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Dear Eric: My younger sister and I are 18 months apart in age and used to be very close. Slowly over the years we have grown apart and somehow, we developed a strong undertow of animosity in our interactions. We now really only talk through our mother as a filter. I am trying to find a way to restart a friendly relationship and return to at least civil communication.

I find it hard to hide my judgment of her life choices that have led her to live at home with my parents for the last year and a half while she tries to lose enough weight for the army to take her, despite the fact she is a fully licensed veterinarian. She would be working as a vet for the army.

In the meantime, she hasn’t had a full-time job and seems uninterested in pursuing anything with any permanence while she mooches off our parents. Clearly, I have some unexplainable anger and frustration with her approach to life that I’m having trouble with.

On her end, she takes the firm position that she hates little children. All little children. Her nieces are no exception. She once told me that looking at a baby to her is like looking at a piece of rotted meat. While I was holding my baby. She does everything she can to avoid me and my children.

And I don’t want to leave behind my children for activities with her, especially when doing so will just make me resent her.

What suggestions do you have for ways to bridge this gap so that we don’t continue to just grow apart and stop ever speaking to each other?

– Frustrated Firstborn

Dear Firstborn: I’ve read what is driving you apart, but I don’t see what brings you together or on what commonalities, beyond genetics, you’re hoping to build a relationship. So, it would be helpful to approach the solution by asking yourself what’s possible, and then asking that of her, as well.

Think about what connected you when you were close. It may be that this period of harmony was when you were much younger, and so the changes and priorities of adulthood may make that harder to reconnect to. But there’s probably still a nugget in there.

Also think about what you appreciate about your sister. It may be a healthy exercise to think about something you enjoy or respect every time your mind turns to your annoyance over her living situation and career plans. This isn’t just mindless positivity. You can’t really change what she’s choosing to do with her life, so it doesn’t do you any good to keep stewing about it.

You both have to prioritize healthy connection and peaceable communication in your interactions. It’s a good idea to talk about how you can both do it, affirm it’s something you both want, and talk through ways that you can interrupt old processes, whether that means just clocking these things for yourselves or establishing a system through which you can flag the other when the commentary gets too critical.

Dear Eric: A coworker regularly makes emphatic declarations of no longer doing something because of her convictions. Examples include not shopping at certain stores because of their poor environmental reputation and not travelling to destinations due to the harmful government in place that includes human rights violations and the rollback of earned women's rights.

The issue is she continues to shop at those stores and vacation in those destinations. By openly describing her store purchases and vacations, she clearly isn't trying to hide that she's going back on her word

This has gone on for several years, and I'm uncomfortable with trying to look interested rather than disgusted. If I point out how she makes these grand announcements of not supporting these stores and countries but continues to do so, she'll be angry.

Any suggestions on how to respond when she brings up these topics?

– Annoyed

Dear Annoyed: Well, what’s wrong with making her angry? She’s introduced her ethics as a point of conversation in the workplace, and she’s made her spending habits another point of conversation. If her ethics don’t align with her actions, it’s reasonable that someone would say something about it. It’s not as if you’re doing surveillance on her or trying to entrap her in some way. She feels the need to share it so feedback shouldn’t be a surprise. She’s free to dismiss said feedback or to take it under consideration. But her feelings about it are her responsibility.

Should you wish to just stay out of it altogether, consider releasing yourself from the expectation to look interested. You can gently change the subject, or you can simply say that you’re focused on work at the moment.

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)

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