long version (with every additional detail that may matter) is as follows.I’m invited to a wedding at the end of May and I want to wear a red cocktail dress that I already own.However, a friend mentioned offhand recently that you should never wear red to a wedding, and I know I’ve heard that before (along with never wearing white, or black).Is wearing a red dress still considered bad manners?I know black is now acceptable at every wedding I’ve gone to in the last 10 years — and there have been many.
If it matters, the wedding is in the NYC suburbs and most of the guests will be from the area, the couple and the guests other than family will be in their late 20s (as am I), it’s a reform Jewish wedding though I am not Jewish (but I know about being appropriately covered in temple, and tend to err on the conservative side for religious ceremonies anyhow), and the bridesmaids are wearing green.
I’ve been friends with the groom since high school but I do know and like the bride and I would be shocked if she cares about what I wear to her wedding.
The red dress is wedding-appropriate and I wouldn’t hesitate to wear it if it were blue or green or black.But it is red (not the brightest red I’ve ever seen, but certainly not muted in any way).I have another dress I could wear if red is inappropriate, but I like the red dress better and frankly, after coming up with different responses from my friends I’m curious about the consensus of you and your readers.Is red still an etiquette mistake?
I want to be red in the dress but not in the face
Dear Red,
My rules of thumb for wedding attire for guests are as follows: 1) you are not the bride, or in the wedding, and therefore nobody cares, but 2) if you think somebody might care, or if you care enough that you’d worry about it on the day of, wear something else.
I don’t think it’s an etiquette mistake any longer, although no doubt a number of readers will clutch their pearls in the comments and wail that it’s a huge faux pas — but rules of etiquette such as this one (if in fact it’s a rule) don’t exist to make anyone feel bad.Quite the opposite: they exist so that everyone knows what’s expected, and so that nobody has to feel silly or like she did something wrong.
In this case, you don’t know what’s expected, and that being said, I would not wear the red dress, just to save yourself (and anyone at the wedding who might take exception to the red) the aggro.If it’s a nighttime wedding, or the dress is a pattern and not solid read, blah blah I can come up with any number of “if”s that may mean the dress is more or less appropriate, depending.
But I just don’t think you want to devote that much time to it.Yeah, the dress looks better than others, but again, what you wore is not what anyone will, or should, remember about the wedding.Pick an outfit you won’t feel even a little bit like you have to explain.
This may be a completely ridiculous question, but: I don’t get what “What exit?” is supposed to mean. I know it’s one of those things that makes past and present New Jerseyans roll their eyes all, ha ha, never heard that one before, but what does it MEAN?
I really can’t come up with any explanation whatsoever.
They don’t teach us this stuff in the Midwest
Dear Mid,
New Jersey has a lot of highways, the most famous (and notoriously ugly) of which is the Jersey Turnpike.That’s what “Which exit?” refers to…I assume.It doesn’t really make sense to a Jerseyan, because at least in North Jersey, there are half a hundred highways it could mean…and a non-Jerseyan doesn’t know any of them, and wouldn’t know what the exit numbers of the Turnpike mean, either, so why make the joke.
Not that anyone really expects an answer to the “Which exit?” question, I guess; it’s just a way to make Garden Staters feel bad about the place.So, it means the Turnpike, but at the same time, it really doesn’t mean anything.
Tags: boys (and girls) etiquette rando the fam
Regarding wedding clothes, I think a lot of this has to do with your intentions. At my wedding, my sister-in-law wore a short, leopard-print sheath dress and I didn’t blink an eye. I knew that that was just her style and it was not just a showy gesture. I also didn’t have bridesmaid dresses, so I didn’t care so much about the pictures. At the reception, I noticed that my cousin , who is always trying to get attention, was wearing a strapless, long white dress and I was annoyed for a moment and then decided, f*ck that, she is not going to bother me at my wedding and that was that. So that is a long way of saying wear your red and be happy and have fun.
†“long white dress” has become the visual code for “bride,” and even feral children and the guys drinking mouthwash under the overpass know that co-opting that image is the equivalent of yelling “Me! Look at me! I’m so daring and clever!”â€
Or of yelling, “I’m a spiteful hag.†A high school classmate of mine got married fresh out of college (she’s since divorced). She’s the third of 4 kids and the first to marry, and her older sister was maid of honor. The bridesmaids wore periwinkle blue. Her sister, who is a challenge (she has also since married and divorced; her marriage was shorter than her little sister’s) and was really bitter that her little sister was marrying before she did, decided not to wear the dress the bride had selected and instead wore a long, so-pale-blue-it-was-basically-white dress, purely out of spite/as a means to take attention. I’d have kicked her out on the spot, but the wedding went off as planned, although the bride and her sister didn’t speak the whole time and one of her brothers gave the toast. I’m told there was a rift between them for a long time after that, and their mother was like “I know you have issues, but bitch, please.â€
@Strat: My sister married a guy who treated her like trash and she adored. When they first got married, I made the mistake of telling her I couldn’t stand him because he treated her like trash (he made fat jokes about her in public for example). She wouldn’t trust me for years. I learned to bite my tongue at every family event. She never spoke to me without being whiny and defensive. I couldn’t believe who she had turned into (and she’s my older sister). She seemed to have no self respect anymore.
Almost twenty years later, she called me at work one morning and was completely hysterical. She’d gotten a call from the police that she needed to come home because he was being arrested for being an internet predator. Later that day I flew out to be with her and my neice. That was more than two years ago. I had kept my mouth shut for more than fifteen years and I was as shocked as she was at what he’d been doing and she could tell. I didn’t come across as judgmental or like I had told her so because that had never occurred to me.
She trusts me a lot more now but still not completely. She called for my legal input (the only attorney in the family) in relation to every legal step in his prosecution and their subsequent divorce. Having lived through all of this and put in all this work on my stupid relationship with my sister, I wish I had just been able to keep my mouth shut earlier, like so many people here have advised. I wish she would have trusted me sooner.
Regarding wedding attire, whenever I’m in doubt, I just ask the bride. If Red is closer with the groom, I’d suggest she ask him if the bride/her mother/ her great-aunt who’s a stickler for etiquette, etc. would be okay with the dress in question. This is pretty much a no-fail strategy. In my experience, most brides are grateful you asked, and not at all shy about expressing preferences. In the past, I’ve had brides who said, “Oh, please don’t wear [color]. That’s what the bridesmaids are wearing.” I would assume a bride would be happy to be asked as opposed to unpleasantly surprised on the day of.
In light of the what-to-wear-at-the-weddingness, I’d like to offer this PSA to any future mothers-of-grooms who HATE the little minx who has deluded their wonderful, darling boy, but who hasn’t fooled THEM, and who plan to wear white at the wedding to show the little hussy up:
By wearing a white dress to his wedding, the message you are sending to the assembled multitude is “I want to sleep with my son.” You may want to rethink your choice.
Sars,
I keep a copy of the “Perfect Together” essay with me when I travel for work and it will keep me laughing and sane when I get the crazy Jersey questions from people. When I get that horrible two word question I just smile and politely respond “off what road?” which invariably confuses my coworker, because as we all know there is only one road with numbered exits in New Jersey.
Telling Sister that You don’t like her boyfriend will not do any good.
It is possible to try leading questions like, “does this or that bother you?” or “how do you feel about something specific?”. If she is being treated badly this may (only may) eventually help her realize her own feelings.
Otherwise, being a non-judgmental friend who is on her side is all you can do.
We don’t get to choose our family members significant others any more than we get to choose the family members.
Learning to put up with the weird and unpleasant ones is probably good for our characters. I hope.
@Red: I think the only steadfast rule that remains about wedding attire is that no woman other than the bride should wear white–unless the dress is not predominantly white: white with a floral print is fine; black & white is fine. Black is definitely okay now and I believe red is as well. I have seen many more black dresses over the years at weddings than red ones, but I really don’t think most people will take issue. I agree with Sars that you should probably wear something that causes less worry on your part, but if you really feel you look your best in that red dress, go for it.
Strategy:
As a person who has been/still is to an extent involved in the BDSM scene and in Dom/sub relationship, what your sister is going through is pretty normal in the fetish scene.
When you realize you are kinky, and love this kind of relationship, and discover the kind of close-knit community the fetish world can offer, you get absolutely immersed in it. When your prior friends don’t understand, or, as often happens, openly judge you or worry about your sanity, you feel alienated and ostracized by them and instead turn toward the acceptance of the fetish community. In short, you fall off the face of the earth from all your old friends. For some people this is temporary, for others it’s more permanent.
This kind of a lifestyle isn’t just about what you do or with whom you associate, however. It’s a huge part of someone’s self-identity and psychosexual experience. For me, it’s the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever had as well. Once you make this self-discovery you do seem to be different, because you’ve learned things about yourself that will never allow you to be the same. This likely has a lot to do with how you see her as being so different, although she’s saying she’s happier than she’s ever been.
The BDSM world does have a culture where open, frank communication, consenuality and safety are of much more importance and focus than in regular dating/social circles. Although it seems scary to most people, BDSM relationships often are much healthier emotionally than many “vanilla” relationships, because the participants can be more open with each other and have definite, negotiated boundaries. That said, the kink world is not without it’s fair share of uneducated, power-tripping douchebags, so do let your sister know if she ever feels unsafe or unhappy you will always listen with an open mind and lack of judgment.
You might benefit from getting to know more about the psychological aspects of BDSM, and more about the culture, and letting your sister know you accept this part of her and want to know more about it, if you want to foster closeness – a lot of what shuts off lines of communication is just the feeling that people won’t understand and either think you are crazy and self-destructive when nothing could be further from the truth, or they’ll just think you’re a freak Knowing you won’t do either will be a huge relief to your sister. :)
Hm – Miss Manners say no black (even now) or white (obviously) but has no word on red, specifically. She does say don’t try to outdo the bride, and red dresses are well-known for their ability to attract attention. My husband’s obnoxious, attention-seeking cousin wore a LOUD red and black dress, with a LARGE red flower in her hair, to our wedding, which a lot of people thought was inappropriate. Maybe I’m old-fashioned but I wish everyone owned (and tried to follow) Miss Manners’ books. :)
Red: Just ask the bride, or groom, if he’s who you know. Please don’t assume that no one cares, just because you never saw a raised eyebrow. I don’t like black, white or red on guests at weddings (although a black and white print gets a pass). At my wedding, a couple of people wore black. I was so deligted to have them there, knew they meant no harm, and would never have said anything about it because it’s not a big deal. But I did notice, and I did care, a little. So now that you know some people think that’s the rule, ask.
When I got married, one of my close friends wore purple which was one of my theme colors and the color of my bridesmaids dresses, and I didn’t care a bit. Actually, come to think of it, I think 2 of my friends wore that color.
I agree with those who said when in doubt, ask, but if it’s an appropriate style of dress for the wedding, and you feel good wearing it in that particular season, then go for it. I occasionally wear white shoes between Labor & Memorial Day, so take that advice with a grain of salt. ;)