On dealing with a difficult sibling. Or maybe I'm the difficult one? Details inside.

TL;DR: OP suffers from severe lack of self-esteem. OP's brother is insanely succesful and tries to influence his brother's decisions all the time, but of course, is never responsible for any misfires that may happen. OP decides enough is enough.

Throwaway (obviously). Please pardon the wall of text. Have tried to break my thoughts down to make them more readable.

• I (M34) suffer from a severe lack of self-esteem. I also suffer from a strong and almost paralysing streak of perfectionism.
• My brother (M38) is a straight-As-sort of a person with a very forceful personality. He's very logical in his thinking (in my opinion) and is very careful in managing how people perceive him (he has a people-facing job).
• In most situations, I seek his opinion on things. This comes from the following behaviour that's been repeated since our childhood: (a) I make a decision, (b) he challenges the decision, (c) he proves that he'd deal with the situation better. To be honest, he does have a very laser-focused way of demolishing my reasoning (and that of others) which does seem very logical, but being subjected to it over and over again hasn't done wonders for my self-esteem. One could say we're like Jimmy McGill and his elder brother from Better Call Saul.
• These days, if I tell him about something which he doesn't agree with, he'll simply say: "Let me try and understand your reasoning behind this decision." This will almost invariably result in him proving that my thoughts are inconsistent and that I've probably not thought the situation through as well as I thought. To be honest, I can't always see the inconsistency, but I don't know whether my judgement is correct or not.
• He will, however, include a disclaimer that this exercise was just to figure out the rationale behind my choices and that as an elder brother, he has the right to do so. But then again, he won't be held responsible for any of my subsequent decisions as I'm free to do whatever I want.
• The above almost always put me in a state of mental paralysis.
• He's extremely nosy, so he'll keep asking away even if I don't wish to answer. He'll simply go, "But why do you not want to tell me? I want to understand why."
• Ever since my childhood, he's had one funny/nonsensical name or the other (which his partners have indulged in calling me by as well in the past). I've never liked it, and despite me having told him multiple times to stop, he refuses to do so saying that, "This is my way of being endearing." or that, "If we can't be a little chilled out around family, then what's the point?"
• Also, given his public-facing job, he's very good at arguing and can make statements today which mean X, but when called out on them tomorrow will say, "Oh, they meant Y. I was being very precise and you misunderstood what I said." or, "I never said X. You're being imprecise in your statement of the facts."
• He feels I play the victim card with respect to everything.

I will be honest here:

• I personally feel that I can go into a funk where I get into a "Woe is me..." sort of mentality.
• I agree that my thinking is more emotional and when he says X, it might be that I interpret that as Y. But I'm made to feel as if that's wrong - this isn't said explicitly. Or maybe that's my emotional brain talking.

Now, on to the questions:

• How do I put and end to this?
• Do you think it's a good idea to just cut ties with him? There've been quite a few times when we've had major rows and I've stopped talking to him for days, but this time, I'm at the end of my rope.

Edits:

• I must admit that some of my big successes have resulted from following his advice. Not following his advice has resulted in some big regrets. But then following his advice has also led me to some very dark places. He's willing to take credit for the successes, but the failures are either (a) a result of me not being able to have followed/understood his advice or (b) ultimately my responsibility because I have free will.
• While my brother is extremely good at ferreting out what's going on in my mind, at the same time, he closes his own life off from me, creating a dynamic of power/superiority. As in the lines of, "I know all your weaknesses... do you know any of mine?" And said weaknesses become ammunition in future arguments.
• Adding to the point above, whenever I mention these, he tells me that I use charged words like "ammunition" and that I always think in terms of power dynamics, which is not what nice people do.
• With respect to a lot of things, I usually do whatever I want, so my brother does tell me that I'm a free spirit and that I'm more or less impossible to influence.
• Given his extreme levels of perception management and the fact that I can be outspoken with people, people usually think I'm the one being mean.
• I do appreciate that I might be the one with the issues here, so please point them out if you see any. I'll be really grateful for your help.

Submitted March 24, 2021 at 05:04AM by a5912dbd37 https://ift.tt/2OVUsdA