Are we brothers?

I have been struggling with a conflict with my eldest brother for more than a year now. Chris, my eldest brother, stopped any form of communication with me when I had to walk away from a conversation with his husband.

History

The relationship between us hasn’t always been good. When I was in my youth; my mother made a point to try and create a division between us in several ways. The top division strategy is to label him as our step-brother. While this is true, I can say I truly hate that this was done to my other brother and I. When I was able to see what the goal was; I immediately stopped this. I’m not sure how I old this was stopped, but I do remember the feeling of betrayal by my mother in this instance. When I was 18, my brother wanted me to have my birthday dinner with him, and that’s when he told me that he was gay. I expressed this then, I do not care what you do in your love life, I will always love you. It’s still true today, as the day I was 18. This was the time I was allowed to see his house, and see who he truly was. I was so proud that he was able to make what he wanted of his life, actually happen. While our relationship has been VERY rocky, and it continued with several things that I saw happen. An example of this, we (dad, my other brother, and I) all asked him when he was going to be able to come visit again, and we got the response of, I’m not sure - I’m super busy. Then a few months later, we were out eating at a local fish restaurant, and we bump into him. We had no idea he was in town, and personally, I was hurt by him doing the whole ‘ghosting’ thing. I’m not sure why he did this, and a phone call would have been easy enough as, I’m in town, I don’t have time.

Conflict

I was in the middle of my dark time, and Chris’s husband was trying to give me advice on how to deal with my stomach issues. He was coming off as treating me as a child, and that triggers something in me to become VERY defensive. It was to the point to where I had to walk away instead of saying something I didn’t mean. I expressed this to him as well. When I talked to Chris the following time; Chris assumed I was going to call him some sort of derogatory name that is based on his sexuality. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. While I was in a state of mind of complete anger, hurt, and almost rage; those thoughts never entered my mind. I expressed to him I had to walk away before I say something mean. His (Chris’s husband) response was, I don’t think you could ever say something mean; yet again, that triggered the ‘Oh you really think that, let’s see where this goes’ response. I had enough control to walk away. When Chris followed up with me after Bryan (Chris’s husband - Name changed to respect privacy) and I had a conflict; I noticed that the things that set me off, was deleted. While I tried to find the conversation pointers that set me off, they were removed. So, I wasn’t able to show Chris was set me off, and it’s now all of my fault that I was being so ‘mean’.

Currently

While I have been blocked from all communication with Chris, and I have attempted EVERY avenue to communicate with him. Chris posted something on Facebook that stated that no cousin wants to talk to him, etc etc, and I’m paraphrasing this. He refuses to communicate with his own little brother. What kind of message does that to say? To my knowledge, every family member on our side of the family, hasn’t written him off; he refuses to communicate with us.

Final Thoughts

I have learned a lot from this whole experience, and I HATE every bit of it. If Chris doesn’t want me to be in his life; be a brother tell me. Running away from any problem isn’t a way to solve a problem, and it will eventually catch up to you. I have learned that the hard way. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my brother, and this whole situation has gotten me upset more times than I will admit to. In the end, Chris hasn’t been able to accept that I accept him for him.