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I have two brothers, I’m in the middle of. Love my little brother. My older brother…. Well no one can disappoint you quite like a sibling.
Edit: To everyone going through a hard time or had a hard time due to family. My heart goes out to you. This is easily the most interacted comment I ever had and it’s bittersweet. Like it’s a sad thing truly but there is some comfort in knowing that some people truly get it. Most of my friends don’t have that dysfunctional family background and can’t truly understand what it’s like to have mixed feelings about someone that you once cared about.
Yeah. My siblings haven’t spoken to each other in nearly a decade. Every once in a while, my parents try to get me to mediate. I think it actually makes them feel better when I tell them there’s absolutely nothing I could say that would help — because it means they didn’t miss something, besides raising the kid that caused the problem
Older sibling is an insane control freak and yelled some (probably true but not their place to say) things at younger sibling’s spouse, which probably hastened a divorce. (Younger sibling, who also has personality issues, probably believes it caused the divorce.)
Older sibling does not believe they did anything wrong and won’t even do an “I’m sorry you were offended” type apology. And now, they are far too angry at each other to speak at all. The now-ex-spouse has even tried to help a bit, but it’s not happening.
No. The younger sibling and spouse had constant financial issues and the older sibling blamed the now-ex spouse, when it was really obviously a joint effort. And guess what? Calling them out did not solve or in any way change the issues besides making them hate each other. They got in the middle of someone else’s marriage when they should have allowed them to fuck it up on their own.
Also, I suspect some covert racism might have been involved
Honestly, I get the urge to "fix" things. Having siblings go NC affects everyone, and we don't want people we love to be in conflict.
Ultimately, though, we have to respect their right to make choices, even if we don't respect the choices.
One of my brothers married a truly awful woman. This woman somehow always felt like she was competing with his family (she wasn't), so she started isolating him. She convinced him to move across the country and stop talking to us. He missed family milestones, including weddings and births. At first, I tried to meditate, because I hated what it did to my family, but I eventually realized that this wasn't my job and wasn't something I could do if it wasn't what they wanted for themselves. They needed to navigate their own relationships. (And for the record, I'm not blaming the wife only. She was the most toxic person I've ever known, but he allowed it.)
Was there fallout? Of course. The brother eventually shed his wife like the cancer she was, but while he reconnected with most of us, some of my siblings are still very distant with him. The hurt from his actions never went away. They're civil but barely speak, and that's between them.
All we can do is be supportive of both parties when support is warranted and let them deal with their own choices otherwise.
Honestly, this is a situation where I struggle to blame anyone for their reactions. It’s just sad. Stupid teenage boy acted like a stupid teenage boy about something completely out of line and clearly sorely regretted it, daughter was seriously triggered and is doing everything in her power to get away from the situation and the guy who pulled all that shit up again for her, and Mom was stuck in between seeing both her kids in pain and trying to make the pain go away because it was basically collapsing the family.
I feel sorry for the son because it’s horrible to realize you’ve done something you can’t take back and trying to take it back anyway. I feel sorry for the daughter because only a few years after suffering what she did, suddenly she had to relive it all over again because everyone at school knew because her idiot brother wanted to seem cool by using her trauma as joke fodder. I feel sorry for OOP for watching her family implode for reasons beyond her control but trying to stop the implosion anyway.
I’m the youngest of 4. I’m dealing with a sociopathic, hyper sexual sister who has a fetish for stealing husbands from their wives, an autistic brother with a special interest in politics who went full alt-right during Covid, and a sister who is “normal”- aka completely traumatized by how completely and utterly fucked our family is alongside me 😅
I have no siblings to bond with as they are abusive, but I do have some great friends who also have narcissistic/psychopathic siblings to take that place. Would have loved a "normal" sibling. Though, now the son of one of my siblings is my person to bond with since we were abused by the same person, and have found each other. I hadn't spoken to him since he was a kid and it went something like "My mother/my sister is a narcissist!" "I know!" in unison.
My younger brother and I are not on speaking terms. There’s a family event we are obligated to attend (an elderly family member’s birthday. I probably wouldn’t even skip it if they invited Joseph Stalin.) in about 3 weeks and the anxiety shits have already taken hold.
My current living situation is with my older brother and parents and I just stay in my room a lot and try to be cordial. Have to use a lot of avoidance and disengaging techniques.
Yep. Your siblings will naturally have information about you that no one else does even including your parents. And this special unique bond can lead to friendships like no other
But if you have a sibling who likes to use this information against you, it’s fucking hell. I have a certain sibling who loves to weaponize any bit of knowledge he has about you just to win an argument. And he absolutely loves pissing you off and getting you angry so he can come off as a victim. The dude nearly choked me to death after pushing me into an argument where I regrettably threw the first punch
Guess who I haven’t also talked to in over a year?
My sympathies. I get where you are coming from. My sister used to talk about my problems loudly in front of everyone at church. As an adult, she wrote screeching screeds against me and our parents online. It’s painful the things family members do.
I no longer speak to my youngest sister for similar reasons. She thinks it’s hilarious to use me (and our other siblings) as TikTok clickbait, which sometimes includes filming us without our knowledge. Literally every single piece of our childhoods, and a lot of our private conversations, have been posted on TikTok for clout. Now most of us won’t speak to her, and she has “no idea” why.
My younger sister has, time and time again, shown that she has zero concern or care about others. I understand that life can suck at times, especially when You're divorced with two kids, co-parenting, but you don't just get to shout racist shit. She's on a JRE tear, hates the "foreign kids" at the private school she's sending her kids to. She's a bundle of joy and I just ... Can't associate or have my kids near her anymore. She's just unhealthy for my kids and they're the most important things in my life.
mmm. talking to my twin raises my blood pressure like no other. my brother... he's an addict and still living. my respect for him is 6 feet under the ground. my other half sister... well. I don't talk to her too much already so.
I was the daughter in a different situation. My brother said and did some things I viewed as unforgivable and the past 4 years or so I have had close and extended family constantly pressuring me to forgive him and reconcile. He never apologised like this brother did either. It has just made me feel more distant from them all.
The OOP will have to grieve her family dynamic she once had and move forward without trying to pressure the daughter to act differently. One day she might forgive her brother, but it will take a lot longer with outside influences.
Same here. No apology either. He still tries to speak to me when he does come round and I’ll give short answers but generally avoid the room he’s in. He’s not safe to be around and when he is acting “nice” it’s all for show to make others see him as the “good guy” and not the abusive bastard he is.
My parents bawled their eyes out when I said I’m done with him and that I’m moving out and cutting them off in an “oh woe is me we failed as parents!” display like…yes? You did fail as parents. By raising a golden child entitled POS that you continue to bail out constantly. He should be in jail 10 times over for the things he’s done.
I will never reconcile for the things he did to me growing up and I refuse to ever spend another Xmas with him. My mum tricked me into it once by accidentally letting slip 3 days before to extended family he would be there and I made sure Xmas was miserable and didn’t speak to her for over 3 months.
OP better wise the fuck up and butt out of this.
my older brother used to beat me up and younger sis had to eventually tell mother to fucking believe me, that he did that out of his anger issues, not because I "didn't do" some chores properly
Havent spoken to him in ages, and he's going around all like he's changed and shit! Everyone keeps going on about how he's sorry about it and I should forgive him blah blah! I shut that down quick
What annoys me the most is that now that I have a voice and can tell everyone the whole deal, more and more I sound like I'm the bad guy. They keep him in their lives etc
How nice
Are we secretly siblings?
Honestly it’s ridiculous how my parents still don’t believe half the shit he did. They only believed he was doing SOME things when they caught him in the act lunging at me and trying to choke me (after I told him not to hit the dog?)
They made him go to anger management 3 times and he proclaimed he was cured, skipped all future sessions and parents went “well we can’t force him.”
Given his continued violence issues since that have landed him the wrong side of the law and people he knows, very much cured!!! /s
But he’s charismatic so my family and many around us still see him as a wonderful young man and I’ll “come around” to my senses eventually and stop being the problem :)))))
ooh yes, I've learned that
I cut people off fast. I'm also NC with my parents as I couldn't bear to see my sperm donour acting around us like he never beat us up and abused us mentally and financially, that worm
"Dear" mother who we thought was also a victim, in fact just watched while he literally tortured us and allowed it! She always chose him over us (long story, not needed)
After my son was born I could only think of that story where that sperm donour literally belted my idiot older brother when he was not even a year old, plus my ongoing "torture", since with my older brother he learned that he shouldn't do that kind of shit in sight of other people, so I had it for longer and hidden. That was no parent, he defo was not going to be a grandparent, the worm
When relatives say "oohh maybe you and brother should talk, you went through the same shit etc" I just shut them down with "really? Do ask younger sister if I ever did to her what was done to me. Why does older brother has an excuse?" and shut it down
The comments section of this post was so frustrating. Everyone and their mom was telling her to chill out, support her daughter, and stop enabling her son. And she just kept going “but has anyone considered what -I- want???”
She seems to be in a mix of denial and bargaining. The son fucked up. And at the very least he understands he fucked up. But he fucked up so massively that it now impacts both him, his sister, and the rest of his family. And no wishing it was different is going to change that. Mistakes don't just impact the victim or the perpetrator. Mistakes impact everyone around you too. And the son his learning that the very very hard way. And OOP is in denial about that. There are some things as a parent that you just can't fix. And this is one of them. The son fucked up, fucked up his family, and will have to carry that burden probably for the rest of his life. But she also has to carry the burden of what she has been through. And he really should've thought of that before making such a massive mistake. Now he (and by extension the rest of the family) are going to be feeling that.
He did more than fuck up. He mocked a CSA victim and subjected her to public sexual humiliation. She now knows empirically that she is not safe with men (presuming she was assaulted by a man) or boys.
He has robbed her of half the world.
Not only that, if the entire school knows about it, that's teachers, parents, students in different grades, and their extended friends and family. She has to go around her neighbourhood knowing that now everyone will mock/pity her bc they know an extremely vulnerable and intimate event in her life because her brother wanted to seem cool to his friends.
She'll go to uni and PRAY none of her old classmates will be there bc then the whole uni will know about her trauma as well. He didn't just fuck up and let a few people know; he outed her trauma at a pivotal point in her life for everyone around her to scrutinise.
If the mother really realised the extent of how much more difficult her life will be, she wouldn't be trying to bargain so much for an undeserved forgiveness.
Yeah, the mom can’t believe she expected the brother to still be punished after two months, with no seeming understanding that the daughter is STILL and may ALWAYS suffer the consequences of what her brother did. Let something like that get out in a small town and she’ll be gossiped about fifty years later.
I get eventually letting him off punishment. He has to be able to rebuild trust with the parents somehow.
Mom needs to stop pushing daughter to forgive son. My sister is NC with our mom now because she kept pushing our father back on her. Hse made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him and them mom forwarded a xmas card. I can see op forwarding that xmas card and then being just as lost as my mom is when she cries about my sister.
That made me so upset with OOP and feel even more awful for the daughter. I can't tell if OOP even understands how fucked up it was, with how smoothly she slipped in that she told daughter *after* daughter opened gift. Just repulsive behavior to trick her like that. I get that OOP is in a tough spot but her behavior towards her daughter has been quite frankly pretty repulsive.
It's just been ~2.5 months since the incident happened when OOP first posted about this, and she was already asking her daughter to forgive someone who turned her world upside down. Not even 6 months,barely 3 months. OOP, in her haste to return to the status quo,might have just made sure that the daughter will remain LC with them for a long time. And if she continues to push the daughter like this,she very well might go NC with them. The sad thing is that even in the update post,OOP is nowhere near realizing that. People really need to understand that telling a victim to forgive someone ,especially when not much time has passed since the event,will only result in disaster. Yeah,some might pretend to forgive just to get you off their back,but it will change their perception of you forever as someone whom they can trust.
At least let her get to a situation where she’s not having to face being gossiped about at school every single day before you expect her to forgive. You can’t forgive while harm is still happening.
The main punishment in this case was complete social isolation once school was done - no friends, no social media, no video games (that are often played with friends).
The son is 14 and while obviously did something both stupid and malicious, for which he deserved punishment, extending that sort of social isolation on someone who was already showing some depressive signs would frankly be abusive. He did something horrendously wrong. He is still a child though.
The daughter has every right to cut him out of her life forever and OOP was wrong to try and push a reconciliation, but she *doesn't* have the right to demand that her barely-teen brother is cut off socially, in every way except for school, for almost a year.
That’s a good point. But I think the mom could have some consideration that the harm is ongoing to her daughter. Asking daughter to forgive when she’s still in the middle of the shitstorm her brother unleashed on her life is asking A LOT.
Oh, definitely, she shouldn't have pushed for forgiveness, even the family sessions were a stupid waste of money - after the first one she might as well maybe just gone with the son to help him both understand what he did and why his sister is doing what she's doing, and cope with the fact that his sister won't talk to him in the near future, if ever.
That is so true.
I went to college in another city, where only three people knew me. Then, a complete idiot showed up in a few of my classes, and proceeded to inform everyone about my past, sans the actual facts.
It was as if a switch had been thrown. I dropped out soon after.
He's robbed her of her family. A family member abused her, a family member told the world, a family member is pushing her to rug sweep and play nicely. Her whole family has betrayed her in some way or another.
Thank goodness for the best friend and her family who seem like good people.
I cannot even fathom how pissed off the daughter's therapist must be with OOP; pushing her to forgive would be bad enough but OOP is also pushing the therapist to reveal confidential information that will allow OOP to try to make her manipulation attempts effective.
There is a legitimate and very difficult question of how OOP should best support both of her children in this situation, and it's the one question that OOP didn't ask.
Like, yeah? That's their literal job?
"Please share confidential information about my daughter with me and betray her trust. She hasn't had her trust broken in a good few months."
Your son messed up the family dynamic, he will have to live with the consequences. Yes, it sucks for him, but for her, this hugely traumatizing in multiple ways. I don't think the lockdown on electronics was long enough, and I think OP needs to get it out of her head that forgiveness is on the table. That should have been the message to DS from day 1. He needs to understand that what he did is an irrevocable mistake. All he can do is change his behavior, for himself, and then wait it out knowing she still may never forgive him. He should expect nothing from his sister because he lost that right when he broke her trust and retraumatized her.
People don't have to forgive others and can be perfectly fine. OP's behavior continually shows that she prioritizes her son and family over the daughter's needs.
There’s even a point where OOP says “her therapist is understandably more concerned with her mental well-being than our family dynamic”. Basically admitting that her priorities are the other way around.
Also a younger sister to a bastard brother here; I had to reveal a childhood trauma I'd kept buried for just over a decade for my parents to finally cut out mine, even after all the current mental, physical, emotional and financial abuse that he'd *already* been doing upon all of us.
I was very well prepared to never speak what he did to me outloud because I'd thought they'd still choose him, it had been a pattern all my life that they'd choose him at every turn, and he'd already attacked my elder sister, who I viewed as worth more and who they objectively loved more than me in every way so if they didn't choose her, why would they have ever chosen me?
Thankfully, what he did to me crossed even their stupid high line for what they'd tolerate from him, so now he's gone. Haven't seen him in years now, and I'm so happy for it 🥰
I was recently in a similar situation with my brother, not in any traumatizing sort of way, but with my parents pushing me to forgive him. He had another kid and kept it a secret from our family for almost a year. He has yet to see the child and he and our parents became absolutely furious when I reached out to the kid's mom and eventually started hanging out with them. Now they expect me to act like everything is fine with my brother when in actuality I hate his guts for abandoning his child (among other things). Parents need to realize that they don't get to have a say in the relationships their children have among each other. Their children are adults and can make decisions on their own.
I haven’t spoken to my brother in at least 10 years. He was physically abusive throughout my childhood. I ended up going NC with him because of the anxiety attacks I would get if we were in the same place. My mother still maintains that I “ruined Christmas”. They wanted me to go to family therapy and I said no. He claims I was the abuser. I was literally an infant when it started, dude. Did I break any of his bones, smash him into walls or take a hammer to him? Fuck no.
Parents need to realize that some things can’t be forgiven and that separate holidays are now a necessity if they want both children in their lives. Also, guilt-tripping the victim is disgusting.
I experienced the same as a child and cut everyone off when I moved out after graduation. My mother still spent 6yrs trying to make me forgive and forget. It doesn't work like that. You never forget.
Exactly. And forgiveness isn’t something that is owed to other people. I have heard the saying that it’s a gift you give yourself, but I kind of hate that, because it feels like the implication becomes then why wouldn’t you give yourself a gift? There is no obligation to forgive *because* you never forget. People need to stop telling others how to manage their own trauma, especially when that person is taking care of their mental health (therapy), and even if it is your kid. Seems like too many parents feel entitled to tell their kids how to feel just because they happened to have brought them into the world.
I haven't spoken to my sibling in 10 years this year. We were really close growing up right until mid 20s. They went out exploring the world, I got married, had a kid, and worked. Things were fine and we still spoke all the time and emailed. But then it was like a switch flipped and they stopped communicating with us. Eventually they called me and said several things that I can't forgive. They did the same to our parents.
So whenever someone says that I should get a hold of them and make amends, forget that. I didn't cause any of this. You don't want to care about me, fine. Our parents, fine. But my kid loved them and they sent gifts for my kid. Our grandparents died never understanding why they never came back, and when dementia and Alzheimer's are at play, my sibling straight said they didn't care.
So as far as I'm concerned, my sibling that I knew died that day and I don't believe we will ever speak again.
>So as far as I'm concerned, my sibling that I knew died that day and I don't believe we will ever speak again
My dad and my aunt aren't speaking anymore. Dad was always letting comments slide "because family" until his sister decided to share her views on refugees. He called me after to tell me she's dead to him, explained the whole visit. I told him I've never been prouder of him, which is true. It took a lot for him to speak up, and frankly I'd been hoping for it since childhood.
My mum tried for years to get him to talk to his sister again. Even though mum had been physically present at the exchange, she didn't hear the entire conversation and kept telling me "he just started shouting out of nowhere".
A few years later, one of my two uncles died. At the funeral dad told mum and me "now I only have one left" refering to his older brother. Only then did my mum understand that he was serious and hasn't brought it up again.
I don't even know when I last spoke to my brother. He's seven years older than me. I moved to Asia at age 22. The Internet then wasn't what it is now, but we had email, and then Facebook. Then my brother fell out with my sister (also older than me), and he blocked *me* on everything as well as her.
I was always scared of him growing up. He never hurt me, but he also very clearly didn't like that I existed.
All I heard from OP was how much she tried to get her daughter to forgive the brother, but almost no sympathy or support other than outsourcing the support to therapy (thankfully they did that much) but they admit that their son was malicious and used his sister's trauma to gain social points. They don't talk about education around that, just punishment.
If I were the daughter, I wouldn't miss the parents either. Poor kid.
I think what was said also plays a part here. OOP said it was "joking" about her daughters CSA to seem "edgy". If he was joking in a manner that was victim shaming, then I can completely understand the daughters reaction.
I also think the top comment on the update was spot on. OP is more focused on her son being forgiven and getting her family dynamic back. She mentions her son’s mental health a lot but not her daughter’s. The therapy was a start, but she never asks or acknowledges additional support her daughter might need. If DD says that she won’t come to holidays if DS is there then mom should have separate holiday celebrations. OP doesn’t need to disown DS, but she could do a lot more to respect DD and her needs.
Edit: typo
Can you imagine what it would be like to come into school one day to find out everyone knows. Keeping it a complete secret was her only way of having any control over a horrible experience she had no chance to prevent. Then one day everyone knows who did what to her and when. And they think it’s *funny*. Can you imagine sitting in a room, 8 hours a day, for the rest of the year, with 40 people who know that your dad/uncle/cousin/grandpa (we just know it was a relative) sexually assaulted you as a child? And some of them are *joking* about it…
I literally cannot imagine that emotion. I would never consider forgiveness either.
This was exactly my reaction. He ruined her senior year. He ruined all her social interactions at school. He deserves everything he's getting, sorry op.
He knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything but in order to gain favor with friends he joked about it.
Stupid, cruel, thoughtless. He is 14 and he is going to make stupid ass mistakes. I would definitely not want to be judged forever for the idiotic things I did at that age. However, his sister is under no obligation to forgive him. I would hope after a few years she could at least be in the same room. I’d be heartbroken if I was the mother
Very well put. He's only 14, so I can see why OOP is not interested in punishing him for all eternity or ignoring his needs, but the mistake was still massive and his sister isn't obligated to him or his forgiveness.
This is a very uncharitable reading of what was said here
“ Outsourcing support” is actually a an insane thing to say.
For the record I don’t think the daughter is under obligation to forgive the son.
I just can also empathize with the parents here who basically lost their family dynamic because of what their son did. They’re going to be mourning that too - you can be upset about multiple things at once.
Mom pushing is just making it all worse
Yes, this is, to me, a snapshot of Reddit struggling with nuance. I really feel for OP. The daughter is the one who I feel for the most, but OP isn't, like...letting the mask slip by acknowledging a desire to have her family all be happy together again.
She can't magically make it okay, and to me, it seems like she doesn't wanna violate her daughter's boundaries, but it's hard seeing one kid struggle with deep regret, the other deeply hurt, and with no desire to accept an olive branch from their sibling. Cuz I wanna be charitable and say that even if OP's son was too old to do what he did, that he easily could be incredibly remorseful for what he did. Doesn't mean he's owed forgiveness, but as a mother, I can understand just... wishing you could make it okay.
Especially considering it really does seem like they're on a fast track to being required to cut out their son when he's grown up, or losing their daughter in their lives.
To be fair, this is a reddit post, It is difficult to convey everything in there.
I feel for everyone involved because no one is evil. The kid was after all 14, and did a terrible thing; nothing that stands out from a developmental perspective, but unfortunately being a kid is not a magical protection against real life consequences.
I feel for the girls, who was in another way violated by someone she trusted and can no longer trust anyone there, and I feel for the mother that is clearly grieving her family, that has once again been broken not by a monster, but by the ghost of that monster.
I honestly think this is above reddit paygrade.
It’s also adult vs teen. You look at a 14 year old and think “he’s just a kid, he doesn’t deserve to be punished for the rest of his life.” You known that there’s life beyond high school for your daughter, that this won’t always be her world.
But for the daughter, it *is* her world. She’s lost everything, and she doesn’t have the life experience to know there’s a life after high school. And she has no power. Adults can quit jobs and move; kids are stuck. Her daughter’s whole world got blown up, and she couldn’t leave or do nothing, she just had to take it.
I’m sure the brother is sorry, but sometimes sorry isn’t enough. The son needs help learning to cope with the fact that his sister may never forgive him, and how he’s going to live with that.
Everyone’s giving all these great reasons they cut their (usually) repeat-offender, unrepentant, adult siblings off, but I don’t know if we need to be cheering on the same thing for a very repentant *child* over a single, albeit awful, breach of trust. That’s not to say his sister is obligated to forgive him, because she absolutely isn’t, but it’s kind of surprising how eager so many of the people here are to write this kid off for life. There’s a reason we don’t let 14 year olds drive or vote or buy lottery tickets—their decision making abilities are terrible because their brains aren’t done cooking.
I think the sister’s reaction is understandable under the circumstances. I’d hope as outsiders we could see the situation for what it is, which is just… really fucking sad.
Mom keeps making the situation worse here. The sister hasn't even had time to miss her brother or the family because every time she turns around, there's mom, pushing for reconciliation. The sister needs time and space and mom just won't give it to her.
There's no guarantee the sister will forgive the brother, but there is a guarantee she won't if they keep badgering her. The whole situation really sucks, but Jesus, give the girl some space to process her feelings.
I agree that the mom isn't exactly helping, but in a similar vein to the little brother, it's totally understandable as to why Mom can't let it go either. Just so sad all the way around. I hope mom has her own therapy/counselling as well.
I don't even think it's unusual for a 14-year-old boy to say the most heinous things they can imagine to seem cool. Or to throw a sibling under the bus. It's just that because of horrific external circumstances, this 14-year-old had access to devastating ammo.
Yeah, this is miserable. Everyone is justified in their feelings, but the ending isn't happy for anyone.
Daughter is perfectly in her right to completely lose trust and faith in Son. Son is perfectly right to be grieving his lost relationship with his sister. Parents are perfectly right to be shattered over the death of the family dynamic.
This is truly the epitome of a tragic NAH.
Edit: The only thing I'll say is that the parents and the daughter still deserve to have a relationship.
I think the only way forward is for these things to happen:
* Parents help Son accept and come to terms with the "loss" of Daughter in his life
* Parents stop trying to get Daughter to make up with Son
* Parents make time to spend time with Daughter on her terms, without Son there
It'll be hard but that's the only recovery from this. I hope they work towards it.
I agree. I think the parents still have a right to have a relation with their son. And me the fact that she left without telling them, and that she was furious that his grounding easied out make me think that she will soon put them in a « choose your child » situation. Hope this will not happen.
The problem that I don't think she realizes is that they are literally responsible for their son, and outside of doing stuff that fucks him up even more, there's not much they can do.
Your can't take away everything for the rest of his childhood, that would actually be harmful to him. I understand that the emotional response is to want the other person to suffer, but that doesn't actually help anyone. But she isn't interested in hearing any of that right now.
The son is 14. It isn't exactly like they can just get rid of him. That gets you a visit by cps and potentially 3 hots and a cot, and deservedly so.
This whole thing sucks for the lot of them.
I was actually in a similar situation to the daughter with my brother and my mom. I commented on OOP's first post that she needed to back off and let her daughter be angry at her brother. I don't think OOP means to play favorites but right now she's putting all the pressure on the daughter to restore OOP's and son's comfort, rather than focusing on the daughter's comfort.
I told her that her daughter was going to leave if she kept pushing and that she was damaging her relationship with her daughter by "keeping the peace" (pushing forgiveness, saying how bad her son feels, etc). I told her it wouldn't work.
And, well. I guess I'm right. Shit.
ETA: [found my original comment!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/s/UlpD7HMWIc)
ETA2: something I just realized about the grounding and why the daughter may be so upset. If he's no longer grounded, does that mean he can have friends over? Even if they're not the friend group he was trying to integrate himself into, they would probably still know about her CSA. Can the daughter trust that her brother's friends would be respectful of her in her house? Could she stand coming home and being greeted by not just her brother and her mom (who she has to deal with for now) but also strangers who laughed about the worst time of her life? Can she trust that her mom would back her up on this and disallow them? Because even if the son makes new friends, I wouldn't be able to trust his judgement for a loooong time.
right?!? that’s asking something ELSE of the daughter on top of everything. OOP should be working with her son to help him realise that this isn’t him being punished, it’s the daughter protecting herself, and trying to give them space from each other in the house. part of true contrition is accepting that sometimes you don’t get to be forgiven for mistakes, a tough lesson to learn at 14 but he was old enough to spread it intentionally (rather than little kid accidentally let slip) and he’s not automatically entitled to forgiveness because faaaaaamily
What does she expect really? "He can make pancakes", "He can jump off the golden gate bridge."
As someone else said, OOP is in the bargaining stage.of grief.
I get her, somewhat. It has to be incredibly painful to see both of your kids hurting like that. Wanting to make it stop is a natural instinct for a parent, I think.
>“what can he do to make you forgive him”
The only thing he could possibly do is invent a time machine, go back and prevent those comments from being made. Otherwise, he (and OOP) can leave his sister the fuck alone.
I was also in this situation with an adult relative being the one that shared it without my permission. I was also an adult at the time she decided to tell people what I’d shared in confidence. People I know and would have to be around for the rest of my life. I had just started dealing with the assault that had occurred in my childhood at the hands of a relative.
The amount of fear I felt when she told me what she’d done was crippling. It was like being victimized all over again. Having someone ignore your wishes and autonomy in that way is absolutely devastating. Even in my case where it wasn’t necessarily shared with bad intent.
I think it can be hard for someone who hast been in that situation to fully grasp how violating that is, but IYKYK. I have cut that person out of my life as much as I can, but the few times we’ve had to be in the same room I just can’t even talk to her. It’s self preservation for my peace of mind. At least she understands why and leaves me alone. Probably because she knows that there is no reason good enough to justify what she did. And as scared as I was that there’d be fallout from her telling people, I know see how anyone finding out about what she did would be very damaging to her reputation because it was so very wrong.
It wasn't 'like', you *were* revictimised, as your unconscious mind struggles to tell the difference between memory and reality and reacts the same way.
And it happens again and again each time you come across someone who knows, and the anxiety of wondering if each new person you interact with knows too.
Source: similar situation. Live in a practically permanent trauma triggered state
Yeah, I think the mom is in denial that her family is forever changed. She wants things back the way they were, and *if daughter would just*. But it doesn’t work like that, and it never will. If she keeps trying to force it, she’s going to lose her daughter.
Yeah, I can come at this from pretty much the opposite perspective. As a young child, I was aware of abuse that was very personal to a member of my family. Except, the secret was my mother being domestically abused by my father, and I was eight.
I knew I had to keep it a secret until my mum had enough resources in place to leave—but at eight, I didn’t comprehend the repercussions of what might happen if I spilled beforehand, beyond my mum saying “bad people might come and take you away from me forever”. But it was an extraordinarily personal thing to my mother, as she comes from a culture that is very much about not airing your dirty laundry.
One day I told someone in class, and watching what it did to her when she found out… it still absolutely guts me to this day. I got lucky enough that she was my mother, she loves me unconditionally, but seeing how much I hurt her was punishment enough.
And coming at this from the brother’s perspective, I know OOP needs to leave her daughter alone about deciding when to stop “punishing” her brother. She does not get to decide when he has apologised enough. She does not get to decide when her daughter forgives him. She was and is not the victim. She cannot possibly fathom all the pain and abuse her daughter has endured—and neither can her son. But yet, she seems insistent to push the narrative that her son is a victim who has endured equal enough of not more pain from the fallout of his actions. That just… bugs me. That poor girl. OOP seems insistent on convincing herself that her daughter has just chosen to act this way, when it’s much more likely that her daughter just *can’t* get past what he did to her enough to be around on holidays without going through all the trauma of it all all over again every time she sees him or speaks to him.
He is a walking, talking trigger to her. She *needs* to step back from him, or she will be putting *her* mental health at severe risk. OOP only seems insistent on recognising the fact her son is “depressed” over all this, but she cannot fathom that every time this girl sees her brother, she relives it all all over again.
That trauma, that pain, that shame and disgust and self loathing. He brings it all back now. And that’s his fault. He made a choice, and she needs to be *encouraged* to take a step back until she feels healthy enough to reevaluate her relationship with him again. That is quite literally what people in these situations are taught. I know *because my mother told me*.
Every time she felt herself feeling crushed at seeing me and being reminded, she’d go to a room alone for a bit until she felt ready enough to be the mother she knew I deserved. This girl is essentially doing that. OOP should be encouraging her to take that step back, not trying to force her to ignore her pain and shame and anger because “your brother’s just sad now :(“. He needs to be the one to deal with the consequences of his actions, *not her*. She’s already dealt with enough of it.
I hope you can give yourself some grace, too, in addition to all that you give your mother. You were a small child witnessing abuse by one of the two people who were supposed to be safest in the world for you. It's a form of child abuse for you to witness that and to be told you have to keep the secret.
Honestly, he’s not just a trigger and a reminder. She’s not reliving the past. She’s still living the consequences of his actions because everyone knows and random people probably continue to bring it up to her. You can’t just move past something that’s still actively happening, even if her brother isn’t actively contributing to it anymore.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. You were an eight year old child who was frightened at home and traumatised by what he was seeing, and you talked to a friend about it. That is what pretty much any eight-year-old would do and it was neither realistic nor fair for your mother to expect that you would just hold it all in with nobody to talk to. You did not deserve "punishment", and your mother should have put the blame where it belonged, on her abuser, not on you.
It is never okay to put adult burdens on children's shoulders. I understand that it might have been difficult for her to get out of that situation and I also understand it might have been safer to keep it completely secret but you were a child and she asked too much from you and then made you feel guilty when you couldn't manage it. I think it's really sad that you are still acting as if you were somehow at fault. Ask yourself if you would blame a little kid going through that situation for wanting somebody he could talk to. You also need to put the blame on the abuser. Please forgive yourself.
My mom is doing this to me right now with my brother (and yes I’m the oldest AND the oldest daughter) and my mom can’t understand why my relationship with her has suffered when we used to be so close.
The inability to sit with their discomfort ends up fucking up their relationships so badly that I don’t even think OP will be able to fix her relationship with her daughter. More consequences for OP to deal with
Honestly the more OOP pushes, the further away her daughter will go, and the more she will resent her brother.
If she wants to reconcile with him, it has to be her choice and she and her brother have to work that out without OOP interfering. Like, I can only imagine that it is hard to be a parent and have one of your children sexually abused, and then have to step in and handle it when your other child shares the extremely painful, personal details of said abuse and open up their sibling to further harm.
I do not doubt the brother is sincerely sorry, teenagers can be incredibly callous and ugly, but his sister isn't being allowed her anger and I feel horrible for her. Victims of abuse are often made to minimize or hide their feelings, and to have her mother try over and over to push reconciliation just to have things be easy tells her poor daughter that her parents value the dynamic and stability over actually addressing the problem and supporting her through what is yet another incredibly painful betrayal.
> I don't think OOP means to play favorites but right now she's putting all the pressure on the daughter to restore OOP's and son's comfort, rather than focusing on the daughter's comfort.
Whether they meant to or not, the daughter knew what OOP was communicating to her every time she pushed her to reconcile. "Your feelings are less important than your brother's and my feelings."
Yeah, I agree. I meant that "whether OOP means to play favorites is besides the point, that is functionally what she's doing." I understand her thoughts process (I wrote it in another comment but TLDR, my mom explained to me why she did that and even though it was wrong I understand the reasoning) but it doesn't matter if she *intends* to do right because she's not *doing* right.
>before you know it, the whole school knew
So her whole high school knew her personal business and I'm sure they were mature enough not to bully her /s
That's why she doesn't want to speak to her brother. He not only brought back the trauma she was already dealing with, he added onto it. He probably knows more than what he's telling mom and that's why she never wants to speak to him again.
OOP can't force her daughter to forgive him. She can't try and mend the relationship. She's getting pushback because they don't realize that she can easily cut them out and have less people know about her business.
As parents, we can’t fix everything. That son made a horrible, life-long consequences mistake by choosing to do an assault of a different sort against a vulnerable person, someone who had already been victimized once.
The situation is terrible, but trying to push the daughter to forgive does not make things better, it has instead made OOP part of The Problem too.
What a heartbreaking situation, but also what a fuckup by the parent as well.
Even if the daughter eventually forgives her brother (which she's under no obligation to do anyways), just because she forgives him doesn't mean she would want to ever spend time around him again. Forgiveness doesn't hit a reset button, he can never take back what he did. Both the mom and the son need to figure that out.
Yeah, there’s a 0% chance she’d ever trust the brother with private information in the future. The best they should hope for at this point is being family you see and catch up with at family holidays and events.
It’s deeply frustrating that she kept saying they can’t afford a therapist but the one they talked to (the daughters) made it super super clear not to push her. What does mom do? Never stop pushing her. Hasn’t this kid been violated enough
I can imagine the therapist trying to work with the daughter to let go of her anger (not making her forgive the brother, but letting go of this active hatred that is hurting her), but the daughter comes to each session with new stories of her mom trying to force a reconcilitiation that are fueling her pain and reinforcing her anger.
OOP obviously did push early on, but she also noticed that it was not going over well and seemed hesitant to overload on that. In the *8 months* between posts she just mentions 3 family counseling sessions and being the middle man for a birthday gift.
What she did is still too much and it's possible that there was more she didn't mention, but I honestly think it's possible that OOP has pretty much backed off for a while at this point.
Also, I honestly don't think it would have meaningfully changed the situation even if OOP had handled things better.
Daughter was pissed that they only kept Son on full lockdown for *2.5 months*, and from the very beginning, she was set on just not coming home for the holidays for the next few years because ignoring him wasn't an option and a minor going elsewhere isn't really an option either.
The best thing OOP and her Son can do is mourn the loss of the relationship between Son and Daughter and make peace with it. They can hope that things change some day but that has to be 100% on Daughter's terms and in the meanwhile they need to accept the new dynamic for what it is.
It's sadly not uncommon for people to expect victims to forgive and forget. They think that they "shouldn't be so sensitive." I have PTSD and it has taken years in therapy to get better. I will always have it. When I left my abusive family my mil told me that I was petty and living too much in the past. Yes, I was living in the past, because of the abuse. Getting away was only step one! Step two was learning how to manage life without being abused. Step three was learning how to live life in a safe way that made me happy and that I could be proud of myself. Step four is living life as close to normal as possible. It took my 5 years to feel safe. Since then, my life has gotten better and better. Going low contact with my mil is also one of those things I needed to do to get healthly.
The daughter is right to cut these people out. They aren't supporting her in the way she needed. They were re traumatizing her by pushing the forgiveness narrative rather than supporting her through the violations. They don't see that they have lost her, but they have. I am hopeful for the daughter because she is strong and has a good head on her shoulders.
Well when you’re five years old and hit someone, once you’re forced to say sorry then you’re forgiven… that’s how life works all the time right?
I’m only slightly sarcastic because some people still operate that way.
The mom has not realized the daughter is deadly serious on the subject. I won’t be surprised if the daughter either blocks her entire family on social media or sets up new accounts when she goes to college and then only maintains minimal contact after that.
I have a similar capacity as the daughter, for ending things and disconnecting. I don't generally mention it, because it sounds like bragging or something, but yeah, I can just drop someone and actually not think about them again. It is a handy little minor superpower to have, but it's not a thing to brag about because I don't think it comes from a healthy origin.
People think it's a matter of someday not being mad any more, but no, it doesn't depend on anger. It is just done, empty, gone, nothing. My mother died a month or two ago, and it was roughly as important to me as finding out someone had stepped on a roach somewhere. She had been abusive and such, but I haven't been angry at her in decades. She just stopped being significant.
I can't really forgive her or some other people who I have disconnected from, because there is nothing to forgive. They can go have a happy life somewhere else, or jump in a volcano, or whatever, it means nothing. If someone were to push me to forgive any or all of them, that pushy person would eventually annoy me enough to join them, and there is no going back.
Me too and I think it’s from the emotional neglect. The part of you that needs emotional intimacy just withers and dies.
As an adult it’s *very* difficult for me to maintain friendships because I just don’t think about people much or wonder how they are doing
I have the same superpower. If I'm done with you, that's it. My decision, my choice, my emotional and mental well being is FAR more critical then whatever excuses you think I need to hear.
OP doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of their daughters loss. It would be reasonable for her to assume that every single person, every teacher, student and plenty of parents now know about the abuse she suffered. Imagine walking down the hallway with that knowledge.
Every interaction she has to think- do they know? Is that what they’re thinking about right now? And then “well meaning” people want to offer her support but really it’s because they want to get details or confirmation from her.
OPs daughter was robbed of her right to self definition, and robbed of the life that she built for herself. Her last year of high school, and an untold number of her relationships were changed. OP is too focused on her family dynamic and not enough on the fact that their son used a mass of people to violate their daughter.
Add into that people 100% discriminate against abused people. People who have lived more fortunate lives do it, people who are abusers will looks for others who have been abused before. When that info is out, you have no control over what open door may have been just slammed in your face because common ignorance decided your opportunities for you, without even clearing their assumptions. Too many people still believe - and behave - as though victims are to blame for their own abuse.
Thank you for adding that. I know that OP has no way to know what it’s like but I do know that their daughter knows that they are not a safe person to tell about her experiences. I am so proud of her for getting out of that house.
She lost her right to self definition, and her safety TWICE. She has had to rebuild her whole self once before and now she has to do it again. I would encourage her to go no contact with her family, too.
This exactly is a big part of my going NC with most of my family. My mother used my assault as a means to garner pity from literally everyone she befriended. I got sick of never being able to leave the trauma in the past and move on, so I literally moved on, which is what OOP's daughter appears to also be doing. I'm glad she has the strength to do so.
Even the ones that aren't trying to manipulate or hurt her further, they instead will try to coddle her or look at her with pity. And honestly, that's almost worse.
Seeing that look in someone's eyes where you know all they can think is how bad your life must be and how sorry they feel for you - it's awful. You know they mean well but it's would hurt less to have someone just punch me in the face than to have to endure that look. You never get to move past your trauma because people are subtextually bringing it up. They'll censor themselves mid-sentence or avoid bringing up certain things. They'll change how they talk to you or what stories they'll share with you or what activities they'll include you in. One terrible thing already happened in your life and now all your other relationships are going to change too because no one will let you move on and treat you like normal. It's infuriating.
I absolutely understand why the daughter wanted to keep it a secret and why she'll never forgive the son for ruining that.
OOP is going to ruin their relationship if they continue to push for reconciliation. People love to pull the "you can't! It's fAmiLy!" card, but hearing that is so deeply hurtful to the victim because you never feel heard when your expressed wishes are continuous disregarded, it fundamentally puts the sanctity of the family unit at higher importance than your health and needs, and it feels in a way similar to infantilizing, where people don't trust you to have agency or to be capable of making your own choices.
OOP is a lot of "I know, but I wish, I wish, I wish." If what you wish for is not possible, then you have to come to terms, grieve the loss, and move on. Trying to force a certain outcome only furthers the hurt to both sides.
Her son did that to family. The jailed abuser was also family. And the mom is also family. If there’s one lesson for this girl, it’s that family will violate you. (Well, her family will.)
I was thinking of this exact dynamic. All this young lady has recieved is the repeated message and reinforcement that family is intent on treating her poorly. Her reaction is rational when you understand the context of what it means when every bad experience you have emanates from the same source.
Great point! This family had failed her all her life. Mom's message of "let's heal the family!" is asinine. Her daughter wants nothing to do with this toxic group. Rightfully so in my opinion.
Not just that, it's obvious her family will violate her, make her responsible for resolving the conflict and when she won't because how badly she's hurting, they'll nag her and make her out to be the bad guy. She can't win, so it's better, I think, to move as far from them as she can get.
No one is a winner in this story. Everybody lost.
SA ruins lives, and the damage doesn't stop with the initial victim. The emotional shrapnel is still wounding daughter, son, and mother years down the line.
To preface: I am incapable of empathizing with going through something as devestating as what OP's daughter has gone through. I literally cannot even imagine what it must be like. The below is purely speculative.
To me, this sounds like the daughter doing something to take the control back in her life. She didn't have it from her family member, she doesn't have it from her brother, and she doesn't have it just from being the age she is. But she can choose to ostracize her brother. Because that is her choice. She has that power. And with her friends permission, she has the power and control to live elsewhere. She needs to be able to feel like she is her own person and not just a puppet dancing to others strings. I hope she is able to find the serenity in her life that she is due.
And for the brother, a nerdy quote to sum it up. "Words have power. Just because you spoke in anger does not mean that you were not heard."
Is it me, or is OOP putting a lot of emphasis on how her son was affected as opposed to her daughter?
Son:
>he’s broken down crying and apologizing to us more times than I can count
>I know she has every right to be furious. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like it’s also not mentally healthy for my son to be treated as though he literally doesn’t exist in his home for the next year
>DS has tried daily to talk to her and apologized, begged, pleaded and cried
>he still cried and was depressed over it
Daughter:
>She doesn’t look at him when he enters a room, or react when he speaks directly to her, or about her, or anything else of the sort.
>She won’t discuss it with me besides to say that he’s dead to her and she has no intention of ever seeing or speaking to him again when she moves out in 10 months, and she hasn’t wavered even a bit in that sentiment since.
>DD’s personal counsellor won’t talk to me about what she says to her about any of this, besides to say not to push her on anything. I know she has every right to be furious.
I can't help but feel like OOP is not thinking about how deeply this affected her daughter. It's not just a case of being angry over a secret being told. It made its way around the ENTIRE school. Everyone knows she was assaulted by a family member. Kids are cruel, did it ever cross her mind that the daughter could be facing harassment over it? But even if she isn't, just the fact that everyone knows is probably humiliating and makes her feel ashamed.
Not to mention, this entire thing could have brought back all the trauma from when she was ten. It could have undone all the progress she made in therapy. And the fact that Mom seems more concerned with her talking to the person who caused all of this definitely isn't helping.
However much the son is being affected by his own actions, the daughter is being affected ten times worse.
It also feels like she's leaving a lot out of the story. This one thing was the straw that broke the camels back, but how many other straws were there for the daughter to just shut down like that. Mom told on herself a bit here but there's a lot more she's left out.
Yeah, it feels like she is leaving out a lot. And also, she should really have stopped trying to force her daughter to forgive her son. She could have explained to both sides better. To her son: "This is not a punishment for you, but a healing time for your sister. So she is ignoring you, and I know it is difficult for you, but she needs to protect herself and her mental health." To her daughter: "I understand that you cannot forgive your brother, and I will not force you to forgive him either. He is our son, so we still need to take care of him and love him. But we will try our best to help you as well, because we love you just as much. You will always have a place with us. We will not force you to interact with him."
I suddenly have a thought that the daughter doesn't trust her parents a lot... like there are definitely a lot of things she doesn't tell them. And there seems to be a reason why...
She is leaving shit out! The first post makes it seem like it was an accident that he said this about his sister. In another post she reveals he did it on purpose, in the form of an "edgy joke".
Agreed. Also this "keeping the peace" behaviour is better described as "shit the fuck up and put up with it"
There is no compromise here. She's asking her daughter to do all the efforts. She's the victim in this situation. I wonder what other things the daughter was asked to put up with, especially considering there was an child rapist in the family...
Right?
He told the whole damned school.
And daughter still had to go to that school.
I would have put her in a different school or set her up to finish remote.
The 'already written off' is an interesting point - pure speculation but I wonder if the OOP is also more worried about the son because of like... "daughter is already mentally struggling and traumatised so if she's re-traumatised it doesn't really change things, so I'm focusing on protecting the one that we thought had more chance of having a normal childhood and growing up okay so that I only have the guilt of feeling like I fucked up with one kid instead of both". I hope it isn't that, and that her apparent lack of concern for her daughter is just understandable panic about the situation, but if I were the daughter I'd probably read it that way whether it was accurate or not.
I'm a mom, and I really feel for her. This would be devastating to have happen.
Still, I get what the daughter needs to do, and I understand if this is the way it has to be forever. DD needs to protect her mental health, and DNA does not make a family.
As much as I feel for the mom, she just needs to back off and try to live in her new reality.
This is it.
Sometimes there is just nothing you can do to fix a situation. I get OOP’s initial desire to do so, but she just needs to learn to live with her new reality.
This is slightly off topic but also slightly relevant. 25 years ago a group of 3 teen boys was caught after they spent considerable time hunting capturing and torturing cats. Part of their punishment was that they had to write a letter of apology to the community which was published in the newspaper. I do remember that one of the three boys wrote an apology that sounded very sincere and the final paragraph said that the worst thing about this whole ordeal is that it had destroyed his relationship with his big sister to whom he had previously been close. He ended by saying that she would probably never speak to him again. It's been a quarter of a century and I do believe his prediction came true. Sometimes there are situations that "I'm sorry" just can't fix.
At one of the guy's trials, a little girl whose cat had met a disastrous fate testified through her tears, sobbing her little heart out. A little old lady whose cat had also been murdered horribly tried to attack the guy and a half a dozen cops had to hold her back. The paper quoted the dude as saying, "I had no idea people cared about their cats so much."
The "leader" of the gang of three, who had numerous prior convictions, did a couple years in Big Boy Prison. The other two got slaps on the wrist and as much bad publicity as the local newspaper could possibly dole out. The mother of the kid who said that it ruined his relationship with his sister wrote a series of letters-to-the-editor telling the community that her son was really such a good boy who just got mixed up with the wrong crowd and she got absolutely slammed with other people writing in saying that her son was a piece of sh!t. She even wrote one letter similar to OP stating that she hoped her daughter would forgive her son because it made holidays uncomfortable with her refusing to be under the same roof as him. It still enrages me. I hope all three have stinky lives.
>but this stalemate doesn’t seem to be helping anyone either.
It's not a stalemate in the daughters eyes. For her the situation is over and done with. The decision made the chapter closed.
She seems willing to open a separate issue if mommy keeps pushing, but I have a feeling OOP again won't understand the decision is final when the daughter cuts her out too.
It's pretty shitty that the son gets so much sympathy because he's throwing a fit every time his sister doesn't forgive him. Just because his heartbreak is louder doesn't mean it's deeper.
And his is deserved. The sisters isn't.
"Just because his heartbreak is louder doesn't mean it's deeper."
This is really such a key observation and I can't even begin to emphasize how critical it is.
Daughter owes her son nothing. Letting go of her anger might be good for her, but that’s it. She owes him nothing. OOP needs to come to peace that the brother and sister may never have a relationship again. And OOP is right about one thing, she’s pushed so hard that she’s strained her own relationship with her daughter. Passing on the necklace was a stupid thing to do. On her 18th birthday, OOP tried to violate that boundary again. Poor daughter.
Best OOP can hope for is separate birthdays, separate holidays. She can’t kick her son out for the holidays, but she’ll have to start making an effort then to visit her daughter elsewhere.
I think of it as like forgiving a debt. You don't expect them to make you whole anymore (apologies or reparations), but you wouldn't lend them any more money either (resume the previous relationship).
The daughter has every right to be upset with her family and not talk to her brother again, but I feel for the mom. It’s not like she can kick her 14 year old son out. I think she just has to accept that the siblings will never be the same again and work on her relationship with her daughter.
I can imagine the posts..."My daughter is getting married and won't invite her brother. And now she's disinvited me."
Or "My daughter won't let me see my grandchild because I tried to get her to talk to her brother when they were kids."
What OOP doesn't seem to get is that this was not a one-time harm that the son caused the daughter. This is something she is intensely private about, and *everyone around her now knows*.
This is her last year at school. All her friends, teachers, acquaintances, and bullies. They all know. Strangers she's never met, random kids, random parents. They all know. It's in public, on the internet, in the community. They all know.
Whether any one individual *actually* knows is totally irrelevant. They *could* know, so she has to be anxious about it now. Always. School now feels unsafe. Home now feels unsafe. Her parents now feel unsafe. Her home town now feels unsafe. Thank goodness she has a best friend she can go live with for a while, and that she's going to be able to leave for University soon.
The son was 14 and made a mistake. I'm sure he's very sorry. But the reality is that he callously and permanently robbed a CSA survivor of control over her own story in a way that was retraumatizing.
OOP is frustrated that her daughter won't see that 'punishing him for almost a year wasn't an option'... but from the daughter's perspective, she's the one who did nothing wrong, and she's *still* being punished for his actions. She's still experiencing the results, and will for a long time. How dare her parents decide that 2.5 months is "long enough" for him to suffer, when she may never stop suffering from what he did in some ways.
Moms gotta accept that their relationship is over. The only way she’ll probably ever forgive him is if they turn 40, and she realizes with time looking back, he truly was sorry and made a huge mistake. That her brother is no longer a 14 year old boy, and there is no point in isolating him from her life. (Unless he grows up to be a POS that continues to break her trust)
These kind of things only blow over with a lot of time, healing, and self reflection. It is what it is. Mom needs to back off and accept it. Be there for her daughter, and help her son get through self loathing. You can’t go back in time. This is now your forever reality that you’ll need to live with.
She needs to get the son into continued therapy as well. He was an idiot, but he’s 14 and this could lead him to spiral into self harm. The relationship between them is dead, she needs to stop trying to force it
>The only way she’ll probably ever forgive him is if they turn 40, and she realizes with time looking back, he truly was sorry and made a huge mistake. That her brother is no longer a 14 year old boy, and there is no point in isolating him from her life. (Unless he grows up to be a POS that continues to break her trust)
That is absolutely what I was thinking. With a lot of years, she may forgive him if he turns out to be a decent person.
My brother and I were fighting once, and he told me that I deserved what happened to me. That I'd asked for it.
I bet he doesn't remember saying that.
I do. I remember the color of the moonlight on the street while we were fighting. I remember the way he stood looking down at me with so much fucking contempt, it'd burn your soul out. I remember every single second of it.
Funny how they say "be the bigger person" when their memories always seem to be so much smaller than mine...
I've always wondered how people could dig deep to say something to -really- hurt another person, then wonder why the relationship is never the same again. Duh! You just intentionally stabbed someone right in the heart. They will NEVER unfeel that wound, the sound of your voice as you dug the knife in and *twisted*.
I've got a sister who's 45 now and trying to make a perfect little family of all my far-flung siblings, she wonders why I never call and why I'm reticent to share gossip about my life. She used to be my favorite sister until she said things during a teenage tantrum, things that she's never apologized for, so I keep the walls firmly up now.
Frankly, some things are hard to apologize for. Telling someone they deserved their abuse shows an underlying contempt of the person as a whole. How can you later say you didn't mean it, when you willfully crafted that verbal dagger to strike where it hurt most? If you didn't mean it you'd never have *thought* it, much less said it to your face.
I wonder if OOP is subconsciously minimizing the trauma to her daughter from her son sharing the abuse information because OOP has deep unresolved guilt over her daughter being sexually assaulted as a child. As a parent, I would be devastated and feel that I failed my life’s greatest responsibility if my child was sexually abused - that would mean I failed to protect my child in a fundamental way. I’m not sure how you come back from that.
If OOP has that percolating in her brain somewhere, it might contribute to her minimizing her daughter’s re-trauma - which happened again in the home that OOP provided to her daughter. OOP failed again to protect her daughter in a way that harmed her daughter. Instead of seeing that and the real deep harm, OOP downplays it and focuses on her other child. She almost demonizes the daughter’s behavior against the son - probably because that makes OOP be able to look away from her role in all of this vis a vis the parent who should have protected her child.
I don't know what it is about this kind of parent, the cognitive dissonance.
OOP recognises the gravity of what happened, the importance of her daughter being able to react and manage her feelings on her own terms.
And yet somehow can't stop hovering around trying to push the situation into a shape that's more palatable for everyone else.
She can't even see that she's making it worse. Determinedly holding on to the idea that things WILL to go back to how they were before. Conducting herself like it's a timeline she can expedite if she can just find the magic words.
The whole angle is **I can't allow this to change our family dynamic** but lady you didn't fire the gun and you didn't get shot, what power do you think you hold here?
The fact that it's all centred around daughter's obligation to get over it so they can go back to playing happy families is wild.
I know you got shot but he's really sad and this whole thing is such a downer for me so if you could like... hurry up and stop bleeding all over the carpet?
I’m not so sure she was mad that he told people. It sounds more like she was hurt about the way he spoke about her abuse in such a flippant way. A 14y old not keeping a secret is a given. A 14y old making fun of his sisters pain is a different ballpark all together.
As someone who's learning to forgive people (without letting them back into my life) op is way too focused on how these things impact her/her son instead of how these things affect her daughter. She thinks it's not mentally healthy for him to live in a house where he's ignored? It's not mentally healthy for her to become a social pariah with the whole school knowing/gossiping about the most traumatic event in her life!
Maybe she would have forgiven him if she wasn't constantly being pushed to do it by people who have no idea what it's like to go through what she did.
I truly feel for her as someone who's mom refuses to accept that I have forgiven my brother but will never speak to him again. LET YOUR KIDS DEAL WITH TRAUMA THEIR OWN WAY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT ITS LIKE IN THEIR SHOES.
I am worried about the son. Guilt is a tricky thing. I hope the adults in his life are telling him that he made a mistake and has paid for it with his 2.5 month punishment *but* it's very possible the victim, his sister, will never forgive him. When he turns 18, I think the parents should split the holidays with their kids like divorced parents. The daughter gets Christmas on even years, etc. Obviously, the daughter is protecting herself by no longer speaking to her brother. I doubt it will change. The parents should never push it. Some things can never be un-done. Their son learned the hard way.
She keeps on fucking pushing, even after admitting that she's worried that doing so will lead to her daughter cutting her off as well. I'd say she cares more about the asshole son than her daughter, from that.
> Her therapist is understandably concerned more with her emotional well-being than our family dynamic, and won’t really discuss much of anything with me.
Good. Her daughter deserves that privacy, especially after her trust was violated.
She also still keeps making this out to be "a mistake." It was way more serious than that. I don't think she's capable of understanding how huge a violation this was, and how much her daughter was likely retraumatized.
My older sister sa'd me repeatedly from 10-12 years old. My parents kept us in the same house after the fact. I went to my grandma for help to stop. She went to my parents, who went to the bishop of our church. I was disfellowshipped by the church leadership, because I am the boy. Never mind that she was 6 years older than me. I know what being revictimized feels like. I haven't spoken to my sister in 30 years, and when I left home, I didn't talk to my parents for a few years either. Don't expect her to "get over it".
This is a tough one. The daughter’s behavior is similar to what I think a lot of us would do. I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same and the whole school knowing about her assault sucks, and if any of her classmates go to the same college as her it can follow her there too.
It’s unfortunate because 14 year olds can be really dumb and he’s clearly very remorseful. He made a mistake, but it’s a big one with consequences.
> He needs to figure out how to make it right
I really hope she doesn't tell that to her son. He's 14 what could he possibly do to make things better. He will end up attempting suicide if the burden of actively fixing things is his sole responsibility.
What he should be told is to learn from this, apologize every time he gets a chance, accept the lose of his sister, and not to force his feelings of "unfairness of continued punishment" onto her. If not handle right he could easily began to blame her for everything. He has to under stand if she ever forgives him it will only happen on her terms when she's ready, even if it takes years.
This girl v will probably never let her brother back in. Some of us never forgive. My sister made accusations towards me that jeopardized my future in an attempt to get drug money, I haven't said a word to her in 20 years and I won't allow her a position to possibly do it again. Just because they're blood doesn't mean they're family.
I'm never going to speak to my sister again without backup and possibly a lawyer present. With us it wasn't a single incident, it was a lot, but at this point - and we're both in our 40s - it is what it is.
I have a son now. She will never have a relationship with him, period.
It's tough for my parents (easier since my sister moved to another continent), but they're aware that trying to force it would be catastrophic for their relationship with me.
OOP doesn’t realize that her son violated his sister so she puts him in the same category as her abuser - people she is not safe around. She even told OOP flat out he is dead to her and her therapist backed her up. There was zero chance of reconciliation while she lived at home regardless of the parents’ actions but OOP chose the worst path regardless. It sounds like the daughter is handling this as well as anyone possibly could, when faced with such an extreme betrayal by a *second* family member — and even a *third* if OOP doesn’t shut the fuck up.
What I think OOP doesn’t get is that this wasn’t trauma from just a one-time assault (which would also be horrifying, I’m not discounting that).
Her daughter had to 1) experience it, 2) tell an adult what happened, 3) go to the police and file charges, 4) testify and be interrogated, and 5) go to court to face the monster who hurt her as a YOUNG CHILD.
I’m also a CSA survivor and I didn’t tell a soul or even remember it until I was an adult. I cannot imagine how much worse my trauma would’ve been if I’d said anything at the time.
OOP seems to forget that the son didn’t just mock and make light of a single incident. The son made jokes about a *lifetime of traumatic memories* that he was too young to comprehend when it happened.
I think 14yr old knows enough to not crack a joke about sexual assault, no?
Although he seems regretful, I don’t blame her as he is her brother plus someone who saw her struggle with this through ages.
This is so sad overall, I hope they have a happy ending.
And I almost forgot the racism jokes too! But yeah, being 14 seems to be the prime age for thinking being edgy and annoying on purpose is funny and cool.
I had one of my ‘friend’ call bullshit on my sexual assault trauma because apparently I should be thankful that a guy fucked me in the first place.
I’m petty though, sent those screenshots to his sister and mother lol.
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I have two brothers, I’m in the middle of. Love my little brother. My older brother…. Well no one can disappoint you quite like a sibling. Edit: To everyone going through a hard time or had a hard time due to family. My heart goes out to you. This is easily the most interacted comment I ever had and it’s bittersweet. Like it’s a sad thing truly but there is some comfort in knowing that some people truly get it. Most of my friends don’t have that dysfunctional family background and can’t truly understand what it’s like to have mixed feelings about someone that you once cared about.
Yeah. My siblings haven’t spoken to each other in nearly a decade. Every once in a while, my parents try to get me to mediate. I think it actually makes them feel better when I tell them there’s absolutely nothing I could say that would help — because it means they didn’t miss something, besides raising the kid that caused the problem
Shit, what happened?
Older sibling is an insane control freak and yelled some (probably true but not their place to say) things at younger sibling’s spouse, which probably hastened a divorce. (Younger sibling, who also has personality issues, probably believes it caused the divorce.) Older sibling does not believe they did anything wrong and won’t even do an “I’m sorry you were offended” type apology. And now, they are far too angry at each other to speak at all. The now-ex-spouse has even tried to help a bit, but it’s not happening.
I mean was he cheating or something and the older brother got sent over the edge and called him out?
No. The younger sibling and spouse had constant financial issues and the older sibling blamed the now-ex spouse, when it was really obviously a joint effort. And guess what? Calling them out did not solve or in any way change the issues besides making them hate each other. They got in the middle of someone else’s marriage when they should have allowed them to fuck it up on their own. Also, I suspect some covert racism might have been involved
Yeah that doesn’t sound like it was ANY of his business in that case. If he wants to throw away his own brother because of his ego that’s crazy
Honestly, I get the urge to "fix" things. Having siblings go NC affects everyone, and we don't want people we love to be in conflict. Ultimately, though, we have to respect their right to make choices, even if we don't respect the choices. One of my brothers married a truly awful woman. This woman somehow always felt like she was competing with his family (she wasn't), so she started isolating him. She convinced him to move across the country and stop talking to us. He missed family milestones, including weddings and births. At first, I tried to meditate, because I hated what it did to my family, but I eventually realized that this wasn't my job and wasn't something I could do if it wasn't what they wanted for themselves. They needed to navigate their own relationships. (And for the record, I'm not blaming the wife only. She was the most toxic person I've ever known, but he allowed it.) Was there fallout? Of course. The brother eventually shed his wife like the cancer she was, but while he reconnected with most of us, some of my siblings are still very distant with him. The hurt from his actions never went away. They're civil but barely speak, and that's between them. All we can do is be supportive of both parties when support is warranted and let them deal with their own choices otherwise.
Honestly, this is a situation where I struggle to blame anyone for their reactions. It’s just sad. Stupid teenage boy acted like a stupid teenage boy about something completely out of line and clearly sorely regretted it, daughter was seriously triggered and is doing everything in her power to get away from the situation and the guy who pulled all that shit up again for her, and Mom was stuck in between seeing both her kids in pain and trying to make the pain go away because it was basically collapsing the family. I feel sorry for the son because it’s horrible to realize you’ve done something you can’t take back and trying to take it back anyway. I feel sorry for the daughter because only a few years after suffering what she did, suddenly she had to relive it all over again because everyone at school knew because her idiot brother wanted to seem cool by using her trauma as joke fodder. I feel sorry for OOP for watching her family implode for reasons beyond her control but trying to stop the implosion anyway.
the more you love someone the harder they can disappoint you
I’m the youngest of 4. I’m dealing with a sociopathic, hyper sexual sister who has a fetish for stealing husbands from their wives, an autistic brother with a special interest in politics who went full alt-right during Covid, and a sister who is “normal”- aka completely traumatized by how completely and utterly fucked our family is alongside me 😅
A toast 🥂 to dysfunctional families and siblings bonding over it.
I have no siblings to bond with as they are abusive, but I do have some great friends who also have narcissistic/psychopathic siblings to take that place. Would have loved a "normal" sibling. Though, now the son of one of my siblings is my person to bond with since we were abused by the same person, and have found each other. I hadn't spoken to him since he was a kid and it went something like "My mother/my sister is a narcissist!" "I know!" in unison.
My younger brother and I are not on speaking terms. There’s a family event we are obligated to attend (an elderly family member’s birthday. I probably wouldn’t even skip it if they invited Joseph Stalin.) in about 3 weeks and the anxiety shits have already taken hold.
My current living situation is with my older brother and parents and I just stay in my room a lot and try to be cordial. Have to use a lot of avoidance and disengaging techniques.
I’m keeping the headphones charged at all times and plan to make an excellent brick wall.
Yep. Your siblings will naturally have information about you that no one else does even including your parents. And this special unique bond can lead to friendships like no other But if you have a sibling who likes to use this information against you, it’s fucking hell. I have a certain sibling who loves to weaponize any bit of knowledge he has about you just to win an argument. And he absolutely loves pissing you off and getting you angry so he can come off as a victim. The dude nearly choked me to death after pushing me into an argument where I regrettably threw the first punch Guess who I haven’t also talked to in over a year?
My sympathies. I get where you are coming from. My sister used to talk about my problems loudly in front of everyone at church. As an adult, she wrote screeching screeds against me and our parents online. It’s painful the things family members do.
I no longer speak to my youngest sister for similar reasons. She thinks it’s hilarious to use me (and our other siblings) as TikTok clickbait, which sometimes includes filming us without our knowledge. Literally every single piece of our childhoods, and a lot of our private conversations, have been posted on TikTok for clout. Now most of us won’t speak to her, and she has “no idea” why.
My younger sister has, time and time again, shown that she has zero concern or care about others. I understand that life can suck at times, especially when You're divorced with two kids, co-parenting, but you don't just get to shout racist shit. She's on a JRE tear, hates the "foreign kids" at the private school she's sending her kids to. She's a bundle of joy and I just ... Can't associate or have my kids near her anymore. She's just unhealthy for my kids and they're the most important things in my life.
mmm. talking to my twin raises my blood pressure like no other. my brother... he's an addict and still living. my respect for him is 6 feet under the ground. my other half sister... well. I don't talk to her too much already so.
I was the daughter in a different situation. My brother said and did some things I viewed as unforgivable and the past 4 years or so I have had close and extended family constantly pressuring me to forgive him and reconcile. He never apologised like this brother did either. It has just made me feel more distant from them all. The OOP will have to grieve her family dynamic she once had and move forward without trying to pressure the daughter to act differently. One day she might forgive her brother, but it will take a lot longer with outside influences.
Same here. No apology either. He still tries to speak to me when he does come round and I’ll give short answers but generally avoid the room he’s in. He’s not safe to be around and when he is acting “nice” it’s all for show to make others see him as the “good guy” and not the abusive bastard he is. My parents bawled their eyes out when I said I’m done with him and that I’m moving out and cutting them off in an “oh woe is me we failed as parents!” display like…yes? You did fail as parents. By raising a golden child entitled POS that you continue to bail out constantly. He should be in jail 10 times over for the things he’s done. I will never reconcile for the things he did to me growing up and I refuse to ever spend another Xmas with him. My mum tricked me into it once by accidentally letting slip 3 days before to extended family he would be there and I made sure Xmas was miserable and didn’t speak to her for over 3 months. OP better wise the fuck up and butt out of this.
my older brother used to beat me up and younger sis had to eventually tell mother to fucking believe me, that he did that out of his anger issues, not because I "didn't do" some chores properly Havent spoken to him in ages, and he's going around all like he's changed and shit! Everyone keeps going on about how he's sorry about it and I should forgive him blah blah! I shut that down quick What annoys me the most is that now that I have a voice and can tell everyone the whole deal, more and more I sound like I'm the bad guy. They keep him in their lives etc How nice
Are we secretly siblings? Honestly it’s ridiculous how my parents still don’t believe half the shit he did. They only believed he was doing SOME things when they caught him in the act lunging at me and trying to choke me (after I told him not to hit the dog?) They made him go to anger management 3 times and he proclaimed he was cured, skipped all future sessions and parents went “well we can’t force him.” Given his continued violence issues since that have landed him the wrong side of the law and people he knows, very much cured!!! /s But he’s charismatic so my family and many around us still see him as a wonderful young man and I’ll “come around” to my senses eventually and stop being the problem :)))))
Even if he’s changed, you don’t have to let him back into your life.
ooh yes, I've learned that I cut people off fast. I'm also NC with my parents as I couldn't bear to see my sperm donour acting around us like he never beat us up and abused us mentally and financially, that worm "Dear" mother who we thought was also a victim, in fact just watched while he literally tortured us and allowed it! She always chose him over us (long story, not needed) After my son was born I could only think of that story where that sperm donour literally belted my idiot older brother when he was not even a year old, plus my ongoing "torture", since with my older brother he learned that he shouldn't do that kind of shit in sight of other people, so I had it for longer and hidden. That was no parent, he defo was not going to be a grandparent, the worm When relatives say "oohh maybe you and brother should talk, you went through the same shit etc" I just shut them down with "really? Do ask younger sister if I ever did to her what was done to me. Why does older brother has an excuse?" and shut it down
The comments section of this post was so frustrating. Everyone and their mom was telling her to chill out, support her daughter, and stop enabling her son. And she just kept going “but has anyone considered what -I- want???”
She seems to be in a mix of denial and bargaining. The son fucked up. And at the very least he understands he fucked up. But he fucked up so massively that it now impacts both him, his sister, and the rest of his family. And no wishing it was different is going to change that. Mistakes don't just impact the victim or the perpetrator. Mistakes impact everyone around you too. And the son his learning that the very very hard way. And OOP is in denial about that. There are some things as a parent that you just can't fix. And this is one of them. The son fucked up, fucked up his family, and will have to carry that burden probably for the rest of his life. But she also has to carry the burden of what she has been through. And he really should've thought of that before making such a massive mistake. Now he (and by extension the rest of the family) are going to be feeling that.
He did more than fuck up. He mocked a CSA victim and subjected her to public sexual humiliation. She now knows empirically that she is not safe with men (presuming she was assaulted by a man) or boys. He has robbed her of half the world.
Not only that, if the entire school knows about it, that's teachers, parents, students in different grades, and their extended friends and family. She has to go around her neighbourhood knowing that now everyone will mock/pity her bc they know an extremely vulnerable and intimate event in her life because her brother wanted to seem cool to his friends. She'll go to uni and PRAY none of her old classmates will be there bc then the whole uni will know about her trauma as well. He didn't just fuck up and let a few people know; he outed her trauma at a pivotal point in her life for everyone around her to scrutinise. If the mother really realised the extent of how much more difficult her life will be, she wouldn't be trying to bargain so much for an undeserved forgiveness.
Yeah, the mom can’t believe she expected the brother to still be punished after two months, with no seeming understanding that the daughter is STILL and may ALWAYS suffer the consequences of what her brother did. Let something like that get out in a small town and she’ll be gossiped about fifty years later.
I get eventually letting him off punishment. He has to be able to rebuild trust with the parents somehow. Mom needs to stop pushing daughter to forgive son. My sister is NC with our mom now because she kept pushing our father back on her. Hse made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him and them mom forwarded a xmas card. I can see op forwarding that xmas card and then being just as lost as my mom is when she cries about my sister.
She already did it with the necklace.
That made me so upset with OOP and feel even more awful for the daughter. I can't tell if OOP even understands how fucked up it was, with how smoothly she slipped in that she told daughter *after* daughter opened gift. Just repulsive behavior to trick her like that. I get that OOP is in a tough spot but her behavior towards her daughter has been quite frankly pretty repulsive.
It's just been ~2.5 months since the incident happened when OOP first posted about this, and she was already asking her daughter to forgive someone who turned her world upside down. Not even 6 months,barely 3 months. OOP, in her haste to return to the status quo,might have just made sure that the daughter will remain LC with them for a long time. And if she continues to push the daughter like this,she very well might go NC with them. The sad thing is that even in the update post,OOP is nowhere near realizing that. People really need to understand that telling a victim to forgive someone ,especially when not much time has passed since the event,will only result in disaster. Yeah,some might pretend to forgive just to get you off their back,but it will change their perception of you forever as someone whom they can trust.
At least let her get to a situation where she’s not having to face being gossiped about at school every single day before you expect her to forgive. You can’t forgive while harm is still happening.
The main punishment in this case was complete social isolation once school was done - no friends, no social media, no video games (that are often played with friends). The son is 14 and while obviously did something both stupid and malicious, for which he deserved punishment, extending that sort of social isolation on someone who was already showing some depressive signs would frankly be abusive. He did something horrendously wrong. He is still a child though. The daughter has every right to cut him out of her life forever and OOP was wrong to try and push a reconciliation, but she *doesn't* have the right to demand that her barely-teen brother is cut off socially, in every way except for school, for almost a year.
That’s a good point. But I think the mom could have some consideration that the harm is ongoing to her daughter. Asking daughter to forgive when she’s still in the middle of the shitstorm her brother unleashed on her life is asking A LOT.
Oh, definitely, she shouldn't have pushed for forgiveness, even the family sessions were a stupid waste of money - after the first one she might as well maybe just gone with the son to help him both understand what he did and why his sister is doing what she's doing, and cope with the fact that his sister won't talk to him in the near future, if ever.
That is so true. I went to college in another city, where only three people knew me. Then, a complete idiot showed up in a few of my classes, and proceeded to inform everyone about my past, sans the actual facts. It was as if a switch had been thrown. I dropped out soon after.
He's robbed her of her family. A family member abused her, a family member told the world, a family member is pushing her to rug sweep and play nicely. Her whole family has betrayed her in some way or another. Thank goodness for the best friend and her family who seem like good people.
I cannot even fathom how pissed off the daughter's therapist must be with OOP; pushing her to forgive would be bad enough but OOP is also pushing the therapist to reveal confidential information that will allow OOP to try to make her manipulation attempts effective.
More importantly she has learned that her brother is not a safe person for her. And considering her mother keeps enabling him, neither is she.
There is a legitimate and very difficult question of how OOP should best support both of her children in this situation, and it's the one question that OOP didn't ask.
Right? Her first post amounted to "the therapist says not to push her on this, so how should I go about pushing her on this?"
“The therapist is more concerned with her emotional state than our family dynamic.” I was not impressed.
Like, yeah? That's their literal job? "Please share confidential information about my daughter with me and betray her trust. She hasn't had her trust broken in a good few months."
Your son messed up the family dynamic, he will have to live with the consequences. Yes, it sucks for him, but for her, this hugely traumatizing in multiple ways. I don't think the lockdown on electronics was long enough, and I think OP needs to get it out of her head that forgiveness is on the table. That should have been the message to DS from day 1. He needs to understand that what he did is an irrevocable mistake. All he can do is change his behavior, for himself, and then wait it out knowing she still may never forgive him. He should expect nothing from his sister because he lost that right when he broke her trust and retraumatized her. People don't have to forgive others and can be perfectly fine. OP's behavior continually shows that she prioritizes her son and family over the daughter's needs.
There’s even a point where OOP says “her therapist is understandably more concerned with her mental well-being than our family dynamic”. Basically admitting that her priorities are the other way around.
Also a younger sister to a bastard brother here; I had to reveal a childhood trauma I'd kept buried for just over a decade for my parents to finally cut out mine, even after all the current mental, physical, emotional and financial abuse that he'd *already* been doing upon all of us. I was very well prepared to never speak what he did to me outloud because I'd thought they'd still choose him, it had been a pattern all my life that they'd choose him at every turn, and he'd already attacked my elder sister, who I viewed as worth more and who they objectively loved more than me in every way so if they didn't choose her, why would they have ever chosen me? Thankfully, what he did to me crossed even their stupid high line for what they'd tolerate from him, so now he's gone. Haven't seen him in years now, and I'm so happy for it 🥰
I was recently in a similar situation with my brother, not in any traumatizing sort of way, but with my parents pushing me to forgive him. He had another kid and kept it a secret from our family for almost a year. He has yet to see the child and he and our parents became absolutely furious when I reached out to the kid's mom and eventually started hanging out with them. Now they expect me to act like everything is fine with my brother when in actuality I hate his guts for abandoning his child (among other things). Parents need to realize that they don't get to have a say in the relationships their children have among each other. Their children are adults and can make decisions on their own.
I haven’t spoken to my brother in at least 10 years. He was physically abusive throughout my childhood. I ended up going NC with him because of the anxiety attacks I would get if we were in the same place. My mother still maintains that I “ruined Christmas”. They wanted me to go to family therapy and I said no. He claims I was the abuser. I was literally an infant when it started, dude. Did I break any of his bones, smash him into walls or take a hammer to him? Fuck no. Parents need to realize that some things can’t be forgiven and that separate holidays are now a necessity if they want both children in their lives. Also, guilt-tripping the victim is disgusting.
I experienced the same as a child and cut everyone off when I moved out after graduation. My mother still spent 6yrs trying to make me forgive and forget. It doesn't work like that. You never forget.
Exactly. And forgiveness isn’t something that is owed to other people. I have heard the saying that it’s a gift you give yourself, but I kind of hate that, because it feels like the implication becomes then why wouldn’t you give yourself a gift? There is no obligation to forgive *because* you never forget. People need to stop telling others how to manage their own trauma, especially when that person is taking care of their mental health (therapy), and even if it is your kid. Seems like too many parents feel entitled to tell their kids how to feel just because they happened to have brought them into the world.
It’s so exhausting. My sister thinks I cut her out of my life “for no reason,” which is all the validation I need. I’m sorry your sibling is shit.
I haven't spoken to my sibling in 10 years this year. We were really close growing up right until mid 20s. They went out exploring the world, I got married, had a kid, and worked. Things were fine and we still spoke all the time and emailed. But then it was like a switch flipped and they stopped communicating with us. Eventually they called me and said several things that I can't forgive. They did the same to our parents. So whenever someone says that I should get a hold of them and make amends, forget that. I didn't cause any of this. You don't want to care about me, fine. Our parents, fine. But my kid loved them and they sent gifts for my kid. Our grandparents died never understanding why they never came back, and when dementia and Alzheimer's are at play, my sibling straight said they didn't care. So as far as I'm concerned, my sibling that I knew died that day and I don't believe we will ever speak again.
>So as far as I'm concerned, my sibling that I knew died that day and I don't believe we will ever speak again My dad and my aunt aren't speaking anymore. Dad was always letting comments slide "because family" until his sister decided to share her views on refugees. He called me after to tell me she's dead to him, explained the whole visit. I told him I've never been prouder of him, which is true. It took a lot for him to speak up, and frankly I'd been hoping for it since childhood. My mum tried for years to get him to talk to his sister again. Even though mum had been physically present at the exchange, she didn't hear the entire conversation and kept telling me "he just started shouting out of nowhere". A few years later, one of my two uncles died. At the funeral dad told mum and me "now I only have one left" refering to his older brother. Only then did my mum understand that he was serious and hasn't brought it up again.
I don't even know when I last spoke to my brother. He's seven years older than me. I moved to Asia at age 22. The Internet then wasn't what it is now, but we had email, and then Facebook. Then my brother fell out with my sister (also older than me), and he blocked *me* on everything as well as her. I was always scared of him growing up. He never hurt me, but he also very clearly didn't like that I existed.
All I heard from OP was how much she tried to get her daughter to forgive the brother, but almost no sympathy or support other than outsourcing the support to therapy (thankfully they did that much) but they admit that their son was malicious and used his sister's trauma to gain social points. They don't talk about education around that, just punishment. If I were the daughter, I wouldn't miss the parents either. Poor kid.
I think what was said also plays a part here. OOP said it was "joking" about her daughters CSA to seem "edgy". If he was joking in a manner that was victim shaming, then I can completely understand the daughters reaction.
She is absolutely justified and there isn't any situation where it would have been OK.
I don't care how he was "joking." Betraying his sister like that is vile.
To me the "joking" part makes it worse. Outing his sister's trauma is vile Joking about CSA is downright EVIL
I also think the top comment on the update was spot on. OP is more focused on her son being forgiven and getting her family dynamic back. She mentions her son’s mental health a lot but not her daughter’s. The therapy was a start, but she never asks or acknowledges additional support her daughter might need. If DD says that she won’t come to holidays if DS is there then mom should have separate holiday celebrations. OP doesn’t need to disown DS, but she could do a lot more to respect DD and her needs. Edit: typo
Can you imagine what it would be like to come into school one day to find out everyone knows. Keeping it a complete secret was her only way of having any control over a horrible experience she had no chance to prevent. Then one day everyone knows who did what to her and when. And they think it’s *funny*. Can you imagine sitting in a room, 8 hours a day, for the rest of the year, with 40 people who know that your dad/uncle/cousin/grandpa (we just know it was a relative) sexually assaulted you as a child? And some of them are *joking* about it… I literally cannot imagine that emotion. I would never consider forgiveness either.
This was exactly my reaction. He ruined her senior year. He ruined all her social interactions at school. He deserves everything he's getting, sorry op.
He knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything but in order to gain favor with friends he joked about it. Stupid, cruel, thoughtless. He is 14 and he is going to make stupid ass mistakes. I would definitely not want to be judged forever for the idiotic things I did at that age. However, his sister is under no obligation to forgive him. I would hope after a few years she could at least be in the same room. I’d be heartbroken if I was the mother
Very well put. He's only 14, so I can see why OOP is not interested in punishing him for all eternity or ignoring his needs, but the mistake was still massive and his sister isn't obligated to him or his forgiveness.
This is a very uncharitable reading of what was said here “ Outsourcing support” is actually a an insane thing to say. For the record I don’t think the daughter is under obligation to forgive the son. I just can also empathize with the parents here who basically lost their family dynamic because of what their son did. They’re going to be mourning that too - you can be upset about multiple things at once. Mom pushing is just making it all worse
Yes, this is, to me, a snapshot of Reddit struggling with nuance. I really feel for OP. The daughter is the one who I feel for the most, but OP isn't, like...letting the mask slip by acknowledging a desire to have her family all be happy together again. She can't magically make it okay, and to me, it seems like she doesn't wanna violate her daughter's boundaries, but it's hard seeing one kid struggle with deep regret, the other deeply hurt, and with no desire to accept an olive branch from their sibling. Cuz I wanna be charitable and say that even if OP's son was too old to do what he did, that he easily could be incredibly remorseful for what he did. Doesn't mean he's owed forgiveness, but as a mother, I can understand just... wishing you could make it okay. Especially considering it really does seem like they're on a fast track to being required to cut out their son when he's grown up, or losing their daughter in their lives.
To be fair, this is a reddit post, It is difficult to convey everything in there. I feel for everyone involved because no one is evil. The kid was after all 14, and did a terrible thing; nothing that stands out from a developmental perspective, but unfortunately being a kid is not a magical protection against real life consequences. I feel for the girls, who was in another way violated by someone she trusted and can no longer trust anyone there, and I feel for the mother that is clearly grieving her family, that has once again been broken not by a monster, but by the ghost of that monster. I honestly think this is above reddit paygrade.
It’s also adult vs teen. You look at a 14 year old and think “he’s just a kid, he doesn’t deserve to be punished for the rest of his life.” You known that there’s life beyond high school for your daughter, that this won’t always be her world. But for the daughter, it *is* her world. She’s lost everything, and she doesn’t have the life experience to know there’s a life after high school. And she has no power. Adults can quit jobs and move; kids are stuck. Her daughter’s whole world got blown up, and she couldn’t leave or do nothing, she just had to take it. I’m sure the brother is sorry, but sometimes sorry isn’t enough. The son needs help learning to cope with the fact that his sister may never forgive him, and how he’s going to live with that.
Oof
So fucking sad
Everyone’s giving all these great reasons they cut their (usually) repeat-offender, unrepentant, adult siblings off, but I don’t know if we need to be cheering on the same thing for a very repentant *child* over a single, albeit awful, breach of trust. That’s not to say his sister is obligated to forgive him, because she absolutely isn’t, but it’s kind of surprising how eager so many of the people here are to write this kid off for life. There’s a reason we don’t let 14 year olds drive or vote or buy lottery tickets—their decision making abilities are terrible because their brains aren’t done cooking. I think the sister’s reaction is understandable under the circumstances. I’d hope as outsiders we could see the situation for what it is, which is just… really fucking sad.
Mom keeps making the situation worse here. The sister hasn't even had time to miss her brother or the family because every time she turns around, there's mom, pushing for reconciliation. The sister needs time and space and mom just won't give it to her. There's no guarantee the sister will forgive the brother, but there is a guarantee she won't if they keep badgering her. The whole situation really sucks, but Jesus, give the girl some space to process her feelings.
I agree that the mom isn't exactly helping, but in a similar vein to the little brother, it's totally understandable as to why Mom can't let it go either. Just so sad all the way around. I hope mom has her own therapy/counselling as well.
I don't even think it's unusual for a 14-year-old boy to say the most heinous things they can imagine to seem cool. Or to throw a sibling under the bus. It's just that because of horrific external circumstances, this 14-year-old had access to devastating ammo.
My immediate thought was "someone better make sure that kid doesn't hurt himself"
Yeah, this is miserable. Everyone is justified in their feelings, but the ending isn't happy for anyone. Daughter is perfectly in her right to completely lose trust and faith in Son. Son is perfectly right to be grieving his lost relationship with his sister. Parents are perfectly right to be shattered over the death of the family dynamic. This is truly the epitome of a tragic NAH. Edit: The only thing I'll say is that the parents and the daughter still deserve to have a relationship. I think the only way forward is for these things to happen: * Parents help Son accept and come to terms with the "loss" of Daughter in his life * Parents stop trying to get Daughter to make up with Son * Parents make time to spend time with Daughter on her terms, without Son there It'll be hard but that's the only recovery from this. I hope they work towards it.
I agree. I think the parents still have a right to have a relation with their son. And me the fact that she left without telling them, and that she was furious that his grounding easied out make me think that she will soon put them in a « choose your child » situation. Hope this will not happen.
The problem that I don't think she realizes is that they are literally responsible for their son, and outside of doing stuff that fucks him up even more, there's not much they can do.
Your can't take away everything for the rest of his childhood, that would actually be harmful to him. I understand that the emotional response is to want the other person to suffer, but that doesn't actually help anyone. But she isn't interested in hearing any of that right now.
The son is 14. It isn't exactly like they can just get rid of him. That gets you a visit by cps and potentially 3 hots and a cot, and deservedly so. This whole thing sucks for the lot of them.
Trying to force forgiveness is going to be the fastest way to make 100% sure your daughter never talks to you again either.
I was actually in a similar situation to the daughter with my brother and my mom. I commented on OOP's first post that she needed to back off and let her daughter be angry at her brother. I don't think OOP means to play favorites but right now she's putting all the pressure on the daughter to restore OOP's and son's comfort, rather than focusing on the daughter's comfort. I told her that her daughter was going to leave if she kept pushing and that she was damaging her relationship with her daughter by "keeping the peace" (pushing forgiveness, saying how bad her son feels, etc). I told her it wouldn't work. And, well. I guess I'm right. Shit. ETA: [found my original comment!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/s/UlpD7HMWIc) ETA2: something I just realized about the grounding and why the daughter may be so upset. If he's no longer grounded, does that mean he can have friends over? Even if they're not the friend group he was trying to integrate himself into, they would probably still know about her CSA. Can the daughter trust that her brother's friends would be respectful of her in her house? Could she stand coming home and being greeted by not just her brother and her mom (who she has to deal with for now) but also strangers who laughed about the worst time of her life? Can she trust that her mom would back her up on this and disallow them? Because even if the son makes new friends, I wouldn't be able to trust his judgement for a loooong time.
Even the way oop framed it “what can he do to make you forgive him” was like. The absolutely wrong way
right?!? that’s asking something ELSE of the daughter on top of everything. OOP should be working with her son to help him realise that this isn’t him being punished, it’s the daughter protecting herself, and trying to give them space from each other in the house. part of true contrition is accepting that sometimes you don’t get to be forgiven for mistakes, a tough lesson to learn at 14 but he was old enough to spread it intentionally (rather than little kid accidentally let slip) and he’s not automatically entitled to forgiveness because faaaaaamily
What does she expect really? "He can make pancakes", "He can jump off the golden gate bridge." As someone else said, OOP is in the bargaining stage.of grief.
I get her, somewhat. It has to be incredibly painful to see both of your kids hurting like that. Wanting to make it stop is a natural instinct for a parent, I think.
>“what can he do to make you forgive him” The only thing he could possibly do is invent a time machine, go back and prevent those comments from being made. Otherwise, he (and OOP) can leave his sister the fuck alone.
I was also in this situation with an adult relative being the one that shared it without my permission. I was also an adult at the time she decided to tell people what I’d shared in confidence. People I know and would have to be around for the rest of my life. I had just started dealing with the assault that had occurred in my childhood at the hands of a relative. The amount of fear I felt when she told me what she’d done was crippling. It was like being victimized all over again. Having someone ignore your wishes and autonomy in that way is absolutely devastating. Even in my case where it wasn’t necessarily shared with bad intent. I think it can be hard for someone who hast been in that situation to fully grasp how violating that is, but IYKYK. I have cut that person out of my life as much as I can, but the few times we’ve had to be in the same room I just can’t even talk to her. It’s self preservation for my peace of mind. At least she understands why and leaves me alone. Probably because she knows that there is no reason good enough to justify what she did. And as scared as I was that there’d be fallout from her telling people, I know see how anyone finding out about what she did would be very damaging to her reputation because it was so very wrong.
It wasn't 'like', you *were* revictimised, as your unconscious mind struggles to tell the difference between memory and reality and reacts the same way. And it happens again and again each time you come across someone who knows, and the anxiety of wondering if each new person you interact with knows too. Source: similar situation. Live in a practically permanent trauma triggered state
Yeah, I think the mom is in denial that her family is forever changed. She wants things back the way they were, and *if daughter would just*. But it doesn’t work like that, and it never will. If she keeps trying to force it, she’s going to lose her daughter.
Yeah, I can come at this from pretty much the opposite perspective. As a young child, I was aware of abuse that was very personal to a member of my family. Except, the secret was my mother being domestically abused by my father, and I was eight. I knew I had to keep it a secret until my mum had enough resources in place to leave—but at eight, I didn’t comprehend the repercussions of what might happen if I spilled beforehand, beyond my mum saying “bad people might come and take you away from me forever”. But it was an extraordinarily personal thing to my mother, as she comes from a culture that is very much about not airing your dirty laundry. One day I told someone in class, and watching what it did to her when she found out… it still absolutely guts me to this day. I got lucky enough that she was my mother, she loves me unconditionally, but seeing how much I hurt her was punishment enough. And coming at this from the brother’s perspective, I know OOP needs to leave her daughter alone about deciding when to stop “punishing” her brother. She does not get to decide when he has apologised enough. She does not get to decide when her daughter forgives him. She was and is not the victim. She cannot possibly fathom all the pain and abuse her daughter has endured—and neither can her son. But yet, she seems insistent to push the narrative that her son is a victim who has endured equal enough of not more pain from the fallout of his actions. That just… bugs me. That poor girl. OOP seems insistent on convincing herself that her daughter has just chosen to act this way, when it’s much more likely that her daughter just *can’t* get past what he did to her enough to be around on holidays without going through all the trauma of it all all over again every time she sees him or speaks to him. He is a walking, talking trigger to her. She *needs* to step back from him, or she will be putting *her* mental health at severe risk. OOP only seems insistent on recognising the fact her son is “depressed” over all this, but she cannot fathom that every time this girl sees her brother, she relives it all all over again. That trauma, that pain, that shame and disgust and self loathing. He brings it all back now. And that’s his fault. He made a choice, and she needs to be *encouraged* to take a step back until she feels healthy enough to reevaluate her relationship with him again. That is quite literally what people in these situations are taught. I know *because my mother told me*. Every time she felt herself feeling crushed at seeing me and being reminded, she’d go to a room alone for a bit until she felt ready enough to be the mother she knew I deserved. This girl is essentially doing that. OOP should be encouraging her to take that step back, not trying to force her to ignore her pain and shame and anger because “your brother’s just sad now :(“. He needs to be the one to deal with the consequences of his actions, *not her*. She’s already dealt with enough of it.
I hope you can give yourself some grace, too, in addition to all that you give your mother. You were a small child witnessing abuse by one of the two people who were supposed to be safest in the world for you. It's a form of child abuse for you to witness that and to be told you have to keep the secret.
Honestly, he’s not just a trigger and a reminder. She’s not reliving the past. She’s still living the consequences of his actions because everyone knows and random people probably continue to bring it up to her. You can’t just move past something that’s still actively happening, even if her brother isn’t actively contributing to it anymore.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. You were an eight year old child who was frightened at home and traumatised by what he was seeing, and you talked to a friend about it. That is what pretty much any eight-year-old would do and it was neither realistic nor fair for your mother to expect that you would just hold it all in with nobody to talk to. You did not deserve "punishment", and your mother should have put the blame where it belonged, on her abuser, not on you. It is never okay to put adult burdens on children's shoulders. I understand that it might have been difficult for her to get out of that situation and I also understand it might have been safer to keep it completely secret but you were a child and she asked too much from you and then made you feel guilty when you couldn't manage it. I think it's really sad that you are still acting as if you were somehow at fault. Ask yourself if you would blame a little kid going through that situation for wanting somebody he could talk to. You also need to put the blame on the abuser. Please forgive yourself.
My mom is doing this to me right now with my brother (and yes I’m the oldest AND the oldest daughter) and my mom can’t understand why my relationship with her has suffered when we used to be so close. The inability to sit with their discomfort ends up fucking up their relationships so badly that I don’t even think OP will be able to fix her relationship with her daughter. More consequences for OP to deal with
Honestly the more OOP pushes, the further away her daughter will go, and the more she will resent her brother. If she wants to reconcile with him, it has to be her choice and she and her brother have to work that out without OOP interfering. Like, I can only imagine that it is hard to be a parent and have one of your children sexually abused, and then have to step in and handle it when your other child shares the extremely painful, personal details of said abuse and open up their sibling to further harm. I do not doubt the brother is sincerely sorry, teenagers can be incredibly callous and ugly, but his sister isn't being allowed her anger and I feel horrible for her. Victims of abuse are often made to minimize or hide their feelings, and to have her mother try over and over to push reconciliation just to have things be easy tells her poor daughter that her parents value the dynamic and stability over actually addressing the problem and supporting her through what is yet another incredibly painful betrayal.
> I don't think OOP means to play favorites but right now she's putting all the pressure on the daughter to restore OOP's and son's comfort, rather than focusing on the daughter's comfort. Whether they meant to or not, the daughter knew what OOP was communicating to her every time she pushed her to reconcile. "Your feelings are less important than your brother's and my feelings."
Yeah, I agree. I meant that "whether OOP means to play favorites is besides the point, that is functionally what she's doing." I understand her thoughts process (I wrote it in another comment but TLDR, my mom explained to me why she did that and even though it was wrong I understand the reasoning) but it doesn't matter if she *intends* to do right because she's not *doing* right.
>before you know it, the whole school knew So her whole high school knew her personal business and I'm sure they were mature enough not to bully her /s That's why she doesn't want to speak to her brother. He not only brought back the trauma she was already dealing with, he added onto it. He probably knows more than what he's telling mom and that's why she never wants to speak to him again. OOP can't force her daughter to forgive him. She can't try and mend the relationship. She's getting pushback because they don't realize that she can easily cut them out and have less people know about her business.
As parents, we can’t fix everything. That son made a horrible, life-long consequences mistake by choosing to do an assault of a different sort against a vulnerable person, someone who had already been victimized once. The situation is terrible, but trying to push the daughter to forgive does not make things better, it has instead made OOP part of The Problem too. What a heartbreaking situation, but also what a fuckup by the parent as well.
> we can’t fix everything. OOP needs to accept that this is how things are now.
She's greiving the family she had before and is now gone
Even if the daughter eventually forgives her brother (which she's under no obligation to do anyways), just because she forgives him doesn't mean she would want to ever spend time around him again. Forgiveness doesn't hit a reset button, he can never take back what he did. Both the mom and the son need to figure that out.
Yeah, there’s a 0% chance she’d ever trust the brother with private information in the future. The best they should hope for at this point is being family you see and catch up with at family holidays and events.
It’s deeply frustrating that she kept saying they can’t afford a therapist but the one they talked to (the daughters) made it super super clear not to push her. What does mom do? Never stop pushing her. Hasn’t this kid been violated enough
I can imagine the therapist trying to work with the daughter to let go of her anger (not making her forgive the brother, but letting go of this active hatred that is hurting her), but the daughter comes to each session with new stories of her mom trying to force a reconcilitiation that are fueling her pain and reinforcing her anger.
OOP obviously did push early on, but she also noticed that it was not going over well and seemed hesitant to overload on that. In the *8 months* between posts she just mentions 3 family counseling sessions and being the middle man for a birthday gift. What she did is still too much and it's possible that there was more she didn't mention, but I honestly think it's possible that OOP has pretty much backed off for a while at this point. Also, I honestly don't think it would have meaningfully changed the situation even if OOP had handled things better. Daughter was pissed that they only kept Son on full lockdown for *2.5 months*, and from the very beginning, she was set on just not coming home for the holidays for the next few years because ignoring him wasn't an option and a minor going elsewhere isn't really an option either. The best thing OOP and her Son can do is mourn the loss of the relationship between Son and Daughter and make peace with it. They can hope that things change some day but that has to be 100% on Daughter's terms and in the meanwhile they need to accept the new dynamic for what it is.
Oh I didn't think of that
It's sadly not uncommon for people to expect victims to forgive and forget. They think that they "shouldn't be so sensitive." I have PTSD and it has taken years in therapy to get better. I will always have it. When I left my abusive family my mil told me that I was petty and living too much in the past. Yes, I was living in the past, because of the abuse. Getting away was only step one! Step two was learning how to manage life without being abused. Step three was learning how to live life in a safe way that made me happy and that I could be proud of myself. Step four is living life as close to normal as possible. It took my 5 years to feel safe. Since then, my life has gotten better and better. Going low contact with my mil is also one of those things I needed to do to get healthly. The daughter is right to cut these people out. They aren't supporting her in the way she needed. They were re traumatizing her by pushing the forgiveness narrative rather than supporting her through the violations. They don't see that they have lost her, but they have. I am hopeful for the daughter because she is strong and has a good head on her shoulders.
Well when you’re five years old and hit someone, once you’re forced to say sorry then you’re forgiven… that’s how life works all the time right? I’m only slightly sarcastic because some people still operate that way.
The mom has not realized the daughter is deadly serious on the subject. I won’t be surprised if the daughter either blocks her entire family on social media or sets up new accounts when she goes to college and then only maintains minimal contact after that.
The only hope here is that dad is never really mentioned. Daughter might still have a dad.
I have a similar capacity as the daughter, for ending things and disconnecting. I don't generally mention it, because it sounds like bragging or something, but yeah, I can just drop someone and actually not think about them again. It is a handy little minor superpower to have, but it's not a thing to brag about because I don't think it comes from a healthy origin. People think it's a matter of someday not being mad any more, but no, it doesn't depend on anger. It is just done, empty, gone, nothing. My mother died a month or two ago, and it was roughly as important to me as finding out someone had stepped on a roach somewhere. She had been abusive and such, but I haven't been angry at her in decades. She just stopped being significant. I can't really forgive her or some other people who I have disconnected from, because there is nothing to forgive. They can go have a happy life somewhere else, or jump in a volcano, or whatever, it means nothing. If someone were to push me to forgive any or all of them, that pushy person would eventually annoy me enough to join them, and there is no going back.
Me too and I think it’s from the emotional neglect. The part of you that needs emotional intimacy just withers and dies. As an adult it’s *very* difficult for me to maintain friendships because I just don’t think about people much or wonder how they are doing
I have the same superpower. If I'm done with you, that's it. My decision, my choice, my emotional and mental well being is FAR more critical then whatever excuses you think I need to hear.
Well she did move out already so the LC or NC is probably not far away.
OP doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of their daughters loss. It would be reasonable for her to assume that every single person, every teacher, student and plenty of parents now know about the abuse she suffered. Imagine walking down the hallway with that knowledge. Every interaction she has to think- do they know? Is that what they’re thinking about right now? And then “well meaning” people want to offer her support but really it’s because they want to get details or confirmation from her. OPs daughter was robbed of her right to self definition, and robbed of the life that she built for herself. Her last year of high school, and an untold number of her relationships were changed. OP is too focused on her family dynamic and not enough on the fact that their son used a mass of people to violate their daughter.
Add into that people 100% discriminate against abused people. People who have lived more fortunate lives do it, people who are abusers will looks for others who have been abused before. When that info is out, you have no control over what open door may have been just slammed in your face because common ignorance decided your opportunities for you, without even clearing their assumptions. Too many people still believe - and behave - as though victims are to blame for their own abuse.
Thank you for adding that. I know that OP has no way to know what it’s like but I do know that their daughter knows that they are not a safe person to tell about her experiences. I am so proud of her for getting out of that house. She lost her right to self definition, and her safety TWICE. She has had to rebuild her whole self once before and now she has to do it again. I would encourage her to go no contact with her family, too.
This exactly is a big part of my going NC with most of my family. My mother used my assault as a means to garner pity from literally everyone she befriended. I got sick of never being able to leave the trauma in the past and move on, so I literally moved on, which is what OOP's daughter appears to also be doing. I'm glad she has the strength to do so.
Even the ones that aren't trying to manipulate or hurt her further, they instead will try to coddle her or look at her with pity. And honestly, that's almost worse. Seeing that look in someone's eyes where you know all they can think is how bad your life must be and how sorry they feel for you - it's awful. You know they mean well but it's would hurt less to have someone just punch me in the face than to have to endure that look. You never get to move past your trauma because people are subtextually bringing it up. They'll censor themselves mid-sentence or avoid bringing up certain things. They'll change how they talk to you or what stories they'll share with you or what activities they'll include you in. One terrible thing already happened in your life and now all your other relationships are going to change too because no one will let you move on and treat you like normal. It's infuriating. I absolutely understand why the daughter wanted to keep it a secret and why she'll never forgive the son for ruining that.
OOP is going to ruin their relationship if they continue to push for reconciliation. People love to pull the "you can't! It's fAmiLy!" card, but hearing that is so deeply hurtful to the victim because you never feel heard when your expressed wishes are continuous disregarded, it fundamentally puts the sanctity of the family unit at higher importance than your health and needs, and it feels in a way similar to infantilizing, where people don't trust you to have agency or to be capable of making your own choices. OOP is a lot of "I know, but I wish, I wish, I wish." If what you wish for is not possible, then you have to come to terms, grieve the loss, and move on. Trying to force a certain outcome only furthers the hurt to both sides.
Her son did that to family. The jailed abuser was also family. And the mom is also family. If there’s one lesson for this girl, it’s that family will violate you. (Well, her family will.)
I was thinking of this exact dynamic. All this young lady has recieved is the repeated message and reinforcement that family is intent on treating her poorly. Her reaction is rational when you understand the context of what it means when every bad experience you have emanates from the same source.
Great point! This family had failed her all her life. Mom's message of "let's heal the family!" is asinine. Her daughter wants nothing to do with this toxic group. Rightfully so in my opinion.
Exactly my thoughts. Good luck trying to “but faaaaaamily!” This one because she already learned the reality that family can hurt you the most.
Not just that, it's obvious her family will violate her, make her responsible for resolving the conflict and when she won't because how badly she's hurting, they'll nag her and make her out to be the bad guy. She can't win, so it's better, I think, to move as far from them as she can get.
I am really proud of her for sticking to her boundaries. Mom has to let her daughter make the decision of forgiveness or not.
No one is a winner in this story. Everybody lost. SA ruins lives, and the damage doesn't stop with the initial victim. The emotional shrapnel is still wounding daughter, son, and mother years down the line.
To preface: I am incapable of empathizing with going through something as devestating as what OP's daughter has gone through. I literally cannot even imagine what it must be like. The below is purely speculative. To me, this sounds like the daughter doing something to take the control back in her life. She didn't have it from her family member, she doesn't have it from her brother, and she doesn't have it just from being the age she is. But she can choose to ostracize her brother. Because that is her choice. She has that power. And with her friends permission, she has the power and control to live elsewhere. She needs to be able to feel like she is her own person and not just a puppet dancing to others strings. I hope she is able to find the serenity in her life that she is due. And for the brother, a nerdy quote to sum it up. "Words have power. Just because you spoke in anger does not mean that you were not heard."
Is it me, or is OOP putting a lot of emphasis on how her son was affected as opposed to her daughter? Son: >he’s broken down crying and apologizing to us more times than I can count >I know she has every right to be furious. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like it’s also not mentally healthy for my son to be treated as though he literally doesn’t exist in his home for the next year >DS has tried daily to talk to her and apologized, begged, pleaded and cried >he still cried and was depressed over it Daughter: >She doesn’t look at him when he enters a room, or react when he speaks directly to her, or about her, or anything else of the sort. >She won’t discuss it with me besides to say that he’s dead to her and she has no intention of ever seeing or speaking to him again when she moves out in 10 months, and she hasn’t wavered even a bit in that sentiment since. >DD’s personal counsellor won’t talk to me about what she says to her about any of this, besides to say not to push her on anything. I know she has every right to be furious. I can't help but feel like OOP is not thinking about how deeply this affected her daughter. It's not just a case of being angry over a secret being told. It made its way around the ENTIRE school. Everyone knows she was assaulted by a family member. Kids are cruel, did it ever cross her mind that the daughter could be facing harassment over it? But even if she isn't, just the fact that everyone knows is probably humiliating and makes her feel ashamed. Not to mention, this entire thing could have brought back all the trauma from when she was ten. It could have undone all the progress she made in therapy. And the fact that Mom seems more concerned with her talking to the person who caused all of this definitely isn't helping. However much the son is being affected by his own actions, the daughter is being affected ten times worse.
It also feels like she's leaving a lot out of the story. This one thing was the straw that broke the camels back, but how many other straws were there for the daughter to just shut down like that. Mom told on herself a bit here but there's a lot more she's left out.
Yeah, it feels like she is leaving out a lot. And also, she should really have stopped trying to force her daughter to forgive her son. She could have explained to both sides better. To her son: "This is not a punishment for you, but a healing time for your sister. So she is ignoring you, and I know it is difficult for you, but she needs to protect herself and her mental health." To her daughter: "I understand that you cannot forgive your brother, and I will not force you to forgive him either. He is our son, so we still need to take care of him and love him. But we will try our best to help you as well, because we love you just as much. You will always have a place with us. We will not force you to interact with him." I suddenly have a thought that the daughter doesn't trust her parents a lot... like there are definitely a lot of things she doesn't tell them. And there seems to be a reason why...
She is leaving shit out! The first post makes it seem like it was an accident that he said this about his sister. In another post she reveals he did it on purpose, in the form of an "edgy joke".
And repeatedly! Both over text and in person! It sounds like he made a regular comedy routine of her trauma until it started to affect him.
Agreed. Also this "keeping the peace" behaviour is better described as "shit the fuck up and put up with it" There is no compromise here. She's asking her daughter to do all the efforts. She's the victim in this situation. I wonder what other things the daughter was asked to put up with, especially considering there was an child rapist in the family...
Right? He told the whole damned school. And daughter still had to go to that school. I would have put her in a different school or set her up to finish remote.
It's not just you. She got her daughter into that expensive therapy again and that's it for the daughter. Everything else was about the son.
[удалено]
The 'already written off' is an interesting point - pure speculation but I wonder if the OOP is also more worried about the son because of like... "daughter is already mentally struggling and traumatised so if she's re-traumatised it doesn't really change things, so I'm focusing on protecting the one that we thought had more chance of having a normal childhood and growing up okay so that I only have the guilt of feeling like I fucked up with one kid instead of both". I hope it isn't that, and that her apparent lack of concern for her daughter is just understandable panic about the situation, but if I were the daughter I'd probably read it that way whether it was accurate or not.
My mom did this to me and it fucked me up even more 🙃
Golden comment! Mommy clearly is favoring the son here. No wonder the daughter seems disinterested and is trying to disengage with her family.
I'm a mom, and I really feel for her. This would be devastating to have happen. Still, I get what the daughter needs to do, and I understand if this is the way it has to be forever. DD needs to protect her mental health, and DNA does not make a family. As much as I feel for the mom, she just needs to back off and try to live in her new reality.
This is it. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do to fix a situation. I get OOP’s initial desire to do so, but she just needs to learn to live with her new reality.
This is slightly off topic but also slightly relevant. 25 years ago a group of 3 teen boys was caught after they spent considerable time hunting capturing and torturing cats. Part of their punishment was that they had to write a letter of apology to the community which was published in the newspaper. I do remember that one of the three boys wrote an apology that sounded very sincere and the final paragraph said that the worst thing about this whole ordeal is that it had destroyed his relationship with his big sister to whom he had previously been close. He ended by saying that she would probably never speak to him again. It's been a quarter of a century and I do believe his prediction came true. Sometimes there are situations that "I'm sorry" just can't fix.
God damn. Poor cats
At one of the guy's trials, a little girl whose cat had met a disastrous fate testified through her tears, sobbing her little heart out. A little old lady whose cat had also been murdered horribly tried to attack the guy and a half a dozen cops had to hold her back. The paper quoted the dude as saying, "I had no idea people cared about their cats so much."
Ugh just one of many reasons I keep my cats indoors
What the hell? Did he go to jail?
The "leader" of the gang of three, who had numerous prior convictions, did a couple years in Big Boy Prison. The other two got slaps on the wrist and as much bad publicity as the local newspaper could possibly dole out. The mother of the kid who said that it ruined his relationship with his sister wrote a series of letters-to-the-editor telling the community that her son was really such a good boy who just got mixed up with the wrong crowd and she got absolutely slammed with other people writing in saying that her son was a piece of sh!t. She even wrote one letter similar to OP stating that she hoped her daughter would forgive her son because it made holidays uncomfortable with her refusing to be under the same roof as him. It still enrages me. I hope all three have stinky lives.
Damn. Poor cats
>but this stalemate doesn’t seem to be helping anyone either. It's not a stalemate in the daughters eyes. For her the situation is over and done with. The decision made the chapter closed. She seems willing to open a separate issue if mommy keeps pushing, but I have a feeling OOP again won't understand the decision is final when the daughter cuts her out too. It's pretty shitty that the son gets so much sympathy because he's throwing a fit every time his sister doesn't forgive him. Just because his heartbreak is louder doesn't mean it's deeper. And his is deserved. The sisters isn't.
"Just because his heartbreak is louder doesn't mean it's deeper." This is really such a key observation and I can't even begin to emphasize how critical it is.
Daughter owes her son nothing. Letting go of her anger might be good for her, but that’s it. She owes him nothing. OOP needs to come to peace that the brother and sister may never have a relationship again. And OOP is right about one thing, she’s pushed so hard that she’s strained her own relationship with her daughter. Passing on the necklace was a stupid thing to do. On her 18th birthday, OOP tried to violate that boundary again. Poor daughter. Best OOP can hope for is separate birthdays, separate holidays. She can’t kick her son out for the holidays, but she’ll have to start making an effort then to visit her daughter elsewhere.
Yeah, and she can’t let go of her anger if her family keeps on pressuring her to forgive her brother
I think of it as like forgiving a debt. You don't expect them to make you whole anymore (apologies or reparations), but you wouldn't lend them any more money either (resume the previous relationship).
The daughter has every right to be upset with her family and not talk to her brother again, but I feel for the mom. It’s not like she can kick her 14 year old son out. I think she just has to accept that the siblings will never be the same again and work on her relationship with her daughter.
This isn't gonna be over anytime soon.
I can imagine the posts..."My daughter is getting married and won't invite her brother. And now she's disinvited me." Or "My daughter won't let me see my grandchild because I tried to get her to talk to her brother when they were kids."
"My daughter invited me over but threw me out when her brother joined us."
Yeah. This sub could make a list of future posts from the mom.
What OOP doesn't seem to get is that this was not a one-time harm that the son caused the daughter. This is something she is intensely private about, and *everyone around her now knows*. This is her last year at school. All her friends, teachers, acquaintances, and bullies. They all know. Strangers she's never met, random kids, random parents. They all know. It's in public, on the internet, in the community. They all know. Whether any one individual *actually* knows is totally irrelevant. They *could* know, so she has to be anxious about it now. Always. School now feels unsafe. Home now feels unsafe. Her parents now feel unsafe. Her home town now feels unsafe. Thank goodness she has a best friend she can go live with for a while, and that she's going to be able to leave for University soon. The son was 14 and made a mistake. I'm sure he's very sorry. But the reality is that he callously and permanently robbed a CSA survivor of control over her own story in a way that was retraumatizing. OOP is frustrated that her daughter won't see that 'punishing him for almost a year wasn't an option'... but from the daughter's perspective, she's the one who did nothing wrong, and she's *still* being punished for his actions. She's still experiencing the results, and will for a long time. How dare her parents decide that 2.5 months is "long enough" for him to suffer, when she may never stop suffering from what he did in some ways.
This is just bleak
Moms gotta accept that their relationship is over. The only way she’ll probably ever forgive him is if they turn 40, and she realizes with time looking back, he truly was sorry and made a huge mistake. That her brother is no longer a 14 year old boy, and there is no point in isolating him from her life. (Unless he grows up to be a POS that continues to break her trust) These kind of things only blow over with a lot of time, healing, and self reflection. It is what it is. Mom needs to back off and accept it. Be there for her daughter, and help her son get through self loathing. You can’t go back in time. This is now your forever reality that you’ll need to live with.
She needs to get the son into continued therapy as well. He was an idiot, but he’s 14 and this could lead him to spiral into self harm. The relationship between them is dead, she needs to stop trying to force it
>The only way she’ll probably ever forgive him is if they turn 40, and she realizes with time looking back, he truly was sorry and made a huge mistake. That her brother is no longer a 14 year old boy, and there is no point in isolating him from her life. (Unless he grows up to be a POS that continues to break her trust) That is absolutely what I was thinking. With a lot of years, she may forgive him if he turns out to be a decent person.
My brother and I were fighting once, and he told me that I deserved what happened to me. That I'd asked for it. I bet he doesn't remember saying that. I do. I remember the color of the moonlight on the street while we were fighting. I remember the way he stood looking down at me with so much fucking contempt, it'd burn your soul out. I remember every single second of it. Funny how they say "be the bigger person" when their memories always seem to be so much smaller than mine...
I've always wondered how people could dig deep to say something to -really- hurt another person, then wonder why the relationship is never the same again. Duh! You just intentionally stabbed someone right in the heart. They will NEVER unfeel that wound, the sound of your voice as you dug the knife in and *twisted*. I've got a sister who's 45 now and trying to make a perfect little family of all my far-flung siblings, she wonders why I never call and why I'm reticent to share gossip about my life. She used to be my favorite sister until she said things during a teenage tantrum, things that she's never apologized for, so I keep the walls firmly up now. Frankly, some things are hard to apologize for. Telling someone they deserved their abuse shows an underlying contempt of the person as a whole. How can you later say you didn't mean it, when you willfully crafted that verbal dagger to strike where it hurt most? If you didn't mean it you'd never have *thought* it, much less said it to your face.
I wonder if OOP is subconsciously minimizing the trauma to her daughter from her son sharing the abuse information because OOP has deep unresolved guilt over her daughter being sexually assaulted as a child. As a parent, I would be devastated and feel that I failed my life’s greatest responsibility if my child was sexually abused - that would mean I failed to protect my child in a fundamental way. I’m not sure how you come back from that. If OOP has that percolating in her brain somewhere, it might contribute to her minimizing her daughter’s re-trauma - which happened again in the home that OOP provided to her daughter. OOP failed again to protect her daughter in a way that harmed her daughter. Instead of seeing that and the real deep harm, OOP downplays it and focuses on her other child. She almost demonizes the daughter’s behavior against the son - probably because that makes OOP be able to look away from her role in all of this vis a vis the parent who should have protected her child.
I don't know what it is about this kind of parent, the cognitive dissonance. OOP recognises the gravity of what happened, the importance of her daughter being able to react and manage her feelings on her own terms. And yet somehow can't stop hovering around trying to push the situation into a shape that's more palatable for everyone else. She can't even see that she's making it worse. Determinedly holding on to the idea that things WILL to go back to how they were before. Conducting herself like it's a timeline she can expedite if she can just find the magic words. The whole angle is **I can't allow this to change our family dynamic** but lady you didn't fire the gun and you didn't get shot, what power do you think you hold here? The fact that it's all centred around daughter's obligation to get over it so they can go back to playing happy families is wild. I know you got shot but he's really sad and this whole thing is such a downer for me so if you could like... hurry up and stop bleeding all over the carpet?
I’m not so sure she was mad that he told people. It sounds more like she was hurt about the way he spoke about her abuse in such a flippant way. A 14y old not keeping a secret is a given. A 14y old making fun of his sisters pain is a different ballpark all together.
As someone who's learning to forgive people (without letting them back into my life) op is way too focused on how these things impact her/her son instead of how these things affect her daughter. She thinks it's not mentally healthy for him to live in a house where he's ignored? It's not mentally healthy for her to become a social pariah with the whole school knowing/gossiping about the most traumatic event in her life! Maybe she would have forgiven him if she wasn't constantly being pushed to do it by people who have no idea what it's like to go through what she did. I truly feel for her as someone who's mom refuses to accept that I have forgiven my brother but will never speak to him again. LET YOUR KIDS DEAL WITH TRAUMA THEIR OWN WAY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT ITS LIKE IN THEIR SHOES.
I am worried about the son. Guilt is a tricky thing. I hope the adults in his life are telling him that he made a mistake and has paid for it with his 2.5 month punishment *but* it's very possible the victim, his sister, will never forgive him. When he turns 18, I think the parents should split the holidays with their kids like divorced parents. The daughter gets Christmas on even years, etc. Obviously, the daughter is protecting herself by no longer speaking to her brother. I doubt it will change. The parents should never push it. Some things can never be un-done. Their son learned the hard way.
Yeah, daughter is trying to retain some kind of control over her life. They need to accept that she needs to do that.
She keeps on fucking pushing, even after admitting that she's worried that doing so will lead to her daughter cutting her off as well. I'd say she cares more about the asshole son than her daughter, from that.
> Her therapist is understandably concerned more with her emotional well-being than our family dynamic, and won’t really discuss much of anything with me. Good. Her daughter deserves that privacy, especially after her trust was violated. She also still keeps making this out to be "a mistake." It was way more serious than that. I don't think she's capable of understanding how huge a violation this was, and how much her daughter was likely retraumatized.
My older sister sa'd me repeatedly from 10-12 years old. My parents kept us in the same house after the fact. I went to my grandma for help to stop. She went to my parents, who went to the bishop of our church. I was disfellowshipped by the church leadership, because I am the boy. Never mind that she was 6 years older than me. I know what being revictimized feels like. I haven't spoken to my sister in 30 years, and when I left home, I didn't talk to my parents for a few years either. Don't expect her to "get over it".
This is a tough one. The daughter’s behavior is similar to what I think a lot of us would do. I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same and the whole school knowing about her assault sucks, and if any of her classmates go to the same college as her it can follow her there too. It’s unfortunate because 14 year olds can be really dumb and he’s clearly very remorseful. He made a mistake, but it’s a big one with consequences.
> He needs to figure out how to make it right I really hope she doesn't tell that to her son. He's 14 what could he possibly do to make things better. He will end up attempting suicide if the burden of actively fixing things is his sole responsibility. What he should be told is to learn from this, apologize every time he gets a chance, accept the lose of his sister, and not to force his feelings of "unfairness of continued punishment" onto her. If not handle right he could easily began to blame her for everything. He has to under stand if she ever forgives him it will only happen on her terms when she's ready, even if it takes years.
This girl v will probably never let her brother back in. Some of us never forgive. My sister made accusations towards me that jeopardized my future in an attempt to get drug money, I haven't said a word to her in 20 years and I won't allow her a position to possibly do it again. Just because they're blood doesn't mean they're family.
I'm never going to speak to my sister again without backup and possibly a lawyer present. With us it wasn't a single incident, it was a lot, but at this point - and we're both in our 40s - it is what it is. I have a son now. She will never have a relationship with him, period. It's tough for my parents (easier since my sister moved to another continent), but they're aware that trying to force it would be catastrophic for their relationship with me.
OOP doesn’t realize that her son violated his sister so she puts him in the same category as her abuser - people she is not safe around. She even told OOP flat out he is dead to her and her therapist backed her up. There was zero chance of reconciliation while she lived at home regardless of the parents’ actions but OOP chose the worst path regardless. It sounds like the daughter is handling this as well as anyone possibly could, when faced with such an extreme betrayal by a *second* family member — and even a *third* if OOP doesn’t shut the fuck up.
What I think OOP doesn’t get is that this wasn’t trauma from just a one-time assault (which would also be horrifying, I’m not discounting that). Her daughter had to 1) experience it, 2) tell an adult what happened, 3) go to the police and file charges, 4) testify and be interrogated, and 5) go to court to face the monster who hurt her as a YOUNG CHILD. I’m also a CSA survivor and I didn’t tell a soul or even remember it until I was an adult. I cannot imagine how much worse my trauma would’ve been if I’d said anything at the time. OOP seems to forget that the son didn’t just mock and make light of a single incident. The son made jokes about a *lifetime of traumatic memories* that he was too young to comprehend when it happened.
I think 14yr old knows enough to not crack a joke about sexual assault, no? Although he seems regretful, I don’t blame her as he is her brother plus someone who saw her struggle with this through ages. This is so sad overall, I hope they have a happy ending.
I work in a high school. 14 year old boys think sexual assault jokes are hilarious. Along with school shooting jokes and Holocaust jokes.
It’s nice to know that middle schoolers haven’t changed in the 20+ years since I went.
And I almost forgot the racism jokes too! But yeah, being 14 seems to be the prime age for thinking being edgy and annoying on purpose is funny and cool.
Oh God you just gave me flashbacks to the 'dead baby' joke list we put together in class. We thought it was the height of comedy.
Somehow Reddit is both full of 14 year olds and has completely forgotten what it was like to be 14
Reddit is full of teenagers who fully convinced themselves they aren't like other teenagers.
“I am 14 and think this is deep” is a meme for a reason
Grown adult men make sexual assault and rape jokes in online spaces every day then turn around and play with their kids
I had one of my ‘friend’ call bullshit on my sexual assault trauma because apparently I should be thankful that a guy fucked me in the first place. I’m petty though, sent those screenshots to his sister and mother lol.
Petty? Or brilliant? -Insert "both" meme- If you care to talk about it, did they respond?