You Had One Job – 5 Mistakes My Brother Made After My Divorce

I came across an article called ‘5 Mistakes You Can Make When Your Brother or Sister Gets a Divorce That Will Hurt Them and Their Kids’. I saved it because I was like, here it is. Proof that my brother was wrong, that I’m not the only person who thinks one shouldn’t act in such a toxic way toward their recently divorced sibling. Not if they care.

Don’t message your nieces and nephews with rude texts. Don’t assume you know what happened. Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Don’t tell kids how to feel. Don’t sling mud. Basic stuff. The kind of advice you’d think nobody would need.

With family like this, who needs enemies?

They say that the ones who hurt you the most are the ones who are supposed to love you the most. Anyone who has doubts if that saying is true, let me put that to rest with a definitive YES. Case in point, my brother.

The year I got divorced was a confusing swirl of emotions. Necessity and survival forced me to bottle everything up for almost a year, so that I was waiting to fall apart. And I couldn’t do that until I was somewhere safe.

So right after the papers were signed, as soon as I had myself together, I took my sons 1400 miles away to Texas, because my brother was there.

If I had found the article before I had packed the truck, I might have driven somewhere else. Unwittingly, I drove us into the belly of the beast, AKA my brother’s apartment in Texas. He was accommodating at first. Gave us a place to stay, and I was grateful because, aside from getting as far away from the ex as I could, I hadn’t formulated more of a plan.

There, in that spare bedroom, with all of our belongings, I could fit in the truck, I allowed myself to collapse and grieve the death of what I had worked so fruitlessly to maintain. I thought I was safe to process and mourn, and in turn, allow my sons to process their emotions in the wake of losing everything familiar to them.

And things were fine. Until they weren’t.

An impostor among us

My brother and I had not spent a great deal of time since I had left home for college. He had come to stay with me for a little bit when he was on R&R from being stationed overseas. Those were some rough years, and I chalked his surly attitude and toxic disposition to the stress of being in the Navy stationed far from home.

When he was at my house during his R&R, I remember my sons gave their uncle a wide berth. He was a stranger to them. They had not met him before, and he hadn’t seen them outside of photos, and here he was meeting them for the first time as pre-teens.

I think children, better than adults, sense danger, much like animals. And they tried to tell me, they told me they thought he was weird, and that he was mean. They didn’t like him. One thing I have always maintained is that if my children didn’t like someone, I wasn’t going to force them to spend time with that person.

So I let them keep their distance. If he had a problem with it, that was not their burden, and I let him know that he had no claim on their affection when he was a virtual stranger to them.

Red flags

That should have been a red flag for me. But like with all other things related to my family, when it comes to seeing the signs sometimes, I’ve been conditioned to just put up with their toxicity. The venom is familiar.

Now we are in his apartment, and I realize that he has a real problem with communication. That he is snarling at my sons. He yells at them over the smallest things. I don’t put up with it. He’s mad that they don’t want to hang out with him. He’s mad that they’re in his space. He’s mad that they don’t want to come out of the bedroom we’re sharing. He’s unwilling to understand anything about what they are going through.

Every day, I was confronting him, calling him out on his behavior. Until one day, he had the nerve to call them ungrateful, to say that they don’t have the right to be upset about what they’ve been through. I think he even, at some point, claims that they should be more respectful towards their father and towards me.

No you didn’t

The article said that you have no business “should-ing” all over your nephews. That telling his nephews how they should act or how they should feel will only backfire on him. And boy did it ever.
If they’re surly, even to me, that’s allowed. I didn’t take their anger personally. They were processing their grief, just like me, but in their own way.

It’s not his business how I choose to raise my children. How I choose to cultivate my relationship with them. He needs to mind his beeswax. I never asked for, nor wanted his opinion.
The one thing I will never abide is ANYONE telling my kids that they aren’t allowed to have feelings and invalidating their experience. I put up with enough of that bullshit myself from my mother and brother; I refuse to stand by and watch it happen to them. I will cut a bitch first. Or cut them off, as evidence has shown.

Mind your business

Talking shit about their father. Bullying and harassing my sons after they got out of school and were in the apartment. He said and did some reprehensible things before we moved out. Absolutely no remorse for any of it, either.

But he was standing by his belief that we didn’t have the right to mourn, that our depression, our emotions were invalid when he didn’t think it could have been all that bad. And he also didn’t understand why I was making such a big deal about the ex. His argument that he was “standing up for me” when he would butt into their Skype calls with their dad.

He claimed he was being a good uncle, when really he was just being an asshole – because he wasn’t standing up for me. He was telling the ex that he should be more respectful to him for taking care of his kids. He wasn’t stepping in because he thought what the ex said against me was bad, but that the ex owed him for being the man in the house now.

WTF? What a fucking asshole.

I mean, no love lost with mr horrible, but seriously? That is the stance you’re going to take on this? That the ex should be grateful to you because you’re stepping in? And that is what he thought, too! He actually threw that in my face one time – that now the task to show my sons how to grow up to be men fell on him.

Fuck the hell off with that noise right now.

Blah blah blah

What the hell does he know about anything related to rearing children? He’s never babysat anyone a day in his life. He’s never had to take care of anyone aside from himself. He needs to back the fuck off. All the way off.

We lasted three months in his apartment until we moved out. I found us a place clear across town not long after that argument. Son of a bitch. I was (and still am) so mad at him. How dare he? What the fuck does he know about what they’ve been through? What I’ve been through.

Yeah. I drove halfway across the country because I thought he was safe. He was not a safe space.

And La Llorona, unsurprisingly, did not understand why I decided to move out either. She was like, you should get along with your brother. He’s only trying to help. Blah blah blah. You can fuck off with that, too mom. I don’t want to hear your defense of your favorite child. She actually tried to defend him, told me I was overreacting.

That was thirteen years ago. Our relationship has never been the same since.

Boundaries for a reason

Over the years, he continued to act as if he were entitled to their attention and love just for the mere act of existing. He would get angry if they didn’t come out of their rooms to greet him, the few times I let him and my mother visit our home.

I stopped posting on Facebook because anything, even something benign, would become a topic of discussion. I deleted all their photos because they weren’t allowed to exist if they didn’t look perfectly happy.

He would interrogate me about what my sons were up to, and I wasn’t sharing; I was suspicious of his intentions. He was like, we want to be there for them. And I was like, they don’t want you there. He would get mad. Their activities and extracurriculars were not about him. He wasn’t going to ruin things for them because he thought what he wanted was more important than their own wishes.

Suspicious behavior

Years after we had moved out, he still hadn’t learned. During the hateful trip to the Grand Canyon in 2015, boy, did he ever let his true colors show. We were supposed to be taking this meaningful journey to one of the great American landscapes. Things were strained as I began to notice my mother and brother whispering among themselves at rest stops or when they thought I couldn’t hear them.

They were talking about my sons and me. Their “observations” of how they behaved and acted. It was the first time in a long time that La Llorona had been around the kids since before the divorce. She had only just moved to Texas, before that having been in Connecticut, far away.

It all came to a head the day we spent at the Grand Canyon. We had finished touring the park and driven to the hotel. We were in the room next door to theirs, and I could hear them arguing with each other through the wall. I heard words, and my sons’ names came up. The boys were already asleep, but I knew this did not bode well.

Driving into oblivion

The next morning, we piled into the minivan to make our journey to Roswell, NM, and this time, I was driving because my brother drives like we don’t have places to be. So in the car with my brother and mother behind me, my eldest riding shotgun, and my youngest asleep all the way in the back.

Apparently, what they had been arguing about was when and where they were going to bring up a discussion about how I was raising my sons. And as soon as they both started talking, it all went downhill from there.

I won’t insult your intelligence by repeating their vitriol, but suffice it to say that I have never wanted to drive headlong off a cliff more in my life. If there had been an edge to drive off of, I probably would have. But instead, we were driving through the desert, nary a road hazard in sight.

So there I am, trapped in a minivan with him and La Llorona while they badmouthed me and berated me for being a “bad mother” for allowing my children to speak their minds. For not being cowed by the two of them. For refusing to make my sons pose with the two of them in pictures to pretend like they were happy to be near their uncle and their grandmother?

And my brother is gaslighting me about our upbringing. Telling me I had no reason to be angry at La Llorona, that I was the one who was in the wrong. He agreed with her that I was disrespectful, a bad daughter. Wow.

This road trip was supposed to have been this family thing. This moment in our lives. And instead, my sons and I are under attack by the two people who are supposed to love us.

My brother alienated my kids

My eldest son has never forgiven his uncle for the bullshit way in which he acted. He remembered his actions during his R&R stay the clearest, and this repeat of his asshole display on the road trip was the nail in the coffin on that relationship. No love lost there.

His younger brother is a little more forgiving. Probably takes more after me, which is worrisome, in that he seems to have gotten really good at compartmentalizing the bad to put up with them, but he still maintains that his uncle is a weirdo. And boy, do I agree.

I am sad that this is what family looks like for them. That the people who were supposed to support us don’t. That the ones who are supposed to love us unconditionally won’t.

He had one job – which he’s failed at from the start

I have struggled my whole life to understand my brother. When we were little, we didn’t really connect. We spent time together, mostly because I was his surrogate mother in those early days. When my mother was too busy acting out her childhood fantasies and claiming she didn’t want to act as an adult because she never got to be a child, I had to be the responsible one in the house. Bunch of bullshit. So my brother got babied.

I remember when I was I think about 10 years old, my brother was 8. One Saturday morning, I had washed a bowl to have some cereal because there were no clean dishes. But I went to the bathroom first before I sat down to eat my breakfast. I come out of the bathroom to find that son of a bitch sitting at the kitchen table eating my bowl of cereal. When I yelled at him, asking him why he was eating my food, he’s like I thought it was for me.

The entitled son of a bitch. Even as a child, I knew his behavior was fucked up. I was like, why would you think that? And he just shrugged his shoulders. I’m pretty sure I beat him up over it.

But that has been his general attitude towards me, our whole lives. What I wanted to do, or the things I thought were important, were not important or deemed necessary unless he agreed. Otherwise, he just condescendingly humored me with his opinions on the subject. I’ve been mansplained to by him more times than I care to count. So as time passed, we grew further apart. I did not pretend that his opinion mattered, that I needed his validation or approval of my successes over the years.

The devil inside

But most recently, his entire worldview was revealed to me in an unexpected manner. We argued over an actor in a movie. First of all, I do not enjoy watching movies with my brother, nor my mother. The two of them together? Kill me, please.

He likes to pause a movie anytime he has a thought he feels he must share because whatever he is thinking is SO important that I should consider myself lucky to hear his thought out loud. In that moment. In the middle of a movie. It is ANNOYING.

So we watched this movie. Why? I was sleeping on his couch in the in-between times as I was preparing to abandon everything and move to Guatemala. I was in between Atlanta and Texas, traveling back and forth as I packed up and sold everything that I owned before the move.

When the movie ended, I remarked that the movie was good. At which point, he was like, the movie was really good, why haven’t more people heard about it? Why hadn’t we heard about it?

And I was like, well, the lead actor was in some kind of scandal about the time the movie was released, so they downplayed the publicity as a result, and it was not advertised. He was like, what kind of scandal? I didn’t know?

So he Googled it. And so did I. Turned out the guy had been accused of assaulting his girlfriend and some other things.

What happened next, I did not see coming.

My brother is enraged and begins to argue about how women are always fucking things up for men. That they hate to see a man succeeding and have to find some way to bring him down. The actor in question had just been in some big-budget movies, but after this scandal, his career was effectively over. And my brother felt some kind of way about it.

He stood up and was pacing in his living room, getting worked up over the evils of plotting women everywhere. And I was like what the fuck are you talking about?

He then turns to me and tells me, you women have it so easy. I’m like, you’re joking, right? I am literally sleeping on your couch. How do I have it so easy?

He was like the world is set up for you to succeed without you trying. And you’re not happy unless you’re ruining men alongside you. He was like, his girlfriend was probably lying. She’s probably out whoring herself for some other rich actor after she ruined his life. What the hell?

I was like, you have got to be kidding me? You think she’s lying about being sexually assaulted? He just looked at me. I was like you’re seriously claiming that I, your sister, have not had to struggle in my life? That I haven’t been basically killing myself as a single mother to make ends meet to raise my kids after the ex fucking cheated on me and ruined our marriage? You’re saying that I have it easy? I was like, have you been paying attention to what the government is doing to women’s rights? You’re saying all of that is justified because women have it easy?

And he was like yes. I called him an incel for having such ignorant misogynistic views, especially with my mom living with him. As we were arguing, I had been gathering my things, because I knew what the conclusion of this argument was going to be. And I wasn’t going to stick around even if he didn’t throw me out of his apartment.

I called my son to come pick me up because I couldn’t stay at his uncle’s place any longer. I had only been staying with my brother because he had more space. My youngest son came to get me and off into the night I went.

I saw my brother for the first time in living color. Everything I had thought was true was a lie. What I had been through, everything I had ever sacrificed, was nothing. I didn’t matter. It was the beliefs of my father all over again, it all made sense now.

Picking sides

I realized much later that during the argument, my mother was suspiciously silent. I wondered if it was because she was shocked at my brother’s words, his behavior? Or maybe she was dismayed at the reality before her. She had called me several times when I left, but I did not pick up the phone.

The next day, she sent me several passive-aggressive text messages, where it was clear she had picked sides, and it wasn’t mine. She wanted me to apologize to my brother.

On principle alone, I did not dignify her ridiculous request with a response. As if.

The day I picked her up to begin the drive to Guatemala, she tried again to get me to speak to him. He was coming to see her off anyway, as I shoved her suitcase into the back of the truck. I let him say his piece. I literally do not remember what he said because I was not listening. I was only waiting for him to stop talking so I could get back in the car and drive away.

My mother was tearful that I was driving away without hugging my brother. That isn’t my brother. That was just another man who has betrayed me and treated me like shit. She has tried in the months since that argument to reconnect me with my brother. She has become the intermediary through which any communication with him passes. I do not call him. I do not text. I have nothing to say to him anymore.

He had one job. To be my brother. He’s never really been there for me, unless it was on his terms. And I have dealt with that, until very recently, when we had this huge argument that broke whatever was left.

I never looked back. I have no regrets.