I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

Originally posted by u/wqzu 3 years ago on r/relationships.

Reposted with permission from u/wqzu. Thank you, kind Redditor for the permission!

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I [21/M] have been looking for my sister [18/F] since 2014. I found a way to contact her last night, but I'm not sure how to do it. [June 28 2018]

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/8uknz2/i_21m_have_been_looking_for_my_sister_18f_since/

Backstory/context

My parents got divorced in August of 2014. It was a messy fuckin divorce. One of the worst I've ever known, and I know quite a few of my friends parents. My mother took half of my Dad's savings, half of his pension (he had just retired after 11 years in the army 25 years in the police; she was cheating medical benefits during this time), half of the house (the mortgage on which she never contributed to), and even tried to get half of the compensation my dad was awarded after being hit by a car (ICU medically induced coma in various hospitals and rehab centers from November 2015 - January 2016 [yes, the divorce took almost two years]). Long story short, she bankrupted my Dad. We were on the verge of homelessness for a while. He spiraled into depression, which drug me into depression. Things were fucking bad for us.

She also tried to use me and my sister as a weapon against him. She moved to Surrey, a place near London ~ 200 miles from where we were living at the time to be with the man she was cheating on my Dad with. My sister, 14 at the time, went with her. My mum tried to make me come too (I wasn't NC at this point), but I had just tarted a software development Apprenticeship at the time, so I stayed with my father. Things were okay. I even went down to surrey to see them. It was when I was down there that I overheard my step-father chatting shite about my Dad, a man he had never met. Calling him worthless, good for nothing, "not a real man" was thrown in there a couple times. She was laughing along all the way. Obviously, I was upset. When I got back home, I texted her to let her know that I knew what he had been saying. This led to a barrage from her side and telling me never to talk or attempt to contact her, my step-father, or - and this is the only thing that killed me - my sister.

I happily obliged with the first two. I carried on talking to my sister through facebook, saying things like "I will never not love you. You'll always be my sister." She said similar things back, and said she missed me. I went to message her one day, and she'd blocked me. I got a text from her, saying that the way I spoke to my mum and step-father was disgusting and that they have been nothing but amazing to me and her. When I first read it I thought it was wierd - when my Dad got the exact same text word for word, despite not saying anything to either of them, I knew it was my mother pretending to be my sister. I texted her back something along the lines of "Your bullshit has always been easy to see through, [mum's name]". I didn't get any message back.

Now's not the time to go into it, but after many a drunken conversation with my Dad I found out my mum was always emotionally abusive and a total narcissist. When she found out I tried to kill myself, she mentioned in a letter to another family member that I should have tried harder. I never want anything to do with her again.

The issue at hand.

As mentioned above, my Father was bankrupted. He had no money left to fight for custody of my sister. I know he'd do anything to see her again. Going through courts is no longer an option - we don't know where they live, we don't have the money. Fuck, we don't even know if any of them are still alive.

Until yesterday. My girlfriend and I were scouring the web for any online presence of any of them, when she found a facebook profile for my sister that was created around two weeks ago. It only has 1 profile picture, and the privacy settings are on pretty much maximum - you can only message it. She sent me the link to it - and I'm blocked. However, given what happened with the text message a few years back, I'm inclined to believe that's in part due to my mother. Maybe I'm being stupidly naive and my sister really doesn't want anything to do with me.

So here's my dilemma. Not only has my sister been cut off from me, she's been cut off from her entire family. All her aunt's, uncle's, and Grandparents are not allowed to contact her, lest they "corrupt" her (mother's words) into seeing me and my Dad again. I can message my sister if I create a new facebook account. Even if it's just to let her know that whatever she's been fed about mine and my father's feelings about her are lies, and that we still love her. Even if it's just to let her know that her Nan thinks about her everyday, and she could die happy after just one phone call from her. The issue is, I don't want her mother intercepting the message and making things worse for her or us. I'm sure her account is heavily monitored. I might sound crazy to a lot of people, and I know there's two sides to every story including this one, but I promise you on my own life - living under my mother is like living under a dictatorship. Your thoughts aren't your own. It's horrible.

She will start university in September, I assume. I'm thinking the best way to do this is to message the account around October time. The thing is, I don't know if I'm emotionally ready to be told to go fuck myself by her. My Dad's therapist has said there's a very real possibility my sister grows to become like my mother. Part of me is ready to accept that fact as closure, part of my wants to believe that would never happen, and part of me thinks I should just leave it alone. I'm really at a loss for what to do. For four years I've been looking for her. Now that I've finally found her - or at least an online presence of hers - I really don't want to fuck anything up. What's the best way to go from here?

TL;DR: Sister has been involuntarily no contact with me since my parent's divorce. She lives with my narcissistic mother who would do anything to make sure I never see her again. I've found a way to contact her and I want to do it, but I don't want to step in her life and fuck it up for her. What's the best way to proceed?

Relevant Comments:

• Commenter says that writing " her Nan thinks about her everyday, and she could die happy after just one phone call from her. " could come across as very manipulative and that it's best to contact her ONLY on behalf of himself and their relationship. OOP: That's a very good point I hadn't even considered. My thought process is that even if she wants nothing to with me or my dad, surely she can't have dismissed all her family that easily. But I don't want to do anything that could be twisted to justify what my mum did. Thanks for the advice.
• I don't want to take away her new family, just reintroduce her back into her old one.

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UPDATE TO: I [21/M] have been looking for my sister [18/F] since 2014. I found a way to contact her last night, but I'm not sure how to do it. [June 18 2020]

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/hbckl2/update_to_i_21m_have_been_looking_for_my_sister/

Update: Well, I'm 23 now. Finished university, starting a real job, Dad and I no longer have depression, life is pretty good. As for my sister, a few interesting things happened to say the least. Firstly - I took the overall consensus from the original post and didn't make any attempt to contact her. I did drunkenly check her the page from time to time to see if anything had changed, and I found that I'd be unblocked on my main facebook account. Probably around August that same year, my sister rang my aunt and said she wanted to arrange a meeting with her and her son (our cousin, obviously). My aunt immediately rang my Dad and I and told us the good news, we were both uncertain about how we should take it but overall we were pretty happy.

They all meet up and apparently my sister has also been kicked out of our mother's house for some reason or another and is staying with a friend, and she hasn't spoken to my mother for over a year (at this point in November). The story goes that my mother and her new victim managed to ostracise themselves from all their friends down there and my mother took out her aggression on my sister, so she stormed out and turned up teary-eyed at this friends house and has been living with them ever since. She asked about me and my father, if we were doing well, and if we 'hate her'. Obviously my aunt assured her that we definitely don't. My sister says that she wants to get in contact with the both of us but she wants to take it slow and she didn't know how we would react. In my view that's completely understandable*. That's interesting point #1.

*Just as a side note, my mother once smacked my sister in the face for wasting a tampon when she was 12. I obviously am not completely familiar with that uniquely female experience but I did get the joy of hearing that moment unfold - just for an idea of the type of person my mother is and what she did to us both as kids.

Interesting point #2 happens when my sister goes, with her new boyfriend, up to visit our Nan*. Another cousin of ours (big family) is also present for this meeting. My cousin tells me that my sister told our Nan that it had been 'a few months' since she had last spoken to our mother, which is quite a bit different to 'over a year ago'. Whatever, maybe my Aunt misremembered the meeting. However, my cousin did say that she got a very 'off' vibe from my sister, and to paraphrase her own words heavily, 'you would think [Sister] had last seen us all last weekend - not 5 years ago. She walked in to [Nan's] house like she owned the fucking place. She didn't really say why she was getting in contact with us and not [you or her father] other than she "wasn't ready", and she didn't really say why she hadn't spoken to her mother either. I don't know, I wasn't happy with it at all, and we were all thinking that you two [my father and I] should be in that room, not us. But maybe [your mother] has made me too paranoid.'

*My Nan is my maternal grandparent. I phone her as often as I can which isn't as often as I would like it to be admittedly and I know I'll kick myself for it. I digress - every time I do phone her, she always asks about my Dad and his new partner, and sends them both Birthday cards, Christmas cards, so on. To me it just speaks volumes about the type of person my Mother is when her mother is more concerned about the wellbeing of her ex-husband and his new partner. Just tryna get this point home to any doubters.

#3 occurs when I find out that my sister asked my Nan for some money to help her out with University and not living with her Mother anymore. My Nan, being the lovely little 86 year old Welsh sweetheart that she is, gave her around £2,000. Now, I'm happy to be proven wrong here, but asking for £2,000 within a few hours of reconnecting with family that you haven't seen or made contact with for five years is very strange. I find out about this, because around November my Nan called me - because she had promised me an update on the situation - to tell me that for about a week after my Sister met up with them all, they had been in regular contact via phone and Facebook. Since that week - nothing. Unreturned voicemails, Facebook messages left on read, my sister had taken the money and fucked off. I spent the day reassuring my Nan that she hadn't done anything wrong, and she definitely wasn't the idiot she thought she was for giving my sister the money.

#4 is the least interesting, but you'll be pleased to know that my ramblings end here at least. It should go without saying that since the first meeting in August with my aunt and her son, neither my Dad nor I have had any direct contact with my sister. On Boxing day, my sister finally calls my Nan and wishes her a merry Christmas. My Nan says thanks and hangs up. In January, on my Nan's 87th birthday, my sister calls up and wishes her a happy birthday, and also mentions that she's having some money problems. My Nan rolls her eyes and hands the phone to my Aunt who buys my Sister's sob story hook, line, and sinker, and rings me to tell me the, quote unquote, "good news" and that "it's different this time, she really wants to see you".

Around May (which is my Birthday month btw), my sisters sends a text to my Aunt to see if she has any old pictures of her. My aunt says she doesn't, but that me and my Dad might (which we do). My sister sends a text back saying that she will get in touch with us.

I know this is gonna come as a complete shock, but it's been radio silence since and in all honesty I'm fine with that. To me, it's crystal clear who my sister has grown up to be like. Toying with family members emotions, treating her own presence as a gift and using it to manipulate money out of people, inconsistent stories about her relationship with the one person she knows would be a deal-breaker if the rest of the family knew was still involved, and terrible at hiding her true intentions. Will she ask me for the photos? Probably not. Unless she gets really desperate and exhausts all other avenues for exploiting money out of people with pity stories, but even she knows that I know exactly who that money is going to. My mother knows that she's not in my Nan's will at this point.

If she does want to meet up, I will bring the photos with me. Part of me wants to bring two envelopes - half of the photos in one envelope, the other half shredded up in another, and depending on how well the meeting goes depends on which envelope she gets. I won't do that but it the thought of being that petty is very tempting.

I'm not holding my breath. She was 14 and I was 17 the last time I saw her; she's turning 21 this year and I was 23 in May. I've had my years of anger and grief and done my time with depression, I've hurt many people and many relationships along the way. I'm still learning what's normal and what isn't, but on the whole my life is split up into before and after, and for the most part my sister lives and will remain in the before. Somewhat because I want to maintain the memory I have of her and not taint it by knowing what she has become, somewhat because I'm not ready to go through what I overcame again. I've accepted my role in the universe as the recipient of bad karma to make up for all the good karma that randomly happens to other people. I'm okay with that; for the first time in my life, I've been the one in control. As for my attitude to her and my mother, the best word I could adequately use to describe it is "ambivalent". They could win the lottery and be on the news tomorrow or they could get hit by a bus - my reaction would probably be the same.

To everyone else out there with estranged parents or other family members - the one thing I learned is that estrangement is the best thing they'll ever do for you.

tl;dr: I didn't contact her, and it turned out to be a good thing, but not for the reasons I thought.

Edit: Thank you all for your comments, I did my best to reply to everybody but given the response to the original post I had no idea this would get so much attention.

• To the people that shared their similar stories, I hope you're all keeping well and staying positive and making the most out of what you've been dealt in life. Hard times make strong people.
• In reference to my idea of ripping up the photos, that was always only ever half-serious. I wouldn't do something like that; it's petty, wouldn't be fair to my sister, and would only give me short term satisfaction in the form of a pathetic 1-up. I realised that before writing this post
• In reference to the 'bad karma' line, I actually think I'm a very lucky man all things considered. I'm where I want to be in life, I have a fun and happy and stable family around me, and I'm confident in the person I've become. That line is a glimpse into my personality - some people got that, some people were genuinely concerned for me which I do sincerely appreciate. The black dog never really stops chasing you, but I get a much warmer feeling from being able to laugh at a universe that is seemingly constantly shitting on you than I do from pretending that everything is okay; that's what I meant by that line.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to read, it felt good to get this off my chest and know that a lot of people think I'm making the right moves. A good amount of people made the fair comment that my sister is still young and still possibly under my Mother's influence. I appreciate those people taking the time to give feedback and advice, but ultimately my life had already moved on. I made peace with the fact that I may never see my sister again long before the events I've detailed out here, and when this all kicked off the closure and acceptance I had moved on from began to unravel. I'm not ready to go back into dark days off of a risk that everything might be okay. Yes, in the future we may reconnect, but for now I am focused on my own life and am content with taking some of the rare happy memories I had of my family in my childhood with me, untouched by these developments.

This is a list of other things that OOP's mom did that was mentioned in the comments and deserves it's own separate spot in the post (these explain in part why sister staying in contact with mom was a dealbreaker for the family):

• Stole £40k from her Mother's bank account, which she had access too, and left my grandmother with a declined debit card when she was trying to buy groceries.
• Made Facebook accounts in her own name, and the told the police (?) that I had made them to harass her, which led the police to calling me while I was at work
• Wrote a letter to my cousin (the female cousin who met my sister, in this update) telling her that her father is a weak man and her kids are a pair of bastards (because one was born out of wedlock) because her father had forced my mother to repay the aforementioned £40k
• Repeatedly called my Aunt a worthless failure after my aunt's marriage broke down
• One of my first memories is my mother screaming at me that I've ruined her life. That was a favourite of hers, to scream at both me and my sister that we ruined her life. And when you're a kid you don't blame your parents for hating you, you blame yourself.

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Relevant Comments:

• Commenter mentions that it isn't great of OOP's family to demand sister not have a relationship with her mom in order to allow her to get close to family again. In addition to the above list of things, OOP writes this: It's not a case of asking my sister to give up the person who raised her. If she can't see that that woman defines the word evil, we have to be cautious about the type of person my sister is. She is aware of all of the above happening, and the fact that none of us can be certain what her current relationship is with her makes us all the more suspicious. She isn't 14 anymore. She's 20, nearly 21. Yes, she's young but there's not a lot of time left to unlearn how to not be a manipulative sociopath. I love my sister and in truth always will, but it's a hard reality I came to terms with a few months ago that I may never have a relationship with her again.
• Commenter suggests that OOP's family commit to not giving the sister more money. OOP: Definitely, we all already have. The only person that would have done it in the first place is my Nan anyway because, you know, she's a grandparent and that's what they do. But she's kicking herself as best as an 87 year old can because of it, though everyone has told her it wasn't her fault.
• My main issue with the whole thing is I just don't believe a word of it. I don't believe that she got kicked out of her mother's, I don't believe that she managed to afford a second hand Toyota Aygo while living in London apparently rent free with friends when she was 16, I don't believe that she found the money to go to costa rica and national festivals while still being so desperate that she had to take (not borrow, take) £2k off of our Nan the day she meets her, and I don't understand why she's comfortable with every member of the family except for me and my father, when every member of my family she has been in contact with has told her that the best thing she could do is contact us.
• It boils down to the fact that at this time, allowing my sister back into my life means allowing my mother back in to my life and I'll cut my bollocks off before I let that happen. Until I'm certain beyond reasonable doubt that there is no one else behind her attempts to reconnect, I'm staying very vigilant if I do get contacted by her.
• Commenter suggests looking into legal action to get Nan's 2k back. OOP: I've often considered that. I've come to terms with the fact that pursuing any legal methods would just drag it up again, and at the end of the day £2,000 could be spent on much more worthwhile things, but it's not life changing money. My dad said something in a drunken state to me when I was 18 that stuck with me: "£180 grand. £180 grand that b* stole from me. And it was the best £180 grand I've ever spent." I think I've adopted that philosophy.
• I think my sister has seen what my mother does and seen that it works. I mean, my mother is a manipulative low life scumbag, and it's gotten her a comfortable life gold digging in London. The only influence my sister had between the ages of 14-now is my mother. She's a product of her environment, and it got her the easiest 2k anyone has ever made.
• I believe a lot of the reasons for my mother's behaviour stems partly from narcissism, partly from her realisation that her greed and lust for money and power hasn't brought her happiness, but she refuses to admit it. She said to me once when I was about 12 years old "People that cross me suffer". I was used to bizarre shit like that and just thought that's normal, and it's just the cry of someone that's deeply hurt and doesn't know how to deal with it. The more I thought it over as the years went by, the more I realised that she turned more and more fucking mental after the death of her father, my grandfather. I really think that switched something in her. It's no excuse and I don't forgive her at all, but it's an explanation. And the fact that she can't make me or my father or the rest of us 'suffer' is probably filling her with rage, which puts a shit eating grin on my face every time I think about it.
• People just don't get it if they don't go through with it, and the thing that annoys me the most is they don't realise how lucky they are to be ignorant. I've had people tell me how strong the maternal bond is and look at me with furrowed brows when I tell them why I don't have a relationship with her. I know they're trying to work out what I did, which is why if the question comes up, I just tell people that she's dead. It does feel dirty, but for all I know she may well be. Well if anything I hope you know that it's not a reflection on you at all. You don't need a license to become a parent, which means literally anybody can do it - even the truly awful ones. You're not alone in your experiences, and there's at least one person here who knows what you've been through. Stay strong mate, the roads only up from here.
• I was a proper scum bastard when I first started to move to independence. I was 17, this had all kicked off, my father god love his soul was too depressed to really be a parent at that time, and the only experience I'd had with relationships was from watching my parents. I'm glad I learned the error of my ways, but I still stay up at night thinking of the people I've hurt. And I know that it's because, at that time, I was a product of my mother. I'm better than who I was, but it'll stick with me.

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Reminder: I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

Originally posted by u/wqzu 3 years ago on r/relationships.