I had an unexpected long talk with my brother last night, just a week after writing about how similar he was to BP. At first, I thought he was taking another page out of her script in luring me back in before going off the rails again. But this conversation felt very different from our previous ones. For those of you not familiar with the story, my brother never really wanted to be a husband or a father and never fully applied himself to either. When our father passed away some years ago, he took that as a reason to completely let his life go to hell and began acting out in many ways. He often liked to point out that I'd done the same in my twenties after a highly stressful and painful loss in my life, but I was quick to remind him that I was a single dude hurting only myself with my issues (mostly just myself, anyway), while he was married with kids and didn't have the right to do any of his acting out at that time in his life. Nothing anyone said stopped him and he continued to do as he pleased up until about a year and a half ago when my sister-in-law filed for divorce and he claimed to have seen the light. They reconciled and things were decent for awhile, until he got up to his old tricks again. This time, she didn't bother to fire a single warning shot and instead filed for divorce and full custody outright. It had no effect. He blamed everybody but himself for the state of things and had been largely absent from the family, until last weekend when he made a point of celebrating Mother's Day with the rest of us. Things went surprisingly well and he's texted me a few times since but it's been a busy week and I haven't made the effort to respond. He knew where I stood on things, so he wasn't exactly surprised by my lack of communication. When he asked to have an honest convo, I was skeptical but agreed.
I was more than a little surprised when the first thing my brother asked me about was BP. He occasionally dips in and out of reading here, but apparently he did see that last post about him and it caused him to go back through everything tagged for BP so he could compare behavior. He wasn't pleased with what he concluded. He asked me what the worst part of the BP debacle was and two things immediately came to mind. I never felt safe in that relationship, not the way you should when you're in love with someone and you trust each other and know you'll be there for one another. She preached partnership, but we both often chose to go it alone. Why she chose that, I don't know, but for me it was the only choice I had since she was often MIA when I needed something. That part sucked. But even worse was, as I put it to him, when you know you would bring down the stars for a person and they can't even be bothered to look up at the sky. I seriously cared about that girl and wanted to be there for her, but she just either didn't know how to handle that or didn't see it as being anything special so she chose to be mean. And that feeling of being willing to do so much while the person you care about ignores you for sport is the worst. I told my brother all of this, and added that his estranged wife probably felt the same way for much longer than I did. She's adored him from minute one, and for the last twenty years. And much like I did with BP, the sister-in-law realized he had nothing more he was willing to offer her or their family and that was when she chose to bounce.
While BP and I were in the final throes of our demise, she would dip in and out and dangle that reconciliation carrot before inevitably getting bored or annoyed at my lack of open arms and then ignoring me some more. She once asked me what I wanted, what my expectations were of her and the relationships and by then I'd reached the point of no return in terms of my apathy towards the situation. We'd gone days, maybe even a few weeks without speaking and she was traveling for work and about to head home. She contacted me out of the blue and I asked what she wanted and she threw the question back to me. I told her I wanted things to be the way they were when I thought she was great and when we got along and when I believed she actually liked me as a human being, but that I expected nothing of her. I didn't expect her 'come to Jesus' moments to last longer than a few hours, if that, and I certainly didn't expect some magical thing to happen where she started to apply herself to the relationship. I made it a point to say I wasn't angry, I wasn't hurt, I wasn't even really all that sad, I just could not have lower expectations of her and nothing she came at me with, good or bad, would surprise me, so I was going to let the chips fall where they may. That pissed her off and she tried to make me the villain for being "cold and uncaring", which was comical given that was all I'd gotten from her for months. But I didn't fight with her. I've always been very slow to anger, but with her I became very quick to anger and, toward the end, started to go straight for the jugular like she always did. On this occasion, I never did let myself get to anger. People fight for what they believe is worth fighting for and I'd realize she wasn't worth the battle anymore. My blood pressure, my anemia pain incidents were all much higher and more frequent during our time together than they've been since it ended, and that's what's most telling to me. When dealing with broken people, you eventually hit your limit and decide that you better start looking out for you because they sure as hell don't want the job. And that's what happened with my sister-in-law - she gave up the fight once she decided it wasn't worth it.
Surprisingly, my brother is aware of certain things that have happened since the divorce papers were filed and he says he's fine with them. There was this calm about him, not like a suicidal calm or anything dire like that, but more of him realizing that yeah, he made a mess of a good thing but it's better to move on than to keep beating the same dead horse. He says he's not going to contest the divorce or custody and he would like to try and build good relationships with the kids, which he knows will be a slow process. He sounded very sincere, more like himself than he has in a very long time. My brother and I have never been super close, but we did used to have a good relationship. I hope he does stick with getting his life together and being there for the kids though. That's the one thing that really needs to happen for all involved. And I'm glad he's wise enough to let go of the marriage, something that can't be easy when you've been with someone for 20 years. This was a good talk for us to have.
