AIBU to resent my unemployed brother still living off our parents?

[Frustratedsister]

Namechanged,

So, I have a 27 yo old brother who is still living at home, also unemployed. He never goes out, has no life, no friends. Its honestly starting to wind me up and im losing alot of respect for him. He leeches off my parents and im starting to think they are enablers. They both work full time and they spend their hard earned on my brothers lifestyle. If we do things together he expects my poor mum to pay for his tickets, accomodation, travel and food. He contributes NOTHING.

With all due respect, im a single struggling mother, i have a teen and a 2 yo. I have to work, provide and keep a roof over our heads, i pay my bills. I wont deny the fact I do get some help from the government but I have purpose, willpower and I am making something of my life.
I feel like I want to say something to my parents. Tactfully of course. I just feel like the respect for my sibling is going. Im not jealous of his lifestyle, I just fail to understand how he wants to live this way and not even try to pull himself out of it.

To add he has crohns disease, i understand it is a chronic condititon that flares up but surely he is still capable of working even if thats part time?

Im sad for my parents, watching them enable him to live this lifestyle. He does...nothing.
I might get flamed, I know the economy isnt great and the jobs market is dire but still...what life is this?
Is it bad of me that im starting to see him in a different light??

He runs, which makes me think he is able bodied to get out. (Sorry i hope my words arent offensive)
No skills.
A little awkward.
Prehaps an element of depression. Other than that he functions just fine.

Should these factors prevent someone from getting out though??? Or a J-O-B!

What are your views?? Im really not sure how to help him. The longer it goes on the more i feel frustrated. I feel so bad for my parents who are working very hard to fund all of this.

I've got a set of cousins like this, absolutely baffles me that at 26 and 23 they just 'don't work'... never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. They don't drive or leave the house.. last time we visited they didn't even come downstairs!
No health issues or reasons not to either.

Crohns is not nice. But what would your brother have done if your parents weren't here? What was his game plan for life, or did he never have one? And what is your parents' game plan for when they are too old to pay for him any longer or too ill to be able to facilitate his life?

What, in short, is the end game here? It might be worth raising this subject with your parents, to make it absolutely plain that you have no intention of taking over where they leave off when they're gone. It might just help them realise that they have to help your brother become more independent.

I have this situation with my 53 year old sister. The whole thing is ridiculous and my parents still treat her as though she’s 15 and that’s how she acts (including tantrums). They now walk on eggshells around her. It’s got gradually worse and worse over the years but when I try to raise it they make up excuses for her behaviour and are in denial there’s anything wrong. I honestly don’t think she’ll cope when anything happens to them but I am not taking over

What makes you asume my children have different fathers.

It sounds like he has some problems if he doesn't go out and has no friends. Your parents are doing what parents do and looking after him, your children are always your children, you can call it enabling but if he can't cope you help.

This! My 46 year old sister moved out of my mum’s house a couple of years ago…to move into my other sister’s spare room. I thought my mum would finally be able to enjoy her own house but now that sister’s daughter has moved in and has just had a baby. My mum is now providing housing for a third generation of the family! I haven’t lived with my parents since the age of 19.

I have an adult son who still lives with me following a major trauma and effectively a breakdown. Very few people know what happened to him and I'm sure lots judge away. I think if I hadn't been here to "catch" him he'd either be on the streets or dead.

I don't love it, mainly because it's no life for him, and I hold some guilt that maybe I didn't support him better at the time, and if I had things would be different for him.

If one of my other children described him as a leech I would be furious. All my children have had my support in different ways when they needed it. Without fail, every time.

He sounds autistic. Why would anyone choose to have no friends, no partner and stay at home all the time unless they can't function in society without great distress. It's very common in the autistic community to live as your brother.
It is not the life he would choose and it's certainly nothing to envy. Unless you are also autistic you really shouldn't compare and judge.
Imagine you had a really successful sibling who looked down on your life.
Your parents are helping a child that needs extra support.

People who don’t go out and have no friends are generally not functioning the same way as the general population.

Most of us wouldn’t want a life like that, and even many people whose parents might be open to supporting them in adulthood choose instead to embark on their own lives, because they want more freedom and choice, and they want to have adventures and do their own thing, and because naturally most people have social needs in adolescence and adulthood that can’t be met by their parents alone.

So I think it’s fair to say people who live this way have some fairly major differences in adaptive functioning. Whether that’s psychological or neurological or what.

Much of the time nobody knows what it is, nothing’s been diagnosed, it’s just a person who’s failed to launch, and a family with no social service or other support to help them understand what the issues are, or what the adult child might be capable of with the right help.

Parents of people in this situation are damned if they do, damned if they don’t, a lot of the time.

Sometimes the parents themselves enjoy feeling needed, and err on the side of not encouraging their adult child to expand their comfort zone. Sometimes they’re scared of what will happen to their child, or what their child might do to them.

It is tough all around. The best you can do is be open to anything your parents might want to share about the situation, and keep running your own life.

She said why, the age gap

No they have no known health issues to you. Come on actually think about it do you honestly think an adult who never leaves the house and has no friends doesn't have some kind of mh issues or ND. No healthy capable person lives like this.

If it’s not been mentioned Failure To Launch is a real mental health condition and yes there is a codependency dynamic but it needs to be looked at holistically with a MH perspective.

I pulled right back from my mum and my brother because of her enabling him. He made a financial mess of his life at least three times, then eventually came crawling home. He walked out of 3 jobs while living with mum and dad. He behaved horribly to dad who had terminal cancer and was so entitled

He behaved horribly to dad who had terminal cancer and was so entitled

This literally means that your dad was so entitled.

Because they're shit stirring to get a rise out of you.

Sounds very much like a mental health issue. Has he been assessed for ADHD or Autism? The GP might be a good place to start.

But even if, and maybe especially if the brother has autism - isn't it encumbent on the parents to try to help him cope outside the home? Rather than just protecting him and swaddling him in care, gentle lessons in how to manage beyond the boundaries of home and parents can only stand him in good stead. If he was completely unable to function then I think OP would have mentioned this; so is this a case of parents over-protecting a ND child to the extent that the brother will be completely unable to cope when the parents are gone?

No keep out your unlikely to change anything. Focus on your own life.

I suspect most people would get that my brother was entitled and not my lovely dad, but heh, be the thread grammar police if it makes you feel better

Is he really having a meaningful impact on you though? No.
Water your own grass.

YABU because it’s your parents’ problem, not yours.

Don’t get me wrong, I get the frustration, but they’re the ones allowing it to happen.

OP - what do they do to help you out, because if they’re helping your brother, they should be helping you !

A horrible situation you! I’d feel very resentful too. Didn't you ask your mother why she’s helping your sister so much, and why she isn’t leaving her assets to you and her in equal shares? What makes parents act in this mean, divisive and unfair manner?

Yes it is - OP is being treated very unfairly