Selfish adult children

[Lexirose01]

This is a little long winded but it’s really upsetting me.
a little background.. My eldest son moved away 6 years ago which was hard for me as we are so close. We remained very close but I was proud of his life. Fast forward to now and my youngest son has been given the opportunity to move to the same place as his brother. There is 6 years between them. My eldest isn’t happy with this and is trying his best to stop the move. He’s also made it clear that he’s too busy to help out with the move even though we all had to travel 5 hours to help him move in to his new place. We are now travelling back and fourth to arrange this move with no offer of help or even to stay at his place overnight. He also doesn’t want to store anything for his brother until his brothers house is ready.
I know that this will fester and inevitably will cause a rift between us.
any advise on how to move forward would be appreciated x

Edit: Never mind, read the OP wrong

I think that you can all respect that eldest ds has his reasons and is entitled to make decisions that he feels are in his best interests. Also that he may make decisions for himself that you may not like and this may not be the only time.

If you can do this there's no need for it to fester and cause a rift.

He may have felt a bit encroached on throughout childhood by his younger brother playing the same sport and also becoming good at it. He may feel this is the thin end of a wedge of often having to miss or reschedule his own things to accommodate his brother, and he doesn't want to do that.

He should be allowed his independence and also his brother should have an experience of needing to sort his own situation out independently.

The resentment and rift could actually come from forcing big brother to help against his wishes for how he spends his time and uses his space, and leaving little brother feeling dependent.

If they can find a way to establish their own lives independently I'd say there's a greater chance of no resentment or rift, and the possibility they might choose to catch up together or with you over dinner etc

All us parents who have suddenly had to accommodate ‘not much stuff’ from child’s end of year at uni will be 🤦‍♀️🙇‍♀️

While on the surface it does sound selfish of him I can understand why he's feeling a bit put out that his younger brother is not only moving to the same city to play the same sport, but is moving only 10 minutes away and he's already being asked to do stuff to help him. He's probably wondering why his brother isn't carving his own path in life and/or worried that he's going to get his parents constantly asking him to do favours for his brother.

Did your younger son deliberately pick a house so close to his brother? It seems unlikely he'd get one only 10 minutes away by coincidence in a city.

I would be really annoyed at your eldest son. I mean seriously annoyed. He does not own the city and can’t control who lives there. If there was some massive fallout I could maybe understand it. I would be telling the eldest how disappointed I was in him that he is putting you to all this work when he could so easily put the stuff in the garage. He could so easily give the keys of his house and tell you to stay the night in his spare room. As a mother all the things you have done for him over the years and this is probably one the first asks of him and it’s a no.

Some siblings can be jealous of other ones. I'd at least say how disappointed you are.