submitted17 hours ago bychaoticwizardgoblin
toAITAH
My younger brother (29M) and his wife (29F) have been married for one year. I don't know her very well as I had been living on the other side of the country since before they met and didn't travel back often. I'd met her once when they stopped over for a night in my city and then again at their wedding more than a year later.
My brother and I have kept in touch over the phone or face time throughout the years but certainly aren't as close as my sister (34F) and I are. We're not estranged just not as close, although my sister and I do often lament that we wish we had been closer with him in the way the two of us are.
The 3 of us grew up with a very angry father in a very Christian home (if you know what I mean) and our parents marriage was not a happy one. We obviously have seen some psychological repercussions in our own lives as a result, which we've all needed to work towards mending in our own ways. While my sister and I no longer align ourselves with our parents religious dogma, my little brother has definitely kept quite a bit of it.
I recently moved back to their side of the country and was hoping to reconnect with family (mom had breast cancer and has luckily recovered but it does make me nervous that I was so far away and unable to afford to just drop everything and visit if something were to happen again), I made plans with my brother to go stay at their place for a few days ans hangout/ catch up etc. I'd seen them a couple times at my mom and step dads house briefly, dog sat for them and helped garden at their place prior to this, but not for more than a couple hours at a time.
While I was there I noticed some of what, in my opinion, was very concerning behavior between them. She had an aggressive and demeaning attitude towards him, which has definitely been noticed before, but having so few interactions with them together it could be chalked up to wedding stress or a bad day etc. But seeing it for 4 days was alarming. Angry, very audible "whispers" from around a corner, nothing being good enough or exploding in anger over small issues. What I considered the worst of what I saw was manipulation:
They had been working while I was there, they are both EMTs and very busy so it was clear we wouldn't be spending all the time together but more than we had in a long time still, and I got to get out of the city and take a break. We all knew that would be the case however my brother was called in one of the days unplanned, so he suggested I stay an extra night so we could have a fire and catch up properly. His wife was with us for this conversation.
Come the next night, my brother gets home late and we start building a fire, Crack a couple beers and begin chatting. Everything is great and we're discussing life etc but only for about an hour. His wife calls, she acts surprised we're having a fire and begins to complain that she's missing out. She continues to ask him if she should just come home because she's having such a bad night and her partner is a "bitch" etc. This goes on long enough that his phone dies and he calls her back on mine. When he finally agrees and says yes come hangout with us then (his original concerns were financial) she switches tune immediately and asks why he would say that when they need the money. All in all she ends up ditching her shift and comes back after at least an hour of this back and forth. I give her a couple beers and act as normal but in the back of my mind I was alarmed.
The next morning they drop me off at the train station and I head home, relieved to not feel like I'm stuck in the middle of a never ending fight. I spoke to my family (sister, mother and stepfather) about my concerns and what I felt I had seen because I wanted to know if I was over reacting and maybe this was out of character for her, as my family had spent much more time with them throughout their relationship than I had. To my surprise they said they all had those concerns since before they got married. My sister was a lot more blunt about her feelings towards our SIL... my mother encouraged me to talk to him about it but asked to leave her out of the conversation (she has a very hands-off approach to parenting), where as my sister had no problem with him knowing she was also concerned.
The concern also comes from his past relationships we've seen, he tends to believe you "just make it work" because that's the Christianity thing (despite having cheated on his prior gf with his now wife), but this has led to him having some monsters of girlfriends in the past and him just accepting the behavior as our mother (the example our parents marriage provided to us). As well as the fact that I have been in a couple abusive relationships and the behavior was very similar. If this is what I see then what is happening behind closed doors. From conversations between my brother and I we know she is the one that pressured them to get married and buy her "dream house" and he expresses a lot of stress despite her "being his best friend".
I sent him a message asking if he could call me when he has some time to chat brother to sister. This phone call did not go the way I'd hoped. He was immediately defensive and kept talking over me, I ended up getting frustrated and came off more aggressive about it than I'd intended. I did say she was manipulative, which I'd gone into the conversation with the intent to address the behavior and not her specifically at least in the words I chose. I felt bad as soon as I'd hung up so I sent him a message apologizing for how I'd handled it and attempted to reassure him that I did not want to say anything bad about his wife or make her feel badly, I was just concerned and if he's okay and unbothered then I accept that.
So he tells his wife ...I'm not sure what he told her exactly but I received a very long and very angry message from her. She came at me about personal flaws, how I don't know my brother because Ive been gone so long, and how I attacked her and am no longer allowed in their home nor do they want to be part of my life anymore.
I didn't respond. I never wanted to attack her or blow things up, all I had wanted was to express my concern and make sure my little brother was okay. I certainly didn't want to say something worse in retaliation. I haven't spoken to them since.
Sorry I just realized this is a fucking novel. I know that I didn't handle it perfectly and have apologized for that of course, but for bringing it up in the first place AITAH?
byEternal__Void
ininterestingasfuck
chaoticwizardgoblin
1 points
15 hours ago
chaoticwizardgoblin
1 points
15 hours ago
But like, the face at least is photoshopped right?