Do I tell my brother a family secret about him that everyone but him knows??

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10/28/2013 21:48

Subject: Do I tell my brother a family secret about him that everyone but him knows??

quote

Anonymous

I will try to keep this concise but it'll have to be on the long side to get to the punchline.

My parents married in 1967 when my mother was already pregnant with my brother. My mother was 19 and my father was 22. A little while later they had me. Parents divorced when I was young; unusually for the time, my mother moved out and we lived with my father. We had visitation with her on weekends until I was about 8. My father married my stepmother around that time, and not long afterwards he convinced me and my brother that it would be better for us not to see her anymore. Apparently we wrote her notes saying we didn't want to see her anymore; while I don't know what kinds of conversations about it my parents had, she then disappeared from our lives. As we got older, my brother was a bit of a delinquent and often got into trouble; he was physically active and not academically-oriented, while I was quiet and an excellent student. I was favored a bit, mostly as a result of good grades and not getting into trouble (my brother smoked, got caught shoplifting once, stole a moped once, stole a little money from my father and stepmother, etc.). However, both my brother and I had deteriorating relationships with my father. My father had a lot of animosity toward my brother, and my brother had a lot of emotional problems (I think stemming from unresolved emotional damage from the divorce and then my mother's disappearance, and then compounded by how my father and stepmother clearly felt about him, etc.) My brother was kicked out of the house on his 18th birthday. I lived at home until right after I turned 20. By the time I left, my father/stepmother and I were literally not talking to each other and I was hiding in my room or else was out of the house most of the time either working or going to college classes.

My father and I have not spoken since I left home more than 20 years ago, and he and my brother have not spoken since my brother left home (my brother tried to write him a few letters, including after my nieces were born, but my father is not interested). When I was 20, my brother tracked her down and we got back in touch with her. My mother and I developed a nice relationship, although there was never a complete clearing the air about what happened. My brother also had a nice relationship with her, although he lives in a different time zone while I lived about 30 minutes away, so I got to see her a lot more. Unfortunately she died in a car accident about 7 years later. My brother has a TON of anger and hurt and negative feelings about my father, and he Just. Cannot. Let. It. Go., accept that he's never going to have a relationship with the man, and move on. He's kind of emotionally fragile, although he tries to be stoic. Fortunately he has a wonderful wife and two lovely daughters, so he's got a family of his own and he himself is a great dad.

Today I found out from my paternal grandmother that my father is not my brother's biological father. Apparently my mother lied to my father about the pregnancy being his, and then he found out when my brother was born (I guess he did the math and/or my mother confessed -- I didn't get those details today). So this explains to me more clearly my father's hatred of my mother, and it also explains his feelings toward my brother. (I don't condone those feelings at all, but it makes sense as a possible explanation for why my father seemed unable to forgive my brother's lapses.) I still think my father sucks because of how he has treated me and my brother from the time we had gotten older until now, but I have more respect for him for raising a son he knew was not his. Clearly since they stayed together and had another baby, he signed up for trying to treat my brother like his own child. I think my mother was pretty shitty for what she did, but that's a topic for another thread. My grandmother said that everybody on my father's side of the family knows except my brother -- aunts, uncles, cousins. I don't know if my mother's side of the family knows.

The question is whether to tell my brother or not. If so, what the hell do I say to try to make him feel better? I think he'll be pretty rocked, to say the least, as well as deeply hurt and angry. On the other hand, it seems wrong that everybody but him knows the truth. I'm still processing it and I'm not sure what to think of it all.

If you're still reading this, thank you for being patient, and thank you for any advice you can offer me or my brother.