Family Feuds·
SISTERLY BOUNDARIES
Two sisters clash over a spare bedroom, with one woman demanding rent and rules while the other guards her peace, sparking a family feud that winds up online.
Let her stay, or keep the boundary?
Be one of the first to vote.
The fight started with a place to sleep. A 39-year-old woman, newly separated from her husband, was living with her parents, and she hated it so much she begged her 25-year-old sister to take her in instead.
The parents' house, according to the younger sister, came with "perfectly reasonable rules": "clean up after yourself, no guest over night, quiet when they go to bed, etc.." That was apparently too much for the older sister, who wanted out. So she turned to the poster and asked to move into the two-bedroom house she lives in alone.
The answer was no.
The poster said their lifestyles are too different and that she didn't want to rearrange her home. Her house had been gifted to her by their grandparents after she finished her bachelor's degree, and she was using the spare bedroom for work, sewing, and crafts. Giving that room up would mean giving up her setup. She wasn't interested.
But the sister kept pushing. She called crying and begged again, so the poster laid out exactly what moving in would look like. She said she would have rules of her own and would expect the sister to help with bills and groceries. In her words, "I too would have rules and would expect her to contribute to the light bill and groceries."
The list was blunt. The sister would need to get a job and stay employed for the entire stay. There would be "no guest," a "10pm curfew," "Cleaning up after herself," and no "not bothering my belongings." On top of that, the poster said, "I would expect her to pay 25% of the light bill and either buy her own food or contribute the same amount to groceries."
That's when the conversation blew up.
The sister reportedly screamed that the poster was "controlling, greedy," and accused her of being horrible for "you want her to be homeless." Then she took the argument public, posting about it on Facebook.
Now the younger sister is left wondering whether she went too far by refusing the move. Her parents, at least, are on her side. They think she did nothing wrong.
She isn't so sure. "My goal is to protect my peace and sanity," she wrote, but after the shouting, the Facebook post, and the accusations, she's asking if she's the asshole for not letting her sister move in.