Would welcome thoughts/ advice. I have a strained relationship with my brother. Always have. We have been no contact in the past - he did something entirely unacceptable to another person in front of me. We ended up making up with the insistence of the person wronged. I think we both find each other difficult. We now have DC, and they all had a lovely relationship which was positive for all concerned.
About 2 years ago, DB decided he was upset with me and would be going no contact. I have never been told why but I think it may be because I forgot to call on his bday whilst I was abroad, but that’s simply a guess at this point.
The reality is sibling doesn’t feature in my thoughts and I have maintained a relationship for the kids sake more than anything. We will never be particularly close, certainly not as close as I am with other siblings. Before I reached out, I was told by other sibling DBs wife had said he was upset with my lack of effort with him. I called him and it transpired he would not be calling me. So I left it. I made no effort and he in turn made no effort back.
The thing is, I was always making an effort with him, I went out of my way to buy expensive presents for his kids, arrange days out which I paid for, went to their birthdays. He did not reciprocate any of this - including not attending his only nieces birthday. I felt extremely angry at his narrative that I don’t make effort, where he can’t even be bothered with my dcs. Including not bringing their cousins to their party and not even calling to say they won’t be there. No birthday present either (not expecting anything expensive but at least a card the kids made and a token gift), so I can only assume there was never an intention to attend.
So after all this time, his partner has called out of the blue to invite me to their child’s bday - giving literally 1 days notice and no acknowledgement she too hasn’t reached out in this time - we got on fine I thought. I want to go and take dc for the kids sake, but I feel very annoyed about it - we can’t exactly hash it out at the bday. So we just pretend all is fine?
So basically would you go for the sake of the kids relationships? There seems to be no intention to resolve the issue, so is it salvaging anything if we won’t be seeing them again anyway?