Dear Carolyn: My sister and I are both divorced. For several years we’ve been getting together about once a week to drink wine and kvetch about work, kids, current events. Now she has a boyfriend. We have both dated fairly consistently, but this is the first guy who’s gotten a title and a spare key, from either of us.
Now they are a package deal. We are in our 50s; I thought the days of joined-at-the-hip couples were behind us. I like this man just fine, but he changes the whole tone and tenor of our hangouts.
I have asked her to leave him behind, which she now does about half the time. Our weekly get-togethers were sacred to me, and I’m not sure whether it’s time to just grieve for them. I swear I’m not just jealous!
— The Tagalong
The Tagalong: Please just say what you want. “Our weekly get-togethers were sacred to me. Any chance we can keep them going, and make other plans that include Boyfriend?”
As long as you’re making an effort to be inclusive and welcoming of her new love, I don’t see anything wrong with asking her explicitly for the one-on-ones to remain so.
Yes, you did bring it up already, but asking her “to leave him behind” with no mention of a plan to include him in other ways was perhaps not as attentive to her needs as you were being to your own. That, too, is something you can say outright — that you’re sorry you put it the way you did, assuming your representation here is accurate, and you’re all in on getting to know her guy better and sharing in her happiness. You’d just like this one weekly lifeline preserved.
Re: The Tagalong: Also be prepared for a new normal. Maybe having him there half the time is the best compromise you’ll be able to get from your sister. Her life has changed in a big way, and there’s no getting around that. I hope she will be up for seeing you solo once a week. If not, when you explain how important it is to you that you and she get solo time together, then make sure you’re willing to be flexible.
— New Normal
Re: The Tagalong: I misunderstood Tagalong as the Girl Scout cookie and kept wondering what cookies had to do with the question.
— I Must Be Hungry for Lunch
I Must Be Hungry for Lunch: Everything. They had everything to do with it.
Re: The Tagalong: Are there other friendships you could cultivate and make a bit more room for, that you haven’t because you have been so used to being fulfilled by the weekly get-together with your sister? Could deepening one or more of those replace some of what you feel you’re losing with your sister in terms of general support, etc.?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: Good point, thanks. It generally comes back to bite us when we let ourselves think there’s only one way to meet a need. Especially one we can’t control.
