Your twin sister said coming out was "a phase" seven months ago and has never once revisited that comment since your relationship with your girlfriend became permanent — do you wait for the apology, or stop expecting one?

TomAlright, this one's been rattling around in my head: Your twin sister said coming out was "a phase" seven months ago and has never once revisited that comment since your relationship with your girlfriend became permanent — do you wait for the apology, or stop expecting one. What's your first read?

CarolWaiting for that apology is just setting yourself up to get hurt again every time she stays quiet. Picture being stuck in the same house where someone called your life fake, while the rest of your world gets more solid—that silence starts to feel like an active choice against you. You don't owe her the benefit of the doubt after seven months of nothing.

TomSeven months is too long to sit on that without saying anything, especially when you're twins and see each other constantly. It’s not even a subtle snub; it’s a full-on ghosting of the moment. She picked “phase” over your face, and now she’s picking silence over fixing it.

CarolCalling it a full-on ghosting ignores that they are twins living under one roof, so there’s nowhere to hide from the awkwardness. Say the sister brings groceries into the kitchen and acts normal while knowing the other person lives with a partner—ignoring the mess isn’t avoidance, it’s just letting the tension simmer until someone snaps. The silence isn’t a weapon she’s aiming; it’s the result of not having the guts to fix what she broke.

TomNot having the guts explains why she froze, but it doesn’t mean the original insult washes away because things got weird later. Picture a guy who calls your business idea stupid at dinner, then keeps buying coffee from your shop without ever mentioning the comment—he didn’t apologize because the daily routine made him lazy, not because the slight stopped mattering. Silence just proves she hasn’t grown enough to look you in the eye yet.

CarolOkay, but that's not what I actually said.

TomFair point, I stretched that example thin. But the core holds: routine convenience isn't forgiveness.

CarolHe’s right that the coffee guy still owes an explanation just because he kept showing up. That kind of casual acceptance does flatten the initial disrespect. But here’s the part nobody talks about: waiting for that apology often means the quieter sibling ends up curating their whole life around the louder one’s mood swings for years, which is its own form of exhaustion.

TomCarving your days around her moods is real work, and you nailed how exhausting that becomes. But most people skip the step before the apology: admitting the word “phase” actually landed and hurt, rather than assuming the silence means the damage is gone. Without that acknowledgment, waiting for a formal fix just leaves two siblings pretending everything’s fine at breakfast.

CarolPretending everything is fine at breakfast is basically playing house with your own memory, except the dollhouse has no windows. Admitting the word "phase" stung is the minimum entry fee for moving past it, not some grand gesture that requires a written apology letter. If you can’t even say “that hurt me” across the table, you’re just saving up anger for a storm that never breaks.

TomSaving up anger is fair, but it misses who else gets caught in the crossfire. Your girlfriend sees the flinch every time your twin walks into the room, and she starts walking on eggships around someone who isn’t even trying to be difficult. You end up protecting both of them from the unspoken thing, which turns a family squabble into a household-wide anxiety loop.

CarolWalking on eggships makes sense, but it blames the roommate, not the root cause. Your sister set the temperature; everyone else is just freezing in place.

TomBlaming the thermostat ignores that the heat radiates differently depending on where you stand in the kitchen. The person closest to the source feels the burn immediately, while everyone else is just shivering from the draft.

CarolStanding near the stove burns you faster, sure, but you don’t get to decide how much gas flows from the valve. My cousin waited six months to tell her brother his joke about weight gain wasn’t funny, and until she spoke up, he thought the laughter meant consent. Silence isn’t protection; it’s just letting the fire keep eating the furniture.

TomYour cousin finally speaking up broke the spell, and that proves the silence isn't noble—it's just expensive. Waiting for a formal apology keeps the relationship frozen, whereas saying "that comment hurt" lets both sides thaw out without needing a court date. So stop holding your breath for the perfect words and just tell her what the phase did to you.

CarolTelling her it hurt works when the listener actually cares, but seven months of total silence says your sister isn't ready to hear it yet. If you dump that pain on her now, you're just handing over a bill she refuses to pay, leaving you stuck cleaning up the mess again. Stop waiting for a check that won't clear and focus on why you need her approval to feel okay yourself.

TomFocusing on my own approval doesn't erase the fact that she still hasn't bothered to ask if I was ever okay with it. Seven months later, the only proof she cares is whether she remembers to invite me to dinner, not whether she notices I'm still flinching at the word phase. Until she stops treating my silence as a closed file, this whole thing stays stuck on hold because she decided not to look.