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[quote=Anonymous][quote]
Anonymous wrote:
My daughter is 23, and she has some pretty serious personality issues that cause her to lose almost every relationship she has ever had. She is extremely passive aggressive. She is flat out rude if she doesn’t get her way. I have tried so hard to help her with this her entire life. I know that she is a full-fledged adult and time for her to deal with it. But I can’t just stand by and watch her lose everyone. I wish I had just the right words to help her or knew how to make her realize what is pushing people away. Honestly, it is affecting our family dynamic as well. Her siblings are tired of it. She does go to therapy, but I think it is more complaining about everyone else instead of working on herself.

I am open to any advice.

What's missing here is whether your daughter cares about her inability to maintain any healthy relationships. *You* seem anguished, but is she?

If the answer is yes, then I'd suggest that you record some of your exchanges with her and then, the next time she brings up the topic of loneliness, play back the audio/video and ask her what she notices about her own interactions. Be honest about the passive aggression and rudeness. Emphasize that while chemistry and common interests bring people together in platonic and romantic relationships alike, the bedrock of all enduring healthy relationships is whether or not people treat each other with kindness and respect and that if she is unwilling and/or unable to do so, then she needs to accept that she's not capable of healthy, close relationships with others and leave other people alone.

In the meantime, I think that twenty plus years of putting up with your daughter's behavior is more than enough and that she won't feel compelled to change unless she experiences the consequences of how she relates to others. Focus your attention on her siblings and spending time with them, and if she complains about being excluded, be honest about the fact that her behavior ruins what should otherwise be a fun time and that the rest of the family would be happy to include her if she can treat everyone with courtesy and kindness but if not, then she won't. You should also read all the countless threads on this board written by healthy, functional siblings whose dysfunctional parents have favored the dysfunctional sibling throughout their whole lives with the result that the dysfunctional dynamic has never changed. Don't be those dysfunctional parents.
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I have come to realize in middle age that the reason that functional families stay functional is that they follow the advice above and severely limit interactions with difficult family members.  Am going through this right now with a young adult child with similar "does not play well with others, including parents" attitude and no real self-reflection on what they might need to do to change behaviors that drive people away.  Have just decided to interact with that child on a limited basis and instead focus on relationships with the other two children who do not act that way.  I too have seen what happens when parents spend their time on trying to "make nice" with the difficult child and ignore the functional ones.   [/quote]

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