I hate my brother

[toad4466]

I know its not right, its not easy to talk about. I have grown up with my brother all my life, im 25 and should be able to understand him, but i dont. It feels like everything in my life has been ruined by my brother. Hes so selfish and such an awful person. He has got himself into debt, and has joined the armed forces. Now we have creditors ringing us up 24/7 asking for money, even i have bailed him out of hundreds in debt to keep him out of prison for his spending problems. I will never see that money repaid.

Well it goes back a long way, he has always used me as a way of fitting in, when we were children he joined a "gang" and told them all sorts of things about me so they had a target, someone to bully, just so he fitted in. He doesnt care about anyone but himself. Even now he is back for the weekend, my parents are on holiday and i finished a shift working at a bar, the house is wrecked, littered with beercans and fag-butts. It will take me hours to clean up, and i have to work tomorrow, when i asked him to help, he pointed out that my parents left me in charge, its my responsibilty. He even stayed up for 2 hours just because he knows that i like an hour to unwind after a busy shift.

The worst thing is, he thinks I have a problem, its all me and he is fantastic! The question I am trying to ask is simple, should I hate him, because I do! Its not right, this goes beyond sibling rivalry! Has anyone experienced something similar? What should I do? Thank you for reading this. I need your help.

Ben

[DN]

Firstly tell your parents that you will not be held responsible for what he does.

 

Don't clean up after him.

 

Ignore him as best you can - preferably by being away when he comes to visit.

 

Get your own place as soon as you can and don't tell him where it is.

 

If you want to be really nasty - get him drunk when he is due to return after leave so he is listed AWOL and can't get home so much.

[heloladies21]

One of the reasons why he might not have ever learned to be responsible is because he's always had you to bail him out. Sometimes you have to learn things on your own or else it won't stick. Stop cleaning up your brother's mess, he's a big boy now. He can take care of himself or face the consequences.

[jna35]

I agree. I defintitely wouldn't clean up after him or bail him out of his messes. All that does is enable him to be dependent. He needs to learn how to take responsibility for himself and his actions. I would get my own place as well. You have your own life to deal with and shouldn't have to worry about your mooch of a brother. I can undertsand your bitter feelings, but hate is a pretty strong word. I prefer to separate the person form their behavior. In other words, hate the behavior not the person.

[Tigris]

Clean up your mess and when your parent scome home they'll see what you've been putting up with. You can clean up after they've seen the mess, that way you've only had to do it once instead of 1000 times!

 

Don't pay anymore debts! He can go and get help from the Citizens Advice Bureau like I did. They get all the interest stopped!

 

Take care

[yokohama_mama]

Hi, yes, I've experienced very similar things with my brother. He was horrible to me the whole time we were growing up. He dropped a brick on my head when I was a baby (I still have the scar), and it didn't get better from there. He did the same thing, encouraging his friends to bully me. The worst thing was we lived in an isolated community, there was no where to go, and my Dad was gone and my Mom was off working, so I was stuck alone with him, and his only entertainment seemed to be harassing me, intimidating me and trying to make me cry. He really made me feel terrible.

 

Fast forward to the future, I'm living in another country, happily married and just happy over all. He's having trouble getting his life together, always running into trouble and having to borrow money from my mom, drinking and smoking pot every day. He's not cruel to me anymore when I see him, but he is difficult to get along with, hard to make conversation with. Now my Mom (who is really wonderful in most every way) is telling me that I should call him, that I should make an effort to develop a friendship with him. She tries to make me feel guilty or sorry for him because my life is on track, and she thinks he's lonely and depressed.

 

My attutude is, "tough". After years of being mistreated by him, I'm not going to forgive everything just because things aren't going well for him. I'm not mean to him, I send him Christmas presents and so on, but I'm not going to be his buddy, and I still resent him for the way he treated me.

 

So Ben (and by the way i have a similar memory of picking up beer cans and cigarette butts to hide evidence of my brother's party from my mom, while my brother slept ) if you hate him it seems reasonable to me. I agree with previous posters that you should try to move out so you can avoid him, not clean up after him and generally ignore him as best you can (although if he's anything like my brother I know that's not easy!)

[Tsunami]

He may be your brother but that doesn't mean he is a nice person, that is sad but true. You need to talk to your parents about this, explain how you feel. Don't say that you hate him, just explain how you find it difficult to like him after all that he has done.

[Spirits Away]

As a brother, instead of hating him, you first have to learn to not get bothered by him. Next step is to help him with life. The "how" part is up to your heart and your intelligence.

 

Good luck

[Dannysgirl]

I know exactly how toad and Yokahama_mama feel. I really used to despise my brother and still do to some degree. All the time we were growing up he was nasty and abusive. He seemed to derive a sick twisted pleasure from hurting me, tormenting me and making me cry. I remember at the eight of twelve being astonished to find that my best friend's brother didn't hit her! He is now 30 going on 15 (he still plays playstaion games and was living with my mother until the age of 28 ) and is an absolute ton of debt. He works a menial dead end job so he has no hope of paying it off and is apparently dating an absolute psychopath.

 

I have accepted that a lot of the way he treated me from childhood up until I was 17( when I suddenly snapped after he had whacked me accross the head for no reason and threatened to kill him I was drying the dishes and had a large kitchen knife in my hand at the time so hitting me was NOT a good idea!) was a result of jealousy I was a very sick child and I needed a lot of attention and numerous hospital visits to stay well.

 

I was also a lot more academic than my brother and have a degree while he basically fooled aroud and acted the clown and ended up failing all nine of his GCSE's in spectacular fashion. I haven't seen him in a good couple of years as I moved away from that village to live in Halls of residence (some of you know the story about my mother and why I left a thread called 'should I break NC with my mother' and that gives a little more perspective on my family life). I have since moved to america and gotten married.

 

These days I don't really hate him so much as pity him, okay its true that when I think about aome of the things he said and did I get really angry but I don't hate him anymore. I don't send him birthday and christmas cards because I couldn't give a toss about him to be honest, I don't hate him but I can't say I love him either. I a way I feel a little smug because my life has turned out great and he always told me what a loser I am, how I'd never make anything of myself and nobody would ever love me because I'm ugly. But guess what? I'm married to a wonderful man who takes excellent care of me, I have a good job and a lovely home. Whats he got? A phycho girlfriend who has beaten him up in the past, a poky little bedsit, and a dead end job in a dead end village in wales.

 

I know its cheesy but its true that livng well is the best revenge. I know that my mother and brother get together regularly for Nia back stabbing sessions in an attempt to make themselves feel better because I've done better than either of them thought I would and better than either of them did.

 

Oh god I'm sorry! I'm supposed to be giving YOU advice not rambling on about my own experiences. I think you should tell your brother to get bent. He's not a child let him pick up his own mess and do NOT lend him any money because you will NOT get it back. My brother was thrown out for a time by my mother when he was sixteen. Very sneakily when he knew my mother would not be there he came over and guilt tripped me into emptying my bank account for him, telling me he had no food etc.. and I did so, okay it was only 100 pounds but it was all my savings and I was only 13. He later went out and blew the whole lot on a night out with his friends and I never saw that money again.

 

Seriously tell him to do one, he sounds like a selfish manipulative pig just like my brother and you don't have to take his BS. The longer you put up with it the worse you'll get treated by him. People only do what they think/konw they can get away with.

 

Good luck!

[yokohama_mama]

Wow, Nia, I think our brothers may have been evil twins separated at birth! My brother said the same kind of awful stuff to me, you'll never get married (I'm happily married, thank-you), no guy will want you (unfortunately I spent a lot of time in my late teens and twenties finding out just how many guys would want me ), you're stupid (which one of us has a degree/decent job?), etc.

 

Interestingly I also had medical issues as a baby that required hospitalization and a lot of extra attention, that could be the root of some of his resentment, although I think it's basically a personality problem with him.

 

Anyway, I think you're absolutely right, living well is the best revenge. Getting on with your own life and making it a good life is a better plan than stewing about the past and letting it ruin the present.

[DN]

An old saying:

 

God chooses your relatives - thank God you can choose your friends.

[Lazymonkey1210]

normally, with sibling relationships, it seemed to me that the older one was abusive and the younger one was the victim. that is not the case in my family. my younger brother and i are only 11 months apart, but we are not at all alike. the truth is, my brother scares the hell out of me.

When we were little kids, my brother had this nasty temper. he would pick things up and throw them at the people he got mad at. now, i'm not talking about toys here. when he was just 5, he threw a heavy floor lamp at my mom because she told him to leave me alone (he also used to bite me). he even threw one of those plastic chairs from a fischer-price kiddie table and chairs set.

even now, my brother has an even worse temper. he will push me down and punch me in the stomach (it doesn't matter to him that i'm a girl) and not even care. i would so love to get him back, but my brother is a very big kid. not fat, but he is literally big boned, and has a lot of muscle now from playing football. i am skinny and tall, and my little brother is at least 20 pounds more then me.

my brother also thinks he is the funny one. he will make himself fart on purpose so that he can be the center of attention, and not even get yelled at even though you can really tell how he does it on purpose. my brother will also tell all his friends about how i am so horrible to him at home even though he's the one who has the problem. whenever my brother does something wrong, he will always get a second chance and not even get punished for it. when i do something wrong, i have to be grounded for a month. my mother doesn't see anything wrong with that and Joey (that's his name) will keep doing the same thing because he knows that he will not get punished. he has become a real twat. i need help on dealing with him but my parents don't seem to care. they all see me as the abusive one and him as the victim.