Girlfriend from Hell

You may think that as a straight woman, I don’t have to worry about psycho girlfriends. But if you thought that, you would be wrong.

When my darling youngest brother first told me he had a new girlfriend, who he’d met in France, I must admit I was rather proud of him. My little brother, with a sophisticated French woman! And an academic high-flyer, no less. Mon dieu!

My family all speak varying degrees of French (mostly very small degrees!). With a bit of practice, I imagined we’d become one of those families I’ve always envied, who speak different languages at home, and are all multicultural and stuff. I imagined taking phone calls at work from the girlfriend (who in time would have become a close friend), chattering away to her in French while my co-workers nudged each other in awe (I have fantasies like that. I am sad). And think of the bilingual nephews and nieces! I’d be practically part-French myself by association – fancy that, stodgy old English me! I saw myself in the future, studying part time and sharing university anecdotes with her over the kitchen table while my brother rolled his eyes and joked that I got on with her better than he did.

I admitted to myself that it might be a bit hard at first to adjust to the fact that my brother had a new woman in his life who, if everything worked out, would be more important to him than his doting big sister. A woman who was possibly cleverer and prettier than me. Gasp! But since I don’t have any major personality disorders, and in fact have a life of my own, I didn’t think this would turn out to be a real problem.

So, all good, right?

Mais non.

I first met her about a month or so after she and my bro started going out. She seemed very nice, a soft and pretty in a studious sort of way. A few days later they both left, to go live in France, so that was all I saw of either of them that year.

The first sign of trouble came a few weeks afterwards. I called their house in France and asked to speak to my bro, who was out. He called back later and said that she was upset because I hadn’t asked her how she was, or chatted at all. Apparently I’d been abrupt. I bit back my pride and apologised. Later, I reflected with a little embarrassment that she was probably right, and I’d been pretty thoughtless. So I made a point from then on to always ask after her when I was talking to my brother, or have a nice chat with her if he wasn’t in. See - I can do this sister-whose-brother-has-a-girlfriend thing!

Moving on.

Some months later. My goody-two-shoes little brother has an STD! Uh-oh! He and the (soon to be revealed as psycheau) girlfriend are both taking of course of little pills to clear it up. I had a long chat with him, and agreed that he must feel bad about passing on something nasty that he’d caught from the skanky girl he’d been sleeping with before, to his respectable current girlfriend. I told him gently, that teaches you not to sleep with skanks! - and a bit more big-sister sex ed – and agreed that he had to take care of his girlfriend. After a while, though, I began to feel kind of bad about it, as he really was wallowing in guilt. I pointed out that at the end of the day, unless she was a virgin when he met her, it could even have come from her. It could have come from either of them. I reminded him that I myself had caught something like that not long before, and of course I am a paragon of moral virtue. The important thing was, I said, not to lay blame, but to get healthy again, and keep it in mind in the future if contemplating promiscuity.

And so to the trouble…

I got call from my brother some months later. He told me, in an odd voice, that he had something rather unpleasant to talk to me about. He said I wasn’t being nice to psycheau girlfriend. I wasn’t treating her like one of the family. I was ignoring her. I was appalled and mortified. The only interaction I’d had with either of them for almost a year was on the phone, and as I explained above, I’d been making sure to always ask after her and have nice chats. If I’d done anything to upset her, I was very sorry and didn’t mean it.

It didn’t end there. I received several more stilted phone calls from my brother over the course of the next few weeks, mostly after I’d got home from work and wanted nothing more than to climb into the bath with a bottle of wine and a bad book (I like trashy literature). Eventually I was accused of insinuating that she was a slut. I was amazed! I said I couldn’t believe that I would have done such a thing, principally because I’d never even thought it as I liked the girl, so it’s not like it could have come out like a Freudian slip or anything. My bro couldn’t tell me exactly when or in what context this had happened, so it was practically impossible for me to defend myself. Days later, after a lot of bemused thinking, it occurred to me. It was because of the conversation we’d had about the STD. I shouldn’t have suggested that the STD could have come from Psycheau!

I finally gave up being polite and apologetic and told him to stop being such a complete twat. I didn’t invent biology, God did. I was relieved to have figured out what the slut thing was all about, because I knew then that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

That European summer I went to visit them in France. Oh, bad idea. From my first full day there, they made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. There were strange silences. Disappearances into the bedroom (not for sex). I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I was walking around on eggshells. (I was particularly aware that although my baby brother lived here, it was also another woman’s home, and I didn’t want her to feel trampled on.) Soon after my arrival, Psycheau Girlfriend sat me down and patiently said we needed to talk because I’d been upsetting my bro, and I was sure if I talked about it I’d be able to work through my issues and behave respectfully towards them. I really, really tried to please her, but it’s a bit difficult to have a frank talk about your issues when as far as you’re concerned, you don’t have any. Up until then, I had thought that maybe the problems were being caused by my brother. Maybe she’d been complaining about me, as you might do with your boyfriend, without realizing he was going to repeat it all back to me. Maybe she hadn’t said anything at all, and he was just being weird. But now I knew it was definitely coming from her too.

Believe me I was relieved to leave France at the end of my visit! I was counting down the days. It’s horrible to be an unwanted houseguest.

I’m going to fast forward over the rest. I think you get the picture. I thought the overt problems were settled until I got another whiney phone call from my brother first thing in the morning on Boxing Day (cheers). I lost it and screamed the house down at him, and told him not to bother calling me ever again if he was going to continue to be such a tosser. He has never again accused me of being horrible to Psycheau.

I’m writing this because she’s recently decided to turn on my parents. While I was in France she’d told me, in sorrowful tones, that they were having problems with my parents. I felt a bit uncomfortable at being told this, but frankly, I’ve got so many issues of my own with my parents that I couldn’t really be surprised. They are pretty eccentric and difficult to get on with sometimes, but they mean well, so I was a bit surprised that my brother hadn’t explained this to her. Whenever my parents mentioned her to me, they seemed pleased and fond, so I assumed that bro and Psycheau hadn’t actually said anything to them about their ‘hurt feelings’. I didn’t tell my parents about my problems with Psycheau. It didn’t seem right at the time, especially they weren’t seeing eye to eye with me over my decision to live in Australia.

December 2007: My parents and I went to visit bro and Psycheau (now in England) a few days after Christmas, for two nights. On day #2, Psycheau girlfriend decided to go into sulks over something my father had supposedly said. She wouldn’t come out of her room until he went to see her with an official apology. He went along with this, keen to keep the peace. Though not until I threatened to walk out and go back to stay with my friend in the Midlands if she didn’t stop being such a spoilt cow. (Interestingly, my brother seemed embarrassed and almost admitted he agreed she was being unreasonable). So things were – sort of – smoothed over. She came out of her room, I pasted on a bright smile and offered everyone a glass of wine, and we went out to dinner and all was well.

Today my parents sent me an e-mail. It included a long clip from my brother’s e-mail to them, when he told them they’d misbehaved when they came to see him at Christmas (and I was there with them for every minute of the short visit, so I know they were nothing short of wonderful on that trip). He said how they had to earn his and Psycheau’s respect again, etc. My parents were very upset. It’s like a repeat of what they did to me in 2006. I told them about what I’d gone through and said my advice was not to bother.

So what do you do when your family is split up my some high-maintenance, spoilt little bitch? Why exactly is she so psycho? Why won’t she allow us to like her? Why has my brother decided to take her side against all of us? And when are they going to split up?! This is painful to me so I wish I knew!