Is this going to cause a massive family rift?

[Whatdoyoudowiththedrunkensailor]

Sorry for length of this -

I have an older brother who is a little bit of a moocher - I’ve posted about him before under a different name. He has had a great education and many opportunities in life and has ended up, in his mid 30s, with no money and financially dependent on my mother. He never pays for himself and works a couple of hours a day, and that’s it. He is always feeling sorry for himself due to having no money, and therefore my mother/other siblings bank roll him as they worry he is depressed. I think he’s just playing on their emotions/using them (but I can’t be sure of this).

He is always asking us if he can do odd jobs for cash. We let him dog sit last year whilst we were away - fridge full of food for him at ours, 25£ a day etc, and he fucked off for 10 hours a day to see friends and left our dog crying (we could hear on camera after neighbour messaged asking if dog was alright)/had to get mother to intervene as we were abroad. Came home to a fruit bowl full of rotting fruit and fridge full of off milk etc.

Anyway we are expecting and he’s due to be god father as he is an extremely fun brother/uncle. We offered him 200-300£ to paint a wardrobe for the baby as he’s very talented artistically and his hobby is art related. He agreed. We set a deadline of 1 week for the work to be finished. 3 weeks later. 3 weeks of him lying (I can’t do it today as I’m working - turns out he was just at home chilling etc), showing up hours after he said he would, us waiting around for him….what he has painted is shockingly bad - he didn’t put the tape on properly and it needs totally clearing up/the non painted bits will need to be repainted to fix it. Anyway we basically said “if you don’t want to do this please just say as we had another person lined up”. No, he’s sorry but he’s not motivated. Ok, fine. So we have to get the other person to undo all his shitty work and the deadline was weeks ago and this has been a totally maddening experience.

Today he messaged asking for money for the time spent on it. On one hand - maybe he is depressed (although he is never too depressed to see his friends and do the things HE wants to do - dinners, lunches, cinema trips, gym etc) and he did spend some time painting. On the other hand he totally fucking let us down and it’s going to now cost us MORE money than the other person originally quoted as she’s not starting from scratch.

I don’t want to cause a huge family argument if we don’t pay him so do we just pay him something? What’s fair?

He is playing you all and you’re all fawning over the poor man child.
If a relative had abandoned my dog and shown dreadful cruelty in the way your brother had I would have been incandescent with rage and it would have been the end of the relationship. Sounds more like a narcissistic sociopath

Well quite, you could buy a new wardrobe for that. My painter charges £250 for a whole room!

I wouldn't pay him anything. He doesn't sound that depressed and even if he is, it's no excuse for lying.

Every time I see a mad post on Mumsnet I think it can’t get worse but this one really takes the biscuit. If you want a #fun uncle# then hire a clown for a few hours. I can’t believe you can be this wet. No he can’t be arsed to do the wardrobe job tell him you have decided he probably would be the same as a godfather. He bloody needs to learn some consequences the spoilt brat.

What do you want from this thread @Whatdoyoudowiththedrunkensailor ?

You are basically unwilling to do anything to try to deal with the issues, so just embrace and move on.

but what do people say to the argument of “I spent X amount of hours on this”. Which he did - I have no idea how it took so long but he did spend his time on it.

Say yes but then you said you weren't going to finish it, and it's going to cost us more now to get it done.

So you're expecting us to pay you X amount
And then pay extra to get what you did removed
And then pay for what we originally wanted also.

Yep. Think again. He won’t give a shit anyway.

He’s lazy, by the way. Really fucking lazy. Not depressed.

You were not harsh. This is my lived experience with my spoiled DB. DP’s ruined their lifes bankrolling DB. In case he did something stupid. Once I asked DM to help with my toddlers as I was very ill and DH was working abroad. No she had to cook his tea. He literally barely worked his entire life and fucked off abroad with his inheritance to #retire# at 50

I think you should pay as he hasn't changed his pattern of behaviour and it was unrealistic to think he would plus you want him to be GF.

(It's like saying the lion ate the raw meat but he said he wouldn't)

Pay him minimum wage rate for however many hours he spent on it.

I would invoice him for partly ruining your vacation, which was no doubt expensive and wasted your time off.

I’ll paint the cupboard for you for £100 😜

That's infuriating - I'm so sorry.

Posted earlier this week about my ex BIL, also a "tortured artist" with a drink problem.

He is now pushing 60 with not a single asset to his name and back at his fathers again. Hasnt had a job since I met him 30 years ago. A very talented creative artist but his mother enabled his behaviour, and then his father did after his mother died (father felt guilty at the death of the mother as it was the drink that killed her too and the father would buy it for her as she never left the house).

Frankly the fact that he has made it to this age is nothing short of miraculous, as Ex and I didnt think he would make 10 years.

Why does he still do it? Because he knows that whatever he does, his father will always look after him. He has never hit rock bottom.

But ex FIL is very ill and wont be with us long and exDH now lives in and has a legal stake in FIL's home and will not be giving ex BIL house room. He will do what should have been done years ago, sadly it will probably kill ex BIL. But given the pain and anguish and abuse he has meted out to exDH over the years, ex no longer cares.

That is your brother and his future. As long as he is enabled, he will never hit rock bottom and until people like him hit rock bottom, they will never sort themselves out.

Gently - you're making excuses for him again. Of course he knew what he was doing was wrong. He's a grown adult. Literally everyone knows that if they're asked to dog sit, that means they need to be with the dog. My children would know that. Does he think dogs don't need to pee for 10 hour stretches? Come on. You've been so conditioned to think of this man as a helpless child that you're not reacting appropriately to any of this.

And it was all just a misunderstanding but he ignored your calls even though you were 'calling and calling' while on your holiday?? No. He ignored you because he didn't want to stop what he was doing and tend to a creature that was completely dependent on him for its basic needs.

And you say 'he got into trouble and made up for it' (bearing in mind we are talking about a GROWN MAN not a little boy here) but... he fucking didn't?!? You literally said in your OP that he left rotting and spoiled food in your house for you to come home to.

Finally - and I speak from experience here - if you're too scared of your family's reaction to respond appropriately to him, then your relationship with your family isn't real anyway. They should care about you and your needs and your dog and your baby too. If upsetting the precious (worthless) golden boy will see you ostracised, then being in the inner circle of such people isn't something to aspire to anyway.

Depression my arse!

He's having a right good old life - at everyone else's expense.

I'd have cut him off after the dog situation. That was unforgivable.

Sounds to me like you're afraid your whole family will take his side and you'll be pushed out.

Surely he caused the rift by doing a rubbish job and if your family protest at you not paying him in spite of the fact he hasn't done what you asked him they are also downplaying the fact he did a useless job. Learn from this as you should have done after the dog incident. Don't ask him to do anything in the future and just don't mention godfather to him. He can still be a fun uncle. Sounds like your parents have protected him all his life and consequently he just does as he wants.

Depression my arse!

Reminds me of a line from the Royle Family:

”She’s got a bone disease”
”Yeah bone bloody idleness!”

I'd highly recommend you listen to the Insight - Exposing Narcissism podcasts.
Maybe start with the one called "Arrested Development" or else "Smoke and Mirrors".

Your family is hugely dysfunctional and your mother is setting your brother up to be a kind of husband for her as she ages. She is stealing his future from him and this is being enabled by others. (This does not mean his behaviour is acceptable, it isnt).
I'd go so far as to say mummy is the root cause of the issues in your family.

I don't think he sounds depressed, but it does seem to me as though he has problems with executive function and pathological demand avoidance. He sounds like he can't get himself going, but neither can he cope with anyone else trying to get him going either. I imagine the painting was a mess because he left it all to the last minute, panicked and then tried to rush it.

I don't have a strong opinion about whether you pay him, as the incident is over as far as he's concerned imo, but I think you could help prevent this situation in future by not offering in advance to pay him for a results-based outcome, which in my experience will create an anxiety loop in his head ("I've got to do it - but I can't do it - but I've got to do it" etc). If you want to help him earn a bit of cash, I would ask him to help you with something you're taking primary responsibility for (i.e. "I have to get some work done in the garden, can you help me?") and then offer him some cash "for his time and effort" after the event. The offer of money in advance comes hand-in-hand with performance expectations, and I suspect he can't cope with that.

Work-wise, he would probably do better working for someone he knows, who will take the hard bits out for him, having put some effort into figuring out what are the hard bits (he may not know himself - it may be working unsupervised, or using the phone, or being asked to do things in a specific way when actually the end outcome is more important than the process, etc etc). The pp who was laughing at her SIL for not wanting to work "because they kept asking me to do things" has seen the same problem in action but not understood it either (tbf because her SIL may not have been able to explain it very well).

I don't think this is laziness or entitlement. He can manage socialising etc because it doesn't come with the weight of expectations. I suspect he probably has a pretty low opinion of himself and needs help, but unfortunately because your family have assumed he's depressed the help has taken the wrong form so far.

Pathological demand avoidance is generally understood as a characteristic of autism, and if he's autistic it might account for the swimming misunderstanding. If you asked me to go swimming with you, I would think you meant go with you as in go at the same time as you. I wouldn't expect you to mean I was supposed to stay in the baby pool with you and your DC, any more than he apparently did (I didn't read the thread, just your summary upthread).

I am autistic with PDA and relate to a lot in how you describe him. I expect a lot of the people I've let down over the years do too! Feel free to PM me if you think I can help.

Some reading. HTH.

Yep. NEVER again ask him to do anything because you know, being the bare faced grifter that he is, he'll let you down again.

I'm surprised you and your husband asked him to be godfather or paint the item (which is now costing you more to sort out...) after the way he mistreated your dog and left rotting food in your home. Come on now OP. Someone needs to show him that actions have consequences- this is your opportunity. 🌹

I'm with your DH. 🌹

@Whatdoyoudowiththedrunkensailor

^Yes, yes I have. He’s the brother from
the swimming trunks story.^

Oh dear OP. I remember that thread. I truly hope you manage to break this pattern you are in with this adult. If you don't he's always going to have his hand out, palm up, to you. 🌹

I was very torn on this.
Its a tricky one but after reading updates I agree @Lucy377.

You said to try

It isn’t finished so I would deduct for not doing/ finishing the flowers but I’d explain why your deducting first.

He didn't complete the job so at most he has earnt about one third of the money allocated.

He lied; that would make me choose another Godfather to stand beside DB, along with the Godmother.Three Godparents.

If the family start to object to no payment or low payment, offer to pay, as a gesture of good will, the first session with a professional counsellor in the hope that he can learn to manage his depression and be capable of supporting himself, meeting promises that he makes and motivate himself to be productive.

He needs the family to pull out of all enabling asssistance, and a professional to put a fire cracker under him to awaken his self preservation muscle.