If you were me

LegacyUser

Imagine this:

you are in a long term relationship and your partner does the dirt on you. They leave you and move in with another. get married after a few months.

Your sibling stays friends with them.

You ask your sibling to choose. "Them or me"

They choose them.

What would you do?

LegacyUser

I hate to say it but you should never have asked your sibling to make the choice. It sounds to me that your bitterness has pushed your sibling away and asking them to make the choice was an easy decision in the end. I know it can be hard to get over these things but you can't ask people to make decisions between people they love.

username123

Unreged wrote: »

Imagine this:

you are in a long term relationship and your partner does the dirt on you. They leave you and move in with another. get married after a few months.

Your sibling stays friends with them.

You ask your sibling to choose. "Them or me"

They choose them.

What would you do?

I understand it was manky for you to have your sibling stay friends with the ex, but the sibling had already made the choice by doing that and you stating 'them or me' just let them make that choice 'official'. Leaving aside the fact that you asked the sibling to make the choice and just looking at this from the angle that your sibling has decided to display loyalty to someone who has hurt you you have 2 choices:
1: Move on and accept the friendship and maintain a relationship with your sibling.
2: Move on and cut contact with your sibling and leave the sibling and the ex to their own devices.

Without knowing any background about how friendly your sibling was with your ex or the nature of their relationship compared to the nature of yourself and your siblings relationship (for example were they friends since childhood and you were never close to sibling), or the nature of the breakup (did you behave very badly towards ex and cause sibling to side with ex - obviously the ex doing the dirt is bad form, but did you turn more psycho than was warranted etc...) - its really very hard to make a judgement on the situation.

But I personally dont hold with the 'blood thicker than water' line of thought and in fact am estranged from my own sibling because his behaviour is unacceptable to me. As far as I am concerned you treat it as you would treat anyone else, if you dont like their behaviour you move on and leave them to it. If a friend showed loyalty to your ex you would dump the friend right?

DublinWriter

Unreged wrote: »

What would you do?

Would never have asked sibling to choose sides in the first place.

Overheal

Unreged wrote: »

Imagine this:

you are in a long term relationship and your partner does the dirt on you. They leave you and move in with another. get married after a few months.

Your sibling stays friends with them.

You ask your sibling to choose. "Them or me"

They choose them.

What would you do?

Im sorry, but that sounds very immature. what happened between you and him/her has nothing to do with them. I would never have made that ultimatum.

Now that you have, what are you going to do? Your sibling called your bluff. You aint doing ****. You love your sibling. And you know it. What are you going to do, stop talking to them? Shun them? Disown them? Pfft. Good luck with that.

Bah humbug!

Blood should be thicker than water. A decent sibling should have your welfare as their primary concern.
I think your right to cut contact, when that clearly isn't the case.

Babbit

No harm, if my brother/sister told me to choose between them and a mate, I would cut them out as a point of principle. Only the most vacuous, vain and heartless of people would force such a question on someone.

robby^5

You did put your sibling on the spot so this reaction is natural, I'd say they dont really want to cut off contact with you but they would be a little angry that you're trying to dictate who they can and cant see, so I'd be humble and aplogise to him/her immediately.

Carsinian Thau

Apologise and take back your request.

People usually choose the person who didn't ask, just on point of principle and to make a point.

roadrunner 1

you are a classic example of a stupidity

Oryx

Moral of this story is never ask someone to choose something unless you are willing to accept the choice they may make. And you didnt ask 'them or me'. You really said 'choose me'.

I dont know the ins and outs of the situation but your choice to your sibling was probably a bit of a rock and a hard place for them. You were the person wronged, not your sibling. I know it sucks but sometimes you have to accept that people close to us are not willing to take offence on our behalf. They make their own decision on whether to cut this person off or not.

Reconcile with your sibling. Life is too short.

Wibbs

roadrunner 1 please take the weekend off to read the charter of this forum. That wasnt advice it was abusive.

Overheal

Babbit wrote: »

No harm, if my brother/sister told me to choose between them and a mate, I would cut them out as a point of principle. Only the most vacuous, vain and heartless of people would force such a question on someone.

I can see the principle behind that, but again as the sibling, I can think of very few cases and situations where I would outright cut a brother or sister out of my life for a slight. In this case the OP is going through a rough patch, has been burned, and is being emotional. I really could not envision cutting someone out for feeling hurt.

RacoonQueen

As much as I dislike(sometimes :pac: ) and don't get on that well with my siblings, if one of my friends, no matter how close I was to them did anything whatsoever to hurt one of my brothers or my sister like your ex did to you, I would f*cking kill said 'friend'.

LegacyUser

Personally I'm very close to me siblings so maybe my opinion doesn't count in this instance but I would find it odd that a sibling sided with an ex (regardless of the circumstances of the break-up) to be very strange indeed. Even if I had been the person in the wrong (I'm imagining a 3rd person scenario here) I would expect that they would be fairly hard on me and be angry with me for being so stupid but still, they would still be my sibling and see their "loyalties" as being to me...

It may be naiive but I would expect that my family would be on "my side" and if they weren't then there is obviously something deficient in your relationship with your sibling or something deficient with them as a whole.

Again, I'm just basing this on my own situatuation but take from it what you will..

wasper

Unreged wrote: »

Imagine this:

you are in a long term relationship and your partner does the dirt on you. They leave you and move in with another. get married after a few months.

Your sibling stays friends with them.

You ask your sibling to choose. "Them or me"

They choose them.

What would you do?

My sympathy is with you. Siblings can be so selfish & callous. They should realise that you are hurting so much from the cheating & the breakup. Yet they stay friends with the other side. I call it bad form.

robbie_998

<snip>

but back to the original query,

it was kind of selfish to ask your sibling in the first place though i can see why you would have an issue with it but a lot of other people would've done the same.... just instinct.

but also your sibling was wrong to choose the ex... maybe you ranted at your sibling about it or something to make her choose.. we dont know but i do kinda agree with you with this issue.... your sibling shouldn't be soo mean about it

LegacyUser

I am so sorry for what has happened to you. Your sibling staying friends with your ex after what he/she did to you is awful i would never forgive my sibling if they did that but i can honestly say my siblings would never do that we are an extremely close family. Do you and your sibling not get along well?

JonathanAnon

It's something that you are just going to have to learn to deal with. Was a stupid thing to do to make your sibling choose, but you can do childish spiteful things when you feel wronged.

Just apologise to your siblings and explain that it is hard for you. And just try avoid being in the same places as your ex and them. For the moment anyway.

lynsalot

Hi OP you've not given us much details so i'm not sure i can help. I think you must be very hurt as is normal from a breakup. it's so hard to see ppl we loved moving on.The thing is though that at least u got out now - not ten years down the road with kids involved. It would be so much harder.

I think you probably over reacted asking your sibling to choose. Now that's presuming there's not more to the story - hard to say really. I think you'd achieve more by explaining how awkward it makes u feel and you really need some moral support right now to see things rationally. I also feel that if u start going out again and invest in your social life. Make new friends, meet new ppl it won't seem so important.

Hopefully my advice helped. If you want to chat, pm me, I'm more than happy to help. Hope things work out for you.

Lindsay

Avoiding Work

I agree with the previous posts saying it was unfair / immature of you to ask your sibling to choose. I also agree that it may have been done out of hurt / spite / anger for putting them in such a position.

If I were you I would
a) (IF you are genuinely sorry for asking them to choose) apologise and accept that they are friends with both parties or
b) (If you feel you were right to do so) accept that you "lost" and move on.

LegacyUser

I would expect support from my family first and foremost.

Reading between the lines I think you should not tough it out with your sibling. My instinct would be to recind the ultimatum. The reason being to give yourself an easier life and self interest.

It would change the way I would treat that person and I would probably not trust them again.

roadrunner 1

you know just because you fell out, why should the sibling? fair play to them not being dictated to. you should respect them not loathe them. your acting as if your in a play ground..... grow up

Agent J

Something for anyone commenting on this to bear in mind.

We dont have all the facts. No offence intended to the OP but there is the age old saying of 3 versions of a story. Yours,Theirs and the Truth.

You need to let people make up their own mind on whom they want to be involved with. You cannt force people to do things your own way and must respect their choices. The most you can ask for is that you are not a topic of conversation and anything to do with you is off limits.

You might have very serious isssues with this person. You cannot expect anyone else to have the same issues.

LegacyUser

I would be very close to my sisters and know they would back me up on anything so i would never be in the position where i would need to them to choose. However i think in this situation when it was obvious that your sibling was staying friends with your ex after what he/she had done to you i do think it was probably a bit naive of you to ask them to chose as the original act of them remaining friends with you ex said it all.

I never think family feuds are a good idea. You never mentioned what the rest of your family think of all this but maybe for a peaceful life it would be good to let this go with your sibling (i wouldn't go as far as appologising as i don't think you are in the wrong). Try not let yourself be eaten up with bitterness over the whole thing.. esp the ex. Try draw a line under the situation and see your sibling for what they are and don't expect anything from them in future. Unfortunately as they say, you can choose your frineds but not your family, you have obviously been unfortunate with your sibling.

Firetrap

I think you should start making an effort to make up with your sibling. Making them choose in the first place wasn't the brightest thing to do and to be honest smacks of the sort of thing that 6 year old kids do in the school playground.

What went on between you and your ex has nothing to do with your sibling. You can't make someone choose their friends, least of all an adult.

There are many reasons why you should apologise to your sibling. From a practical point of view, think of the problems and awkwardness it may cause at family occasions. Also, if you leave things too long the rift will fester and ill-feeling stirred up.

LegacyUser

While I can well understand the terrible hurt you must feel - if I was in that
situation knowing firstly that it would take me a while to get over the betrayal
I would NOT ALLOW the individual who did this to you destroy the rest of your
life that you have to live. Regarding your sibling in loving your son/daughter/child
you must seem them as a separate person to you, they still love you, they still
are loyal to you, they are not betraying you by still being friendly to the person
who has deeply hurt you because your relationship with your ex is your issue not
your siblings and seeing them as a separate person. a person whose happiness
is paramount to your feelings I know would make this 'friendship' with your ex and
his wife a lot easier to bear - you will find when you let go of the wish for your
sibling to be loyal to you and let them make up their own mind it will work in your
favour. Let the anguish go - you have enough to cope with regarding your own
feelings - in doing so, you will find things will work out in the end.
Sometimes we have to accept that while a relationship with a person for whatever
reason dies, in our wisdom, we have to accept that the relationship your sibling
had with your ex was on a different level and acknowledge they did get along with each other.
I hope this might help you to see things in a different light

Dr Bolouswki

Moonbaby wrote: »

Bah humbug!

Blood should be thicker than water. A decent sibling should have your welfare as their primary concern.
I think your right to cut contact, when that clearly isn't the case.

You're saying family should be more important than principles and if they don't agree you should cut off contact with your family? Aren't you totally contradicting yourself?

To the OP: you should never put an ultimatium like this to someone - obvisouly we dont know all the details, but outside of a very limited set of circumstances involving violence or soemthing similar, I can't see why a family member should give up a personal relationship simply because you have fallen out with that person.