ok, maybe jealousy is not the right word, but i feel EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE with my older (by 18 months) sister and feel horrible for feeling so!

bascially all my life we've grown up together and we've been fairly close though at times it feels like we have nothing in common. my sister and i are nothing alike, she was popular, i was goth. she is ditzy, i am brainy. she gets along with my parents, i can't hold a conversation longer than 2 minutes with them.

i know she looks up to me (even though i'm younger) because she's told me that before. she always tells me that she admires me for doing what i want, etc. my parents usually worry about her because she has a hard time living within her means and basically worried she has no direction in life.

she's had to rely on them to pay her bills and support her in all her (expensive) moves since she's been out of college. she now lives at home with them. i've never asked my parents for money since i left college and swear that i will never move home unless i'm dying or something.

well for the past year, she has been "experimenting" with what she wants to do (taking classes, etc..) and has decided that she wants to go to design school. this comes as a shock (well kind of) to everyone because she has wanted to be everything from: international diplomat, stewardess, marketing professional, etc. and now she has treaded on my sacred territory (i went to school for architecture and do design now). well, i've been totally supportive of her while she's doing this summer program, telling her my experiences, giving her hints, etc. my parents will pay for whatever for her as long as she goes back to school.

well here's where the jealous/competitive streak comes in. she keeps calling me and telling me how our parents are so worried about ME now (since i'm unemployed). and they keep asking her why can't i go do the same thing that she's doing (hello earth to mom and dad!?! um, i do!?!?). and i can't help but feel my sister feels some glee in this reversal of situations now.

and i can't stand it!!! she'll get credit for everything just because she's older.

do you ever feel the same way? how do you cope or do i just need to chill out?

This isn't exactly the same thing, but . . .

My brother is nine years older. He, my parents, and I all have degrees from the same university. Dad and brother's are business degrees. That school wouldn't have been my first choice, except they had the number 1 international business program, and that was what I wanted.

So off to the College of Business I go with grand visions of my future. But everything is "well, this is how it was when your brother was there" and "this is what he did." I don't give a damn what he did. This is MY college experience, not to mention a decade later, and I'm guessing a few things have changed!

Well, halfway through, I discovered I suck at math and decided to switch to majoring in journalism/public relations. So then every time I was around my family, dad and bro would gang up on me and give me the worst time about how PR people are useless and I was wasting my time and journalism degrees are ridiculous. To them, there's nothing to major in but business. That's all there is in the world, spreadsheets and numbers.

It was just the last straw in comparisons with my brother. I got good grades, never got in trouble, did all the things I was "supposed" to do. He got bad grades, but they were excusable because he had motor skills problems. My whole life, it seems like everything he did was golden, no matter what it was, and everything I did could have been better. One time in high school, my dad saw the 100 averages on my report card and said, "What? They don't give extra credit?"

I just take joy in the fact that I've generally been happy with what I do for a living and my brother does nothing but complain.

Sometimes you just have to take self-satisfaction in rising above your family's opinions. It's taken me a lot of years and a lot of dinners to learn how to just ignore them.

I've learned I've had to rise above certain family opinions, too. Ironically enough, I was the kid with motor skills problems...so, I didn't get in trouble for D's and F's, like my brother would. But, once I got to college age, sometimes it seemed like my parents bailed my brother out more, financially.

I'm finding that, with stuff like my writing (which, as I'm sure you're all sick of hearing by now, is a huuuge deal for me), I have to just let it be "my stuff" and not let my family affect it. So, when my mom's like "Is anything you're having worth publishing? Are you sticking to poetry? etc." I just have to say, "Yes, I am writing...let's see how it goes." (OK, that's also because the "nagging mom characters" that end up in my fiction are pretty much my mom! But, I guess that's another story.)

Anyway, about your sis being on "your territory" -- urgh. I have this sneaking suspicion, because she's a jenny-come-lately to this art thing, that she's not going to be as talented as you--because you are quite talented, cutxpaste. I've seen your site, and it's quite funky & fun.

It also seems as if your sister is more interested in the parental attention than success.

Wuzzled, that bit about rising above your family's opinions just rocks! :)

'Cause, really, if someone like Georgia O'Keefe had decided to just make her parents happy, she've been on some farm, churning butter, letting some asshole husband slap her around, and making 1,000 babies.

Good luck, cutxpaste! ladyjane

you know, it's so hard to give advice for siblings because dealing with them is just so personal and involves decades of history, but i'll just share my experiences -

i have two brothers and a sister, with five years from the oldest to the youngest. so we were always compared with each other _nonstop_ in school. i'm just dealing with some of the repercussions now of always considering my sister and my brothers 'smarter' than me. my sister has always been jealous that i was 'the pretty one' and 'the popular one' but i was always jealous of her 'cause i thought she had it so easy and was favored by our parents, etc. point being - so much of the 'competition' is in the eye of the beholder.

it's hard, but if you can try to see the humor in it, i find it really helped me to get past the competitiveness and see the good in my relationships with my siblings.

i think the fact you didn't need to go to an expensive design school to design fabulous things says a lot. you're a natural and you taught yourself the skills you needed. that takes so much more intiative and self motivation.

i've had similar feeling with my older sister. and it's strange how the parents are the ones who incite competitiveness. lately i feel like any new artwork or creative project i show my parents sort of rolls off of them, they don't give me much of a reaction and it's so frustrating!

but your sis probably feels the same way about you and i'm she's heard earfuls of 'why can't you be more like your sister' when you're not around. it's good to hear you're so supportive of each other.

Your parents are supporting your sister, who lives at home with them, and they worry about you being unemployed and still self-sufficient? That's silly.

I've never had a similar situation since my brothers are kind of irresponsible and we all do very different things so I don't know how good my advice will be but here goes:
- You should remind yourself of all the great things you've done. You can even keep a list and read it every time you get off the phone with her. Put 'have my own place to live and don't answer to anyone else' at the top.
- Design is a big field, chances are she'll end up doing very different work than you, if she even follows through with this.
- Practise ignoring people who give unsolicited advice about what you should be doing with your career; unless perhaps they're design professionals whose work you admire.

That's all I can think of right now. Good luck.

-liz