Enabling tight sibling

[bonnevivante]

My sibling lives in a rented room with shared facilities out of choice. I own my house (mortgaged) with DP.

Sibling, DP and I all earn £65-70k but my household has double the income.

Our parents have gifted us both big sums of money. All my money went to my house. Sibling has 6 figures in cash in the bank.

Sibling lives closer to me than parents. Sibling does not have any additional needs.

My AIBU is that my parents expect me to take care of sibling in a weird way.

1. No privacy in shared house, invite sibling over the weekend to your house.
2. Invite sibling to use a special feature of your home.
3. Buy sibling takeaway a few times and ask to deliver at shared accommodation.
4. Buy sibling this item of clothing.
5. the list goes on...

Sibling is very tight - happily lives off pot noodles and sandwiches.

I accepted money off parents so I feel like I cannot say no when they ask for little things.

DP says that I am enabling sibling and it has become an issue of my energy and time more than money.

What should I do?

I agree. Ask questions. Eg why do you think I need to support X, do you think it's reasonable that I give up my free time with DP to support X etc? Do you think X isn't able to buy his own takeaway etc?

Or just laugh every single time they 'suggest' something you should do for brother.

No it doesn’t “mean” that at all. I’d ask yourself why you need that to be the reason I feel differently to you? Different people have different responses to things.

@tomtome yes people do have different responses to things, and being told a mother is still mum regardless of whether she's on your side or not is not something I agree with. Everyone's different, everyone has different relationships, but the point I was trying to make is that if you 'don't understand' why someone would disown their mother then you clearly haven't been in the position where you would want to 🤷🏼‍♀️

@livingoncoffeeeee you know fuck all about me or my relationship with my mother. You do you and stop making ridiculous blanket statements. It would be more accurate to say YOU don’t understand how someone could remain in a relationship that is uneven. Of course that’s ridiculous and people love people who don’t care for them all the time.

@tometome, if you're going to get so aggressive because someone disagrees with a comment you make then maybe you should refrain from posting your pov on people's posts. And while you're at it, take you're own advice, you know nothing about my life or relationships either 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yes but I said I didn’t understand your response I didn’t suggest anything about your relationship.

We can go around in circles on this forever, I'm sorry if I caused offence, it wasn't my intention. Maybe I am naive in thinking that someone who doesn't understand my feelings on the subject hasn't been in the position to do so 🤷🏼‍♀️ like you say, we know nothing about each other.

I don’t think your brother is the issue here. How are you enabling him? Does he ask for clothes or takeaways? No. It your parents who are doing the asking. Does he know this?

I would just say to your mother - if DB wants a take away he can ask me himself. Same for clothes!!

OP you say your DB doesn't have any additional needs but is there actually any reason for your parents to have concerns about him? I'm trying to understand their motivation to be able to make sense of why they are asking you to do something which (on the surface) seems to have no real reason behind it. Do they think your DB is less well off?

I accepted money off parents so I feel like I cannot say no when they ask for little things.

Eh? Didn’t your brother also accept money?

You definitely don’t have to do this. Make non-committal replies to your parents when they suggest you do these things and just invite him over once in a while for a meal you’d be having anyway. I honestly can’t imagine why you’d buy him clothes or deliver paid-for takeaways.

"Oh, I wouldn't want to embarrass him. He's a grown man, mum!"

What the fuck is up with some parents seeing the golden boys as the responsibility of their sisters, regardless of the fact that in this case, he’s wealthy and just lazy as fuck?

Your mum would really cut you off over this?

If so, she’s not much of a loss is she? What does your dad make of it?

So we didnt have as extreme a version of this but my dh did have this in his family with his mum and his DB and it was quite bad. between all 3 of them fil mil and db in law it was costing us an additional 2k per year (we paid for all meals for everyone, luvish gifts were expected and db in law was not allowed to put his hand i his if visiting.
Dh was told off for an hour by his mother because his bro bought ONE subway sandwich himself on a weekend trip where everything bar his train ticket was fully funded.
He would have said this 4 years ago.

We just paired things back slowly. I had to handhold my DH through it as it is fairly intense conditioning and the fear is very real.

Takeaways i would just stop immediately - its beyond weird. Use the line another poster suggested or something like "thats a nice idea. I'd love it if someone send my a deliveroo.

The feature of your house they use start reducing invites. Once a month maybe progressing to less and only when it suits.
Weekend stuff invite your brother to meet you outside at parks /events or self serve cafes (carefully select venues and order first then pay so you only buy your own stuff).
Progress to ticked events and position as we have tickets to X want to come?
Here is ticket link we booked midday entry.
When you mention going to his and he begs off about the LL say "well you could treating us to a meal out if you want to thank us for everything we do"

Put your mother on an information diet. Do not tell her about holidays or anything nice or expensive. Ham up outgoings and how financially stretched you are (the gifted money is locked in savings used on mortgage, whatever) you earn eell but ougings are high.

Interestingly - the comment made about what do you want is EXACTLY what my husbands therapist said. He was conditioned to think about others allllll the tine. What do you want to happen? Is a great question to ask.
The answer cant be for everything to be nice or everyone to have a nice time.

And you can do what you want:enable not enable or partial enable. The key part being if it suits you

You really dont sound like you want to enable you sound like you resent it. So you perbably dont want to do that.

Question: do you like your bro as a person ? Would you be friends if not related

This is the issue with accepting money. You are now so beholden.
Wait until they age and one parent is left alone then forget your brother, the payback will really start.

If your parent demands that you do things for someone else or else they’ll cut you out….well they’re a shitty parent. Maybe it would be better to be cut out.

Does the parent do things for the sibling too? Or is it just you expected to?

Sounds like a terrible family dynamic, but no one else but you will change it, because it suits everyone else just fine.

If I were you I’d have a good think about what I was willing to do and what I wasn’t willing to do. Then start setting boundaries on the things you no longer want to do for your brother. Don’t get into discussion about it just say no.

Stop buying a wealthy adult stuff! Sibling or not!

Think that's a given. He'll be the one who "needs it" more, depends whether or not the parent's tell the OP beforehand or not though is another matter. My thoughts are they'll still expect the OP to do all the caring and running around while planning on leaving everything to the sibling.

Is it just your Mother who puts this pressure on?

You know when people say some Mothers mess up their sons and many people get up in arms and say society blames Mothers for everything.Here is an actual example of how to make a fully grown man in to a useless twat because he will expect women to run around after him.

Let her cut you off if love or relationships are held to ransom like this they are not worth having, even with parents.

Yeah don’t do that for your sibling: their lifestyle, their choice. Why don’t they buy a house?

Tell your parents to butt out: you’re not children.

Inviting a sibling you get on with over for a meal is a normal part of life in many families (whether that’s once a month, week, 6 weeks etc is up to you), but letting them squat in your house at weekends because they’ve chosen to rent in a shared place? No. That’s called consequences.

Stand up to your parents.

He sounds like he may have depression and your parents are aware but you aren't ?

Yep. And refuse to discuss beyond that.

Tbh if you genuinely think she’ll cut you off for not pandering to this bs it’s a very unhealthy dynamic anyway.

I feel like if you earned 120 to 150k household income and your brother was living in a shared house on benefits these things might be nice kind things to do. As that life can be very grim. But that's not the case!

It really sounds like your family are acting like he's actually hard up. Maybe it's because he's presented as having no mo ey for so long? Or maybe it's the living situation people just assume there must be money issues. But if this is juat through choice, I'd absolutely be coming back with a hard no and saying its because he's got loads of money.

Also the fact you're a woman and he's a man is definitely relevant.

Do you have the kind of relationship where you could talk to him about this? So tell him your parents think he needs takeaways, clothes etc. Does he need help with this kind of thing? If not, tell your parents. If so, ask what the problem is - money or something else.

If he takes up the invitation to come around and use facility (bath? TV?) I'd assume he appreciates it and wouldn't make it part of that conversation.

1. No privacy in shared house, invite sibling over the weekend to your house.
2. Invite sibling to use a special feature of your home.
3. Buy sibling takeaway a few times and ask to deliver at shared accommodation.
4. Buy sibling this item of clothing.

I see 1 and 2 as different and far more reasonable or 'normal' requests. I mean yes, they have the money that they could have their own special feature and privacy but they don't. You shouldn't feel beholden to have them over every weekend but to say 'well they're not using our hot tub, they could buy their own' (or whatever the special feature is) would just seem surly and mean.

However, buying them things is just odd. Why haven't you asked why this is being requested of you? If my mum randomly told me I needed to buy one of my sisters a pair of jeans my response would be 'What? Why?!'