Depressed: My brother is ending our relationship!
Hi. My name is Rich and I posted a topic days ago and I want you to know that I'm not ending the relationship with my brother... he's ending the relationship with me! Ever since I received his e-mail (please see below) I am being silenced by him. There is nothing worse than being ignored. He must have hated the OCD humor I sent him. Oh my God! What do I do now?
DAYS AGO I WROTE: "My name is Rich and I just want to end my relationship with my brother Doug because I am angry after the condescending e-mail he sent me. (see below) I said I was sorry and sent him an e-mail which had an OCD humor article. He mustn't have liked it because he has been silent for a week. Why should I apologize to him? I'm not sure if he has OCD, can you tell me? He may not want to admit to it but he has had therapy in general. I don't know for what. He doesn't want to shake hands with me or anyone and also he uses hand sanitizer. For example, when we went to the museum he and his ex-wife whipped out the hand sanitizer after touching the exhibits. At his house, he told his ex-wife "No mail in the kitchen" because he fears that it has anthrax on it. He got a divorce and his ex-wife cited mental cruelty because I know how he can be: very controlling. Everything must be in its place. Don't dare put something back where it doesn't belong. When you go to the movies with him, he wants to sit in the back row next to the wall. And I just give in and accept that because I'm trying to be the nice older brother. When we watch a movie at home, he will not allow talking during the movie, if you say one peep during the hour and a half he says, "I don't like talking during the movie. I lose the continuity of what's going on." He used to brush his teeth for an hour. When we visit my mother's house he has to have his own dish towel on the back of a kitchen chair to dry his hands after using the kitchen sink. He warns everyone not to dry their hands on "his" dish towel. Does he sound like he has OCD? I e-mailed him about joining this online OCD Group and he e-mailed back: "Why would I be interested in an OCD group?: Do you ever actually listen to me when we talk?"
I confronted him as delicately as possible and he has responded:
"Rich, I'm not going to get sucked into this and defend myself. Obviously you think you've got me all figured out, just like you've figured out every person and personality in our family. You've built your case against me, ignoring what I've told you about OCD, about myself, and what two trained doctors of psychology have said about me. I've noticed that you ignore alot of what I say to you. Well please try not to ignore this. I would like you to consider that you are a serial pathologizer. You have a tendancy to pathologize every behavior of everybody you know. This is unhealthy for you and very unhealthy for your relationships. I devote more time and energy to our relationship than I do to most others. But you are making it harder and harder for me to want to do this. Please think about what I said about you being a serial pathologizer and tell me what you think.
I know you think this OCD email was an attempt to be helpful, but it just showed me that you have taken it upon yourself to approach our relationship more as a therapist than as a friend. It also showed me that you have been secretly monitoring my behavior, keeping a list, and building a case against me. This makes me feel like you are judging me, and have been for years, which makes me not want to be around you. Your email also confirmed for me that you listen to me selectively, hearing a skewed version of events that jibes with your pre-formed world view. I never asked you to be my therapist, so please stop monitoring and pathologizing me. Doug"
I feel yelled at. Do you think he's yelling at me? Does he have OCD? What do you think of this "pathologizing" business? What opinion do YOU have?"
Rich
DAYS AGO I WROTE: "My name is Rich and I just want to end my relationship with my brother Doug because I am angry after the condescending e-mail he sent me. (see below) I said I was sorry and sent him an e-mail which had an OCD humor article. He mustn't have liked it because he has been silent for a week. Why should I apologize to him? I'm not sure if he has OCD, can you tell me? He may not want to admit to it but he has had therapy in general. I don't know for what. He doesn't want to shake hands with me or anyone and also he uses hand sanitizer. For example, when we went to the museum he and his ex-wife whipped out the hand sanitizer after touching the exhibits. At his house, he told his ex-wife "No mail in the kitchen" because he fears that it has anthrax on it. He got a divorce and his ex-wife cited mental cruelty because I know how he can be: very controlling. Everything must be in its place. Don't dare put something back where it doesn't belong. When you go to the movies with him, he wants to sit in the back row next to the wall. And I just give in and accept that because I'm trying to be the nice older brother. When we watch a movie at home, he will not allow talking during the movie, if you say one peep during the hour and a half he says, "I don't like talking during the movie. I lose the continuity of what's going on." He used to brush his teeth for an hour. When we visit my mother's house he has to have his own dish towel on the back of a kitchen chair to dry his hands after using the kitchen sink. He warns everyone not to dry their hands on "his" dish towel. Does he sound like he has OCD? I e-mailed him about joining this online OCD Group and he e-mailed back: "Why would I be interested in an OCD group?: Do you ever actually listen to me when we talk?"
I confronted him as delicately as possible and he has responded:
"Rich, I'm not going to get sucked into this and defend myself. Obviously you think you've got me all figured out, just like you've figured out every person and personality in our family. You've built your case against me, ignoring what I've told you about OCD, about myself, and what two trained doctors of psychology have said about me. I've noticed that you ignore alot of what I say to you. Well please try not to ignore this. I would like you to consider that you are a serial pathologizer. You have a tendancy to pathologize every behavior of everybody you know. This is unhealthy for you and very unhealthy for your relationships. I devote more time and energy to our relationship than I do to most others. But you are making it harder and harder for me to want to do this. Please think about what I said about you being a serial pathologizer and tell me what you think.
I know you think this OCD email was an attempt to be helpful, but it just showed me that you have taken it upon yourself to approach our relationship more as a therapist than as a friend. It also showed me that you have been secretly monitoring my behavior, keeping a list, and building a case against me. This makes me feel like you are judging me, and have been for years, which makes me not want to be around you. Your email also confirmed for me that you listen to me selectively, hearing a skewed version of events that jibes with your pre-formed world view. I never asked you to be my therapist, so please stop monitoring and pathologizing me. Doug"
I feel yelled at. Do you think he's yelling at me? Does he have OCD? What do you think of this "pathologizing" business? What opinion do YOU have?"
Rich
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ellen S on -
Hi Rich,
I'm sorry for what your family is experiencing right now. It must be very hard. I can't comment on most of your questions because I'm not a doctor. I have an imperfect family full of imperfect people, and so have been around the block a few times, and would offer you this:
Question 1. What is most important to you - being correct, or being in your brother's life? Your answer to that question determines your course of action. You may be right, but what does that matter if you have lost your brother?
Estrangement of a brother/father/child/friend/etc is like a foot in wet cement. The longer your foot is in it, the harder it is to get your foot out. Eventually it may be impossible, and the damage done to the foot is great.
At some point in our lives, we all have to make peace with the fact that we will have to learn to agree to disagree. That's how we survive in a world full of other imperfect people. Time usually sees the truth told, the right or wrong of it determined when we "play it out" with character qualities we'd like to see in the other person. Much of life is about tolerance, patience, and resisting the urge to speak, even when we are right.
If your brother truly has OCD, he is probably miserable, because by definition it is disturbing his life and his ability to function normally. Eventually he will likely need you in his life even though he is too upset to realize it today.
That brings us 'round to question #1 again...
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Permalink Reply by John on -
Hi Rich,
I think you are looking for some adivce, but to answer your questions…
You can’t really tell if someone is yelling at you through emails, sometimes people write in CAPS for that—but he hasn’t here… He does sound very angry though.
Does he have OCD? I’m not a doctor, so I’m not really sure. However, I do think those are bizarre behaviors that should be looked at. Apparently they already have been?
Maybe he is OCD…but he’s not going to get help until he wants to. It’s probably a very sensitive subject for him, which is why he got so defensive. He feels attacked.
It may be too late to save your relationship with your brother, but the first thing you could do is apologize. Unfortunately for you, you’re in the wrong here. Apologies are in order. Maybe you could have said something in person rather than indirectly through an email invitation? It would just make your concerns more genuine and heart-felt, and maybe he wouldn’t react in the same way.
Let’s face it, what you did wasn’t the funniest thing in the world—you can’t really blame him for getting upset. Like I said, I would just apologize. It’s all you really can do at this point.
I agree with Ellen that you should ask yourself what is most important to you - being correct, or being in your brother's life?
Good luck
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Permalink Reply by EilBak on -
Hey Rich,
I am just like all those others before me, very sorry for what your family has to experience at the very moment. It is hard to understand, what kind of your relationship you and your brother used to have, because it sounds to me, that it always has been (just like your brother used to write it) kind of the relationship between a therapist and its inpatient (that is just the impression I get by reading those email). Nevertheless it seems to me it was kind of an analytical than loving relationship, but I might have got that wrong.
If you really want your brother back I guess you should talk to him one on one, because solving problems via email contact to my mind is very hard and sometimes impossible, because there are so many things missing that are connected to solving problems and to understand the other one's situation properly. You do never know how he really feels, if you are just writing with him, because you cannot hear his voice and the tone of the voice, you cannot see his eyes and the glance and the way he would look at you if you would be standing right in front of him.
You should solve this problem because family is your own blood and it is very important.
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