“My Sister Is Leaving Town For My Milestone Birthday!”
I know I am really feeling sorry for myself right now, but I am very hurt and can’t help it. My sister and I are close, and I can’t fathom why she would do this. Am I overreacting? Any advice for me please? — In Tears
I can understand feeling a little hurt, but anything beyond feeling some disappointment and then moving on would be overreacting. If it was important to you to do something special with someone special on your 60th birthday, you should have planned something instead of passively waiting for the plans to be made for you. It’s not as if you don’t have family — you have a husband and two daughters — and I hope you have some friends, too. Could you not ask your husband to take a day off from work if it is important you celebrate all day? Or meet you for a lunch date even? Could you not travel to visit either of your daughters? I imagine your husband gets off work by evening, in time for a celebratory birthday dinner, right? So, it’s just in the daytime hours that you would be alone? And that’s unreasonable to you? What is it that you think your sister should do with you all day, anyway?
I’m sorry I’m not more sympathetic; it just feels kind of childish to completely give up agency of your own birthday and then get more than a little disappointed when no one else takes the reins and gives you the kind of day you want. You’re a grown woman – when you realized you couldn’t spend the daytime hours of your birthday with your husband or kids, and it wasn’t satisfactory to do something on your own that day until your husband was off work, you should have reached out to your sister (and/or friends! do you have friends?) to plan something. Sure, it would have been nice if your only local sibling had reached out to you first, but the fact that she didn’t doesn’t mean you are not important to her! She may have assumed your husband had it covered, or she didn’t realize how important it was to you to do something special during the daytime hours of your birthday. Maybe the date to meet the distant relative from the internet was one that worked for all parties and it simply didn’t occur to her to reserve the date for you when, to her knowledge, there was nothing planned and she didn’t realize you were expecting HER to plan something.
Anyway, you have a few days to get something on the calendar so you aren’t sitting around all alone on your 60th birthday, feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for your husband to get off work. (And if you haven’t planned something to do with him yet in the evening, don’t wait for him to do it; get on the horn and make some reservations somewhere or, at the very least, tell him where you want to go and give explicit instructions for him to make a reservation.) If you have friends, call them and see if anyone can meet for brunch and maybe a nice drive if it’s a pretty day. Go antiquing or to the spa or see a movie or go to a museum or — I don’t know, whatever someone like you would want to do on her 60th birthday where you live. This is your day and your life – you’re in charge.
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Lw1 you do realize you can celebrate your birthday on a day that isn’t your actual birthday right? Pick a day everyone you want to be there is available and celebrate! Even if you’ve been officially 60 for a week. You can still celebrate it. Hell I can’t remember the last time we celebrated Thanksgiving or Christmas on the right day. We just pick a day that works for everyone and do it then
Wow. What a contrast in letters and circumstances! And Wendy’s answers to both were incredibly perfect. LW 1 – chill and spa day it! That’s what I’d do as first choice. I texted my sis in law the other day for her bday asking what she’s doing and she said hopefully not have to deal with anyone – my thoughts exactly LOL. I’m the type who would have fun if someone planned something for me but I would book a weekend stay at a spa, or casino with a spa in a heartbeat – and the KICK IT for the weekend. Making myself jealous right now.
LW 2 – wow, you are strong. Keep up the good work! My mom was nut too – though not to this extent – so I still allow her around but give her plenty of instructions. But we have had years long breaks and again, she was nowhere near as egregious as what you mom sounds like, so kudos to you.
Wouldn’t it just be incredibly ironic if LW1’s family was planning a surprise party for her?
That being said, I don’t understand people and their leaving things like this up to chance. People are not mind readers. If you want something in life, you need to make what you want explicitly clear to those you want it from. Now if you had told everyone how important your 60th was to you, and everyone blew you off, I’d get the angst. But, it is a week from the day, and you’re now just mentioning it. If you act like something is not a big deal, why would anyone else in your life act otherwise?
When I was coming up on my 40th, I sat my husband down and said, my 40th is coming up. PLEASE do not plan a surprise party for me. Miss Saigon is coming into town, can we go see that instead? Guess what we did for my birthday? A bunch of my family and friends got together for my birthday to have a nice dinner and go see Miss Saigon. During that conversation, he told me he’d never had a surprise party and wished he had. Guess what we did for his 40th, I threw a huge surprise party for him.
So many “problems” we have in life are a result of us just not using our words and communicating with the other person.
This! I’m extremely particular and I learned early on to take the reigns if I want something “special” and I plan appropriately.
I celebrated my 40th in January. I wanted to go on fun trip with my husband (we went to Africa) and I wanted to celebrate with my girlfriends. The weekend before my 40th, I planned a great Saturday brunch at one of my favorite restaurants that led into day drinking. I paid for everyone of course because I’m 40 and I don’t want people to pay for my “special” days. The weekend after, we left for our trip. The day of… I don’t think we did anything. Since my birthday is in January and the weather in my city was super crappy on both my 30th (also planned by me) and 40th, I declared that for my 50th, we’re going an island somewhere.
Two of my other girlfriends are turning 40 this year and both have already planned something special. My calendar is marked.
So, LW, don’t passively wait for things to happen. Make them happen!! Travel to see your children. Ask one of them to visit you. Plan an evening out with your husband. Do something fun for yourself during the day. Personally, I would get a massage and enjoy lunch somewhere with a good book.
Also, communication is key!!!
LW1: Plan a beautiful 60th birthday party with your relatives and friends, and call your sister to find a date that will work for her. She might not be indifferent, but didn’t want to alter a commitment that was somehow complicated to make, toward basically a stranger. Let it be. I would offer myself a hair cut, a massage, a movie, whatever makes me feel really on a day vacation where I care about myself.
LW2: I am sorry about this abuse and your mother’s harassment. But I think you give her too much weight in your life if you flee her like this, at your own expense. Whatever she does, you can deny her any answer, you remain free to not react at all. You can’t make it as if she didn’t exist because she does. You can only control your part, so ignore her and consider that your sister can’t be trusted.
LW1) Eh. I’d say — Grow Up! But you’re sixty so clearly that will never happen.
LW2) Is your mother actually physically dangerous? You don’t seem to say as much. Sorry, but really? This all just sounds like an lot of drama — I mean why not just throw the card away in the Trash? Honestly? I can’t for the life of me think of a single reason why you would give out your address to anybody if it was truly that big of a deal to you. Unless you are addictive to drama, All these moves and blah blah blah. I dunno. Seems excessive. This address fiasco seems like a self created fifth act in the ongoing drama that is your life.
The LW included a lot of details that I left out for brevity sake. I don’t think anyone ever needs to explain why he or she would have a strict zero-tolerance for a family member who condoned child abuse. To accuse her of being “addicted to drama” because she doesn’t want her psychopathic, manipulative mother to know where she lives is gross and out of line.
Brise and BGM – Do not tell an abuse survivor that they are wrong for how they are handling it. That wasn’t her question.
Fine! Move again, LW2. Disrupt your life! Lose even more money. Give the abuser still more power.
LW Why be so angry and disappointed with your sister. Your husband is going to work that day and you don’t mind. Your kids aren’t coming home and you don’t mind. Your sister made her own plans and you mind. Why would it be more important for your sister to spend the day with you than your own immediate family? I would be very surprised if a relative was doing nothing with their family on their birthday but expected me to have planned to spend the day with them. People usually take their cue from you. You were planning nothing and neither was your family so it was pretty normal for your sister to assume you weren’t planning to celebrate. This just proves that your sister doesn’t read minds.
You’re wanting your sister to prove that you are more important that her plans to visit a distant relative. If your sister is involved in tracing the family tree and the distant relative has an entire branch already done I can see your sister not wanting to cancel on someone she barely knows. Canceling would make her flaky and unreliable. The family tree is for everyone in the family, including you. This isn’t her putting a distant relative ahead of you. It’s her choosing to keep her plans, that were already made, when you suddenly decided she should spend the day with you. It’s demanding and rude to expect her to cancel. She is taking her daughter with her. Her daughter is a closer relative to her than you are. You and your sister both grew up and married and created your own families. It seems like you are displacing your disappointment about your own family onto your sister. Maybe it feels safer to be angry with her?
Birthdays are truly awful. I wish that entire concept had never been dreamt up. They are nothing but endless headaches and disappointments for most people. I truly loathe birthdays.
I feel the same way about weddings. I loath everything about traditional weddings. I don’t begrudge people who have their hearts set on one, but I just don’t get the $30,000 appeal
I totally agree with you. I just don’t get it.
LW, yes you are being way too sensitive. Pick a day before or after your sister’s trip and celebrate your birthday with her…go out to eat or whatever. On your actual birthday go out to lunch with some friends or something.
LW: Before I started reading, I assume the milestone birthday was 18 or 21 or maybe even 30. Generally, by a certain age, people realize that birthdays are not that exciting or important as an adult. By seeing how other people don’t swoon over your own birthday and how life is so busy that we don’t spend much time on other people’s birthdays either. It’s fine to celebrate it, but basing your measure of someone’s love for you on their willingness to drop everything on the exact day of your birth 60 years ago is childish. Celebrate on another day with your loved ones. If you want to have a special day, plan things for yourself that make you happy with whoever is available, if anyone. Otherwise, celebrate with the only person in the world who cares the most about your birthday.
I never understand adults who care that much about their bday. Are you turning 60 or 6?
LW, i understand wanting to celebrate your birthday (milestone or not) as i do too. However, i plan things and invite people. It sounds like you just expected people to make a big deal out of it and that’s not fair. It’s also not fair to put the brunt of your unhappiness on your sister instead of on your husband and children. At this point if it’s too late for your husband to take it off or plan a lunch date with then you should take yourself out to celebrate. Plan a spa day/ order food/ etc.
LW – if you expressed your disappointment to your sister the same way you did in this letter, could she have forgotten it was your birthday and was too embarrassed to admit it? It seems unnecessarily cruel to flaunt the outing she has instead esp if you are so close.
Lots of commenters have said you need to be in control of your own celebration but maybe like me, youre a bit too scared of rejection to do that. I did however learn this somewhat earlier than turning 60 and also stopped getting disappointed when others didn’t acknowledge my birthday.
I hope you can arrange some treat for yourself and maybe a nice informal get together when your family are available.
Happy Birthday