posted
13 to 17 is a big diffrence. I'd bet he doesn't feel like the same person any more, and probably thinks you don't know the person he is now. And many male 17 year olds are pretty reticient about hugging family members.
I know that doesn't really help, but I'd bet that in a few more years things will be completely different again, and you'll be able to have an adult friendship. I'd try to start up a correspondance with him if you can, particularly when he goes off to college, if he does.
Good luck, and *hugs*. Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Puffy, I understand why this hurts so much, but you need to take a step back and remember that he is a 17 year old guy. The fact that he was so distant from you is pretty typical 17 year old guy behavior. I don't think this reflects anything real about the way he feels about you.
My younger brother (only 4.5 years younger than I am), barely spoke to me or any other member of the family between about age 14 and age 19. I moved away from home when he was 17 and didn't see him for nearly 2 years. When I did see him next he was literally jumping up and down and ran over and hugged me. My first thought was, "Who are you? You look like my brother but you don't act like him at all."
I also have a sister who is 10 years younger than I am, we were very close when she was a kid and are very close now that we are both adults but during her teenage years it was a totally different story.
I was at a 60th birthday celebration recently for a colleague. His younger sister (~5 years younger) spoke and showed pictures as part of a roast. She had lots of pictures of him as a boy and then jumped from pictures of him at about age 13 to pictures of him around 20. She said, "there are no pictures of him between these ages because none of us saw him for about 7 years. We all lived in the same house, but he never opened his door and never spoke to any of us."
I'm not trying to excuse your brother. He treated you awfully. But maybe it will hurt less if you realize that his behavior was pretty typical of teenage guys. Hard as it is, you need to try not to take it personally because two years from now you don't want this to interfere with your friendship. He is right on the cusp of outgrowing this. Give him a year or so and I suspect he will be back to the loving friendly brother he use to be.
[ January 17, 2007, 11:02 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Puffy Treat: 17, which I suppose may explain a lot about the shift in attitude towards me since the move.
I bet it explains 99.9 percent of it. Not knowing the particulars, it's pretty easy to see the difference between affection for from young 13 year old and a 17 year old. At 17, who has the desire or ability to handle awkward relationships? Its a super tough age- probably more about him than you, since you don't really change that much from 26 to 30.
Rabbit- Having been "that teenage guy" in high school myself, hating everything about my family and unable to bear the sight of them for several years, (and for no particular reason), I can completely sympathize with him.
Even today at almost 22, I have a relationship with my family that is marked by that distance. Very often, as I've spoken of here, they pigeonhole me and force me into that role- they treat me as if I was the person they remember from when we all lived together. I can be a completely other and mature and feel like a normal person when I am with friends who accept and understand me, but the looks I get from family members sometimes, the feeling I get from them, the latent hostility, still makes spending a long time with them make me sick at heart.
For whatever reason, there are many to choose from, my family holds our relationship against me, sometimes to an unbearable degree. I was never really bad or mean, nor did I do REALLY bad things or ever hurt anyone, but visiting with my family now can try my patience with them. They, especially my mother, continue to do things that naturally irritated me and sparked problems when I was a teen. I think they do it out of habit and a kind of lingering need to have me be the same person with the same issues I used to have.
It's easier to deal with the devil you know, so my mother continues to burst into my room without knocking, because she'll know what I'm going to say, and she'll know that the issue will always be between us- same goes for most of my "personal space" issues at home. It doesn't seem to matter that I have literally asked my Mother, (and I've done a mental estimation based on weekly averages) , about 1,500 times to please knock on my door before trying the knob. She tries it every time, and if the lock isn't engaged, she opens it. Once I sat her down in the kitchen and told her how many times I had asked her for this, and she shrugged me off, as if it had never happened. Each time it does, EACH TIME, and this is averaging once a day when I was in highschool, she would promise to knock- and she never has. Never. It's crazy, but I just think she relies on that conflict to always be there. Really, it's twilight zone stuff sometimes.
posted
I'll just echo what others said, though maybe with a little more credit, being only recently 18 myself. Last summer, when I was 17, I basically told my family I was sick and tired of them and would rather be hiking. Then I left and went hiking. You might remember me doing that. I meant to stay out for 6 months. I was big and bad and ready to be my own person, not a member of my family. After a month, I broke. I missed them too much. I came home. Prodigal son and whatnot. But all that to say, sometimes it takes a 200+ mile hike in mosquito infested miserable wilderness to make a 17 year old boy realize that he needs his family.
My brother is just three years older than me. We grew up together. We spent a lot of time together, both as children and when we moved to Canada when he was finding his feet here. Sometimes, I feel like he is the person in the family who most "gets" me. And I feel like I am the person who most "gets" him. Our younger sisters are much younger than us.
I can't remember ever getting a hug from him and I doubt that I ever will. We never had that kind of relationship and I think he's happiest that way. Usually, I hope for a conversation every couple of months.
However, that's just my story. I'm not at all saying that this is your situation. I agree wholeheartedly with what others. Boys seem to lose familial ability in their formative years. I think, however, that they do usually 'come back', especially if you respect their 'adult' space that they've made.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
What it sounds like to me is that he's been away from you for a while, has grown up a bit, and doesn't know how to relate to you. I'm 9 and 10 years younger than my sisters, and the youngest older one went to the Air Force when I was 10 years old. She was pretty much gone for like 4 or 5 years before I really had a chance to spend good time with her again when she came back. I didn't know how to relate to her, and because I was a stupid young kid I didn't know how to go about even starting to relate to her. So instead I ignored her and left her alone. She finally broke the ice and pushed the issue and we got to know each other again. Maybe this is what you are experiencing as well.
Posts: 1042 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
My brother and I had, in many ways, a rotten childhood. When I got married and moved away, I was doing what was right for me-- and he got really mad at me for "abandoning" him. It was really hard, and it just about broke my heart. Luckily, he is over it now. I mean, he has other problems, but he's over that. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Dr Strangelove: I'll just echo what others said, though maybe with a little more credit, being only recently 18 myself. Last summer, when I was 17, I basically told my family I was sick and tired of them and would rather be hiking. Then I left and went hiking. You might remember me doing that. I meant to stay out for 6 months. I was big and bad and ready to be my own person, not a member of my family. After a month, I broke. I missed them too much. I came home. Prodigal son and whatnot. But all that to say, sometimes it takes a 200+ mile hike in mosquito infested miserable wilderness to make a 17 year old boy realize that he needs his family.
Never went on the hike (or perhaps I did) but by the age of 18 I was fed up with my family. Not every single member, my youngest brother and I were REALLY close, but I was sick of them as a whole. I became a missionary a year later, and by the end of those 2 years, I loved my family. To this day I am VERY happy when they are in town. Two of my siblings live in Utah and that makes me really happy, if I could live under the same roof as my family, I would love it, as weird as that sounds.
Puffy, I know its hard to see a relationship change so drastically and for no good reason, but give your brother his space, just continue to be genuine and kind to him and I think everything will be OK. I am not promising that things will return to how they were. A 12 year old boy is an entirely different vehicle then a 17 year old. He possibly thinks that you and him have alot less in common, or perhaps he has his circle of friends and he feels they are what is important in his life.
I had a brother that by the age of 23 I was ready to disown. He wasn't an evil person by any stretch of the word, but he drove me nuts with his quirks and idiosyncrasies. I had no idea how somebody so different could have been raised by the same parents as myself. I'm approaching 25 and I invite this brother over to my house every single weekend and holiday because I honestly enjoy his company much more, I understand him much better, and his faults have become projects that I want to help alleviate. I have learned to get along with him, even want him around now. Maybe I've changed, maybe he changed, but I'm only in my 20's, who knows what our relationship will be in 5 more years? 10? 20? 30? All *I* can do is be the best person I can be, and provide a presence of which my family feels comfortable around.
Your brother is choosing the terms of your relationship right now. Thats fine, many boys his age are selfish and yet have no idea what they really want. My advice is be a safe haven for him, let him know that you love him and enjoy his company. One day, he might decide that he needs more of you in his life.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I know that all of what each of you have been saying is true.
Still, it's a bitter pill to swallow. I was able to repress these feelings of misery during my visit, but it just all came crashing down on me yesterday.
Thanks for your words of sympathy, and your advice.
quote:Originally posted by Puffy Treat: I know that all of what each of you have been saying is true.
Still, it's a bitter pill to swallow. I was able to repress these feelings of misery during my visit, but it just all cam crashing down on me yesterday.
Thanks for your words of sympathy, and your advice.
Embrace the sadness insofar as it confirms a very important truth, that you love your brother, and you care about your relationship with him.
Just try and do nice things for him, I was impressed that you actually sat down and asked him about this, most people are not so direct, and directly is really the best approach in this instance. Does your brother use instant messenger services? Email? I'm just guessing but I imagine he talks to alot of his friends using those two mediums. Why not write him and just ask him how things with school/friends/girls are? Add him to your MSN list or AOL IM and just say hi and try to strike up conversations with him on occasion. Just let him know you care, but you are not going to stifle him with love.
You might coax him into trusting you. If there is one thing that was true about at least me, I craved people to talk to especially those who I thought were wise. Even a confidant was nice to have.
You know I am really close to digressing into a pet peeve of mine. I personally think all 18-21 year old boys need to be either impressed into the military or else locked up and forced to do community service. Boys at that age really are not that hard to figure out, they are just clearly in need of a swift kick to the butt, too bad thats illegal now.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I wasn't a big part of my family for a good bit of last year. Mostly due to homework and extracurriculars, but I never went out of my way to spend time with them. Everything about them was, well.. some of it still is, like nails on a chalkboard. I couldn't physically stand being around them.
Good luck, PT. Perhaps all he needs is some time to get over himself.
Posts: 1215 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
My sister and I were the same way when we were younger. She is only 3 years older than me but when she was 17 and I was 14, we went from being able to talk and "chill" to her not being around. She would ditch family events because she had other things to do and friends to hang out with. She became "estranged" (for lack of a better term) from the whole family. This lasted until after she graduated from college. Now that she is older and has a family of her own, she has realized the importance of family and makes a point to stay in contact with me. She lives only minutes from our parents, but since Kwea and I moved a year and a half ago, she is 1200 miles from me. We talk often, if not through daily emails, we talk on the phone every few days. I know everything going on with her family, in fact I know that her older daughter was home sick from school today.
Give it time and most likely, he will grow out of it. He has to have time to discover himself and the man he will become. I know it's hard now, but have patience with him and don't let it bother you too much.
Posts: 325 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
He also might have felt awkward around you. I'm not generally good with people, and when I see someone after both of our situations have drastically changed, I tend to not do anything, for fear of doing something wrong. Maybe you could email him with some tidbit of news you think he'd find interesting, or something. Nothing that would demand a really long response from him, but something that he would know how to respond to, so he wouldn't have to worry about whether his response was right or wrong.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Thing is, this is all speculation. We don't know why your brother didn't show you affection. It *might* be being 17 (a good bet), or it *might* be that he's not spoken with you in a while (another good bet)... but it might also be that he's depressed. Or that he's angry with you. Or that he's not sure he's welcome with you. Or something else.
You *can* give him time, and it might fix itself. It might not.
Sorry to be so not-comforting. You can let him know you want to hear what's up, when he wants to talk; maybe you already did.
Bless you for caring so much!
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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