Why brothers should not be roommates

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The twins are now 25 and, by coincidence, have ended up pursuing their careers in the same city. This is a good thing. They are roommates. This is a bad thing.

Mostly they fight about money. Brother A is reasonably successful, Brother B is a struggling musician who’s working two jobs and still behind on his student loans.

A says that B is constantly borrowing money from him, never pays him back, and now owes him several thousand dollars. A also says B is condescending because, after all, B is an artist and A is just a drone.

B says that when he writes A a check, A forgets to deposit it for several weeks. As a result, B’s later checks bounce. B also says that A doesn’t keep track of when B does pay him back, and doesn’t remember when B pays for something out of pocket. B also notes that he took A in when A came to the big city, and in return A acted like he was the boss from day one. Also, A doesn’t care about B’s music.

Eventually they both end up complaining to their mother, who gets depressed. Then I get mad at them for dragging their mother into it.

Yesterday, A decided to clamp down on B by changing the code on the remote control, so B couldn’t turn on the TV, and by locking B out of the router, blocking his Internet access. A says that B isn’t paying him back for cable or Internet, and he’s tired of being sponged. B, of course, had a bunch of work-related stuff on some online storage service that he now can’t access.

They both called their mother, who is now terribly upset that they can’t work things out. I keep telling her not to get involved in squabbles between her children, and that if they want us to mediate, they need to ask us together – otherwise she’ll get blamed for taking sides.

They both need to find someone else to live with, but the lease runs for another 8 months.

2

Oy vey.

Thank you for making mediating my sweetie’s teenaged boys’ troubles seem like paradise in comparison.

3

They need to have a fistfight and a bro hug and get it all sorted!

Seriously tho the twins I know are 32 and they text and talk all day like little girls, but they refuse to live together. They seem to have differ in the same way yours do. I think I will stop pressing them to live together now :slight_smile:

4

My twin cousins are in their early 60s and are currently not speaking due to one being a tenant of the other. They are utterly different identical twins, only they can tell the difference, but they sure do seem to dislike each other. Shame that neither of them chose a career as a professional projectionist.

5

Several times, people have asked my brothers (who aren’t twins, even irish ones, but close enough in age and looks that people mistake them for each other) something along the lines of “wouldn’t it have been better if you’d gone to college to the same town and been able to share a flat?”

Answer, in stereo: HELL NO!

Then the one who’s closest to the asker explains that they love each other and stuff, but one of the reasons they go on loving each other is that they know better than to share expenses or try to agree about who cleans, ok? It was so evident it would have been a disaster that nobody in our family even mentioned the possibility, back when the youngest was picking schools.

6

I don’t think this applies to brothers only. :smiley:

7

I have three sons, and now feel a little better that their disputes aren’t nearly on the level of the OP’s.

I know another two brothers, one of whom, when drunk, mistook his brother’s laundry hamper for a urinal one night. Zany hijinks ensued.

8

This is the case with my family too. My sisters are a year apart and my brother-in-law is famous for saying “I never saw two people who loved each other more, until they get in the same room.” My mother’s two surviving sisters live less than 100 feet apart and don’t speak to each other - they sit at opposite sides of the room whenever they’re forced to be together.

Despite their twinness, my sons didn’t get along all that well when they lived under our roof. They had separate interests and separate friends, and that was fine by us. We were surprised when A moved in with B, but we thought it would be a short-term thing until A got used to the big city and found his own place. When they decided to renew the lease we warned them about having each other as a roommate, but they assured us everything was under control.

It’s especially tough on my wife, who grew up in a three-generation home, where all her parents’ brothers and sisters lived together for years after they started their own families. Some of her best childhood memories are of playing happily with her cousins. She sincerely believes that family triumphs over everything, and every time one of our sons complains about the other, she gets really upset.

9

Living with siblings is generally a very, very bad idea. Having a roommate is like getting married – you may get along most of the time, but it’s inevitable that you’ll bicker & argue many times, and sometimes you or the other needs to move out (as in getting a divorce). With brothers, however, no divorce is possible – especially with twins, you’re bonded by blood.

10

I lived with my brother, and it was a DISASTER! He was having women issues, and he and the roomies (who trickled out) smoked pot. The house was not wheelchair friendly, which meant eating became an issue for me, leading to health issues. A “pissing match” led me to have a health crisis which landed me in a nursing home for 4+ years.

11

I definitely agree with this. With roommates, if you end up having a big blowout, you can just move out and wash your hands clean of them forever. With family, not so much.

When I first lived with my sister, I still had my irresponsible college student attitude, and much like Brother A in the OP, my sister was footing the bills. It took many fights, threats, tears and intervention of her (then) boyfriend (now fiance), to come to a peaceful understanding during that time. But then when I graduated and got a job and started contributing half to all the bills, it got much much MUCH better. Money doesn’t solve all the world’s problems, but it made such a difference to be able to contribute money (because contributing by doing the chores just wasn’t working) and put me on an equal footing in my sister’s eyes.

12

I remember back when I lived with my brother, both fresh out of school starting new jobs. We lived together about 4 or 5 years. Once when my mother was visiting and we were all in the car, my brother got so mad he jumped out of the car and walked home. My mother made me drive around and try to find him but he seemed to have vanished in thin air. She was quite distraught and had us both sit down and promise not to fight anymore.
Luckily for all of us, my brother met his future wife and got married soon afterwards.

The fight: I forget the details, but my brother thought I was spending my money foolishly. He was right.

13

Dude, they need to grow up and quit involving their mother in their arguments. Can Mom get a script that says “Please leave me out of your arguments. You two are adults now and need to work out your own issues” and then repeat it ad nauseam?

14

That is her script. She repeats it ad nauseum. (Actually, I think her exact phrase is, “That sucks. What are you going to do about it?”) It does not stop them from calling to whine and it does not stop her from being upset when they do.

15

If she is telling them to solve their own problems she isn’t doing it effectively or she is not backing up her words with actions.

I agree family tends to take advantage. My brother was one of those people who was always “Five bucks short.” If he made $50,000/year of $500/year he’d still be, “Five bucks short.”

He was very responsible except toward mum, he NEVER paid her back and it’d get up mum’s nose.

I told her, “When Mike says, ‘can I borrow five dollars,’ what he means is, 'give me five dollars and I have no intention of ever returning it to you.”

After a decade of borrowing money and never paying you back why does this constantly surprise you?

16

I had a cousin who kept doing that to my grandmother (for alot more than $5). He was very unhappy when she died and he was the only grandchild to get nothing. Well she did for his debts against her estate (with caveat that if he challenged the will that provision was void and her executor was to sue him).