Hello,
I'm new to this forum. I am hoping to find guidance or advice from people because I am feeling somewhat lost at the moment on figuring out what to do.
I am a 32 year old man. I have a 27 year old younger brother whom I am really close with. We grew up as "best buddies" in our childhood, and even as adults I felt like I could trust and rely on him for anything and everything.
We got into a disagreement recently. It was nothing serious, just a misunderstanding that we weren't listening to each other's opinions about a problem regarding pets. Usually for small conflicts like this we would resolve it within a day, if not within hours.
As I was reflecting on resolving the conflict with my brother, I realize that it had always been me who would start the conversation whenever we had a conflict to resolve. It was a habit I had as the older brother, but we're both independent adults now so I wanted to make sure my brother had the willingness to resolve conflicts on his own well. So I had an idea test my brother. I decided I would not start the conversation this time and I wanted to observe how he would resolve the conflict. A week has gone by, I gave him opportunities to talk to me about it. But he would give me cold treatment. So then I finally asked him after a week why he didn't try to talk to me about it or at least to follow up with me to see if I was okay after our argument. He replied to me "you've said what you said, I've said what I said, there's nothing to talk about". I'm like "fine no one cares about our argument anymore last week. But why were you giving me cold treatment?". This is when he told me that it's because I am a "***ing smart ass" that he can't talk to me. Apparently I would not care or change my opinion about anything anyway even if we talked. He has continued to refuse to talk to me after that encounter.
I feel really bad about this as you can probably tell. I did not expect him to say such things. Historically we've always resolved our conflicts between each other so I am dumbfounded about why he would start thinking that we couldn't talk about problems now. I feel like I have been blindsided all this time. He seems to be a mess when it comes to dealing with conflicts. I am having my doubts that maybe my parents and I spoiled him too much when we were growing up so he never actually learned how to deal with conflicts properly.
My brother is usually the one I console with whenever I have difficult experiences like this. So I am feeling very alone at the moment.