I have two siblings, a sister with whom I’m close, and a brother with whom I’m not. The latter lives in DC and contact between us has been increasingly sporadic over the years for a variety of reasons. It’s not active hostility or a complete estrangement, but when he called me last Christmas I realized after I got off the phone with him that it was the first time I’d talked to him in about three years.
He just called me to say that he hears I’m going through a period of fairly substantial suckiness in my life (true), and that he is concerned about me and wants to offer whatever support and/or help he could.
It sounds no more sinister than a caring brother checking out your well-being, to these ears. The fact he hasn’t been in touch, doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about you.
Your brother decided to check in with you because he heard you’ve been struggling. You admit you’re not at odds, you just don’t speak often. Then you characterize the call as very, very, very weird. Why not accept it for what it was? Your brother touching base.
Why stay stuck in the “this is how are relationship has always been” thing and just go with the flow?
Maybe he regrets the semi-estrangement, and thought your time of suckiness would make a good excuse to open a closer relationship.
Maybe he just loves his sister, even though you two don’t have a lot to chitchat about.
It is remotely possible that he is a dickhead who would love to gloat over the details of your suffering.
Given the details in the OP, I’m betting he simply loves his sister, regrets your distance to some degree, and is taking your life’s general suckiness as an excuse to let you know he still cares.
I’m taking his expression of concern as sincere, and told him so – and will think about what he said about figuring out ways people might be able to help me deal with some of the suckiness, and told him that as well. I’m just completely taken aback by this phone call that comes out of freaking nowhere.
Well, you found it odd enough to share on here and characterized it as very, very, very weird. You then ended your post with What. The. Fuck. These things don’t normally point to signs of positivity.
In the OP, you state that he called you at Christmas - how is that out of nowhere? To me, Christmas has always been, first and foremost, about family. It seems (to me) that your posting of it here (more than NINE MONTHS later) is more “out of freaking nowhere” than him calling you on that particular day.
That’s not clearly implicit.
“He just called to say…” is much different than saying, “Yesterday, he called to say…” Think about the line in the Stevie Wonder song - “I just called to say I love you…”
Apologies for hijack, Twickster. Hopefully his ulterior motive is to mend the fence.
I can kind of see where the OP is coming from. I rarely talk to my brother, and we have never called each other on the phone and only see each other at family events, but if either my sister or I were going through a terrible time, he’ll be there. He went out of his way to pretty extraordinary lengths to help my sister out a few years ago. If he were to call me just to say he was thinking of me, I’d have a What the fuck? moment too. I love him, but it would still be very, very weird.
I have two sisters. I haven’t called either (except because I missed a call) in years.
We aren’t particularly close. It’s not that I don’t like them but that I don’t feel the need to talk to them. My constructive formative years did not involve them very much. I’ve chatted with each online in the last year, and every indication I have, from them and from our parents, is that they’re fine. Similarly, they know I’m still alive and functioning sufficiently.
It would absolutely be weird if either called – to the point of being nervous that they had called, because one assumes one would only call if something was up. But other than my profound dislike for the phone (thus part of the nerves), … it wouldn’t be bad. Just weird, like if my wife bought some tiramisu.
But unless the news was bad, it wouldn’t be a bad weird, just unusual. I think that’s the sense twickster is talking about. Surprising, unexpected, but not anywhere close to “Well, there went my day.”
