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My Brother The Jerk
burqued505
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I'm 39, my brother is 46. My brother, lets call him Roger, has a very difficulty time with human interaction. He finds it difficult to begin and maintain friendships and impossible to have a relationship with the opposite sex. Roger is all about quid pro quo. If he does you a favor and the next week you find yourself out to lunch with him, he assumes that you're buying. That's not to say that I would buy him lunch, but with him it's expected. So Roger an I went hiking last weekend, he forgot his water bottle in my car. Roger conveniently forgets personal items in my car and around my house as a excuse to stop by. Since he couldn't live without his water bottle, he had been pestering me about stopping by after work to pick it up, I agreed. I arrive from work at 6:00pm to find Roger waiting in the driveway. He asks if he could use my computer since the neighbor's internet has been down for days and he's too cheap to actually pay for service. Again, I agree. My wife calls on her way home, she was thinking of stopping for some Thai on the way home. I ask her to please pick up enough for Roger as well, not wanting him to feel unwelcome. We sit down to dinner at 7:30. Roger sits, shoveling food into face, eyes fixed down at his plate. After 15 minute of uncomfortable conversation, Roger gets up and walks to my office to continue his internet actives, leaving behind a dirty plate and various bits of food on the table. A few minute later I check to see what Roger is up to, he's working on his resume and applying for jobs since he can't seem to get along with the people at his current job. Roger does not know how to communicate with people. He assumes other will tolerate his actions and he does not need to ask, he just does what he pleases and then wonders why he's lonely. At 9:30 I send Roger a text message from the living room, "we going to start getting ready for bed, let's pack it up soon." Half and hour later, I walk into the office and he tells me in an excited voice, "I can't stop, if I stop now I'll lose all of my progress on this application, I'll be done in 15 minutes!" I know this is BS, he tries to pacify people by giving them unrealistic time frames when in reality he knows that whatever he's doing will take far longer. 11:30 rolled around, he was still screwing around with his resume and my wife and I had had it. I don't like getting upset, especially with family. At this point I couldn't take it. I told him, "the reason you can't maintain relationships is because you don't communicate." If Roger had said, "hey, do you guys mind if I stop by your place some time this week to work on some stuff, it may take me several hours..." we would have been ok with that. Am I being unreasonable? After talking to my therapist about him, she believes he has Asperger's. I tried introducing him to my circle of friends and he manages to make everyone feel uncomfortable. I could go on for hours but I think I'll stop here.
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From what you have described about him in this post it is hard to tell if he has something or not. At first read through before the mention of Aspergers it sounds like an entitlement issues and might be more well suited to ask the people in Social Entropy++. They are great for those type of issues.
If your brother does have Aspergers however, it seems that it mostly because your parents never had him tested and he has gotten into this type of routine. Probably babied/protected him more because he had some differences about him than other kids his age. My step-son has been diagnosed with Aspergers and he has a lot of difficulty making friends or maintain them, teachers at school hate him because the way he "works". Without knowing more about your brother it is hard to say, step-son likes to make a lot of noises while he is doing his homework, has issues looking people in the face, has issues with changes in schedule for the day.
If he does have it will probably need to sit him down and have him look you in the face and you will have to explain rules for your house. You will need to be very calm in doing this however, any type of anger from you can just make him shut down. After you talk to him about the rules, will need to ask him that he wants to talk about them or maybe change/tweak them. Than in the future when he is over will just need to calmly mention the rules the two of you had talked about (before he gets very into something, like in that story before dinner arrived), will probably need to mention it a few times but should be more co-operative in leaving.
PaD id - 346,240,298
Marvel FF - Lil bill12
I have a couple of brothers who we no longer have any relationship with because they are takers. We spent years trying to work with them, taking them in time after time and giving them money, jobs, cars, and second chances. Ultimately they can be counted on to take and take for as much as we are willing to keep giving. So we had to make the difficult choice to stop giving and in the end that resulted in them deciding to stop associating with us as we had nothing left to offer them.
Family gives you a leg up in forming a great relationship with someone but it does not obligate you to be their friend.
I would recommend that you keep everything civil, but don't open yourself up to situations you know will result in this behavior.
Same with the plate, when he got up and left it there, you should have told him to bring his plate to the sink if that was expected.
If you want him to be more communicative, you should start being fairly explicit with what you expect of him. (Thanking people for dinner, not making excuses to come over, being more courteous, etc). Perhaps that may even help him out in other areas if he is forced to act more appropriately in his long standing relationships (family).
It may certainly be worth getting him to see someone to verify if he does have Aspergers or anything else that could shed some insight into his behavior other than just being a jerk.
am I missing something
Could be google docs or something... or maybe an online resume site/submission... no idea. Still no reason he can't type it locally on something and email it to himself or save it on a USB drive or some such.
It's generally considered good advice to customize a resume towards the specific job you're applying for, and to do so it can be helpful to have the job posting available.
Don't know if that's what was being done or not, just saying.
I LOL'd.
But in all seriousness: I guess I wouldn't put a ton of stock in your therapist saying she thinks he has Asperger's, though she is a professional, she is really only guessing based on your description of your brother's behavior, after all. That said, whether he has some sort of spectrum disorder or not, I agree with some of the previous commenters that you should probably sit him down and be as direct and clear as possible. Whether he has a disorder and it simply never occurs to him how irksome his behavior is, or whether he's just a selfish jerk who will ignore or pretend not to understand other people's feelings unless forced to confront them, your best course of action is to lay out for him what is and is not acceptable calmly and clearly.
Without being a professional therapist, he sounds lonely and entitled, the latter leading to the former. Sounds to me like he needs some tough love and maybe a therapist. By tough love I mean it's time to sit down and have some direct conversations with him and explain why these behaviors are not okay, even for a brother.
It's really not worth bringing up as an excuse for behavior. Unless someone is actually diagnosably on the autism spectrum, they should be able to behave politely around others.
I think it's interesting that you criticize Roger for not communicating, but your story doesn't give any indication that you communicated your expectations to him. You jumped right to a big, general criticism of his character. Maybe he has some kind of Spectrum Disorder; maybe he's immature. Maybe he just gets on your nerves. And maybe he gets on your nerves so much because you can see some of your own weaknesses in him. I have a brother, and I find that when I do get angry with him, it's generally because I see parts of myself that I don't like.
You need to explain to him exactly what is annoying you. There's no obligation for you to do so, or to be his friend, but it would be a shame to cut Roger out of your life without making your own effort to communicate.
So next time establish clearer boundries in regards to behavior at your house. If 9:30 is bedtime then tell him at 8:30 and at 9.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
That wasn't. But not telling him to clean up his plate (assuming it's expected) and sending him a text from the other room is.
That being said, there are people with Aspergers/Autism/ASD who are total assholes, just like there are plenty of "normal" people/allistics who are total assholes.
From the information provided, there is no way of knowing whether or not your brother is just inadvertently coming across as an asshole, or being an asshole. If he's been taught that when a person does another person a favor, that person owes them a favor in return, he may have no idea the lunch thing is irritating and presumptuous. Or that you're supposed to take care of house guests, and interpret that as he needs to leave his plate so you can fulfill your duty as host. He may have no conception of time. I knew a lot of people who were like that in high school. They had NO CLUE they were rubbing everybody around them the wrong way.
Or, your brother has learned that because he's different the family lets him get away with stuff and he's taking advantage of that. (I also knew people like this in high school.) I have no way of even guessing which of these two possibilities could be accurate. That's something you need to figure out for yourself, possibly with the help of your therapist, before you decide how to deal with your relationship with him.
All of your bulletpoints are written from the perspective of someone who is owed those actions, rather than being an uninvited guest who is inconveniencing his host. This is what that list would look like with any degree of perspective beyond being owed these actions:
It appears to me that the OP has done quite well in communication, addition to being a fairly compassionate big brother in this instance given that is is apparently patterned behavior. I don't know what's up between you and your brother, but projecting that here doesn't seem to be relevant to the situation as it was related.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Very possible, but to play devils advocate here, he may not have had enough people telling him that compared to those telling him (by words and/or actions) the contrary.
I've met some INSANELY self entitled assholes in my life, and they don't really have an age limit.
Even an old friend of mine from my childhood, he was basically fed from a spoon till his mid 30's. Lived at home, never had to cook, clean, shop for himself, etc. His insurance and gas for his car he paid for... except for when he didn't, in which case they paid for him. He basically lived his life like a highschool kid on summer break for well over a decade. When he first moved out with his then long term girlfriend, he literally freaked out and couldn't deal with it and had to move back in under a month.
Now he wasn't an asshole like the OP's brother. But he was spoiled rotten and essentially living in a shell well past when just about anyone would have assumed a person would be able to stand on their own two feet. Him and his GF both actually started living with his parents as well... and might even still be for all I know. I kind of lost track of him.
So I can absolutely see how this persons brother might have floated through life with everyone who has any authority in his life basically coddling him and nurturing really bad behavior/habits.
I won't get into a textual analysis of the story; your interpretation is certainly a possibility too. My point is that this is the guy's brother, whether he likes it or not. He can either cut him out or try to fix things. The OP doesn't really ask for help, he asks for validation of a feeling. The feeling is certainly valid, but being super-right doesn't really fix any problems. The brother doesn't communicate well, but communication is a two-way thing. The OP can communicate more in order to attempt to open the communication channels that he desires.
My suggestion regarding projection is simply some advice I have found helpful when dealing with interpersonal conflict. It is not "projection" of a problem in the sense that the OP is the one with the actual problem; it is "projection" in the sense we all have our own issues, and that maybe the OP can relate to his brother and find some empathy as a way to help foster the relationship.
My experience is of actually having a brother who is exactly like the OP's brother. As an example of his behavior, as a grown ass man in his 30s with his own home and wife and children, he would visit my parents home (where I was still living) to play video games on their computer. Once while doing this, one of my nieces also came to use the computer, to do homework (her family was below the poverty line, they couldn't afford internet access). I went to my brother and asked him to get off the computer for the niece, he said he would. An hour later I asked him to wrap it up again, he said he would. Eventually 2 hours had passed and he was still playing his game. I went in and told him that if he didn't get off, I'd unplug it. He made no move, so I actually ended up having to unplug the thing to get him off.
There's no "well, he didn't know this was unacceptable." Of course he knew it was unacceptable; he knew because I told him 3 or 4 times before we got to that point.
The OP says right in the story that he tells his brother that it's time to go. The brother doesn't go. I think it's pretty clear that the OP is not the person who has a problem communicating here.
There's also the fact that the brother skulks around in his drive waiting for the OP to come home to let him in. Which suggests that he's at least aware enough of his effect on people that he realizes simply asking won't get him the forced access he wants. He wants to do something that most people would refuse if asked outright, so he uses a sneaky method to get what he wants instead, relying on his brother's family ties and sense of manners to allow him to get away with murder. "he tries to pacify people by giving them unrealistic time frames " ==> this is not something done by a person who is "unaware" that he's being rude. He knows what the response will be if he's honest. So he lies.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
That said, I would feel similarly bothered if someone were to do these kinds of things to me, but I don't wouldn't expect anyone to understand why I feel that way and would be prepared to be able to explain that to someone else in a way they could understand in a relatively calm manner. Yes, allowing someone to be a host and serve you dinner and then not having the courtesy to at least clean up after yourself and lessen the small burden you put on your host, is rude to the majority of the population. Either he doesn't understand that it's rude, or he does understand but he has a reason to not care. In the case of the former, you would of course have to make him understand that it is rude. The latter, well, maybe he has something going on that needs to be untangled, or he's just set in that way and cannot be swayed.
The bottom line is that the boundaries need to be crystal clear, or people will have excuses to not acknowledge them. Regardless for the reasons for your brother's actions, it clearly makes you uncomfortable when he does certain things, and the boundaries need to be set to prevent it from happening. If he crosses them, you can enforce them or adjust them, but not making a decisive action is only going to perpetuate the problem. And if you're worried that you're blowing things out of proportion or something or looking at things from the wrong angle, the easiest way to figure out if your perspective is skewed is to confront him about it directly. Do so calmly, do not try to insult him, and respect his point of view, try to understand why he behaves like this, and I think it may become more clear to you whether or not you're being unreasonable. But if you are confident about your boundaries, then don't resort to half-measures and vagueness. Tell him exactly what is expected of him (as before, calmly and respectfully). Do not allow room for lack of understanding. How he responds to it after that is entirely on his end.
OP, I think you should be clear and firm in expressing boundaries, because whether this guy is purposefully manipulative or just cluelessly manipulative, he's gonna keep trampling your boundaries in the interest of getting what he wants if you don't make them painfully opaque and in his face. Don't let him cross a boundary, and then try to explain to him later why it was wrong (despite the fact that his tactic got him exactly what he wanted, so clearly it was a good strategy). Just state what you need from him, the moment he is trying to get something out of you.
"Hey, I while I'm here, I need to use your computer"
"no, sorry. If you need to get some work done, you'll have to do it at home or the library."
[starts to walk away from dirty dishes]
"Michael, could you put your dishes in the dishwasher?"
"Hey, we're going to bed now, you're gonna need to leave."
"but but but [whining] [pouting] [trying to guilt or logic you into abandoning you're boundaries]."
"this is my home and I am asking you to respect my wishes while you're in it. You need to leave. Right now."
The key things to remember are:
-Repitition: he's gonna try and wheedle your boundaries down, but if you just firmly repeat yourself, he should give up after awhile
-Don't ever give more information than you need to: manipulators love to argue you down, so if they're trying to get something from you that you aren't willing to give (time, money, immediate attention, anything), they will want all of your reasons so that they can explain exactly why what they need is more important than what you need. All they need to know is "I'm not going to do that. That isn't going to work for me. No." Ad infinitum. Don't give them any opening to argue.
-Don't lie/make excuses: this is kind of the same point as "don't give them fuel to argue." Don't say that your computer is broken, you're just on your way out, etc. For one, you're creating an opening for argument/bargaining, but it also has the effect of totally obfuscating the fact that you are setting a boundary.
Those are my main pointers for dealing with manipulative people, good luck, and stay strong!
Therapists learn how to set boundaries as a professional skill; I am sure your therapist can help with this!