My brother has been dating his girlfriend (16F) since October of last year, so about 5-6 months right now. She is a really sweet girl, and they are a lovely couple, but lately their relationship is getting extremely co-dependent.
I have a good relationship with him, and I don’t want to ruin it by meddling too much. However, my mom has asked me to talk to him. She’s tried to sit him down and let him know about her concerns in a respectful way, but she said he gets really defensive.
Although my mom was the one who asked me to talk about it with him, I have my own concerns, for both my brother and his girlfriend. I wasn’t going to talk to him about it, as it’s his relationship and it’s not really my place to say anything, but now that it’s getting to this point I feel it needs to be addressed. It’s getting to the point that it feels like the entire household is walking on eggshells around them.
They spend almost every day glued to each other, and they don’t really have friends outside of each other. They kiss in a bit of an NSFW way in public (borderline making out) and in front of our family. His girlfriend posts almost obsessively about their relationship on social media, including saying that she wants to marry him and that he’s the only reason she’s alive right now, and describing herself as someone who “can’t give space” and is “jealous over nothing” in a relationship.
Both of them have mental conditions: he has ADD + anger problems, she has BPD. No judgement here, as a lot of people in my family have ADD/ADHD, including myself, and they are both great people otherwise. However, I do worry that their respective conditions are causing them to act in unhealthy ways without realizing it.
Also, his girlfriend has had mostly traumatic relationships: her parents are neglectful and her previous relationship was borderline abusive. I worry that she doesn’t know how to be in a healthy relationship, although that’s not her fault at all.
I would really like advice on how to talk to him about our concerns in a healthy and respectful way. I want to show him that I support him and his relationship. I don’t want to meddle too much, or cause friction between my brother and his girlfriend, but this entire dynamic of tiptoeing around the issue needs to stop. How should I approach this conversation?
TLDR: I need to figure out how to talk to my brother about how his relationship seems to be becoming overly codependent without making him feel alienated. Advice?
Submitted March 08, 2022 at 12:26PM by pageantdisaster https://ift.tt/ZY6raA3
No comments:
Post a Comment