I'm at the end of my tether with my brother and would appreciate some advice or at least being told I'm not totally unreasonable!
A bit of background - he's 40 (3 years younger than me). He hasn't worked for 20 years except the very occasional short stint which always ends with him packing it in because someone looked at him funny or some other trivial thing. He lives in a house owned by our mum that was our late gran's. He lived with her for a few years and although he wasn't a carer exactly he kept an eye on things and it was a comfort to her. He's never paid any rent and doesn't pay insurance - my mum does. He's had to go on gas and electricity meters because he ran up big arrears and he doesn't look after the place at all.
He has 2 children, a ds(13) and dd (4) by different mothers both of whom left him because they got sick of his shit. To be fair he's a good dad and great with them but he does slag their mums off in front of them sometimes which makes me uncomfortable.
He relies on my mum - a pensioner - for 'help' i.e. money and uses the children as leverage. He's on benefits including ESA for a mental health condition he's never actually clarified. He comes round to mum's and sits there on his phone while our 75 yo mother entertains the kids, he eats her food, uses her shower etc and never a word of thanks. He's always been very self centred, ungrateful and lacking in any kind of personal responsibility.
So to Christmas...I live 300 miles away and I do come to visit when I can but obviously I do have work etc. he resents this as he thinks I should never have left our tiny town and that he looks after mum all the time while I occasionally swoop in to get the glory. He doesn't actually do a lot for mum and what he does do he does grudgingly. This year he's been on edge the whole time, and yesterday I came into the room when his little dd was just behind the closed door. I opened it suddenly, it didn't hit her but gave her a fright and she ran to dad who lost it with me and yelled about how I should be more careful etc. fair enough, I apologized but he would leave it. DH told him there was no harm done and he started on DH then telling him he had no idea what it's like having kids - DH has two from his first marriage, brought them up till eldest was 10 and is still close with them! DH told brother not to patronize him which really upset brother as he's not used to being spoken to like that. Mum then told DB he should've been keeping an eye on his dd instead of being glued to his phone at which we got a massive rant and he then stormed out taking two very bemused dcs with him.
He later texted me basically to tell me how awful we all are. I replied that we do love him to which I got the following:
Between the three of you, with your selfish attitude, DH's opinionated offensive rant and mothers biased bullshit picking, you well and truly ruined Christmas for me. So y'know, get to fuck.
So. I'm sick of walking on eggshells around him, as are we all. I really think he needs help. At this point I'd happily go nc but I want a relationship with niece and nephew and more importantly, don't want my mum to have to cope with him alone. We both had a normal upbringing, no dysfunctional in the family but he's always been like this and we don't know why. Everything is someone else's fault, he's a fucking parasite and I'm sick of it.
Aaagh - that was incredibly long. Sorry.