Favouritism - (Part 1) Exploring the Harm

Introduction

All of my life I've lived with favouritism, though I never understood why it existed. We all knew it happened, it wasn't exactly hidden, but we didn't see what was really going on and how widespread it was. But if you grow up in a forest, you don't find anything unusual about the number of trees.



In later years, I became a father and I realised that I felt no desire to continue this pattern with my own children. As far as I could see, each of my kids was special in their own way and choosing just one for "special treatment" would be damnable. In truth, I'm fascinated by how different each one of them is, so it would be like comparing apples with oranges.

I'd already gone no-contact with my father because he'd become too uncomfortable to deal with, but then a couple of years ago, I got dragged back into this world when my sister started having a lot of problems with him. They'd never had a comfortable relationship, but something was really needling her.

Investigating Favouritism

Okay, I wasn't dragged, I put myself directly into this middle of the conflict. I arrogantly believed that I might be able to mediate and fix the rift, so I started off by doing research into why some parents select a favourite. Surprisingly, if the stats are to believed, around a third of parents think it's acceptable to favour one child over their others. Typically they'd say they just felt more comfortable with one of them, or that the first born would always be a little bit special. But this didn't explain why my sister was having so many issues 30 years later. After-all *she* was the first born!

I spent some time talking to her to try and understand why she was getting so upset. A lot of it was historical stuff that was haunting her, but clearly there was something re-opening those old wounds and causing her to lose control of her emotions. The more I tried to reason with her, the more I realised that something was going on that I just didn't understand. These days I'd say she was suffering with mild PTSD symptoms.

Let's consider some of the background facts:
  • I was the favourite. If my father needed a helper, or just someone to come along for the ride, then he'd always pick me.
  • She was the scape goat. It didn't matter what she did, nothing was ever good enough, and as such, she never felt any love or got any positive attention.
  • I'd become tired of his constant criticism and gone no-contact, but she felt sorry for him and was trying to keep some sort of relationship going.
  • He'd long since remarried by this stage and picked out one of his second wife's granddaughters as my successor. We were all fed up of hearing about how wonderful she was and that partially explains why I'd gone no-contact.
  • As children of his first marriage, we all felt second best.
  • He had little time for his real grandchildren.
  • She'd started feeling isolated during the day. and found herself with more social dependence on him than she'd ideally wanted.
  • He was insensitive with many of the things he said.
My sister had grown up into a person who was easily prickled. My mother jokingly called her "Deadly Nightshade" because of her temper, but she was also wary of trying anything new. My younger brother didn't fair any better, but the one thing that I still marvel over to this day is that (unlike my brother) she never showed any animosity towards me.

The Deadlock

Anyway, I guess no one thing triggered the breakdown in the relationship, it was his constant little digs that started to build up. In the end she broke and confronted him about how he'd treated her as a child, how he'd been heavy handed and abusive. He'd reacted badly to this, accusing her of raking up the past and denying most of her accusations. He wanted to forget those things, he certainly didn't want to discuss it, there was nothing for him to gain. But, the more he denied her, the more their relationship worsened.

It seemed they were at an impasse and I withdrew as gracefully as I could.

Part 2 - The long term impact

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