Intense Sibling Rivalry Between Me (21M) And My Sister (21F) Getting Out Of Control

In the past 3 and a half years, I (21M) have faced intense sibling rivalry with my sister (21F), who was born the same day as me. The sibling rivalry basically resulted in my sister and I totally cutting communication with each other and it basically caused me to have mental health issues during much of the pandemic (luckily, I do not have suicidal thoughts or anything and luckily, I still have decent grades at MIT even with this chaos and still managed to graduate) as well as caused me to have an even more strained relationship with my whole mother’s side except for one cousin of mine (28M) who is currently a truck driver.

Let me tell you the full story: because my father does have an older sister who lived in Russia (she moved to the US by the way along with her husband in 2016 and hence, I have a green card because of that), he decided to send me from Vietnam to Russia in 2006 to be able to study abroad, and so despite the fact my father still financially supports me and all of that, my guardianship was transferred over to my uncle and aunt (I was essentially adopted by the way).

Due to that, and the fact that I moved to the US in 2012 as an international student for middle school, and later high school and MIT for Computer Science (2018-2022), I was being viewed as an intellectual in my mother’s side and since much of my mother’s side doesn’t value education, especially going to prestigious universities (funny thing is nobody in my mother’s side has been to prestigious universities and the most prestigious university anybody in my mother’s side has been to is the fact that one of my cousin’s husbands went to NYU and nobody got a masters or above except for my mother and her younger sister and my oldest sister (33F)), I ended up being scapegoated and viewed as the black sheep in my mother’s side (my mother is amongst the only people in her family who received a doctorate by the way along with her younger sister and my mother is currently a high ranking doctor in Vietnam).

I was also scapegoated and viewed as a black sheep by my mother’s side for a host of other reasons, including the fact that I look like my father (my father came from the North, my mother came from the South, and since many of her American relatives fought for the US side, they didn’t really like Northern people), I have a passion for technology in a family that isn’t very tech savvy (except for my 28M cousin), I love living in expensive and affluent cities like Cambridge MA (even though many people in my mother’s side are wealthy/affluent, basically everybody has lived in more affordable and less affluent places outside of the city like Worcester, Auburn, Webster, etc.), I love to travel to Europe (besides my mother and my two sisters, nobody on that side has visited Europe even once), I have a passion for playing classical music pieces like Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. on the piano, and also, I am an EV and climate enthusiast, in a family who mainly drives less expensive Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Subaru, and doesn’t care about the car they drive.

I am not the only one scapegoated and viewed as the black sheep in my mother’s side. My father’s entire family is also being scapegoated and viewed as the black sheep as well due to all of this nonsense (many of my father’s relatives live in affluent/expensive suburbs (my father has relatives who live in places like Great Falls VA, McLean VA, Tenafly NJ, Short Hills NJ, Jericho NY, Scarsdale NY, Old Westbury NY, Palo Alto CA, Los Altos CA, etc.), and many attend prestigious universities by the way with one of them attending MIT, the same school as me, and another attending Stanford).

Due to me being scapegoated and being viewed as the black sheep, my sister (21F) ends up being favoured despite the fact even though she is extremely academically gifted and talented and is a high achiever, she is less academically gifted and is less of a high achiever than me, which I thought was unfair (here is the point: we both went to the same high school; although I was ranked 1st at my high school upon graduation, she was ranked 3rd in a class of 125 (she also has a very high GPA and near-perfect SAT scores), which is still very respectable). I was being treated horribly by my mother’s side and she was being treated very well and was welcomed with open arms. The one thing was that after moving to Boston for 2 years (she moved to Boston in 2015 by the way), her cousins decided to book a 5-star hotel in Dubai for her to sleep in for two nights as a layover hotel to Vietnam in June of 2017. She was basically 3 months from 16 by the way, but she was so privileged that she got to fly from Boston to Vietnam by herself, stay at a 5-star hotel in Dubai by herself, and even travel around Dubai by herself, which made me very jealous of her (I basically had to make money on my own using my iOS/Android mobile applications and multiple internships just to do this). In fact, in September 2022, my mother’s relatives basically pooled money to gift her a new Mercedes Benz C300 4MATIC as well (at the same time, I was looking for an economy car under 30k at MSRP and had to use my own money along with the money my father’s relatives give to me to buy it).

Due to her being loved by my mother’s side whilst I was being scapegoated, the sibling rivalry started in June 2017, and it got so bad that in June 2019 (after she graduated from high school) that she and I parted ways with one another (we basically stopped communicating with each other since then and I stopped attending family gatherings as well). After parting ways with my sister, my life has not only got tremendously worse, but I also basically stopped all contact with my mother’s side of the family except for my mother (I eventually regained my relationship with my 28M cousin sometime in September 2019, but for other relatives, between September 2019 and mid-2021, I have no contact with them). Eventually, as vaccines become more available in mid-2021, I regained some contact with some of my mother’s relatives and plan on fully regaining my relationship, but not sure when it would happen since many of them have scapegoated me and viewed me as a black sheep for me being liberal as well as a myriad of other reasons, so it is very hard to regain a full relationship with my mother’s side of the family. Also, even though I was the only person in my mother’s side to attend a university that is more prestigious than UMass Amherst (I attended MIT by the way), my sister attended a community college for 2 semesters between Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 and transferred to UMass Boston and is on her last semester right now, but I still congratulated her regardless for being financially savvy and for going to a 4 year university and for being ambitious as well since she knows she will go to medical school to become a dermatologist and maybe open a clinic someday.

During the time I basically lost all contact with her, I did visit several psychologists and therapists to basically use some coping strategies and the good thing is that I did keep as far of a distance from her, despite the fact it is challenging since we both live in Boston and the fact that I could accidentally bump into her at any time, but I try my best to calm down the rivalry by keeping a distance from her. Even though I kept a distance and tried not to contact her (I didn’t talk to her for 3.5 years by the way), there are still big tensions between me and her due to my sister living in practically the same city as me and the fact that my mother’s side also lives closeby in Worcester, meaning that she goes to a lot of family gatherings (the last time I have visited a family gathering with this side of the family was in May 2019 by the way and for many relatives, I have not seen them in person since that gathering). Even with so many psychologists (I met at least 5-10 psychologists in a 3.5 year span) and even with me trying my real hardest, tensions still didn’t end, and due to me being scapegoated and viewed as a black sheep by my mother’s side, they are not willing to be a middle person and let my sister calm down, and instead, continue on with the tensions, which absolutely caused a lot of mental health issues on my side (moving outside of Boston would not be a very good idea for me since if I were to transfer to another university, that meant I would have to say goodbye to MIT and maybe sacrifice with a worse university unless if I went to Stanford).

I am curious with this dysfunctional family not willing to support me but standing up on my sister’s side and letting her continue the tensions against me even though I am trying my best to behave and study hard at uni to finish my degree and perhaps start my entrepreneurial passion in technology, I am curious if relationship counselling is a good idea to resolve all of this sibling rivalry or would it be best for me to move out of Boston and presumably to another metro area (New York Metro area, DC Metro area, Austin Metro area, San Diego Metro area, Seattle Metro area, etc.), given the fact I have already finished university? The good thing is that my sister might move to another state once she finishes UMass Boston, so maybe, it would free up all the tensions and sibling rivalries and let me move on with my life and live in peace. Also, since sometime in the middle of 2022, after not communicating with her, she might have become a bit more friendly, so who knows if relationship counselling is a viable choice or I should just move out of the area and cut ties with my mother’s side again?

TL;DR: Over the past 3 and a half years, there has been sibling rivalry between my sister (21F) and I (21M) and it has basically caused my mental health to decline, and plus, since she lives in the same city as me, there has been a lot of tension which caused me to feel very uncomfortable and paranoid. This whole rivalry came from the fact that she was the favoured child and that I was the scapegoat in that whole mother’s side, and it caused her to be more privileged than me, therefore, starting the rivalry in the first place and basically causing my relationship to not be so good with my mother’s side. I was being scapegoated and viewed as a black sheep due to a myriad of reasons including my belief in attending a prestigious university and living in an affluent area as well as my appearance due to me looking like many Northern Vietnamese in a family who fought against the North.