When I say “none of the rest matters,” by the way, I mean the reasons you gained weight and whether you’re doing the work to manage your weight are both irrelevant to how you deal with your friend. Your body is no more or less her business based on how many processed snack foods you put into it and why or how legitimately worried she is. She overstepped hard regardless.
Dear Carolyn: My sister has said some hurtful things to me over the years and has yelled at me and my family in my own house. Now, as we’re in our 50s, I have finally gotten strong enough to ask her not to stay at my house when she visits. I told her I will still meet her for dinner out, visiting our mom, etc. Her response is that I am being selfish and inhospitable. I do not know how to move forward.
The next step is to live by those terms. Fortunately, her calling you selfish or inhospitable or a poopyhead or whatever else doesn’t materially affect the living-by-your-decision stage. You will meet her for dinners out. You will see her when you visit your mom. You will not host her in your home.
She can either accept these terms or reject them, but that’s up to her. When you’re doing what you believe is right or necessary — vs. what you think will achieve a specific practical outcome — then the results are secondary, even when they don’t feel that way. The primary goal is the necessary rightness of refusing to be mistreated.
This content was originally published here.
