Could this be the worst sister ever?

Think that sometimes your sister can be The Worst? Then you’ll be miffed to read that this sister may well have stolen the title…

Some people are close to their sisters.

Others have a little more trouble.

And some sisters are so different that it’s surprising that they came from the same bakery.

Like these two women from the US – who are having so much trouble that one of the sisters she asked Chicago Tribune columnist and NPR regular Amy Dickinson what she should do.

Here’s what happened:

One sister (who calls herself Sad Sister), organises a shopping trip and girls getaway every Autumn. The women go shopping, treat themselves to a fancy hotel and eat out a lot.

But Sad Sister doesn’t invite her sister, “Wendy”, to come along. And now sister Wendy is reallly hurt.

The reasons that Sad Sister doesn’t invite Wendy are breath-taking in their pettiness.

And Ask Amy didn’t hold back in one of the best advice column take downs you’ll ever read.

In case you can’t read it above, the full letter (that was published online) said:

Dear Amy: Every fall, my sister, cousins and a cousin’s sister-in-law have a weekend shopping excursion in our home city. We stay in a hotel, treat ourselves, shop for our children and go out for lunches and dinners. It is a great time to reconnect.

I have a sister “Wendy,” who we do not invite. She is offended to the point of tears when she finds we have not invited her. My two sisters and I are very close in age, but Wendy hasn’t been as close to this set of cousins as my sister and I have been through the years.

We are all married stay-at-home moms. Wendy is a divorced, working mom with one young child.

There are several reasons we do not include her. We know she doesn’t have very much money for such an outing. She also does not have many of the same interests as we do. Her life is quite different from ours. We’re not interested in what she has to talk about. She complains too much about her aches and pains, and claims to have some kind of neurological disease that some of us feel is more psychosomatic than real and which she uses to avoid getting up for church on Sundays.

She also complains about her ex-husband who left her for another woman, but everyone knows it takes “two to tango” and she is not without fault.

We’re all very active churchgoers, while she only sporadically attends services. Plain and simple, she does not really fit in with us anymore.

She takes it very personally, and last year even came over to my home unannounced crying about it, which upset my children and caused my husband to threaten to call the police if she did not leave.

Now she barely speaks to me and has told our relatives that I am a horrible person (even though I’ve helped her).

How can we get her to understand that she should perhaps find another set of friends whose lives and interests align more closely with hers? — Sad Sister

And the reply:

Dear Sad: First, let’s establish that I agree with your sister: You are a horrible person.

Obviously, you can do whatever you want and associate with — or exclude — whomever you want, but you don’t get to do this and also blame the person you are excluding for not “fitting in.”

The only way your sister would ever fit in would be for you to make room for her. You are unwilling to do that, and that is your choice. But her being upset is completely justified, and you’ll just have to live with that.

Perhaps this is something you could ponder from your church pew, because despite your regular attendance, you don’t seem to have learned much.

Ask Amy makes an excellent point: If you can’t see that your divorced, sick and financially-strapped sister is in desperate need of a weekend away, or just a decent friend, then you are indeed a horrible person and a truly terrible sister.