(helps if you've read this before you continue, no biggie if not though!)
So. We had the fun and games of eldest nephews birthday and this time, for once, I was not going to kowtow to him. I had had enough. I just carried on with my life, I wasn't going to him cap in hand to say how sorry I was for our behaviour - which is what I normally have to do for us to continue to have any vague level of civility. It's always the same, no matter what has happened I'm wrong and he's right and I have to bow down to him before we're able to be treated normally again. Or whatever that means to him, I don't think we've ever been treated 'normally' but there you go.
So I left things. Two weeks before the October half term holiday I texted him about possibly meeting up, we offered to pay, and I suggested a load of places we could possibly go and be outside to minimise risk (this was prior to where we live being upgraded in the English 'tier' system for Covid so we could meet up). The conversation unfolded as follows:
HIM
Are you seriously just going to act as if everything is alright and like NEPHEW's birthday didn't happen?! I have had no message from you about it since with you knowing how annoyed I was at it all. And you think you can just message me something like this and I'll open to the idea?!
ME
I knew how annoyed you were which is exactly why I haven't messaged you. I'm never going to win this argument, I know that, I just always end up in tears and I can't do that anymore. We'd just like to see the kids over half term
HIM
So you're happy to break the rule of 6 now but you weren't for NEPHEW's birthday?!
ME
These are not the same circumstances. Then can we just take the kids out for the day please?
HIM
How are they not?! It's still the same thing, more than 6 people being together
ME
One three year old is not the same as five adults. In that situation we were more than happy to risk it for an hour but then plans changed and we felt uneasy
HIM
I'm afraid it's not going to be as simple as this. We were left really angry with the way it was dealt with by you both and it's a culmination of a lot of other things too which we spoke to you about years ago but it only changed for a few months. The very fact you text me acting as if nothing has happened and everything's alright has just added to it all.
And that was it - I snapped. I was done, I didn't care anymore, he'd broken me, I wasn't going to let him get away with it any longer. This last message had tipped me over the edge. I spent the next day writing an email, adding and editing throughout as the day went on, as a reply to that text. I copied and pasted each paragraph into its own text message and sent the replies to him that evening. I genuinely had no idea how he'd react to it or how/when/what he'd reply, all I did know was that we could not carry on like that, *I* could not carry on like that.
I'd sent the email to hubby just before I left work (i.e. before I sent it to my brother) and I've since sent it to my best friend. Both had the same reaction, that it was hard hitting but measured and they were both so so proud of me for writing it. They'd both seen how the relationship with my brother had deteriorated and how it had affected my mental health and were so pleased I'd sent what I'd sent. As hubby put it - I gave him both barrels, reloaded, gave him both again and then threw in a grenade for good measure. This is what I sent:
Ok. It’s time to be brutally honest with you because pussy footing around to try and fit your agenda clearly isn’t working anymore. You’re angry with the way this was dealt with?? I’ve been angry FOR YEARS about the way you and YOUR WIFE treat me and, more recently, HUBBY. I know you have never forgiven him for the hurt he caused me and you’ve never forgiven me for taking him back but we’re together now and stronger than ever so you’re just going to have to deal with it.
Your hypocritical stance on family stinks. You’re both very good at equality between the parents but there is no equivalent of me, of us, and so we’re frequently forgotten or an afterthought at best. Prime example, the letters I sent over lockdown earlier this year. I know mum got responses to her letters because she told me she had, I’d put a large amount of money on the fact SIL'S PARENTS got replies to anything they sent too. You told me we didn’t get a reply as they had so many letters from friends not everyone got a response. But the grandparents did, so are we friends or are we family?! The way we’re treated over presents also makes us angry. I don’t think asking two weeks before a birthday is ‘short notice’. I know there is a list and I know it gets shared with the grandparents, they clearly do ask earlier than we do but why, when it gets to only a few things left on the lists, do you not think ‘oh, we need to save something for ME and HUBBY to get’? Are we that forgotten about? It’s not as if we’re NOT going to buy presents is it??!? We’re always going to get presents and since everything we always suggest is not met with your approval we need the list and yet we’re never thought of as the list gets bought up. These are just two recent examples but there have been many many over the years showing how we’ve been treated differently.
Every single family event is dominated by you and dictated by what YOU want to do. Father’s day, mother’s day, birthdays, Christmas…. We cannot put any other plans in place until we know what YOU are doing. You’re a bully and you’ve been gaslighting me for years, I cannot do this anymore. The mix of that and YOUR WIFE’s passive aggressiveness, not to mention the fact she just cannot hide her utter disdain for my very existence, has made being in your presence increasingly difficult. My mental health has suffered and yet I still force myself to spend time in your house as I love your children desperately and want to spend as much time with them as possible despite the constant barriers you put in our way. We want to be involved in their lives but it is draining to ask frequently for days out, or to come over, and to be told no. We know we can’t see them unless you are present and that further restricts the time we’re able to spend with them. Maybe we don’t ask much as we should but when you’ve been hitting your head against a brick wall for a long time it gets to the point where you need to stop doing it as it hurts too much. Why have you never asked us if we want to join you on days out?! Why does it always have to come from us?!
Over the past couple of months it has looked increasingly likely that we are never going to have children and it will just be the two of us for the foreseeable future. We’ve done a lot of research into adoption and we feel that route is no longer open to us, we still cannot conceive naturally. We’ve been offered the money for another round of IVF but, as much as we are seriously considering it, the odds that it will work are still ridiculously low (5%). You have great empathy for mum and what she has to deal with daily with dad, I’ve seen the way you treat her and you take her for days out as a break and the kids do video calls and send messages. However for reasons I cannot fathom (altho, probably, it’s because if you’re brutally honest you don’t really like me either) you have absolutely no empathy for the situation we are in. This is proven by the many and frequent crass comments you make about children. You have no idea how it feels to be in our position, the world is geared towards those that have children and we are surrounded by constant reminders every day of what we desperately would like but cannot have. Adverts on the tube and on TV (pregnancy vitamins, days out for kids, toys), baby on board badges and buggies on the commute, articles in newspapers about what to do for child-friendly holidays, it never ends. You have managed to tick every single box in life that you are meant to and expected to tick – job, house, wife, kids, dog. And whilst I have no doubt whatsoever that you have worked incredibly hard to get there and it has not been easy for you, at the same time you have not been denied any of those things through no fault of your own. Just imagine for one minute how that feels. To want something, that pretty much everyone else has, so desperately but there is absolutely nothing you can do to fill that void. The pain and emptiness that we carry around with us EVERY SINGLE DAY is palpable and you have no idea. Nor do you seem to care or if you do care, it’s only a bit and there is certainly no empathy there.
All of this goes both ways. When have you ever texted me to ask how I am? How we are? How things are going? You did for a bit when HUBBY and I were splitting up but, generally, I just get ear-splitting silence from you. You take no interest in us or our lives. I know you text mum frequently and have conversations with her, but you don’t with us. I have tried to start conversations on numerous occasions but when I do eventually get a reply from you (and I know you’re busy with work, I don’t expect instant replies genuinely I don’t) the conversation doesn’t really flow naturally and peters out after a few texts. Yet you have frequent conversations with mum. Again, I can only assume it’s because you don’t really like me and don’t really have any interest in my life or care what I’m up to. We have no children therefore our plans are worthless and there’s no reason for you to keep in touch with me.
It is perfectly possible to love someone desperately yet dislike them. You are my brother and for that reason I love you to the moon and back and would throw myself in front of a bus for you, but as a person being around you just makes me feel on edge the whole time.
Now, your reaction to this will be that I’m being over sensitive. That’s always your reaction when I tell you how I’m feeling, you dismiss my very real feelings but you can’t see what you do to me and how you make me feel. Whilst I admit that I can be more sensitive than most (especially towards you, my own flesh and blood, for a long time now you’ve been the only one able to really push my buttons) BUT - you are the ONLY person in my life that I speak to that makes me feel like this. Every conversation I have with you makes my insides contract, my breathing tenses and nine times out of ten I end up crying and in a very messed up state. HUBBY has had to pick up the pieces every single time and he too is sick of seeing me like that. You are the only person that makes me feel like that and puts me in that state so yes, whilst I admit I do have over sensitive tendencies the only conclusion I can get to is that the issue is with you and not with me. I don’t react like this with anyone else. It is how you treat me and view me that leads me to feel like this and whatever level of oversensitivity I may have just makes things worse.
For my part, I am sorry I haven’t said any of this sooner. Really I am. It’s an incredibly heavy weight to carry and I have found the burden extremely draining for a long time, but you have a very domineering personality and it’s difficult to stand up to you, I know mum struggles. I have found it difficult in the past to find the strength to say these things but it has got to the point now that we cannot carry on like this anymore. You have said yourself that we’re not as close as either of us would like to be but until you start to take some responsibility for how things have turned out between us we will not be able to move forward. I desperately want a different relationship with both you and YOUR WIFE but the longer this goes on the more I realise that just isn’t going to happen. But maybe some new, middle ground/third way can be forged. One day it will just be the two of us and I want you in my life more and not less, but I also no longer want to be scared of you or how I feel when I’m around you. And I certainly don’t want every interaction we have to end with me in floods of tears convulsing.
It took him over ten days to reply.
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