Abuser Is A Sibling, Should I Cut All Contact?

[Ecil]

I'm posting anonymously because I'm worried there's too much info on my own profile and someone could figure out who I am.

My brother sexually abused me when I was a child and has emotionally manipulated and abused me as an adult. there's about 7 years difference between us. I still have quite regular contact with him but I try to keep my distance as much as I can. My family don't know any of it and I don't intend on telling them my mother was neglectful and emotionally abusive but now she's old and sick. My dad has some health issues too.

Every time I see him I want to rip my skin off an throw it at him. He can't say anything without me getting mad and saying horrible things to him. People are starting to think I'm a bit of a bully to him.

As I'm writing all this I just thought you know what I would reply to this thread if it was someone else...cut him out never speak to him again.

It's not really that easy when we share a family. I don't have anyone to talk to about this and I feel too exposed on the regular forum to openly discuss it. He's the type of person who if he thought I was using a forum like this would look for me and if he found me would use my posts against me to manipulate me. He's also a text book gaslighter.

What would you do?

 

[Ilupu]

I'd do it, or try to cut as much contact as possible.

If people ask? You can always say it's personal, and you haven't been treated well, if you feel like explaining at all.

 

[Vezos]

I'm from the same situation. Like, almost exactly the same, except my mother isn't sick and not particularly what I would call old.

Except... I disclosed the abuse when I was fourteen. When I was sixteen, I completely flipped my shit, and I cut contact with him, except he was still living in the same house as me. I didn't really have any thought process at all for cutting contact. I just could. not. do. it. any. more. Really, literally, genuinely, I could not. I hid in my room any time I was in the house, ate and slept when I was at my boyfriend's house or at school, and after a few months I told my parents that if he didn't move out by my seventeenth birthday, I was emancipating myself and moving out, because I couldn't live like that forever.

Since then, I've seen him several times. Even shared a cabin with him and my sister on a cruise when I was nineteen. Each time I've interacted with him since has completely destroyed any progress I've made on myself.

It is really hard to share a family with someone you've cut contact with. I have had to cope with my decision to not attend events that he would be at. I can't see my parents. I can't see my grandmother, who is nearly 100. I missed my cousin's wedding. It's just extremely hard. This year was the first time a family member told me that if I wanted to come for Thanksgiving, they would tell him he was not welcome, which was an amazing feeling, but, you know, I've been dealing with this for almost ten years, since I was a teenager, and that was the very first time, and I have a lot of anger, because I feel like it shouldn't have been the first time, you know? That's really hard to deal with.

No one in my family knows the extent of the abuse, and almost everyone has been fed some line of bullshit from my parents who no doubt minimized the shit out of the situation. So I deal with that. And that is hard.

Luckily, in the past few years, some other members of the family have come to see what a worthless, selfish piece of shit my brother really is.

No matter how hard it has been to ensure to the best of my ability that I don't have to interact with my brother, it has been the right choice for me. I couldn't live with him in my life. Never again. Recently, my father asked for confirmation that I don't want to see him, and I told him, point blank, "If I see him, I'll kill him." No more hiding. No more happy face.

 

[Vuco]

It's not really that easy when we share a family.

That's a real thing and difficult to negotiate.

It will be easier (I think) once your parents are dead. Do you want to wait that long? Have you ever talked about any of this with your brother? I'm kind of thinking of something along the lines of "Look you evil b*@#&d, I'm drawing a bright clear boundary for our 'relationship'. This is what it is and this is why." Depending on the whole package of what he's like, you may have some kind of price to pay at some point anyway. Your choices being "sooner" or "later" How does he react when you "get mad and say hateful things to him?"

The choice isn't about him. He obviously has no value in your life and the relationship the 2 of you have has no value either. What's more of a factor is how important your relationships with your parents are, how worthwhile they are, and how cutting your brother out of your life would affect those relationships.

 

[Ecil]

Thank you all for your replies you are all right of course. I'm feeling at the moment like a just can't do it anymore too. I have a really good relationship with my dad and my older sisters who have kids.

He acts like we're best buds or something it's fubar. I think that may be my fault for going along like nothing happened for years. Now I'm dealing with some of this stuff I just can't pretend.

Yeah if I'm mean to him he's acting all hurt little lamb. He comes across as quite vulnerable and fragile which is totally just an act. And obviously that makes me seem like a real bitch.

 

[Cizifu]

A very, very wise man here once told me that it was of the utmost importance for me to work on becoming assertive. I think that if you're going to continue the relationship you have with your brother, implementing assertive communication that holds him accountable for his words and actions in a way that is not aggressive or passive aggressive could be invaluable to you. Being able to evenly, calmly, assertively call people on their bullshit is so incredibly powerful. If your brother is anything like my bastard brother, he's a master of passive-aggression, gaslighting, and otherwise extremely manipulative and under-handed argumentative tactics.

 

[Ebew]

I'm in nearly the same boat. My brother who's 10 years older molested me for 5 years and manipulated me for years. Only difference is I told my mother when I was 9. Her response? Don't tell your father. Nothing was done. I tried to discuss it with both of them in my early 20s. Dad's response? What do you want me to do about it now?

My brother is their favorite and can do no wrong even though he borders on what I call evil.

I've reduced contact. I don't go to family functions and while my brother is on social media, I have no other contact with him or his family. I talk to my parents weekly for just a few minutes but they haven't earned the right to know any more than I'm working and sleeping.

 

[Gajalu]

I'm posting anonymously because I'm worried there's too much info on my own profile and someone could figure out who I am....

I wouldnt worry about him finding you. I didnt want my family, who does google searches on my regular user name to find places i post then downs me and says im a liar and i wanted this to be a support for healing, so i picked a user name that no one would ever know is me, i made it so no one can see my ema il address & only members can see the rest. I didnt post a lot in the about me part but i didnt have to and where in located i put "eastern part of the US" and i never post my state or any states ive lived in, my real name or any family members (especially my abusers' names). My mom had control of me until I was 19, even after i moved out at 18. She and my step dad raised me in a satanic like cult. I cut off all contact and havent spoken to her since. Im now almost 35, ive been in therapy 6 yrs, 1st full yr i went to him weekly and he didnt know the real reason for a while yr. My dad and step mom and rest of the family didnt know and as i slowly told my therapist over 2 yts, he said "arent you tired of living alone with a secert? You cant recover if you hold it in as a secert." I have since told my family, they did stop speaking to me but i can now say its no longer in me as a secert.

You decide, but a thought, if he controls you, how do you get your power back? Never give your power away to any one. If it were me, Id tell the family, whether they believe me or not (it might click for them "ah, that's why she treats him like that"), id tell my mother that she emotional abused me and how, id cut contact with my brother and tell him he controls me no more and let what will be be. It hurt very much that my family doesnt believe me but i dont have to live with the secert inside and though my mother and atep father (step father now dead) controls me in my head, they dont in actual terms and i wouldnt be able to fuction let alone get better if i had contact with my mom.

Take that as you want, you decide but thats my take on it

 

[Ecil]

It's not that I don't think my family would believe me it's that I don't want to do that to them. It's something my therapist said I need to work on, that I care too much about other people and thus don't care for myself enough. My mother probably doesn't have that long left and I don't want to make her more unwell with this. I know it would totally destroy my dad I just can't do that to them.

Yes cizifu he's just exactly as you described.

This might sound odd but I don't really want to destroy his life too. His wife would probably leave him and he would lose his job and family (he doesn't have kids don't worry i would certainly say something if I thought anyone was at risk, I mean my mother, dad and sisters). I don't want to destroy him like how it feels with the guy who raped me I just don't want him near me ever again.

How would I start the process? I mean like slowly phase him out or something?

 

[Ogozi]

As I'm writing all this I just thought you know what I would reply to this thread if it was someone else...cut him out never speak to him again.

It's not really that easy when we share a family.

What I think you may misunderstand when people say to cut contact... Is that most of us know that. Know exactly how hard it is. Know the consequences. And are still saying to do it. Not because it's easy. Because it's right.

 

[Zoze]

What I think you may misunderstand when people say to cut contact... Is that most of us know that. Know exactly how hard it is. Know the consequences. And are still saying to do it. Not because it's easy. Because it's right.

100% agreed. You are giving your power away to gim. You are worried about his life cuz he's your brother and tou love him, just like i love my mother who abused me, made me kill small animals and prostitute at 12 yrs old for her and other criminal activities and if you dont want to make it known to his wife, then dont, though she should know who she married nut regardless, cut contact to take your power back. Until you do, you will always be "his", under his control and you will never be able to recover your life back! On my reply i forgot to give you a hug :hug:

 

[Atija]

My brother is their favorite and can do no wrong even though he borders on what I call evil.

Sounds like a narcissist! I am almost certain my brother has NPD, although he never achieved Golden Child status, he has always been treated as if he did no wrong. A few years after my disclosure, when I was 16 or 17, my father was reflecting on the teenagehood of his children and said, "Your brother was an unnaturally good kid. He was like a perfect angel." Oh... Really? He was? Why do I have PTSD, again, dad? Incest? No? Okay, angel it is then.

This might sound odd but I don't really want to destroy his life too. His wife would probably leave him and he would lose his job and family (he doesn't have kids don't worry i would certainly say something if I thought anyone was at risk, I mean my mother, dad and sisters). I don't want to destroy him like how it feels with the guy who raped me I just don't want him near me ever again.

You know, I felt this way when I outed my brother. I spent a couple of years protecting him, because when my symptoms fully manifested at the age of 12, my mother, who had been a social worker, knew I had been sexually abused by someone, and she would viciously interrogate me about it. I didn't give him up because I was protecting him. Then, when I finally disclosed, I was so much more gravely hurt by everyone sweeping it under the rug like nothing happened. No accountability. No repercussions. Now I wish it had destroyed him.

How would I start the process? I mean like slowly phase him out or something?

THAT is for you and you alone to negotiate, and I have finally learned that I get to negotiate that process every second of every day. No one gets to decide but me what is okay when. That contact gets decided minute by minute.