I've posted before about my dysfunctional/toxic family. My brother and I are now NC with our mother for very many reasons. It's a decision that won't ever be changed both because I don't want to change it and because the LA would have something to say if we resumed contact.
The relationship I'm posting about, is the one between myself and my brother.
In a nutshell, my brother was the Golden Child in our family and I was the Scapegoat and we fulfilled these roles well. My brother could do no wrong, I could do no right. As adults, we both struggle. I have internalised all the things that were said about me and I am very hard on myself at times. My brother is the opposite. He struggles with the idea of ever being in the wrong and holds other people to very high and exacting standards. But ones to which he doesn't hold himself. So it's very easy to fall short of his expectations, whilst he constantly lets other people down. And he gets very angry when people let him down. He's always angry; his family, his friends, colleagues, strangers, bankers, people who have credit, the unemployed, the rich, the poor, the government, his parents, baby boomers, children of baby boomers who are set to inherit... all make him angry.
We both have a fragile sense of self. I constantly feel 'not good enough' and probably have too low expectations of others because I don't feel I deserve more. He almost feels 'too good' (as he was brought up to believe) and he judges other people in terms of how highly they regard him. If that makes sense. So, if someone lets me down, I tend to let it go and think it's not worth making a fuss. If he perceives someone has let him down he becomes very angry - how dare they do that to him.
So, for example, when I discovered my exH's affair, just over 2 years ago, I turned to my brother for support because I had no one else. He didn't once ask me if I was ok, or how the children were, or offer to take them out or invite us round for dinner or anything. Instead, I listened to hours of him ranting on the phone about how my he'd been let down and abandoned by one of his best friends (my exH); how his wedding photos were now ruined because my ex was his best man; how his daughter (and any future children) would have lost out on the only uncle they could have ever had; how it had reminded him how he felt when our parents split up... in a nutshell, it was all about him and I listened to him rant, I offered platitudes, I reassured him, I 'supported' him, I hugged him in my kitchen when he cried for the teenage boy he was when our parents split... and not once did he ask how I was/we were.
So fast forward to now.
His daughter came to stay with us for the weekend at the end of the summer and I babysat. He came to pick his daughter up after the weekend. He was late. We all went out for dinner and he was rude. He was rude and boorish to his wife - e.g. their daughter is 2 and was fractious by the time we got out. He let her do all the 'looking after' of their daughter whilst she was trying to eat her own dinner and then, when he'd finished eating, he went to eat the food off his wife's plate. When she said she hadn't finished, he sneered that she needed to hurry up then because he didn't want to sit there all night now he'd finished eating, but didn't offer to help... You get the picture...
Anyway, he was rude to me after this, I was sick of it. My children were there, he hadn't thanked me for having his daughter, he was chauvinistic and rude and I, very quietly, asked him to stop being rude to me. My punishment/his response was to stand up in the pub (my local) and engage in a very public, but private, character assasination. Everything from my failed relationships, to my career, my friendships, my parenting was in the firing line. I could tell by his wife's increasingly warning tone as she told him to be quiet (which he ignored) that she knew the worst was yet to come - my brother has form for vitriolic diatribes that are seen through from start to finish so I'm guessing she'd heard it all before.
So I got the children, left the pub and haven't spoken to him since.
He has since tried getting in touch, but I've blocked him on my phone and all his emails go straight to my deleted folder unread. I thought he might realise, but his arrogance clearly knows no bounds! He emailed my son asking to skype him on Christmas Day. My son didn't want to. He doesn't like Skype and he doesn't like the way my brother speaks to me. But he doesn't want to lose contact. In the last 3 years he's seen his entire family fall apart - he's lost his grandad; grandad's widow; grandad's children; his grandma; his great grandma and his parents have split up. He doesn't want to lose his uncle too. So I feel I have to do something. But I don't know what. He replied to the email saying he didn't want to skype, but could they talk on the phone after christmas? and my brother hasn't replied - effectively stonewalling him (as predicted because he didn't get his own way). My son recognises this. But he doesn't want to lose his only other blood relative.
I don't know what to do.
I'm considering emailing his wife, but she is complicit in it in that she enables my brother, even though he is equally vile to her.
Any suggestions?
Just so sad and exhausted by it all. I've watched, and continue to watch, my whole family just falling apart around me and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. I've cut out the rot, but it still isn't enough. My brother lacks any introspection so can't see that his reactions/responses might be flawed. It's the fault of other people, you know as in, "don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry".
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Relationships
Is it worth trying to rescue this relationship or not?
FolkGirl · 30/12/2014 17:57
You know, after reading that back, I'm not quite sure myself... 
I suppose because I feel I owe it to my children to give it my best shot, rather than look like the crazy person who cut out their whole family! (well mother and brother. I'm amicable with my exH and my dad died. His widow doesn't want to know us, in part, because of my brother's behaviour. She also witnessed this many times over the years)
Thank you.
I suppose it's just hard because I now find myself completely alone. I have friends, and I have a couple of very good friends; the sort I could call on at 3 am if necessary. But I do feel a little bit like a balloon that's been let go and that floating away doesn't feel like freedom, it feels a bit scary. I do have friends, but I generally feel on the periphery of friendship groups rather than in the middle of them. That's ok, it doesn't bother me too much. I find it difficult to let people in to be honest. But I'm also single and whilst I find interpersonal relationships generally difficult, I find romantic ones virtually impossible, so I don't see this changing any time soon.
It's also hard for the children because it's almost like before me, the family didn't exist. They never ask to see my mother. My daughter was 5 when we went NC and my son didn't like her anyway 
My dad died 6 months later. We've not been to the grave since the funeral (2 yrs ago), the children never talk about him, they don't miss him because he wasn't really interested in them once his 'new' children came along (same age as my daughter). There are no photos of my daughter with her grandad. There are no photos of me before 18 when I left home. There are no 'family' photos. Both of my parents' birthdays passed last year, as did the date of my dad's death, and I didn't even realise until after the fact.
My grandma died 4 years ago. The children both miss her and talk about her still. But I have nothing of her. My mother hasn't progressed or settled the Will. She's the executor and the main beneficiary and it suits her to delay it. So my children don't have any of the small trinkets or keepsakes that would keep her alive to them. or that she promised them before she died.
I'm just so frustrated by it all. My brother and I were supposed to be drawing a line under it all and moving forward after losing our parents to be the family we wanted our children to have and I feel like he is sabotaging it all. He is a bully. He is emotionally abusive. But really does subscribe to it being other people's fault that he gets angry. He won't accept any responsibility for it at all.
My son is nearly 16, though and I'm not sure, realistically that I can stop contact between them.
I think that if he does try getting in touch again, I will just have to tell him that I am very tired of it all and need a break from it, you're right. My original idea was to email his wife saying similar and suggesting that we continued a relationship of sorts for the sake of the children. But I don't know that would work.
I just feel like I turn 40 next year and, despite my efforts,my life is shit. My family has fallen apart and I don't even have one anymore. My career was affected by a combination of my dad's poor health; managing the difficulties my mother's toxic behaviour created; the impact of the messages I got growing up that I hadn't yet challenged; and staying in a shit marriage for longer than I should have because I was so exhausted by everything else that I didn't have the capacity to deal with that. I now feel trapped in a dead end. I have the potential to do so much more: a first class degree, a professional qualification in a field I don't want to re enter, but would like to use it as a stepping stone to something better/related, but don't know where to even start. I'm not depressed. In fact, I feel better than I have done for years. It's just that now I can see it all so clearly. I just feel so sad that I haven't succeeded in any area of my life at all. I just wish I'd said, "no more" 10 years ago.
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