Cat Fight

There is another woman in my family with whom I have a really hard time. We have some similarities.  We are the two women over 25 who are single.  We are both JDs.  We are both on the plump side.

I seem to be more 'succesful' than her in a variety of ways.  I'm 30 years younger, but have a much more prestigious job.  She works primarily as a paralegal, which is, I think, difficult for her.  We both started to try and lose weight, but I lost 60 pounds and she lost 10.  Things like that make it, I think, quite hard for me around me.  She is constantly putting me down and marginalizing me.  This is extreme enough that I have stopped going to some of the functions if I know she'll be there.

It turns out she has been really mad at me for the last several years, because when my dad had cancer and I took care of him, she felt cut out of his life.  And in all honesty, she was.  She blames me.

I find this sad.  It seems like women compete for male attention.  I did my very, very best to take care of my dad.  Chemotherapy was really hard for my dad.  Hard enough he questioned whether or not he wanted to finish it. And my dad at that time had to cut a lot out of his life, just as he was having cancer cut out of his body.  I don't really remember what happened, but I think my dad asked me to tell this woman he didn't have the energy to see her and I did.

It seems like this is a pattern.  The women are too scared to confront the men, so we blame the other women over it.  I don't really know what to do.  I can't really talk to this woman about what happened without probably creating a fight with my dad.  I don't actually really want a relationship with her, but my family wants me to stop skipping events (which is nice).