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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I have experiences similar to yours. Stuff happened in my family that was inappropriate. In my case it involved my brother and my father. I understand why you felt the need to talk about this openly and to just get the truth of your experience out there with your parents. Definitely having kids myself makes me aware of how NOT normal things were in my family, and when a person realizes that, I do not think it's creating drama to try to talk about that. It sounds like you talked about this with your parents and you all are moving forward.  I haven't talked with my parents for various reasons, but I did talk to my brother, who had a not-great reaction--though not as extreme as yours.

I can't know what is going on with your brother. But in my case, when I talked to my brother about my memory of the inappropriate things and how they had affected me, what bothered him most, it seems to me, was my insistence that really we had been poorly parented and that what happened was in fact abusive. He had this kind of fantasy that we were a happy family and that, sure, we may have had problems, but really everything was just fine between us all. My saying that no, not-normal things had happened to me, and that they had really affected me, was hard for him to deal with because, for all these decades, he had not thought that way at all. I think he actively did not think about it. It was like I was presenting a different reality and he did not want to accept it. His reaction was that it all happened so long ago, what did it matter. But my reaction was, well, it DID matter, it had a huge effect on me, and affected my ability to trust and be intimate with my own family now. This is not what he wanted to hear. He wanted to go on with the sort of Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil mindset.

It may be that your brother is feeling similarly, that he is avoiding you because you are reminding him of things that he would rather not think about, and forcing him to re-evaluate events of the past that probably had an effect on him as well. He may not want to know what those effects were. Some people just don't want to know. Denial is really very powerful and is the usual MO in families that tolerate inappropriate boundary violations.

Have you asked your brother, "Hey, are you cutting me off? What's up with you?" Have you tried calling him on the phone? I would not ask your parents to intervene. It's better to be direct and honest, as you were with your parents.

Anyway, I congratulate you on bringing this up. I can imagine how hard it was. I don't think you are creating drama. It sounds to me like you are just trying to communicate honestly and, you know, unfortunately some families are not such big fans of that. [/quote]

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