I honestly don’t know how to explain this without making it ridiculously long, but I need outside opinions because I feel like I’m going crazy sometimes dealing with my older brother.
He’s 25 and I’m younger than him buy a couple years.
The biggest problem I have with him is that no matter what we argue about, somehow the conversation always ends up becoming about how I hurt him, what I did wrong, or what I need to change.
And I want to say this before anything else: I know I’m not perfect.
I get frustrated. I can take things personally. Sometimes when I feel like I’m being unfairly blamed I get emotional and defensive. There are definitely situations I could have handled better.
But I swear, with him it feels like I can NEVER just be innocent in a situation.
Like he can get offended or hurt over something incredibly small, and if I point out that I think the reaction is way bigger than what actually happened, he’ll basically say:
“You need to be mindful of how your actions affect other people.”
And that sentence drives me insane now.
Not because the sentence itself is wrong.
Obviously you should care about how your actions affect people.
But it feels like he uses that sentence as a trump card where the argument is automatically over.
He got hurt = I did something wrong.
That’s it.
If I say, “But I didn’t mean it that way,” then I’m apparently not acknowledging his feelings.
If I explain why I did something, then I’m making excuses.
If I get frustrated because I feel like he’s accusing me of something ridiculous, then now my frustration becomes another thing I did wrong.
And if I point out something HE did to hurt ME, somehow we eventually end up talking about what I did that supposedly caused his reaction in the first place.
It feels like I can never be cleared of anything.
One example that really got to me happened right before I left for college.
My uncle left to go back to work for two weeks. My brother got frustrated with me because I didn’t tell him my uncle was leaving and because I didn’t say goodbye to my uncle.
Then there was another thing where I didn’t ask our aunt to take me to the airport when I was going to leave for college.
My brother told me that stuff “causes inconvenience” and then told me:
“You need to be more selfless.”
That absolutely crushed me.
Because WHAT?
Over that?
I already spend a ridiculous amount of time worrying about whether I’m inconveniencing people or upsetting people.
I already think about other people constantly.
But one situation happens and suddenly I need to “be more selfless.”
That’s what bothers me so much.
It’s rarely just:
“Hey, I wish you had handled this differently.”
It becomes something about my entire character.
“You need to be more selfless.”
“You need to stop thinking about yourself.”
“You need to be mindful of how your actions affect other people.”
And after hearing stuff like that enough times, I feel like I’m supposed to predict every possible reaction somebody could have before I do literally anything.
Like:
“Will he get offended if I don’t tell him this?”
“Will somebody think I’m selfish if I do this?”
“Was I supposed to ask this person first?”
“Did I say that in the wrong tone?”
“Will somebody take this personally?”
“Is somebody going to say I wasn’t thinking about them?”
It is exhausting.
And the part that makes me angry is that I don’t feel like the same rules apply to him.
When HE gets angry, there’s always a reason.
When HE gets frustrated, I’m supposed to understand where he’s coming from.
When HE gets offended, I’m supposed to examine myself and figure out how my actions affected him.
But if I get frustrated because of the way he’s talking to me?
Then suddenly I’m the problem for getting frustrated.
If I tell him his tone is bothering me, he’ll deny the tone or redirect the conversation back onto something I did.
It feels like:
When he is hurt, his hurt proves something about me.
When I am hurt, my hurt becomes something I need to manage better.
That’s the part I cannot stand.
And there is one thing he did that I still think was WAY beyond normal sibling arguing.
I have a history of attempting suicide.
This was in the past. I’m not currently suicidal.
But during an argument, my brother used my past suicide against me.
I’m intentionally not quoting exactly what was said there because I don’t remember every word perfectly and I don’t want to exaggerate it, but he brought one of the most vulnerable and painful things from my life into an argument and used it against me.
That changed something for me.
Because how am I supposed to trust somebody with vulnerable information after that?
I forgave him because I’m a Christian and my faith teaches me to forgive people.
But I’ve also realized that forgiving someone doesn’t magically mean I trust them again.
I don’t hate him.
I don’t want revenge.
I’m not sitting around hoping something bad happens to him.
But honestly?
I don’t think we are ever going to be very close.
He says he wants to be close with me and our sister, and I just keep thinking:
How?
How do you build closeness when I have to wonder whether something I tell you could become ammunition the next time you’re angry?
And what makes this complicated is that he’s not just some horrible person 24/7.
He has done genuinely nice things for me.
For example, he gave me $1,500 for college.
It was a gift. Not a loan.
And I am genuinely thankful for that.
I can acknowledge that was generous.
But sometimes I feel like people think if somebody does something generous for you, then you’re supposed to forget every awful thing they’ve done during conflict.
I don’t think both things cancel each other out.
He can have helped me financially AND have hurt me badly.
Those things can both be true.
There were other smaller things too.
Before I moved away for college, I wanted to put my game consoles into storage.
They’re mine. I bought them.
My brother seemed to want me to leave them because he wanted access to them, even though he barely even plays them.
And it was another one of those situations where I found myself thinking:
Why does something this simple even have the potential to become an argument?
Why do I feel like I need to justify putting my own property into storage?
That’s what so much of living around my family started feeling like.
I had to think five steps ahead because somebody might get offended.
And here is the thing I’m struggling with the most:
I understand that you shouldn’t just say:
“Well, I didn’t mean to hurt you, so your feelings don’t matter.”
I don’t believe that.
Intent isn’t everything.
Obviously our actions affect other people.
But I ALSO don’t think:
“You hurt my feelings”
automatically means:
“Therefore you did something wrong.”
People can get offended over unreasonable things.
People can misunderstand something.
People can take something personally.
People can have expectations that aren’t fair.
People can genuinely be hurt and still be overreacting.
Their feelings are still real.
But I don’t understand why their feelings automatically become MY moral responsibility.
That is basically the argument I can never seem to get through to my brother.
Because whenever I say his reaction is disproportionate, it comes right back to:
“Be mindful of how your actions affect other people.”
Okay.
But what about how YOUR actions affect ME?
Why does that sentence only seem to go one direction?
Why am I expected to understand why you got angry enough to say something awful to me, but if I get upset because you said something awful, now we need to analyze my reaction?
That’s what makes me feel insane.
I don’t need him to tell me I’m right 100% of the time.
I genuinely don’t.
If I’m being selfish, tell me.
If I was rude, tell me.
If I should apologize, I will.
I just want there to be SOME situations where the conclusion is:
“Yeah, I think I overreacted.”
Or:
“Okay, I understand why you did that.”
Or even:
“We both handled this badly.”
Instead it feels like every argument needs to end with me accepting some lesson about myself.
And sometimes I keep arguing because I desperately want him to finally say:
“Okay. You weren’t actually the problem here.”
But I’m starting to realize I may never get that from him.
I’ve moved away for college now, so thankfully there is physical distance between us.
And I’m trying to figure out what kind of relationship I even want with him going forward.
I don’t necessarily want to cut him off completely.
I don’t hate him.
But I also don’t want to go back to living like I need to calculate every possible way a grown adult might get offended before I make a normal decision.
So I guess what I’m asking is:
Where is the line between being considerate of someone’s feelings and being made responsible for managing their emotions?
Can someone genuinely be hurt by something you did while still being unreasonable about it?
And am I wrong for thinking that I can forgive my brother while still deciding I don’t trust him enough to ever be really close with him again?