TLDR: My husband and I were the victims of a drunk driver. My brother reacted by gifting us an expensive 4WD. I feel weird accepting such an expensive gift.
My brother and I grew up extremely poor. My brother has always stood out as being special and excelling at everything he puts his mind to. As a result, my father and mother both over-exerted themselves in order to make enough money to pay for all of the considerable fees associated with my brother's upbringing.
When he was younger, my brother never really appreciated how much our parents sacrificed so that he could live the life he did. He was spoiled, and demanding, and my parents that would literally break their body apart to satisfy my brother's (and mine) every whim. This changed when he was seventeen. During this time, my father worked almost 70 hours a week at labour intensive jobs in order to meet all of my brother's expenses. Eventually, his body gave up and he suffered an almost-fatal injury at work. This opened up my brother's eyes and something in him changed that day.
Fast forward to the present and now my brother is a highly successful lawyer making an exorbitant amount of money. Despite this, he spends the bare minimum on himself, preferring to spoil the loved ones in his life instead. I'm sure he still feels guilty for what happened all those years ago, and this is his way of coping with it. Put it this way: my brother drives a cheap Honda while our parents now drive a Maserati and a Tesla.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with my brother spoiling our parents. My problem starts when he starts trying to spend large amounts of money on me. Now, I'm not as successful as him, but my husband and I do perfectly fine on our own. For the large part, I tolerate his behaviour. His gifts have been limited to spoiling my children and myself on special occasions like birthdays, and paying for our family holidays. I've so far tolerated his behaviour because I know it comes from a place of love, and I feel like an idiot if I were to kick up a fuss over his generosity.
But his behaviour recently escalated. A few weeks ago, my family got into a serious car accident when a drunk driver drove straight into the side of our sedan. Thankfully, no one was grievously hurt but one of my children had to stay overnight at a hospital. At the hospital, we were discussing a buying a 4WD as a replacement car because it would be safer if we ever found ourselves in the same situation. This morning, my brother came over with an expensive looking 4WD as a "gift to his nephew".
I know I should just feel grateful. But, honestly, accepting a gift that is probably worth more than $100,000 just makes me feel so weird (for a lack of a better term). Both my husband, and my parents, say that I should just thank him and accept it. But it just makes me feel inadequate, as if I'm incapable of supporting my family myself. Am I reasonable feeling this way? Or should I just get over it?
Submitted September 02, 2018 at 03:24AM by lavishgifts https://ift.tt/2wCn66Z
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