So I'm 21F, and I have an older brother 25M, who has a girlfriend 25F, let's call her Amy.
My brother and Amy have been together for 8 years, they met in high school, and they were a super lovey dovey and cute couple at first. It all went downhill when they turned 18. They immediately moved in together as they went to the same university. Amy was doing all the chores. She'd have to ask a million times for him to even do the dishes. Now I admit, my parents always somewhat spoiled us, so we were never expected to do any chores, and I too had trouble adjusting when I moved in with flatmates.
It was starting to get better but...In their second year of university, he dropped out. He has always been a big gamer, but basically games took over and he skipped more and more, even stuff you aren't allowed to skip, and had to drop out. He just started staying home all day playing video games.
So let me fast forward it to now:
She works full time and does all the chores, carries all the mental load. She brings in the majority of the income and pays for almost everything. My parents send some money to my brother because they don't want him to move back home at 25, basically, but it's still nothing compared to her (and he uses a lot of it to buy stuff for himself). He hasn't had a job in three years (he had one three years ago but decided it was too hard and won't even apply to anything now). Refuses to do anything, plays video games all night (speaking and being loud while she is sleeping just there), and sleeps all day. I also feel like he became mean? When we are all together, most of his humor revolves around mocking people. He used to be genuinely funny, now it's just constant jabs, at things he knows actually hurt, and especially directed towards his girlfriend. I think he had or has depression, I'm not a therapist but he reminds me a lot of our mother when she went through depression.
A week ago, she talked to me. We aren't super close, and don't talk often (she is lovely but we have wildly different interests), so it was a bit surprising for me. She just kinda vomited all her feelings. My brother and I used to be so close (but nowadays I feel like I can't get through at all and he resents me), so she was asking me for help to make him "like before". She said she wanted an engagement, she wanted kids...But none of this can happen right now.
I told her to leave. I told her we can't "make him like before", it has to come from himself. That I can't even tell her if he ever will be "like before" or at least better than now. That she is just hurting herself. She grew up with an abusive father so I know she feels like "it's not that bad" because he doesn't insult her (though a lot of his "jokes" could be insults honestly...) and doesn't hit her, and she loves him. But she is miserable.
She did it. She left. And he kept bugging her about it, he was 100% convinced she was leaving him for someone else. So she snapped and told him she wasn't, and that it was me who advised her to leave.
He has to move back with our parents because they can't afford to send him enough money for him to live on his own. He hates me and thinks I convinced her to leave him by lying, even though I sent him (with her permission) the screenshots of our convo. My parents are mad at me. They say family comes first, and she is an adult, she shouldn't need someone else to tell her to leave if she was that miserable. They don't want me to come back for the holidays (I study in another country, last time I saw them was a year ago).
Is there anything I can do? Anything that could make this situation better? Just wait? Apologize? I love my family, I don't want to be excluded from the family. I know it must have hurt my brother terribly but she was having break downs and completely miserable, and it wasn't like being with her made him happy either. Any kind of help is welcome, advice, input, anything, thank you for reading.
Tl;dr: My brother's girlfriend asked me for advice to fix her relationship with my brother, that has been terrible for years now (she works, does all chores pays for most things, and he just stays home, trashes the place, is "jokingly" mean to her, etc), and I told her to leave him. She did, and ended up telling him that was my advice, now all of my family hates me.
Submitted June 01, 2020 at 06:52PM by Sufficient-Dance https://ift.tt/2XpiMpG
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