Woman Lies To Husband About Her Sister Having HIV
Posted by: Wendy Atterberry
Filed in:
relationships
2:15PM, Friday August 14th 2009
Holy crap, you guys. I’ve heard some pretty sad stories about sibling rivalry, but this one takes the cake. A woman who grew up jealous and resentful that all her boyfriends lost interest in her the second they met her “stunningly beautiful” sister confessed to Slate’s resident advice columnist, Dear Prudence, that when she was dating her now-husband she lied to him about her sister having HIV so he wouldn’t be tempted to sleep with her! Now, years later, the husband still asks about the sister’s health, and the sister doesn’t understand why he always seems so concerned about her. The woman wants to come clean, but she doesn’t know how she can explain such a horrible lie. See how Prudence replies after the jump.
Prudence tells the woman that her lie is, indeed, terrible, and it’s a miracle she hasn’t been found out yet. The good news, she says, is that the woman recognizes how ugly her behavior is and wants to make amends. Prudie suggests taking the husband someplace private and telling him how she grew up jealous and resentful that everyone she dated lost interest in her the moment they met her “stunningly beautiful sister,” and letting him know she was worried the same thing would happen with him.
Confess that you told the terrible lie about her being HIV-positive just so it wouldn’t happen. Add that what you did is not a comment on his character but on your insecurity. Say your sister is in perfect health, but your lie has made you sick at heart, and all you can do is beg his forgiveness.
That’s good advice, but I’d also suggest investing in at least a few sessions of therapy to work out some of the baggage with her sister. At any rate, let’s hope the husband can forgive his wife for her lie, she can learn to forgive herself and get over her insecurity, and the two of them can move on.
Have you ever seen or experienced sibling rivalry anything this? [via Slate]
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*sam*
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 01:22 pm: [report]
when I was like 2 or 3, apparently I liked to throw metal Tonka trucks (like, the big ones) on my baby brother’s head while he was sitting quietly in his crib. my family jokes a/b it now, but they said that for a while, they couldn’t leave me unattended near him b/c they were seriously worried I would end up killing him.
...sorry Matt. :/
jimnist10
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 02:07 pm: [report]
When I was not-quite-3, my little brother was born and I was not a happy camper. Apparently I used to try to rip him out of my mother’s arms and say “Mommy, put the laundry away so we can play” and I would proceed to open a drawer for her to put the laundry aka my brother, away. I also once kneed my brother in the balls for beating me at Super Mario Brothers. Yeah, I wasn’t so nice to him for the first 8-10 years of his life, but we’re bff now. Awww… I miss my baby bro since he’s moved to L.A.! :-(
Hcpink
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 02:33 pm: [report]
I heard this on the Cane Show (Hot 99.5) in D.C. today… what a horrible story!
finally-bride
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 03:23 pm: [report]
wow, sad. i wonder if he ever tries and brings up the actual topic
Sobriquet
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 03:40 pm: [report]
I know this is an absolutely horrible thing to have done, but I totally sympathize. My little sis definitely got the looks of the family, luckily I got just about everything else. I mean, this woman should really have trusted that her husband (and her sister!) would love her enough not to do something like that, but if she’s had such bad experiences in the past you can’t blame her for being a bit desperate not to have them repeated.
moonblossom
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 04:27 pm: [report]
My sister is really pretty and has way more game than me. So…even though I never did anything like this, I sure thought about it
bjoontheupside
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 05:02 pm: [report]
My sister is eight years older than me and twice while we were growing up she tried or threatened to kill me. The first time was when I was just a baby and she threatened my parents that she would set my crib on fire…with me in it. She threatened this because she was mad at them. The second time was when I was a little older,(maybe three or four years-old) old enough to remember this anyway…we were taking a bath together and she tried to drown me. I remember her pushing on my chest and holding me under the water. Luckily, my mother came in when she heard splashing. To say the least, my sister and I don’t have much of a relationship.
PaulaDDN
wrote on August 16 2009 @ 11:48 am: [report]
Wow !! If she could say that about her own sister it means she has more personal issues than that, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She is s very insecure person and i think she really needs professional help. Im sure she will be fine afterwars because she wants to fix it and she already recognized she have a problem, she already gave the first step. Now she just have to talk with the husband… and maybe the sister also.
My sister is super hot, great body, she doesn’t even need to work out or diet, she is one of the lucky ones but i’ve never feel jealous of here,come on, everybody is diferent and we all have something special that the other person dont have, so let take advantage of our good things instead of focusing in the other people.
jackofhearts
wrote on August 17 2009 @ 07:12 am: [report]
When I was growing up I was a sociable, chatty, outgoing child. My brother was far more diffident and socially awkward.
He knew in early adolescence that he was gay, which made high school pretty hard for him (he never came out while at school, but the overbearing atmosphere was one of homophobia and machismo that he found very alienating). I, on the other hand, sailed through the lower grades of high school because of my confidence and good grades.
This all changed when he got to university and I entered the senior grades. He was able to come out, mature emotionally and academically and really come into his own. I, however, became slowly more alienated by my classmates who put beauty and the ability to attract boys as a top priority. I was an average looking kid (I’ve become better at working with what I’ve got!)and totally bought the shallow, Queen B, bitchy mentality. My self-confidence and my self-worth plummeted.
Over a few years I came to resent my brother hugely. I missed being the sociable, popular sister. I know these are pathetic, ugly feelings and I felt ashamed of them at the time but I felt that his success somehow undermined me. I eventually began to see a counsellor and figure out some of these issues. He never knew how much I resented him - I’m a master at hiding my feelings - and I’m happy to say that I’m well on the way to overcoming the problem.
A big part of my recovery had to do with the fact that our lives have diverged - we went to the same high school and uni at first - so there isn’t the same level of comparison any more. We still see each other frequently but our lives have developed independently.
bogart4017
wrote on August 17 2009 @ 12:53 pm: [report]
Thank god i had four brothers and only 1 sister. There are a lot of sister issues here. Luckily the only issues we’ve had was between my third-born brother who i was always very close to. As time went on he went from talkative to gregarious to down-right obnoxious as we became adults. After reading between the lines for a few years i finally asked him directly what his problem was. He told me he felt as if i got some sort of special treatment because i was the oldest. I informed him the rest of them got all the breaks because the parents already made all the mistakes on me! He is still over-compensating (his games of one-upmanship are absolutely adolescent) but eventually he’ll get some kind of help.