I have a twin brother who I considered my best friend. We were raised by my sweet mom and grandma and he turned out to be a sensitive, sweet boy in most aspects. Now in the last few years we have drifted apart more than ever and at some point it was even hard to have us in the same room.
The main issue is that we get agitated when I challenge him on his thoughts about male/female dynamics. To me, it feels like he got affected by podcast bro-mentality and slowly turned into someone that I can’t relate to. He for example even commented that our mother is a ‘manly woman’ because she’s strong, and strength is a ‘male quality’. He also gets agitated when I talk about subjects about women being victimized / oppressed. So much so, that he has told me he thinks that I’m a lesbian because I ‘hate men’. (I am a lesbian, but obviously just because I’m born that way). He pushes me to prove everything I say, and when I do, he tries to discredit the source or just ‘can’t confirm’. He later escalated to telling me that what I’m saying isn’t true regardless - again, without having done any research about it himself. At some point it got so ridiculous that he started to say that I wasn’t telling the truth about unrelated things. For example: “we need another chair” “that’s not true”.
He also started making snarky remarks at me disguised as ‘dark humor’. He makes these remarks with a big smile, joking that he wishes he was an only child for example. At first, I didn’t even notice how much he did this to me, but my eyes opened to the amount of comments towards me when he first met my partner. This because he did it to her too and I couldn’t take it when he did it to her. Calling her a pussy and that she could go to Halloween dressed as herself (amongst other things). I told him to stop, and he got so offended that he just ignored us completely for the rest of the day. If I don’t like his ‘joke’ and react, the family feels like I’ve ruined the mood, not him. My family says that, even though they are sitting around the same table, they never see/hear/register comments made towards me, regardless of it being my brother, or a neighbor being homophobic (which drives me crazy).
When my brother gets mad at me, he just stops reaching out. So fixing things seems to be solely on me. In an effort to talk things out before family holidays, I invited him over and started questioning him about it. I wanted to be open minded about him perhaps feeling criticized by me too much or something, but according to him that is not the case at all.
He says that I’m being negative and that this negativity could only make me unhappy. That he’s giving me pushback in order to protect me from myself, and that he only gets mad because I force him to protect me from myself so often…
Besides me thinking that this savior story is weird, I told him that I’m happy, and that if he worries about me so much, he should just ask me how I’m doing instead of diminishing what I say. He agreed and said he shouldn’t have done it like that.
Since then he’s been treating me normal-ish. The new normal: no more snarky remarks from him, I mostly don’t talk about my worries, and not much contact in general.
My family is happy, as to them it’s fixed.
But we’re now half a year later and after the relief of constant tension resolving, I just feel hurt… I feel hurt about him making certain remarks, discrediting me while making NO effort to show interest in what I’m talking about and what I’m worried about as a woman and lesbian. At the same time defending men who make misogynistic and homophobic remarks just because they’re ‘good people’ that don’t mean to hurt me.
I love my family. I don’t want this to impact the family dynamic. I went into therapy, and my mom too - which actually helped a lot. But I find myself still thinking about it often. I also dream about him - that he does something to hurt me with a smile.
Any women who feel like they’ve lost connection with their brother over the years? Would love to hear from you.
TLDR:
lost my friendship with my brother because we clash on topics like male/female dynamics and even though we somewhat resolved it, I still feel hurt about his comments and attitudes.