Nasty sibling

[Pomodor0]

Looking for advice.
My sister and I have noticed some narcissistic tendencies in our younger brother over recent years. His scapegoat appears to be our mother who he is abusive towards. She can not do anything right.

Our mother has admittedly distanced herself from him in the last 5 years, not intentionally I don't think, but through anxiety at being around him.

So a bit of background:
Dad longed for a son after two girls. He was into his rugby growing up and used to take me and my sister along. My brother was born 3 years after me and he put all his energy into him pretty much. Dad knew nothing about my sister and I growing up, didn't know who our friends were, couldn't tell tou what foods we liked or didn't. My brother on the other hand was his shadow and Dad pushed him into rugby- he was very pushy and sometimes nasty towards our brother when he didn't do things the way he thought. If he lost a game through partly his mistake, he would ignore him for days.

Dad was verbally abusive towards mum when he drank and she would stick up for our brother now and then but mostly stayed quiet. We have since learned that she was having an affair for many years whilst Dad's abuse was going on. My sister and I stayed out of Dad's way mostly as he would turn on us also if he was drinking, but we were much less of a focus for him than our brother.

Mum divorced Dad when my sister and I had left home and brother went to Uni, she had met someone else that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She remarried and moved 80 miles away.

My brother has inherited Dad's nasty side which is often unleashed when things don't go his way. Otherwise, he is usually calm, respectful and charismatic to be around. He hates our mother for divorcing Dad and spends much of his time at the rugby with Dad. Mum can not do anything right at all. He says that she puts more effort into myself and my sister- something I definitely agree with, but this divide emerged when we were youngsters and Dad didn't make much effort with us either- although my mum never missed any of

Posted too soon-
Any of his rugby matches! She was also the club secretary so he certainly had more of a relationship with her than we had with our Dad.

Mum is always uptight and apprehensive when she's about to spend time with him- evident to see and I guess this has contributed to her spending less time with him and his children and more time with us and ours. She treats all of her grandchildren the same but sees much less of my brother's kids as he only sees them EOW and once during the week. Mum being 80 miles away and working FT makes it difficult for her and him to be free at the same time.

My brother does not see it this way.
He sends her abusive messages, swears at her and blames her for not trying hard enough with him and his kids. If she dares be half an hour late when visiting him he won't even open the door to her.

My sister and I think he's nasty. He can also turn and snap at us at times if we dare to minimise any of his "many" achievements, particularly professionally. We keep him at a healthy distance for the sake of our kids relationships with his kids. However, what does my mum do? She's been crying again after another abusive outburst from him because she can't visit him when he says she should visit as she has workmen in that day and she needs to be at home. His ex wife won't allow him to take his children there to visit her (she's controlling and v possessive with the children- she punishes him by refusing them visits if my brother dare break any of her crazy rules).

Mum tries not to lean on my sister and I too much but it's all too clear when she's upset by him. At a point now where I wonder if she should cut him off? She said it isn't an option, he's her son and she should always make an effort with him, but this is abuse and she doesn't deserve it.

Any advice?

Anyone?

From his perspective, he probably feels he was left to take the brunt of your father’s abuse while his mother concentrated on her other children and her affair partner, instead of protecting you all and leaving sooner. It was tolerable for her while he was there to be on the receiving end of it, but as soon as he left she made it apparent she wasn’t going to tolerate what she expected him to.

It’s likely that he’s carrying a lot of trauma from being an abuse victim. Of course he’s angry and lashing out.

‘if we dare to minimise any of his "many" achievements‘

but why are you minimising his achievements, rather than being happy for/proud of him? And in what way exactly are you minimising?

He calls her names like "bitch, slag, wanker, fucking selfish, cow, cunt, idiot, arsehole.."

Are you saying that she deserves all of that @whumpthereitis ?

He is in his mid thirties now and is responsible for his abusive reactions.
My sister and I were verbally abused by our father. We don't speak to him this way.

How is your relationship with your dad nowadays?. Do you have any contact with him now?.

Your mother left her abusive H only when you people as her children had all left home. By that stage the damage to you all as her now adult children had long since been done. I am not at all excusing your brother's actions but the emotional harm done to you all as her now adult children could have been somewhat mitigated if she had left her abuser far earlier in life. Your mother also should not be using either you or your sister as some sort of sounding boards; that is not fair to either of you here.

Sure, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

No, he shouldn’t be speaking to her like that, but it’s not particularly surprising that he is considering his mentor. The one his mother left him at the mercy of while she focused on you and your sister.

she may have been a good mother to you, but by the sounds of it she wasn’t to him. He needs therapy to deal with his feelings, because he’s not expressing them in healthy ways. However, like I said, it’s not surprising that he feels hurt, resentful, and angry. I’m not saying that he isn’t nasty now in his own right, but he is a product of his environment. Your mother bears some responsibility for that in failing to protect him.

His behaviour is not ok, but it's not inherited from your father. It's learned from your father. It's what he knows and what he's seen, especially as the primary target of your father's behaviour. Your father's attention came at a cost. There was abuse ,there was trauma. There will be anger,hurst,resentment and shame now. He will exhibit the same behaviours he's seen and was subjected to.

Should your mother put up with it and be his emotional punching bag? No. But she does need to acknowledge her role in his childhood,acknowledge the harm that was done to him and apologise for her part in it.

He needs to work on himself and probably needs targeted professional support with it (counselling, therapy,etc) and while you can suggest or encourage him to ask for help,you can't make him do it.

She acknowledges her role @IdontWanna I think it's the reason ahe keeps trying with him.

It's odd that given my Dad was the abusive one, it's him he's close to and directs none of the abuse towards him.

Concerning really that many posters here blame the mother for not protecting him more than blaming the father who was actually abusive. I do agree that she should have left him sooner to protect us all but she couldn't see a way out financially. She admits her doing though. My sister and I have had lots of therapy over the years. My brother has had some too but his recollection of events is odd- he doesn't remember Dad's abuse the way it happened. He excuses it.

Probably because you’re posting specifically in regards to his relationship with his mother, rather than with his father. The focus is going to be on her in that context.

of course his father is an arsehole. Thinking your mother is accountable for her own actions (you know, as adults are) and the damage they have inflicted is not the same as excusing your father. I’m sure you know that.

it’s also not odd at all that he doesn’t relate to your father in that way. As a child your brother would have sought to avoid his abuse by pleasing him, and that dynamic has continued into adulthood. It’s actually very common behavior for abuse victims to exhibit.

no one is saying your brother is a nice person, or that he isn’t fucked up. They’re saying they understand why he’s fucked up, and recognize that your mother does have a part to play in that. She sacrificed your brother to your father so she could concentrate on you, your sister and her boyfriend, knowing that your father’s attention was on your brother. Only when your brother left home did she divorce him, because she wasn’t willing to tolerate the abuse she allowed her son to suffer. Women walk out of relationships with just their children and the clothes on their back, in order to protect their children. Your mother prioritized financial comfort knowing that the heat was off her.

so yes, your father was a terrible human being and a bad father. Your mother sounds like she was pretty awful in her own right. She’s not ‘good’ by virtue of your father being bad.

And none of your response answers the question posted in my OP.

Are you saying that my mother should continue accepting abuse from my brother in order to have a relationship with him because she deserves it?

You offer no solution, only justification for abuse.

no one is justifying abuse.

Ironically, you’re quick to justify and excuse your mother’s harmful actions on account of her being an abuse victim, but extend no understanding to your brother, who was also an abuse victim, and allowed to be one by your mother. And yes, you can detest someone’s actions but still understand what the anger was born from. Sympathy and compassion for the boy he was does not mean you have to like the man he became.

As for advice, my opinion would be that your brother cut his ties with his family of birth and work on healing himself, for his own benefit and that of those around him. For your mother? If she says she’s unwilling to cut him off, through love, guilt, or both, then I’m not sure what you expect to be able to do.

And I don’t know if there is a solution. Unfortunately, abuse casts a long shadow.

To be honest your heated responses show what you think your mother should do.

Maybe you're not engaging with the previous pps posts because you're too close to see this objectively

For me it just comes down to what does your mum want to do. She's an adult. You can't make her go no contact.

She probably is living with the guilt of what happened to her family. She could have stopped it. You have all been affected deeply.

I also find it odd you refer to your ex sil as crazy. You know your brother is an abusive narcissist. But she's crazy? Maybe she's dealing with the same crap as your mum.

I read this and saw some similarities with my own upbringing. My mum put up with a lot of emotional abuse from my dad (as did we as kids) because she’d grown up thinking that it was shameful to get divorced. We were grown up by the time they divorced and we’d have been happier and less screwed up if they’d done it earlier when we were children. Despite my dad being the abuser I would say that we all tried to gain approval from him and didn’t always treat our mum brilliantly. There’s been a lot of counselling on this. Partly, for me at least, I feel my mum, as the adult, let us down by not taking us away from this. However, I consider now that she felt unable to financially, because of her upbringing and views about divorce, and that what we went through wasn’t necessarily considered abuse when we were children. It was only when I became a parent that I began to question the parenting I’d had. Reading Mumsnet helped because I began to be able to recognise that what we’d been through. There wasn’t anything like that 30 or 40 years ago. I think my mum just thought this was normal.
As for your brother, no your mum shouldn’t put up with it. My brother is horrible to my mum, threatens to not talk to her (and has, at times, not spoken to her for months) and controls who she sees to an extent. It is a continuation of how my dad treated her but she still has this hope that he’ll change. She turns a blind eye to his many faults and has ‘lent’ him thousands. It isn’t selfish for you and your sister to protect yourselves and not engage when your mum is upset about the relationship she has with your brother. In my counselling I’m told to hand things back to people. You’ve taken measures to deal with your brother so you need to hand your mums issues back to her. Your brother is an adult and should seek therapy for his issues. Mine won’t. Until he sees your mum as an adult with her own issues he probably won’t change.

I relate a lot to your post @ApathyMartha . Your family dynamic sounds almost identical and I agree too that my brother is now playing out the way Dad treated her.

My mum is a little different in that she's now not wanting to tolerate the abusive behaviour anymore. I don't understand why my brother won't just cut her off if he hates her so much, it's like he needs her there as his emotional punch bag.

Mum doesn't put on me with it, it's just very evident to see that she's incredibly upset by it.

Do a little reading on the psychology of abuse victims. It really isn’t that difficult to understand at all. Your brother is acting out what he was taught. He’s an arsehole, and he’s one made in your father’s imaged with the backing of your mother.

He may hate her, and love her at the same time. He may want to punish her, and want to see evidence that she actually does love and care for him. He may desperately want a normal relationship with her, but be overwhelmed with his feelings of rage and betrayal.

He has a right to feel angry. He’s not expressing it well at all and while there isn’t an excuse for it there is a clear reason. No matter what he is, there’s no escaping the fact that she did let him down massively, and failed as a parent to him. There was clearly a male/female split in the house, and you seem to have lumped him in with your father, separate to the rest of you and his father’s business. He was a child. A child that needed protecting. He was an abused child who was left to take up the majority of your father’s attention. You have all the compassion and understanding for your mother’s position, but none for your brother? The child he was? Your mother was an adult who made choices, whereas your brother lacked any agency. You understand your mother’s failure to act even though she could, but you don’t understand your bother, who had no options?

How do you think you would have felt, and be feeling, in regards to your mother if your lived experience was his?

Well without having to go over every single detail of pur upbringing @whumpthereitis my sister and I have been at the tail end of our brother's angry outbursts so empathy is difficult. He gave me two black eyes when I was 19.

We were completely neglected by our father too don't forget and suffered at his abusive outbursts. We lived in our bedrooms. Our brother is not the only victim.

@Pomodor0

I don't really have much advice I'm afraid. the people who need advice in this situation aren't asking (or listening to it).

I just think your family is incredibly dysfunctional (I have experience of this!), and I have learned that I am only responsible, and can control, my own actions.

Of course your mother should not be getting messages like that from her son.
She should not have to tolerate that from anyone. I do not think I have came across that level of malevolence in a son-mother relationship. And this is unfortunate.

But your mother is the one with the options to end the contact (or even limit the contact). You do not. You could ask your brother to stop it. But you haven't, and it sounds like you don't want to.

One thing I will add is your brother is the youngest member of the family? And the circumstances of his upbringing sound harsh and upsetting. He did not cause this dysfunction, but he is continuing it within the family.

Your mother chose to stay with your father despite the abuse and she chose not to protect your brother from the abuse. These actions (as they always do), have ramifications that can carry on for decades or for generations. She does not deserve her punishment, but she did not protect your brother when he was vulnerable and needed it. Now, she is maybe more vulnerable and needs protection, that it is clear you want to give, but she chooses to continue in the relationship despite the abuse. She may be more vulnerable but she still has autonomy. I would step back until that is no longer the case. There really isn't anything else you can do.

No, he wasn’t the only victim, but he was the main focus of your father’s attentions, which were terrible enough that you were glad to escape his notice. Your bother wasn’t so ‘fortunate’. Ironically, it’s often the case that those most in need of empathy are those that appear to be the least deserving of it. He’s not a perfect victim, but he is nonetheless a victim. Your mother’s role in that was not insignificant. Him being ‘bad’ does not make your mother ‘good’, however much you may want to define it so neatly.

Unfortunately that’s the classic cycle of abuse. Most abusers have been abused themselves, because they’ve never learned how to express themselves differently. They’ve never been taught to skills necessary to break the cycle. He wasn’t born a monster, he was taught to be one, and his mother stood back and let it happen. He was abused by both parents, in different ways.

You don’t have to like him in order to understand him, or to acknowledge what he went through.

'My brother has inherited Dad's nasty side'

No he didnt he was abused by your parents - just like you were. You are scapegoating him. Go seek therapy and understand family dynamics affect everyone.