Sibling kept baby a secret

LegacyUser

Hi,
Ive always had a difficult relationship with my brother, we grew up in a dysfunctional family, alcoholism and codependancy.

He is a few years older than me. At one point when I was a teenager he moved out of the house and cut all contact with the family for 5 or 6 years because he was angry with the alcoholic.

He has never gotten any help for growing up in that environment - I regularly attend Alanon and deal with these issues. It was a parent who was alcoholic but the house was a crazy place for a number of years because of it.
He just wants someone to blame about it.

After our parents passed away we began to maintain a rather tentative relationship. We have to deal with each other regularly about legal stuff to do with our parents estate.The executor is a nasty piece of work and is delaying everything and brother blames this on me. There was a row over this around 2 years ago where he was very nasty and really hurt my feelings and he absolutely refused to apologise or acknowledge that he had said or done anything wrong despite me trying to talk it out with him calmly, he just degenerated into shouting abuse each time.

Since then we have really only spoken when necessary about solicitors etc... But I thought the bad feeling had mellowed slightly as he has certainly been less aggressive on the phone and more civil. I had more or less resigned myself to the knowledge that we would never be best friends but that after the estate is settled we could perhaps have the odd call or text just to say hello.

There have been other small things that hurt my feelings since or parents died but I have mostly let it slide rather than cause a fuss.

Yesterday I discovered, purely by accident, that himself and his wife had a baby last year. He doesnt know that I know. I am his only sibling. I recognise that we are not best buddies but I feel very hurt that he would keep that a secret from me. He only lives around the corner from me so many neighbours know we are siblings and many of my friends live in the area and know who he is too.

To my mind it would actually take more of an effort to NOT tell me than to tell me. I am shocked and hurt.

Should I just pretend I still dont know? Should I tell him I know?
I really dont know what to do.

I dont see how I can bring it up without it being a row because I am hurt, and what can he possibly say about not telling me about his child for nearly a year (and the 9 months that his wife was pregnant) that would make it ok? But I also dont see how I can easily continue these civil phonecalls about legal issues with him when I know this and say nothing

So Im leaning more towards not saying anything. I feel very sad about the whole thing.

What do people think?

Craft25

Hi i feel really bad for you.. the best thing to do for now IMO is to focus on getting past all dealings with the estate before making any attempts on the personal front..

you will have to continue to use your own personal outlets to share your feelings (alanon, friends), if you ever expect to talk through the past with him, expect it to be a long way down the road..

If you send a letter to him, he may just crumple it up and throw it away in anger.. but he may put it away somewhere and pick it up in the future, maybe when he is more secure of mind and open to contact

PS. i know the secret keeping hurts... but like you said all this pain started with people that came before you.. if you have the strength to not get too upset, retaliate and perpetuate the hurt it will be all the better for everyone

partyguinness

TBH its best not to rock the boat.

He prob has his reasons for not sharing this info with you and maybe in time he will introduce you.

But for the moment just focus on developing a good relationship with your brother and not revealing that you know his "secret" which may only antogonise him.

One step at a time and let time take its course.

Baybay

I must begin by saying that I have no siblings and have no experience about that dynamic.

My OH has a number of siblings however and while they did not have the issues growing up that you are still dealing with, for various unavoidable reasons they are not close or at least not all are with each other.
This can sometimes be a bit of an issue and my OH finds it necessary to take a step back and remember that although these people are family and for that loves them, they are not friends. Your brother has obviously taken this thought process to a different level.

You, by extension, may remind him of a time in his life he would rather forget or of an incident, long forgotten by you, of something that happened when you were both younger or maybe you look like the one of your parents with whom he had an issue. Maybe he feels you escaped much more lightly than he. Who knows? It is about him. I'm sure Alanon can give much greater insight as to why he might be behaving in the ways he's chosen.

However, you say that he has mellowed noticeably so maybe fatherhood is having an effect.
If you feel slighted that you know nothing about this child, as those all round you seem to, might he be feeling similar that you haven't acknowledged it? I know it's taken this amount of time for you to find out but he doesn't know that.

I don't mean to imply any blame should lie with you. It doesn't. But you do seem to want a relationship with your brother that he seems reluctant to be part of.

Might sending a congratulatory card even a this stage, serve to thaw a little ice. If it doesn't, will you be surprised? And if it does, it's a small step towards a reconciliation.

bikki

Seems to be all about your feelings and not his, maybe he got his closure on his past but you keep coming along and picking at the scab forcing all his emotions on the subject to the surface and hes acting out the only way he knows how.

Try comunicating to him on other subjects unrelated to the legal matters or ur child hood.

LegacyUser

OP here.

Thanks for the replies.

Just to clarify a little, we have discussed our pasts and childhood a number of times, but the conversations always just went in these circles of him wanting to place blame rather than address the issues raised. Eventually after many calls from him to me questioning why this all happened I had to be clear and tell him that the conversations were going nowhere and unless he could begin to deal with things it was just going to be an ongoing circular discussion of why, why, why and blame being laid for things that happened rather than acceptance of what happened and moving on. I did not close off discussion, I just refused to continually engage on the same roundabout of blame.

He doesnt believe he has been affected by his childhood although its quite obvious to me in many of his attitudes and mannerisms. In fact, he behaves just like the alcoholic in the family except that he is tee total. He has all the ism's of alcoholism but doesnt pick up the bottle. This (i am told by educators in the field) is quite common in ACOAs (adult children of alcoholics) who dont address the issues they were raised with.

This is all just background to the issue at hand though.

Baybay - Im not sure who else knows about the child, he was in touch with an aunt of ours but for reasons unknown he decided to cut all contact with her last year sometime (before the baby was born). She says she doesnt know why, one day she spoke to him, next time she phoned he refused the call and has done so since. She didnt know about the baby either (she is very upset about it). To the best of my knowledge he is not in contact with any other family member (due to the alcoholism) - so doubtful they know.
I wouldnt imagine he feels slighted that I havent acknowledged it because although we do have neighbours that would recognise us both as siblings - we have no connections through friendships - as in, I dont regularly talk to anyone who regularly talks to him. So our social circles are quite isolated from each other - the aunt was the only really common link but like I say, he cut her off last year.

Im not even sure I want a relationship with him in the 'normal' sense of a family relationship - but I did think we were reaching a point where we could be civil/friendly to each other - just as an example a neighbour found a dog on the street recently that my brother has a similiar one of and I immediately texted him to check was it his pet - to which he replied with a joke about how the dog was tucked up in bed with his bone. So there are mixed signals in the 'friendly' territority. But now I actually feel that any friendliness in the past couple of years has been based on deceit on his part.

bikki - i cant post on his feelings because I dont know what they are, I only know my own. He was usually the one picking at the scab of the past because he has never dealt with any of the issues associated with it.

When I do try to communicate about issues other than legal or childhood he tends to go into 'radio' mode, as in he just talks and talks and talks (about whatever subject has caught his interest) and cannot listen to anything that I say - this is a well known trait and even his wife has made jokes about how he goes into output only mode and cant listen.

If he doesnt go into output only mode he actually stops listening entirely and says things like 'huh? what?, sorry i wasnt listening. oh i have to go' - so I do find him difficult to engage on anything bar the most banal topics (like the weather or traffic).

partyguinness and craft25 - I think time probably is the best thing to utilise in this situation.

Many thanks for all responses. I actually felt better just getting it off my chest.

I feel somehow 'belittled' that my own brother does not consider me important enough to tell that he has had a baby - and as Ive no other siblings there are no other chances for me to have a niece or nephew.