Per the parameters and standard operating procedures of your relationship, you are not supposed to be able to achieve anything she has not.

As a side note:

As far as the "profound change" you described... I feel a little strange saying this-but I did not experience any "profound change".

Yikes.  That's too bad.  

I think all relationships can change once one person has kids (or both), but it doesn't mean that they have to end, as long as both parties are willing to work on them and keep them up.

Sorry to hear about these troubles with your sister.  I don't have any siblings, so I can't relate.  I imagine with family it's hard to just cut ties.  I think I would minimize contact though for a while as best as I could.

Hang in there.

when you have a realtionship that is based on one thing that becomes inappropriate for your situation. I remember one of my best single girlfriends, we had really bonded over dating terrible and inappropriate men. When I settled down with Lee i continued to keep up with her and we'd talk about our lives, she w/ the bad guys and me with hubby.

One day she said to me, very acidly, "We don't all have perfect little relationships with out perfect little boyfriends!"

I really searched my heart to see if I was bragging, but really I just wasn't complaining anymore and she could not related to that.

Obvs, you're big sister is very reluctant to relinquish her role and that transition sucks, but it would have happened w/ or w/out kids because you were already moving on, you know?

in fact I am dealing with a situation related to my sister today. Thanks for the diary, Smuchie!

I want to echo someone above that I don't think this has to with your decision to have children. Like your sister, my sister -- who is a year younger than me --wants marriage and children, too. But I think there is a much deeper issue with us: We have made very different decisions at critical points of our lives. She is still involved with some self-destructive behavior, and like you, for the longest time I felt guilty about my own achievements.

Today, I was firm with her. I told her it is never too late to turn her life around; that she could use the bad situation she is in now to create a life plan for herself. But I refused to apologize for being in the place that I am now -- or, this was really hard -- bail her out.

Also, she plans to seek treatment for, among other things, depression. I am wondering if you can encourage your sister to do the same as there seems to be deeper issues here. You should not apologize for having a family -- as I do not see them as part of the problem!

Glad I am not alone on this...

being supportive in whatever she wanted to do in handling her depression.
I didn't want to be pushy, or sound "high horsy" as someone who does not suffer from it.
I know it goes deeper, it's just the kid situation that is bringing it all to the surface.  
My refusal to let her boss me around when it comes to my kids has led to our dynamic shifting.  I think it's really uncomfortable for her.
And although we've been close, she has always felt a need to compete with me.
It doesn't help matters that since I've had kids, my relationship with my parents has changed and gotten stronger.
She can't stand that.  
She complains that when we are at thier house, it's the "Watch Smuchie and hubby raise her kids show".

How could I not? It would seem quite strange not to change.

I think some painful shifts in relationships happen to everyone. Some people "need" their friends and family members to be a certain way and stay that way, oftentimes to shore up their own sense of superiority. I gave two friends the boot because of their behavior when I got married, and one friend the boot recently over her inappropriate (and frankly sad) lecturing me about how to be a mother. Two of these were old friends - 20 and 30 year plus friendships!! - but I found myself deeply over their .... stuff. I cared not a whit about why they behaved the way they did - and that is a huge shift in me, partly due to being a mother.

OTOH, I don't personally believe stuff like:

A deeper understanding of everything.  A visceral and spiritual relationship with life.

That does sound a bit high horsey. It's kind of hard to see how this doesn't diminish people who don't have kids. And kind of hard to square with the reality of a huge diversity of people who are mothers.

Your sister needs to have something in her life that gives her joy and purpose.  And she definitely sounds depressed.  

I know a bit part of my depression has been irrational jealousy - I had a hard time understanding why other people get to have better jobs and vacations and whatnot, forgetting to take into account that they are older and/or have worked for years while I was failing to complete grad school.  Or, they were born rich and brilliant, and are really good tennis players, but nobody said life had to be fair and it's not like I'd really enjoy their lives anyway.

I don't think being a mom really changed anything about my character.  I'm not a better person, but I certainly have different priorities.  You always have something to do, and it's usually at least partly fun, so that's good.

The only good news I could see was that she isn't talking to you for right now.  The relationship between you two seems so sad.  But it seems also to be almost 100% one sided from what you've written.  Your sister sounds a bit mean actually which personally I would have a very hard time being around much less have my family with someone so toxic.

I hope things get better between you and it sounds like that will come when your sister either gets help or has some sort of realization about herself and her life.

Really sorry it sounds so miserable.

While I was reading your writing I wondered if she wasn't related to you, how would you feel or what you would do about the relationship?  Or how would you advise a friend in a similar circumstance -- either with a family or friend relationship?  It helps me sometimes to pull myself out of the equation or frame it differently and get a better "read" on the situation without all the heavy emotion and history of family dynamics.

I certainly had friends pre-kid that were no longer good friends after kid.  In particular, we had a couple that we loved to go to dinner with.  They were vehemently childless by choice which I think is perfectly fine.  In addition, they are very busy socially so we always have to plan events with them well in advance.  So we figured that with kids nothing would change -- we would plan dinner together every couple of months, we would get a sitter, and enjoy their company as always.  

But now we're in their "friends with kids" category, and have to initiate every event.  They've told us that kids make things so complicated that they don't make proactive effort to plan things with their friends with kids (never mind that we never expect to bring kids to events with them and look forward to kid-free time).  Instead, they expect us to do all the organizing.  So we see them about twice a year, if that, and have found that we get so paranoid about avoiding all conversations about kids that we don't enjoy the evening any more.  Meh.  

Interestingly, they told us their experience with people with kids well before we had ours, and it seems to stem from the experience you described: people with kids think they have a different perspective and different priorities, and it's just not relevant to people w/o kids.  I don't think that's true with us, but the expectation that is there is just as difficult to deal with.

Since she is your sister you almost have to separate it into "is this a person I would choose to spend time with" (seems the answer is no), and then "what obligation do I have to family" and take it from there.  

--R

Who when she came to visit me for the first time post baby, got so weirded out by the whole thing that she stopped talking to me for a while.
She said it was "too heavy".
We've since worked all of that out and figured out how to relate to each other past that big difference between us.

About my sister:
I guess that her being my sister has made room for a lot of aquiescence (is that a word?).  It's been really frusterating to watch her destroy her life, and really taxing on my time and energy to try and talk her out of it.
It just falls on deaf ears anyway.
We end up having the same conversation over and over again.

Another Thought is this:

Even IF your sister managed to have a child, this dynamic would likely continue and intensify vis a vis competition about who is the "better" mommaUnit.

Unresolved familial issues are a bitch.