I have a lengthy query regarding how to get a relative to repay the money they owe you. First some background: I recently got married and relocated to a very far-off country. Nearly a year has passed, and everything is wonderful (except where my sister is concerned).
My Close Knit Sister Owes Me Lot Money How
My “close knit” family, who are at best intrusive and at worst emotionally abusive, has not handled it well. Growing up, my sister and I were very close, and she helped me with our parents and extended family (usually).
She is a year older than I am, but we have always been friends and attended the same college, etc. She has always been a high achiever, but she has also been immature and VERY emotional/needy. There are some details there, but I won’t go into them.
Stay With Us
She tells me she just booked her tickets and is coming for 10 WEEKS and is so excited to STAY WITH US a few months after the move. We recently got married, live in a studio apartment, are still settling in, and have a limited budget. I caution her that perhaps this isn’t the best course of action, but she is adamant that because of all the travelling she will be doing, she won’t have much time to attend because the reservation is already made, and changing it would cost a fortune.
Okay, I suppose? She shows up and acts like a complete shit. She wants to go out every day (and spends a tonne of money), never pays for anything, including groceries or other necessities, and even makes my husband do her laundry (long story), all while whining that she is bored.
Has broken down in tears more than once because I’ve made her feel like “not a guest.” Everything revolves around her, even when she literally set the kitchen on fire (really long story). She reportedly finds it difficult to spend the entire day at home alone, but she won’t do anything by herself (she did set the kitchen on fire, though). She’s a passive-aggressive b*tch, and I’m already under a lot of pressure.
Turned Out
It turned out she wanted to travel… She mistakenly believed that I would be joining her (but not the new hubs). I won’t go on vacation for longer than two weeks. The two weeks she was the focus of were, to put it mildly, stressful and unpleasant.
She takes up all of my extra time and is so abhorrent that even my developing friends are aware of how cruel she is to me. Hey, it’s family, so I can deal. In retrospect, it seems like she threw at me every script from our mother’s or family’s emotional abuse playbook, and I should have ejected her.
Conclusion
Anyway, this is the real problem. Because “hey we’re booking together it’s easier to just do it at once,” she kept asking my husband and I to put purchases on our cards so she could pay us back. Additionally, she once had to wait a while to receive new cards after her wallet was stolen or lost. I now know that this is a recipe for disaster, but I also know that she makes a lot more money than I do—in the mid six figures—and that she would definitely be able to make the repayments.
She agreed after a lengthy discussion about repaying us right away. To cut a long story short, after our trip is over, we show her the spreadsheet listing everything she owes us, and she promises to pay right away when she gets home.
