I don’t think I want my brother in my life anymore. It makes me very sad to come to that realization but if I’m honest I just don’t want someone like him in my life. It’s hard because it’s my brother, you know?
We’re very opposite in pretty much every aspect of life. He’s a young-earth creationist while I’m agnostic. He thinks Trump is awesome because he’ll “bomb the shit outta isis” while I voted for Liberal Trudeau (Canada) in the last election. I’m a vegetarian and he thinks it’s funny to go into details about slaughterhouses.
All of those things I can and have put aside and just ignore him when he says stupid shit. But he’s just such a jerk.
I just got home after spending a few days visiting with him and his family. We were out for dinner and everyone was talking about the age they feel like in their heads. My 16 year old nephew (who mostly just keeps his head down and tries to avoid catching his father’s attention) said “my friends tell me I act like I’m 28” and my brother said “You?? you’re the least mature of all your friends, when I see you all together you’re the biggest idiot of the group!”. Nephew just put his head down and kept eating .
The other nephew, aged 12, got sent to bed early for being “disobedient” because he didn’t want dessert. My brother also said to him “Don’t make me spank you in front of your aunt! You hear my voice? You need to obey me when I tell you to do something”.
It’s so incredibly uncomfortable for every single meal we have because that’s when he bullies and harasses the boys the most. I did try once to say something but was instantly told “Don’t tell me how to raise my kids!”.
He’s also so rude to me. I’d been trying to identify a bird for the last few weeks and when I got to his place described the bird and asked him if he knew. He knew what bird I was talking about but he didn’t know what it was, either. The next day I (finally) figured out it was a nighthawk and I excitedly said “It’s a nighthawk!!”. I’m hard of hearing in one ear so I often don’t hear the first couple of words that someone says but it sounded to me like he was joking “oh yeah I knew that!” sort of thing so I jokingly said “Liah!” complete with terrible English accent. Suddenly he’s yelling about a sign in Arizona, and “don’t call me a liar!I don’t have time for this! I’m playing a game!” And I was just sort of wa…?
Then he pretty much just gave me the cold shoulder the rest of the visit. It’s always like that when I go visit - just sad and unpleasant.
So I was walking the dog tonight and it just kind of came to me that I just really don’t want someone like that in my life. If it was someone I wasn’t related to, I’d tell him he’s a terrible parent and get the hell out of my life.
So anyway this is long and rambling and just something I needed to get off my chest.
Your nephews need you, and not just at the end of a phone call or email. Be present, physically, for them occasionally. You’re a grown adult, and you’ve lived with this brother all your life (I doubt that he was much better, ever) – you can handle it. And now you have a reason to do so, for the sake of these kids. (Because his wife probably doesn’t stand up to him much – this type of bully finds doormats to marry, or else browbeats them into doormats after marriage.)
Don’t let yourself get upset when he is rude to you or gives you the cold shoulder – just tolerate him, and quietly laugh to yourself at his predictable antics. So continue to visit them. The boys need to see people who don’t knuckle under to his bullying. And people who can be graceful & pleasant to others, even when the others are rude.
As a young-earth creationist, he no doubt believes literally in Noah’s Ark. Talk to the boys about that, and help them calculate how much poop that many animals would generate every day, and how many hours Noah & family would have had to spend shoveling poop overboard to avoid sinking. (Teenage boys will love this.) Just give them the idea that it’s OK to questions things, and to try to logically calculate the reasonableness of answers.
Tell them, per Dan Savage, “It gets better”. Once you graduate high school and go away to college, you never have to come back except when you choose to visit. You can go off and live ypur own life. (But do make sure they have your phone number & email in the meantime.)
You might also tell them that their father loves them, even if he doesn’t show it much, and that he thinks he’s doing the right thing by trying to, as he sees it, bring them up right. Even if you you yourself don’t believe that of your brother, these kids probably need to hear that.
I’m with the previous poster. Most of the influences on kids are NOT their parents but their other immediate relations…aunts, uncles and older cousins.
You are in a good position to influence your nephews in a better life outlook. They probably already know their dad is a jerk, but having you to back them up will make their position easier.
Joining the chorus of cutting links with him but maintaining them with the nephews. Perhaps they’ll be looking for another home when they turn 18 and you might be more helpful to them then.
Any idea what might have contributed to him turning out like that?
Yes. We’ve been through a lot together and were raised in a very abusive household. There were times when I had to jump out my bedroom window and sleep in the forest. That’s the thing that gets to me - he knows better! He’s lived the belittling and bullying. We were raised fundamentalist Pentecostals which I’ve broken away from but my brother has not.
I love the nephews and want to be there to support them but there just really isn’t much I can do unfortunately. They live far away so it’s not like I can just pop over to pick them up and take them out for lunch.
I can’t even communicate with them because they aren’t allowed anything private like email/mail/texting. Anyway…
I’ll figure out a way to let them know that I’m here for them anytime, for anything. I just don’t know how yet.
I’d drop him like a hot rock if it weren’t for the boys and their lack of privacy/ability to communicate with the outside world.
Consider cutting down contact to one brief annual get-together just so you can keep an eye on the kids and give them your contact information if/when they’re ever allowed to be non-cultists and have real lives. Let them know that you want them in your life, you just don’t see eye to eye with their father. Don’t badmouth their dad to them.
Just don’t be too surprised if they come looking for you when they turn 18 and decide to run away, or get too rebellious and daddy kicks them out.
I say just be yourself around him. Don’t let him bully you, speak your mind, don’t betray yourself when you are around him. Laugh at him, when he’s an idiot. He’s your brother, it’s okay to laugh at your brother when he’s an idiot. Let him kick you out of his life, if he can’t take it. Show your nephews what it’s like to have their own ideas and opinions.
My Aunt knuckled under and kissed my Mom’s ass for years for my sake, and I’m probably only alive and somewhat normal because of her. I went to live with her when I was 17. I cannot fathom how hard it would have been growing up in such a crazy situation without a single person there to tell me, ‘‘This is not normal or appropriate.’’
But she also has real trauma because of what my Mom put her through during those years. Their relationship was utterly destroyed and she has some anxiety issues because of having to walk on eggshells that long to make someone happy. My Mom used people’s desire to have a relationship with me in order to control them, so the minute someone stepped out of line she would block off their access to me. It happened with my grandmother and my aunt saw the devastating impact losing my grandmother had on me and was determined I would not lose another person.
I’m saying you’re not in an easy situation. I’d try to come up with a plan for how you can be supportive of those boys while sustaining the minimal amount of damage to yourself.
At this point, I think I agree with you. I have to have a balance with my own peace of mind and being there for the boys (who are such lovely people by the way and don’t deserve the abuse their father puts them through).
I was hoping you’d pop in, Spice Weasel as I know you understand this sort of thing. That’s the thing, if I step out of line with him, he’ll just cut off access to the boys. At least the older one is close to 18 and can do what he wants after that. But, as you and I are well aware having been raised religiously and with abuse, it can take well into adulthood to break free from it all.
So your nephews are 12, 16 and 18, is that correct? Do they have other positive influences in their lives besides you? That could also contribute to what you decide to do.
I should probably clarify I wasn’t raised religiously in the same way you were, I just became very religious when I was 10 or 11, independent of family pressure… and certainly it was related to things getting much worse at home around that time. At the time one of my parents was an atheist and the other agnostic, though my Mom had some kind of weird spiritual awakening since then. I was so religious that I was commonly punished by being grounded from church. I’m guessing that doesn’t happen in religious families.
I hope you take some small amount of comfort in knowing that you survived the same shitty childhood your brother did and you chose not to become an abusive asshole. That you are concerned for your nephews speaks to the quality of person you are.
The parents of some of my JW friends would do that, church being about the only time they were supposed to have social interactions (they weren’t even supposed to talk with their classmates, guess how well that worked). But well, at that time, being JW in that town already marked a family as “weird”.
Just two nephews, 12 and 16. Their mom loves them but doesn’t stand up to my brother. They go to a private religious school where their mom is a teacher and their dad is an assistant teacher. They have almost zero time without their parents. Sister in laws brother left the religion and raised his kids in an accepting, loving home so, of course, my brother can’t stand them and the cousins rarely see each other. They really don’t have anyone in their lives who isn’t super religious and can show them that there are people who don’t just hate everyone who isn’t like them.
When I was there one of the boys was talking about his upcoming science class and his mom said “don’t listen too much to science, it it lies that will lead you away from the bible”. I can’t just image what their “science” class will entail.
I had a close JW friend in high school and he was definitely weird. I was one of the few people he did talk to, and then one random day he sent me a ten-page letter about how I should convert to JW so we could be together romantically. I cared about him very much, but that was awkward.
It just seems to me some very religious people might view missing church for any reason other than sickness/dire emergency as a sin.
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