I always feel like I get good advice from here so I'm going to post again and keep my fingers crossed.

To start, my sister, we will call her A, and I had a really good relationship all through my teenage years and into college. We always used to talk to each other and I considered her one of my best friends. We texted constantly once I moved away and we always talked to each other about issues we were having. Two years ago, everything changed. She came out to everyone as gay and started to have a lot of depression (it was genetic and we all have it). At some point, something happened with her friends and she had a suicide attempt. She went to the hospital for 10 days and then was released and seemed to be doing better, aside from the normal teenager stuff. She said she felt suffocated at my parents house and wanted to visit me, because they locked her down and were really weird with her when she got home from the hospital. She came to stay with me and my husband for a week during the summer. Long story short, we got in a fight and she had a very serious suicide attempt at my apartment. Ever since this, our relationship has been weird, to say the least. I mean, how could it not be?

Well, within the last year, she turned 18 and moved out of my parents house to live 450 miles away with her girlfriend who she met while she was in treatment the first time around. During this year, she has been making a ton of poor decisions IMO. I haven't really expressed this to her because we don't really talk and I know she wouldn't ever agree anyway so I don't see a point in starting drama unnecessarily. She has moved a lot, has a job doing something she never even really went after, and she is trying to rush her rocky relationship along.

During the week of my wedding, her and her girlfriend were staying at my parents house with me and it was just super weird and awkward. She didn't hardly speak more than 2 sentences to me during the whole week and then she left right after my ceremony. She left saying "We're really tired and we want to go back to our house and sleep in our own beds".

My husband and I, at first, weren't too offended but then as we stewed about it a little more, we got super disappointed and hurt. We spent so much time and money putting together the wedding and she was hardly present (she only even made it into 4 photos, 2 were family photos and 2 were as she was leaving). I also was irritated because WE were tired and WE wanted to sleep in our own beds but we were here putting on everything and SHE needed sleep. A week after the wedding, I called her to talk to her. I told her how we were disappointed but didn't want to hold it against her because we know that she can't fix it. We just wanted her to know how we felt. I told her how even when I was angry, I couldn't even go to the point of saying I would leave her wedding early because I would want to see her happy.

As our conversation progressed, I got to the point where I told her that it didn't seem like she was happy. I didn't want to start an argument, but that's how I felt and I wanted to be honest with her. She got super upset and got off the phone with me. She started to make it about how I don't like her girlfriend, but that had nothing to do with it.

TLDR; My sister and I had a good relationship, it went bad and now we don't talk. She left my wedding early, I told her she didn't seem like she's happy, and now she is even more upset with me. I don't know how to fix our relationship from here.

PING ME!

Was your family supportive when she came out? Finding yourself can be a difficult time, and LGBT+ youth are 4x as likely to attempt suicide as straight youth. If she felt like your family wasn't supportive, it could be a factor in why your relationship changed.

I thin, at this point, if you want to fix your relationship, you'll have to start small. Like, talking on the phone once a week WITHOUT bringing up your disappointments with her life decisions. It can be pretty hard to have someone you aren't close with make a judgement about your happiness or decisions without them asking for the advice. So, maybe wait to talk about anything more serious (unless you're worried about her safety at any point, then you might need to mention it) until you repair your relationship a bit.

I'm gonna second . If she felt like your parents weren't supportive, bordering on controlling, it's probably not a welcome feeling to be met with expectations that she doesn't feel like she can or want to live up to. It's completely legitimate to be concerned, but it's not gonna change anything to tell her that her life choices are bad. If she doesn't really feel like part of the family, it must be pretty exhausting to be around said family for the wedding and put on a facade of being so happy and joyful. I don't know how important she was for the wedding party, was she a bridesmaid? Did she have any duties she did not fulfill? To me, your reaction was a little much, and I can see how she might be upset.

You have to come to her to fix the relationship. Her life might not be what you'd like for her, but it's her choice, and you gotta respect that. I know how it feels to want such good things for your loved ones, and then they choose not as good things as you know they deserve, but then you gotta let them make their own mistakes and be there for them IF it burns to the ground, and not WHEN.

If she's not ready to mend your relationship, be sure to let her know that you're there for her if she needs you to be, and when she's ready to fix it, you'll be there. If she wants to try and mend it, pythonesque's method is good.

I wish you all the luck. Congratulations on your wedding as well. :)

I can understand this if they weren't supportive, but they were. Everyone supported her, especially me and she's even told us that. It has nothing to do with being gay. My parents were controlling about her being around friends that were bad influences and they locked all the medications away. It was that kind of controlling where she felt like they didn't trust her, which they didn't because it was my mother's medications that she overdosed with.

I get what you guys are saying, but the ONLY reason we're not close is because she knows that I got a lot of questions after what happened at my apartment and it got awkward. I respect her choices, she just tries to blame everyone else for the problems she causes. She doesn't respect people and their feeling and then she blames them for the reason she did things.

I get where it seems like my reaction was a bit much for her not really being a part of my wedding, but she's my SISTER. I hadn't seen her in months until the wedding and then she didn't talk to me the whole time. She wasn't mad at me, she was mad at my parents and that's why she left. And she was mad at my parents because she wasn't supposed to bring her dog down and she did anyway and then didn't have anywhere to house it other than my parents' house.

It sounds like she doesn't feel like she can talk to you, to be honest. Whether it's because of the problems with your parents or awkwardness over the wedding or her feeling like you disapprove of her girlfriend, it seems like she doesn't feel comfortable or safe talking with you. Pressuring her to talk isn't going to help, so asking a bunch of questions before she's ready to discuss things or calling her to tell her you're disappointed in her isn't going to make her want to open up more (even if you're warranted in being disappointed with her attitude at the wedding). It's going to make her close off. Starting to establish a more casual relationship again (casual conversations on the phone, text messages, emails, Facebook posts of dog videos with things like 'this made me think of you!') will start to improve that relationship so maybe you could eventually have those more serious conversations again. Maybe ask her how she's feeling and hold back on giving your opinion until she asks for it. It might open a door for her to eventually confide in you.

I have a younger sister I don't really get along with, so I sympathize with how difficult it can be. We're friendly to each other now, talk occasionally and get together around holidays, and at times it makes me sad that we don't have a better relationship like we did when we were kids. There was a stretch of time I didn't talk to her because of how she treated me. Fixing relationships and improving them takes a lot of time.

My input may not be popular, but Im going to toss it out there nonetheless.

We arent in peoples lives to live them for them. We are all hugely different people who live lives in our own different ways. Doing it right or wrong isnt a thing. We are in one anothers lives to try and support each other when and how we can. I agree with you that theres not much point in telling her how you dont agree with how she is living her life, because she doesnt really need anyone elses permission.

As far as the decisions shes making that you dont agree with, the way I see it, you can either choose to be there for her when things get tough, or chose to let her go through it on her own.

People are complex. Relationships are even more so. Sometimes things will be strained. Thats allowed. Its often a part of a growth stage, if one allows it to be.

It actually seems to me that you are putting too much on her. You had a wedding. You did that for you. If she got tired or felt she needed to leave, shes allowed to leave, unless you had people sign away their rights to make their own decisions and look after their own needs. If you were tired, you as an adult need to make your own call about how you deal with that....not hold a third party responsible for suffering with you. (Im only saying suffering here because it seems like thats a little bit what you are getting at...'We had to go through it and so she did too...and it was way worse for us').

Im glad you felt comfortable reaching out to her and expressing your feelings but again, where you said "I told her how even when I was angry, I couldn't even go to the point of saying I would leave her wedding early because I would want to see her happy." ...seems again like you are trying to hold her responsible for your feelings. It may not be the case, but maybe she assumed that you could be in charge of your own feelings at your wedding, and focus on the event and occassion, instead of relying on her to fulfill whatever specific expectations you had put on her.

And honestly it would come off as SERIOUSLY condescending for someone to say that they didnt think I was happy. I dont know how you are expecting her to take or what shes meant to do with that and its likely she blew up at bit and tried to focus things down to a certain point. She can express her feelings about how she feels about how you treat her girlfriend, even if you dont think it had anything to do with it. Obviously she did. And thats valid. I would assume she feels like her girlfriend is her main point of support now, and so shes going to bring that up and defend it.

That all said, I do understand why you're upset an Im sorry things have gone downhill. I just think it might valuable to maybe look at it from her perspective, if you can. The best way to do that is to get it from her.

BUT it really might be a good idea to take some time, get some space and objectivity for both of you. It seems like theres an abundance of emotion and indignation, and thats not allows a great mix for actually FIXING things (though a great mix for further stirring things up).

I always like writing something up to give myself time to really process what Im thinking and feeling and give myself a chance to step away from it and understand what the other side might be seeing. It also helps keep the conversation focused and to allows her some space as well.

Thank you for your feedback, it has seriously been the most helpful of all. You put things in a way where I can see where she's coming from, without assuming to know complicated family dynamics. I have not really talked further with my sister since the first post, I think it's best for everyone that way. I feel like our relationship will not ever be close to or at the level it was until she learns to be her own human, separate from anyone else including me. I am just frustrated and want my sister back. I want her to succeed, but she needs to do that on her own and I can't control that or help her. 😔

Im really glad if I was useful at all, so far as my own thoughts were on the issue. I am hopeful that some day you will both have a relationship to and with one another that you can cherish. Best!