'My sister (36F) and I (35F) signed a 3 year lease. She got pregnant 3 months in. How do I tell her I need to move out?' + UPDATE
"My sister (36F) and I (35F) signed a 3 year lease. She got pregnant 3 months in. How do I tell her I need to move out?"
I (35F) moved across the country (Canada) with my son (m14) and my dog to start new. I asked my sister, 36F, to join me in the city. She lived in a small town 2 hours south from where we live now. I accepted a job offer, as did my sister and we signed a 3 year fixed rental agreement in a 3 bedroom house.
My sister and I are very different people. We have a complicated, but supportive relationship. We have a lot of love and respect for one another. We also have some on/off co-dependency issues from our childhood.
Things were going well for the first few months. We were transitioning into this dynamic and it wasn’t always easy, but we found systems and ways to make it work. Everything changed 3 months ago.
My sister met a man, and conceived on her first date. The baby is due in April. It’s a welcomed surprise. My sister is experiencing a difficult start to her pregnancy—insomnia, stress, thyroid issues. We have not been getting along.
My son and I can do nothing right. It’s the little things compounded. My sister is also quite entitled—openly expresses and reinforces this attribute with humour. In her pregnancy, it’s been worse. There’s little to no consideration.
For example, she’s struggling with the sound in the house. She leaves her door open for her cat and refuses to wear earplugs. Instead, she demands for my son and I to vacate the living room and kitchen at 8pm because she can hear us.
I don’t get home until 7pm and need to make dinner. Another example is that I had been giving her upwards of $600/m in groceries. I have a lot of allergies and she wouldn’t accommodate these allergies so I would often need to eat alone and buy additional groceries.
It hurt me to learn that she had her groceries supplemented by the father of her unborn child, meaning that she had been asking for money for groceries that were already paid for. My salary is less than my sister’s and I have a dependent.
She decided that the child’s father (m36) would move into this house, with his dog and his cat, and sleep in the foyer at the top of the stairs without consulting with myself or my son.
This area of the house is not closed in. It’s positioned above the living room/kitchen—an area that my sister has already deemed inaccessible between 8pm and 6am, and also between 5pm and 7pm. My son and I are starting to get forced into our bedrooms off the entry hallway.
They split up 2 weeks ago, and he’s still moving in. He’s a bit of a dirty guy and my sister is Type -A. To put things into perspective, she has cleaned out his house, and his two storage units in the last 3 months.
He’s not much of a cook, or cleaner. She said that I’m lucky because I get to benefit financially from this. I’ll pay less in rent and “I don’t even deserve it”. Those were her actual words. I actually like the guy. I don’t like the way my sister treats him, but he’s a nice guy.
I moved for a lot of reasons. My son’s was experiencing anxiety, and self esteem issues around his father (never married, separated after birth of our son, in-and-out of the picture) whom had drained our collective savings account for the kid’s education because of addiction.
I wasn’t able to secure a suitable salary with my education to get ahead. To be fully honest here, my sister and I had a hard upbringing. The only reason I stayed in our hometown was so that my son had access to his father, and well, a time came where his father’s absence would be more beneficial than his presence.
I moved so that we could start a new life, and have peace. We are not experiencing peace. I confronted my sister about the use of communal spaces, and that she would have to find solutions to limit the way sound affected her.
I confronted my sister about shared bills, and have asked her to post the bills on the fridge, and that we would no longer be splitting most groceries. I told her that I’m not entirely comfortable with someone moving in here.
It’s not within the rights of our lease and we would need to communicate this with the landlord, and ask to break the lease. My sister’s response to everything has been emotional, reluctant, and avoidant. She simply cries, yells and walks away. She claims that I am abandoning her.
I feel exhausted, exploited and manipulated. It’s affecting my work, my personal life and my ability to enjoy life. My son is experiencing some anxiety too. He has sports and extracurricular most days after school and I am adamant to discuss adult things without my son there.
However, he has witnessed some arguments and knows that we are not getting along. I want to leave this situation. I know I have to. I feel like I am abandoning her. Not just because she tells me so, but because everything is crazy and I want to leave.
I didn’t sign up for this. I don’t agree to live with my sister, her estranged ex bf of 3 months, and his two pets. I don’t know where to start, how to do this. I know I need a couple months to save up for first and last.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's inital post:
Have the guy take over your lease and leave before the real madness starts.
Sea_Luck_8537 (OP)
I think this is the best route. I had originally pitched this idea and my sister had said he wouldn’t move in. A month passed and she decided he would move in. I originally said that I would stick it out until June, marking 1 year on our lease, but I just can’t stick it out that long. My work and mental state are suffering too much.
Edit: In all fairness, I have been fickle agreeing to this arrangement and disagreeing with the arrangement of the father to be moving in. It’s difficult to think about my son or myself when I can clearly see my sister is in so much distress.
Despite all the comments here about her being awful, she’s still my sister, and I love her. I will continue to support her, but on my terms. Her feeling abandoned is valid to her because that’s how she feels and she’s afraid. It’s not as easy as walking away. I want our relationship to get better—not worse.
You never agreed to live with someone who treats you like shit. She has zero respect or regard for your needs or your son's needs. She is choosing to ignore your feelings at every turn.
As soon as you possibly can, give her thirty days' notice that you and your son are leaving. In the meantime, do what's best for you and your son, not necessarily what she has decided she wants you to do (such as changing your habits and staying out of common spaces).
Three months later, the OP returned with an update.
Posting on iternet was an absolute wake-up call. My sister found the post. Her and her ex totally berated me in a government building conference room after hours. When I was adamant about moving out, things got substantially worse.
My sister decided he would not move in, and we would both move out. I notified the landlord to give him 60 days notice. I found a place for myself, and my son. It’s within my budget, and absolutely perfect. With an exit in sight, things were starting to become tolerable.
Come mid November, there was still the issue of shared assets, so I braced the difficult conversation with my sister via text requesting to set a date and time to discuss things. Her actual reply was “suck my dick, I’m blocking you.” I remember being shocked. This was actually out of character.
My son and I got in late that night to find that the internet password had been changed with a message on the chalkboard that as soon as I drop the topic of shared assets and prepay the upcoming electric bill, she would not reveal the wifi password.
We live in an area without cell coverage, so I couldn’t even message my sister to call her out. I’m not proud, but I went to the garage and unplugged the router, and locked it in my truck. When she came to me, she was furious.
I can hardly remember what she said now—what I can say is that she was very cruel and near violent. In that verbal vomit she said “You have no idea what I’ve been through - I miscarried.”
At that point, I asked her to give me a few minutes to process. I left shortly after, with my son and my dog, leaving the router on the porch. I’m embarrassed to say that I offered to stay the night, and keep her company.
I realize now that in order to support someone, we have to ask ourselves if this is safe, if we have the capacity to offer support and if this person has the capacity to accept support. She half way apologized a couple days later.
After that, she grieved independently, and almost silently. My son and I grieved independently from her, being careful to follow her direction and boundaries of “not taking about it”. Weeks felt like months. The house was cold. Any level of contact or coordination was the beginning of a fight.
In therapy I started to unpack the events over the last year. I learnt a great deal about myself, mostly in regards to my self integrity. I’ve come to understand my role in perpetuating her controlling behaviours, my lack of self-esteem which snowballed under our shared roof—leaving me in a state of ambivalence, and complacency.
I recognize the ways in which my sister held little to no regard to my autonomy, often using emotional manipulation to force my submission. I know this is abuse. Know that when she got cold, I got colder—I am not innocent in all this. Someone once described us as “an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force”. I think there are times where we play either role.
I carry deep compassion and love for my sister and remain forever empathic. I remain optimistic that she will come to understandings of her own that will reunite her with her humility. I am terribly sorry for her loss, and often find myself worried about her well-being, I have hope that in time, we can build a stronger, more sustainable dynamic.
I am painting my bedroom at my new place. Even with my son on the other side of the country this holiday, I feel at peace here. I wish my sister has peace too. A day will come where we can overcome some of these hardships, but that day is not today.
We are 5,600km away from our family this holiday and only 5km apart, but remain alone. We are clearly F’d up in more ways than one. I remain optimistic for our relationship. Merry Christmas & Keep the change—you filthy animal.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's update:
sounds like a lot of mess and hurt on both sides, you did the best with keeping distance, having therapy and living in peace with your son. you're so nice for being optimistic about your relationship, i hope the same too that eventually, you both find peace.
This story screams unreliable narrator. And I'm using the singular because OOP and the sister that commented may as well be the same person.
Yeah, I was with OP until the sister's comment and then I couldn't suspend my disbelief any longer. I'm willing to accept that OP and sister are real people, but after that comment OP just became too untrustworthy to believe at face value.
OP says her sister found it, so that confirms it wasn't a random stranger onine. If anything, OOP sounds like she's purposely lying online for sympathy and the sister was the more pitiable case.
I think I'm on the sisters side. I don't know what exactly is off about oop posts but they come off as manipulative. Maybe its the therapy-speak, or the passive voice or the overly flowery language, but Im more inclined to believe the sister. To be fair, I didnt fully read the bits about the boyfriend (which I think would be the most revealing), maybe once the melatonin wears off I'll reread.
I think that when it comes to relationships, we tend to want to sort everyone into victims and abusers. It absolutely is the case sometimes, with or without a power imbalance, and I don't want to minimize that. But sometimes it's just two people being shitty to eachother. If two people get into an argument and start a fist fight, you don't really say that one of them was physically abused the other.