I (29 male) was recently contacted by my parents, who have not been in touch with me for the past five years. They wanted to ask for my help, or more specifically, they wanted me to help my brother out.
Growing Up Under the Shadow of My Brother
My brother, Craig (31 male), has always been the golden child. My parents made no effort to hide it. He was better than me in every aspect, especially academically. They constantly reminded me that he was doing better at school and that I needed to step up if I ever hoped to be on the same level. He got into a great college, and five years ago, he became the youngest vice president in the history of his company. He had been working there since graduation, earning well right from the start.
But when he achieved that promotion, my parents used his fancy corporate job as a new standard to beat for me. They couldn’t stop rubbing it in my face, and honestly, I wasn’t interested in being a 9-to-5 employee. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and that had been my goal for as long as I could remember.
Starting My Own Business
Five years ago, after working in various places and gaining some industry experience, I decided to finally start my own business. I launched a line of modern, edgy car accessories that I designed myself. I had done enough research and had a solid business model, so I was ready to go ahead with it. I decided to talk to my parents first, as I thought they would support me, but their reaction was the complete opposite.
The Rejection
After throwing my brother a party to celebrate his new job, I approached my parents to tell them about my business plans. Instead of encouragement, they laughed, saying it was embarrassing that after all the years of education, this was my big idea. They told me I wasn’t capable enough and that my business was doomed to fail. They advised me to stick with my current job because, if I failed, it would be too embarrassing for them. They made it clear they didn’t believe in me.
They said I had a choice: I could continue at my job, not be an embarrassment, or go ahead with my business and lose them in the process. I was deeply offended, and after a heated argument, I chose to cut them out of my life and never spoke to them again. My brother sided with them, and I wanted nothing to do with him either.
Proving Them Wrong
I had worked with cars for a long time, and I had faith in my business idea. I knew it was something people wanted. So, despite the risks, I went ahead and quit my job to pursue my dream. The beginning was rough. I was living pay check to pay check, relying on word-of-mouth marketing, but eventually, things started to pick up. After a year and a half, the business gained momentum, and now I’m comfortable. I live in a nice apartment, drive a good car, and am doing well enough to prove my parents wrong.
No Contact for 5 Years
During the five years since I cut off my parents, I’ve had many milestones. I got married to my girlfriend of several years, and we’ve been married for four years now. We recently found out we were expecting a child. Despite all these changes, I’ve never reached out to my parents. I’ve heard through relatives that they ask about me often but never make an effort to contact me.
The Unexpected Contact
Last week, my parents finally reached out. They asked if I would be willing to meet with them, but they didn’t specify why. After discussing it with my wife, I decided to visit them and see what this was about.
When I arrived, they were unusually nice, and I could sense that they were building up to something. After some small talk, they finally got to the point. They congratulated me on my success and admitted that their initial scepticism about my business had been wrong. But then they told me that Craig had recently lost his job. His company had undergone mass layoffs, and he had been sitting at home for the past four months, struggling to find another job. My parents were concerned about him and asked if I would be willing to hire him.
The Dilemma
I was caught off guard. They expected me to help him out, but I couldn’t immediately respond. I needed some time to think. I didn’t want to say yes without considering all the consequences, especially since I knew that if I declined, they would likely turn the situation against me. So I told them I needed time to think and would give them my answer later.
After discussing it with my wife, I decided to decline. My wife works in a bank and doesn’t have much to do with my company, but she agreed with my decision. She reminded me that this was the professional world, and I was under no obligation to help my brother, especially after everything that had happened. She also felt that my parents’ attempt to reconcile wasn’t genuine.
The Response
When I finally told my parents that I couldn’t hire Craig, they completely flipped out. They started screaming at me, accusing me of turning my back on them after all they had done for me. They reminded me that they raised me and paid for everything when I was a child, and now when they needed my help, I was refusing. They claimed that Craig was my brother and I needed to help him out, just like he would have helped me if the roles were reversed.
The Final Decision
I tried to explain that I didn’t want to work with Craig and that I didn’t owe them anything, especially considering they had disowned me just five years ago. But they wouldn’t listen. The argument got heated, and I eventually told them that I didn’t want to speak to them anymore. I blocked their numbers and haven’t been in contact since.
Conflicted Feelings
Since then, I’ve been feeling conflicted. My parents’ comments about how they would have helped me if my business had failed made me question my decision. But my wife reassured me that they were just trying to manipulate me and guilt-trip me into helping Craig. She also pointed out that they had never apologized for the way they treated me.
I’m trying to focus on my growing family and not let my parents’ behaviour affect me. I’m happy with my life and proud of the progress I’ve made, but I still can’t shake off the nagging feeling of guilt.
Unexpected Call from Craig
I had expected my parents to do something on that day, but they did not bother, so I thought that maybe they had finally moved on from this whole episode. I was trying to do the same thing, but then this morning, I received a call from Craig while I was at work. It was really strange because he had totally stopped speaking to us five years ago, and I had no idea what he wanted to speak to me about.
For a second, I thought he might try to talk to me along the same lines as my parents and demand that I give him a job, and I’d have to go through the entire ordeal again. So, I ignored his first call, but then he called me a few more times and even messaged me, saying that it was urgent and he needed to speak to me. He told me that I didn’t need to worry because he wasn’t going to ask anything of me; he just wanted to discuss something that had been bothering him for some time.
The Conversation
So, I decided to answer the call, and we spoke today. He said that he had been pretty depressed for the past few weeks, so he hadn’t been speaking to anybody and had been ignoring all the messages and emails he had been receiving, including the ones from his relatives. It was only a couple of days ago that he had finally checked those messages and realized that everybody was talking about how it was unfair for our parents to be demanding that I give him a job in my company, especially when they had never treated me well.
Craig was really confused because he had been talking to our parents constantly for the past couple of weeks, but they hadn’t said anything about such things going on in the family. He had spoken to our parents after reading those messages and asked them if they had done something of the sort, and they had outright declined it. They said they didn’t know what was being referred to in those messages, but he felt like they were lying to him. So, he had called me instead to find out the truth.
Telling Craig, the Truth
I thought that he deserved to know exactly what our parents had been up to behind his back, so I decided to tell him the truth. I explained the entire story of whatever my parents had told me and said that after they shared his story with me, they had told me that I needed to give him a job and help the family out because he was not in a good place right now, and they didn’t want him to suffer.
I told Craig that maybe their initial intention was to genuinely help him and support him to get his life back on track, but eventually, it just turned into harassing me, and I wasn’t fine with that. I told Craig that I was really sorry about his job situation because I knew that it meant everything to him, and he had put in a lot of work at the company in his position. I knew it couldn’t have been easy to be laid off, but honestly, he also knew that we never got along and would not work well together, which is why I declined my parents’ request.
Craig’s Understanding
Craig seemed to understand. He told me that he wasn’t interested in working with me, not to offend me, but because he wasn’t in the right state right now to be working with anybody. He was just taking a break on purpose. My parents had made it seem like he had no offers that were worth considering, but he actually did, and he was just holding out on them because he wanted to take a break.
It was his personal choice, and it wasn’t because he wasn’t upset, but his decision to not work for a while was not influenced by that. He seemed pretty frustrated and vented for a bit, and I let him because, even though we were not on the best of terms, I thought he could use it.
A Much-Needed Talk
After having a full conversation about this, he told me that he was very upset about what our parents had done regarding him. It made him seem desperate and gave people the wrong idea about him, like he was trying to convince my parents to force me to get him a job. He said it was confusing because he had never done anything of the sort.
He told me that he was going to speak to our parents about this and apologized to me for all that I had gone through. I thought it was really mature of him, and I really felt like he had grown up a lot in the past five years, especially after he got laid off from his job. I guess he realized that nothing was permanent, and so he shouldn’t be so proud and arrogant. Maybe that was a lesson in disguise, but anyway, we weren’t exactly able to patch things up, but at least we had a good talk, and I think that’s enough for me.
Update: Craig Confronts Our Parents
A couple of days ago, Craig and I spoke to each other on the phone again. After our discussion, he said that he was going to speak to our parents and confront them about what they had done. So, he did that, and it did not go too well. Our parents got all offensive and said they were just trying to help him out because they didn’t think that his position to take some time for himself was a good one, and he needed to get back into looking for a better job immediately.
They ended up in a huge fight about it because Craig accused them of trying to control his life from the beginning and never letting him make any decisions of his own, even when he was grown up. My parents obviously didn’t like that and started counting all the things they had done for him, which were just normal things that parents usually do for their kids. I don’t know why they always feel the need to brag about it as if they did it as a favour. It was not a favour; they had to do it anyway.
The Fallout
They got into a really bad fight, and now Craig is no longer speaking to them. Guess who they’re blaming for all of that? Yep, you got it: they are blaming me for it all once again. I just don’t understand how I can become the scapegoat for literally every situation they are in. This time, there were no personal confrontations, and they just decided to go ahead and make a Facebook post about it.
Relatives Come to My Rescue
Luckily for me, though, all our relatives came to my rescue immediately and called my parents out on their BS. They reminded them that they had been terrible parents, not just to me, but also to Craig in a way. They kept trying to control him and put him under pressure, especially when he was going through such a difficult time. They should have been there for him morally and emotionally, supporting him, but instead, they were trying to put him down even more and make him seem like the bad guy.
After receiving a lot of comments from our relatives, my parents decided to delete that post and block everybody from my family.
The Aftermath
To sum it up, pretty much everyone has ostracized them, and I’m really happy about it. Craig and I, well, he has apologized to me for treating me badly in the past, and we’re going to try and build our relationship in the future. But right now, the most important thing in my life is my wife, and I’m really excited to be a father.
