Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I don't really have family, at least nobody whom I talk to. I left my parents' house when I was twenty-one. I left no forwarding address.

I never intended to look back, but my older brother changed that. I trusted him, and yet he gave my phone number and address to my parents. His rationale was that they were worried about me. I felt that this was the feeblest of excuses. He could easily have told them that he had spoken to me quite recently and that I was fine. Instead, he dealt me the ultimate betrayal. I have never REALLY understood why he did this, and the topic was so painful to me that after the initial confrontation I didn't probe further.

Armed with the information that my brother had provided, my father started calling me on the phone. He even showed up on my doorstep. I can't tell you how stressful this was. I mean, I loved my father, I really did, but when I was a teenager, he made it quite clear that he supported my mother against me--even though she was quite obviously screwed up psychologically and was inflicting psychological abuse on me. So after I moved away, we got into heated arguments on the phone, during which I would completely lose it and my then-partner wound up taking over the argument and then hanging up in a fury. And when I opened the front door and saw my father standing there, I went into full panic mode. All the blood left my head, I started shaking uncontrollably, and I could barely speak. I was terrified. Since I left home, I have always had that reaction to him even if I was not face to face with him. He showed up at my job on several occasions. I always refused to see him, and I always went into a panic. My boss must have thought that my father was a serial killer or something.

My brother could not have known that this would be my reaction, of course, but HE was the one who kept warning ME to leave home as soon as possible for my sanity's sake. And then when I did, he stabbed me in the back. By giving my parents access to me, he exposed me to the entreaties of not only my parents but my other relatives. I received cards and letters from everyone. Because I felt responsible for their hurt feelings, I started vacillating and wallowing in guilt feelings. I think that if I had been able to make the clean break that I had planned, I would have been much healthier. But my brother opened the door, and (at that time) I didn't know how to close it again. My attempts to deal with my parents led me to my previous therapist, who (perhaps unintentionally) really messed with my head, after which I swore off therapy for life (or fifteen years, anyway). I obviously would have had to work through my feelings at some point, but I should have been allowed to choose when and how and whether to reestablish contact with my folks. My brother's actions skewed everything.

I didn't cut my brother off completely, but my feelings for him cooled considerably. Four or five years later, he let me know that he would be in my neck of the woods with his wife and daughter. He wanted to see me. I was excited but apprehensive. I agreed to see him because I still loved him and because I was thinking that we could have an hour alone and I could talk about the betrayal that still made me feel that I could not trust him. I have always felt that some betrayals are essentially unforgivable, but I also felt that since he was my brother, I owed him a second chance.

Well, our reunion didn't turn out the way I expected. He seemed to go out of his way never to be alone with me, and dinner turned out to be a veritable party with all of his old friends, whom he had not seen in some years. I wasn't treated as a sibling; I was lost in the crowd. I didn't even get to sit next to him at the dinner table.

This made me so angry that it was the last time I saw him. That was about twenty years ago.

After I came out this summer, I (perhaps inevitably) started reevaluating my entire past. I've reaffirmed that I cannot have any kind of relationship with my parents, but I am thinking of making contact with my brother again. I googled him and can reach him by e-mail. If I do write to him, I want to come out to him and tell him that he has a brother, not a sister. I want him to know how much pain he caused me, and I want to find out if he had other reasons for telling my parents where to find me. I'm not angry about that anymore, but I do still hurt a bit when I think about it because the ramifications were huge and completely shifted the direction of my life.

I suppose I'll talk to my therapist about this at some point, but I'd like some other feedback. I have no way of knowing whether I can trust my brother. If I do make contact, I don't plan to give him any information that my parents might find useful. I'll provide an e-mail address and nothing else. I won't tell him where I live, whom I live with, or where I work. I might even use a pseudonym.

I keep asking myself this question, though: if I feel the need to take such precautions, is it really worth it? I don't think of shared DNA as a good reason to have a relationship with someone. I don't believe in the adage that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family--that is, I can't choose whom I'm related to, but I can darn well choose whether to have anything to do with those relatives. And yet I still find myself drawn to my brother, like a moth to the flame.

The moth has no choice, but I do. When faced with such a choice, I tend to err on the side of self-preservation. But maybe it's worth the risk. Maybe.

Insights, anyone?

If you love your brother, make contact. That's what I would do, cause I hate to leave things unresolved with those I love. People aren't around forever. But that's me.

I'm guessing it's been at least a few years since you've last talked, so if you decide to make contact, I'd take things slow - catch up on his life and some of yours before you lay any bombshells.
I wouldn't do both the coming out and the heart to heart about his betrayal in the same time frame.
Decide which one can't wait and then re-establish your relationship a bit before broaching the other one.

I think family can be really important. They can be part of your history, your origins, your landmark in life.
It sounds to me like you want that link, you want to have a good relationship with your brother that you want to have a brother again. Someone with a shared upbringing, someone who understands things nobody else does, that piece of you that might be missing.

But I don't think your hesitance is about trust. It is about the hurt you still feel. In practise you ended up an orphan. Getting in touch with him might be like picking at an old scab to see if it is healed but perhaps talking to him about this stuff might be healing for you.

You never know, he might also be yearing for the sibling he once had.

Arch, do you know what your brother's relationship is with your parents?

Quote from: Leiandra on September 22, 2008, 12:33:49 AM
Arch, do you know what your brother's relationship is with your parents?

I have no idea. I haven't spoken to him in nearly twenty years, and I cut off my parents about fifteen years ago. However, he used to keep them and our other relatives at arm's length and would blow into town every couple of years, visit everyone in one day, and then disappear again. He never wrote to me (his wife wrote occasionally), so I don't think he wrote to them.

I don't know anything.

Before he left home, he pulled me aside and told me to prepare myself because he used to take all of our mother's crap and now he would not be deflecting her from me anymore. I thought things were pretty bad already; and until he said that, I had no idea that he was protecting me from her. And when I was old enough, he used to urge me to get a job and to move out as soon as possible, at eighteen if I could. So it's not like my mother started being a problem after he moved out.

He lives in Hawaii now, on the Big Island. My parents still live in Southern California. I doubt that he sees them more than once a year, but I suppose he could be friendlier with them than he used to be. Anything is possible, right?

Nicky, I've always been pretty disconnected from family. My mother hated her family, so I never knew her parents or anyone from that side of the family. I saw them two or three times in my life. Since I was a military brat, I also spent long periods away from my father's side of the family and never really cared about any of them. I started distancing myself from my mother when I was about nine and felt completely disconnected from her by my early teens. I loved my dad and was uncritical of him until he started supporting my mother against me when I was sixteen. I can't blame him--she's his wife, and he was caught in the middle. And I had always been crazy about my brother until he told them where to find me. But you're right, I crave that connection. We were siblings. We grew up together. Not to mention that he might remember some things from my early childhood that I can't recall. But mainly he's just my big brother, and I've been thinking about him more and more since I came out.

I wish I weren't thinking about him. Life is so much simpler when I don't have to deal with people, especially relatives.

Do you think it's possible that the reason your brother did what he did was because he felt pressured into it? Not because he wanted to betray you, but because your parents had some sort of hold over him, or wouldn't stop harrassing him, to the extent that he felt he had no other choice?

Before your parents got your personal details, did they know how to get hold of your brother?

Quote from: Leiandra on September 22, 2008, 01:43:29 AM
Do you think it's possible that the reason your brother did what he did was because he felt pressured into it? Not because he wanted to betray you, but because your parents had some sort of hold over him, or wouldn't stop harrassing him, to the extent that he felt he had no other choice?

Before your parents got your personal details, did they know how to get hold of your brother?

Hunh. I never thought of that. I mean, I'm sure that they put him on the spot. They had his contact info and probably called him to see if he knew anything.

He was in his late twenties by then, had finished school, and was working. So was his wife (now his ex-wife), and they had a housemate to help cut their overhead. BUT--I know that my father used to secretly send him money out of his individual account (behind my mother's back), to help with school and living expenses. I suppose my father could have used that as a wedge. And I have no idea what kind of mental state my mother was in after I left; that could have been a factor.

Seems to me that if my brother had been unduly pressured, he would have trotted that out in his defense, though. Then again, maybe he was embarrassed about the whole thing, especially when I reacted with such anger. We were both always somewhat reticent and reserved--in my family, people didn't show their emotions--so perhaps he backed off after he found out how furious I was.

Heck, maybe he's the one who was worried. He lived in another city, but my parents didn't. I disappeared one day without any warning. So maybe he figured that they could check up on me and make sure I was okay. But I had told him that I was fine...he had no reason to think that I wasn't.

If I do get in touch with him again, I don't want my parents to know about it. I definitely don't intend to seek them out, and I wouldn't want them to get their hopes up. So I would be asking my brother to keep me a secret. He would have to keep my gender a secret, too. My father might understand about my gender, but my mother? No way. I don't love her, but I'd rather keep her ignorant. She'd be much happier that way.

I hadn't thought about this before; I guess it wouldn't be very fair to ask my brother to keep a secret like that, would it?

Jeez. Maybe I should just let sleeping dogs lie.

If you want my honest opinion, Arch, I think it might be an idea to clear the air between you. You're both older and, hopefully, wiser. Get all this sorted out once and for all... find out exactly what happened and why. Tell him how you feel and how what he did affected you, in a calm and rational way. Then hear his side of it, and his motivations.

When all's said and done, he is your brother.

Do you really want to spend the next twenty years asking yourself the same questions and wondering what could have been between you? Time has a way of seasoning people's attitudes, and giving new perspectives on things.

My advice would be to meet him, have a good heart to heart about everything... and if, at the end of it, you still feel that you need to go your seperate ways, then you'll do so knowing that there's been nothing left unsaid between you.

You don't want the next chance to say all the things you really want to say... to be when you're throwing a handful of dirt into a six-foot deep hole. Trust me on that one.

Quote from: Leiandra on September 22, 2008, 03:15:11 AM
You don't want the next chance to say all the things you really want to say... to be when you're throwing a handful of dirt into a six-foot deep hole. Trust me on that one.

Believe me, I know this too well. I cut off my beloved mentor after a misunderstanding and was too embarrassed to face him when I realized how stupid I had been. One night in 2007, I finally decided to make contact again, as soon as possible. I came home to an e-mail stating that he had died unexpectedly that very day. He was only forty-four. I am still working through my grief--and my guilt.

A few days later, I received some more unwelcome news, this time about an old friend from high school and college who had been stricken with severe mental illness in his early twenties. I had lost touch, found him again, and sent him an e-mail--but he committed suicide the day before I sent him the message. He never even had a chance to read it. He was young, too--only forty.

It was eerie to have almost the same thing happen with both--my deciding to make contact again, I mean--and to learn about their deaths in the same week.

I haven't really had any active feeling for my brother in years, but coming out has had a profound effect on my perceptions and my priorities. So have these two deaths. Keeping my brother out of my life keeps me safe, but I'm not sure that's worth it anymore. And if something did happen to him before I had a chance to at least try to clear the air, I'm not sure how I would take it. Not well, I'm sure.

Time to ruminate.

I'm sorry to hear about your two loved one's that are no longer here but I think you should give your brother a chance to clear the air and if you two don't you can still resume your normal life hopefully happy.I hope the 3rd times a charm in getting a hold of someone I hope nothing happens to your brother.

Well you can never really choose your family so i would try but just say to him if it could be just you and him or just get to know him more. As it has been a hwile since youve last talked