Aunt gave up on selfish niece

Adapted from a recent online discussion.

Dear Carolyn:

You've written about relatives who play favorites -- that's me! My older niece appreciated everything I ever gave her. Her younger sister felt entitled to everything and never, ever said thank you -- not even when I left work to pick her up for school when she missed her bus. When she turned 18, I stopped sending gifts, doing favors, everything.

Her older sister noticed and felt guilty. The younger sister simply cut me out of her life. I was useful to her only when I was giving her what she wanted. People might want to appreciate generous relatives.

-- Favorite-Playing Aunt

Of course. But there are situations where the favoritism is capricious and cruel, sometimes even driven by the gift-giver's psychological need to secure an ally and create a rift between the haves and have-nots. Just ask siblings of a favorite who could do no wrong, and who was used to remind everyone else of their failures. In those cases, seeing the aunt as "generous" is a slap in the face to her designated have-nots.

To Aunt:

Please knock it off. The more sensitive, conscientious of the two sisters is the one you are hurting. Swallow your righteousness and give some love to the less pleasant sister (who might actually need it more for the fact that she's able to ask for it less), if for no other reason than for the sake of the nicer sister who aches to solve this problem and has no power to do so.

-- Anonymous

Your "who may actually need it more" insight could be its own thread.

Sometimes people really are selfish, and that might be the case here, but I also think it's common for people to ascribe simple, negative motives where more subtle and complicated things might be happening.

For example, the accessible charm of the older sister might have bestowed on the younger sis an entire childhood of being overlooked, ignored, misread, incrementally black-sheeped. By the end of the process, black sheep are easy to write off -- "She's so entitled!" -- but what about those points along the way when adults could have acted like adults and made the extra effort, possibly pre-empting a future where Black Sheep wants no part of family?

Certainly enough there for debate.

On the statement "the one who loves less, controls the relationship":

The person who loves the most also gains the most joy from the relationship. If it ends, this person usually has learned more and carries more into the next relationship.

It's not much fun to be the unloving one, power or no.

-- S.