The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on whether to renew a relationship with an estranged sibling.
Several years ago, I told my sister that I wouldn’t be upset if we never spoke again. Recently her husband, with whom I have a good relationship, asked me to reconsider. I’m torn. I don’t want to have any contact with her, but I don’t want to deny my two adult daughters contact with the only family that exists on my side.
Growing up, my sister and I experienced daily physical and emotional abuse from our mother, who was prone to frequent outbursts of terrifying rage. (My father was the invisible man, allowing her ego and anger to run amok.) Today I am in my early 70s. My sister is a few years younger. We were never close but we used to get together for holidays. We live hundreds of miles apart; my sister remained in the city where we grew up and where my mother continued to live after my father passed away.
Some time ago, my mother ran into health problems and was hospitalized. My sister told me that she had done her part and that now our mother was my problem. For a year, I traveled back and forth every weekend to deal with my mother’s health issues. Then I moved her to a retirement home near me, and until her death made hundreds of visits to see her there and in the hospital.
Throughout this period, my sister’s behavior was appalling. Before I moved my mother, she divided up her jewelry, taking everything of value for herself and leaving my two daughters with leftovers. (My sister said that as my mother’s only daughter she was entitled to the jewelry, and my girls should be grateful that they got anything.) When I wanted to arrange extra care for my mother, my sister said I could pay for it; she wasn’t going to allow me to piss away her inheritance, which was not substantial in any event.
After my mother’s death, I found the stress of dealing with my sister’s self-absorption and anger increasingly difficult. I know that my sister has her own legacy from our traumatic upbringing; she has talked about having been in therapy for decades. I’ve told my daughters that I absolutely don’t want to stand in their way if they want to interact with my sister. They have spoken with her a few times on the phone but found the calls awkward. My stress level is definitely lower without having to deal with my sister, but I wonder if I am being unreasonable about this. Name Withheld
There’s a sense in which you seem to be collateral damage, an incidental casualty of your sister’s justified anger toward her mother. Knowing what you do about what your sister has endured, wouldn’t it be great if you could just let go of your own rancor? Well, something of a paradox arises here. Respond to someone’s shabby behavior with resentment, and you’re treating her as a moral agent capable of making her own decisions. Respond with irenic understanding, and you’re treating her as a patient or a puppet, someone acted upon and controlled by larger forces. It’s a distinction that the philosopher P.F. Strawson marked as one between “reactive” and “objective” attitudes. “To understand all is to forgive all,” the old French maxim insists. Such forgiveness comes at a steep moral price.
Respond to someone’s shabby behavior with resentment, and you’re treating her as a moral agent capable of making her own decisions.
At this point in your life, you may certainly conclude, adopting the reactive posture, that your obligations toward your sister have been eroded by her disregard for you; because she doesn’t seem to value her relationship with you, you struggle to find value in your relationship with her. You have commendably insisted that your strained relationship with your sister shouldn’t impede your daughters from establishing their own ties. If that hasn’t gone well, it isn’t obviously your doing.
But there is another relationship that you do value, which has associated obligations, too: It’s with your brother-in-law. You might want to spend some time with him and your sister, not for her sake but for his. That argues for trying to build a relationship with your sister that you can value — a relationship with a person, not a patient. The work of repair, I’d guess, would involve both hearing her out and asking her to acknowledge that she has let you down.
Although certain religious traditions teach that we should forgive unconditionally, forgiveness is more naturally seen as a response to remorse. And if you and your sister fail to find common ground, you can tell your brother-in-law that you made an effort but no headway.
A friend of my husband’s has repeatedly voiced anti-vaccination views. Recently, I found that he procured vaccination papers without being vaccinated so that he could travel and go out in public. This act of fraud has crossed the line for me. He often travels to countries without high vaccine levels, so the chance of him hurting others is high. I asked my husband to consider drawing back from this friendship to show that he is not condoning this. Am I making too big a deal of it? During Covid, it’s been difficult to keep up friendships, so a loss of this one would be hard for my husband. Name Withheld
It has been curious, amid the pandemic, to see normally law-abiding people exempt themselves from laws because they don’t agree with their rationale. Even if you thought (against all the evidence) that vaccines do no good, you wouldn’t be entitled to second-guess the judgment of political officials who have taken expert advice and made rules. Pandemic scofflaws like this man are making decisions for other people — people who might not have chosen, say, to consort with the unvaccinated.
As we look forward to a post-pandemic (if not post-Covid) era, maintaining your other friendships should get easier. In the meantime, I see no reason not to let this man know where you stand. As the social psychologist Tom R. Tyler argued in a classic study, norms of legitimacy, more than fear of punishment, explain why people obey the law. By sounding off, you’ll be helping to sustain those norms.
What has protected us here is the whole scheme: vaccinations, certificates and so on. Any individual defection isn’t likely to cause a great deal of immediate harm. The main wrong he’s doing is displaying an egocentric contempt for all those who have troubled themselves to support the scheme by putting in the small contributions that make society work.
My spouse and I are fully boosted seniors. I am currently cautious in all things, having a compromised immune system. After the holidays, we agreed to indoor restaurant dining with friends who had just returned from a family visit to the Midwest.
As we were leaving the restaurant, the wife mentioned that she had a forged Covid-19 vaccination card. She said that she had Covid early in 2021, has antibodies, tests herself and never got vaccinated. When my spouse questioned her husband privately about this, the husband backpedaled, claiming that she didn’t have a forged Covid vaccination card (which could be a felony) but that restaurants don’t always check for cards.
This was the third time we have met these folks for dinner in recent months, arriving separately and always at a restaurant with indoor dining only. Our cards were invariably checked upon arrival. Their stories just don’t jibe. I am beside myself with disappointment at the blatant dishonesty. More important, I am conflicted having this knowledge and keeping it to myself, since we know many of the same people. Name Withheld
People who have had Covid will generally gain some measure of immunity as a result. But they’re even better protected — and less likely to transmit the virus — when they’re vaccinated and boosted as well. You were dining in January, a month when Covid killed some 60,000 Americans. Here we’ve got a woman who, in ways I’ve just touched on, was shirking a system created for the general welfare, and elevating the odds of exposure for an immune-compromised friend; and a husband who was lying to you.
You should have told them what you thought and felt free to share your concerns with other acquaintances. This couple abused your friendship and forfeited whatever consideration this relationship might otherwise have conferred. Your attitude to them can be appropriately reactive.
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. His books include “Cosmopolitanism,” “The Honor Code” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” To submit a query: Send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.)
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