If you're the scapegoat what's your relationship with golden child?

[DuchyCazalet]

Struggling with this at the moment. Dbro is the golden child. DM is strangely obsessed with him even though he treats her rudely. Her elevating him to diety status only enables this behaviour. The whole dynamic is skewed. My relationship with him was close years ago but I'm really struggling now. I also think that he's quite happy to stir the situation up. Feel like I can't have a relationship with him without her sticking her oar in. She has an expectation that I treat him like the god she seems to think he is and overlook any rudeness he shows me. He doesn't live close to me/her so that makes things easier in one way.
Seems that very low contact with both is the way to go. I know that for some who have the golden child status it can be a burden but he seems to accept it as his right and it's led to him being obnoxious but at times he can be really good fun.
Just needing a vent and hoping to hear from others so that I know I'm not alone.

Not sure whether I am the Scapegoat but think I have definitely been relegated to the back of the queue (in my birth family), I am the black sheep in the family (for going to Uni as a mature student and living in a nicer house in a nicer area than the rest of the family) especially since my poor dad died.

My mother always favours my younger sis my brother who has a disability and my niece is definitely on a pedestal (sisters DD and mums eldest grandchild) none of them can do any wrong and are all ‘like my mum’ and are ‘easy to get along with’ (according to my mum).

My mum always likes to play the martyr, uses guilt and plays one off against another (as her father did in her family which she hated) and she always liked to be and feel needed which suits my sister (who has in the past made a lot of bad decisions) now I think roles are starting to reverse as my mum is now 80. My mum, sis, brother and niece are all thick as thieves (due to inverse snobbery). I haven’t cut contact but I have gradually begun distancing myself from them over the last few months and its quiet freeing. Nothing I do is good enough and my children even further at the back of the queue than me (so much so that my mum has removed all photos of my teens out of her living room and the only photos on display are of my elder niece and her sister, my brother, my sister and my mum).

I can get along with my brother, sister and my mum individually on a one to one basis but my relationship with my niece has always been strained.

Thank you for sharing.
It's not easy when your normal is actually dysfunctional but you can't see that when you're mired in the middle of it.

Yes, as the girl I was always ‘lesser’ in my mother’s eyes, and most of the family. My brothers don’t really see DM much at all, but she worships the ground they walk in. I am the caretaker, but for those things that no one else sees about DM because they don’t really talk to her and find out.

DM has serious chronic health problems now and there is silly ‘front’ where DM pretends her health isn’t so bad, or that she can’t get her house fixed or go out to the doctors, and my brothers react VERY badly when I say she needs a lift or needs a repair done, telling me that I was over reacting. Like I just made up that she couldn’t get to the doctor or that she couldn’t work her heating upstairs!

So I just decided to just help DM myself and keep my mouth shut, and I STILL got into trouble - brothers getting angry I wasn’t ‘informing them’ of every single thing I did. DM complains also about my help and then tells my brothers that she’s sorting stuff, but in reality it’s me!

God give me strength! If DM wasn’t so actually frail, elderly and in need I’d tell them all to do one!

Definite scapegoat here, and I really don’t know exactly why, but I’m barely in touch with my golden child brother. More recently I’ve been annoyed at him for childishly refusing to deal with the fact that our mum has dementia, but that doesn’t explain it all

i was the scapegoat until the day I left home at 16. My brother is the golden child but I actually think its wrecked his life, by having everything given to him on a plate. We get on ok now. My DS is now scapegoated by my mother but doesn't actually give 2 hoots and we live far enough away to ignore it and grey rock