My brother abandoned me at a gig – it was the final straw

Metro’s agony aunt Em Clarkson is here to solve all your problems.

This week, she’s giving solid advice on mending old family wounds and being suspicious about a boyfriend’s trip to France.

Read on for this week’s reader conundrums and Em’s guidance.

I have a history of fall outs with my eldest brother. When this happens, we stop talking for few months and then I am the one that apologises even thought I am not the cause of the issue. 

The last time, I invited my brother to come with me to a concert, along with another of my brothers. It was supposed to just be me and them but my sister-in-law, asked to come along – fine. 

On the day of concert, I arrived late, but the concert still hadn’t started. I couldn’t find them in the crowd and when I asked one of them to meet me somewhere inside the stadium, both refused because they would lose their good spot. 

I ended up spending two hours at a concert on my own because they literally didn’t want to leave their place. Instead, they called me at the end of concert to ask where I was. I didn’t reply and stopped contact altogether after that. 

I told my other siblings that I don’t want to get in touch with my eldest brother anymore and my sister said I am being unreasonable as it was my fault I got there late. I think they were selfish and didn’t show any respect to me. Am I wrong? 

No, you’re not wrong. In isolation this situation (while being rude of them) might seemingly not be enough to warrant cutting off communication with your brother all together, but it sounds to me that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  

For whatever reason, there is a really frustrating expectation that we have to put up with a lot of s**t from our families, and time and time again we see that boundaries are hardest to implement within these dynamics.

What advice would you give? Have your say in the comments belowComment Now

Particularly as women, we are expected to be tolerant, sometimes painstakingly so actually, and it makes people feel really uncomfortable when we eventually snap and say *enough*.  

That’s normally why they tell us that we are being over-sensitive and overreacting, and that’s usually why we find ourselves softening the boundaries we laid down time and time again in order that we might be seen to be a little bit more accommodating, because we’ve been made to feel guilty for the discomfort we caused by trying to advocate for ourselves.  

You will probably always love your brothers, but you might not always like them, and that IS alright. I’m sure that you will be able to get to a place in the future where you are able to exist happily with that acceptance, where you’ve managed your expectations to the point that you can see and enjoy him without the possibility of being disappointed by him when he lets you down, but you aren’t going to get there without boundaries.  

At the moment your brother is disrespecting you, to leave you alone at an event you invited him to, is rude, and that’s not how he should treat the people that he cares about, and it’s not the sort of behaviour you need to put up with either.  

If I were you, I’d write to him and say, in as calm a way as you can, that you were hurt by his behaviour, that you feel undervalued and disrespected and it’s just not a dynamic you’re comfortable with.  

Ask him if he’d ever treat any of his friends in the way he had treated you, and if not, why not? You may be siblings, but the dynamic is still a relationship, and every relationship needs a foundation of respect. If he can’t offer that to you right now then you’re going to need to take a step back.  

I wouldn’t expect a response to be honest but get it off your chest either way. And then get to work untangling your feelings about him, with a therapist if that’s an option for you, and if not, by having a real think about who your brother is vs who you want him to be.  

It’s often the difference between those two things that we find ourselves susceptible to hurt, and it’s worth trying to see if we can work to expect a little bit less, and somehow find a way to be happy with that.

Sending lots of love xx 

My boyfriend/long term situationship has gone to Paris this weekend with a few of his friends, two couples and one single female friend (so in my mind, a couple’s holiday with another woman). 

I let him know a few times the whole thing was making me uncomfortable and ‘jokingly’ asked if he could take me along to test the water. He wouldn’t. 

I’ve now seen on Instagram in every photo of the trip he is stood right next to the female friend. I don’t know if I’m reading too much into the whole thing, but I feel awful and anxious, and a big mess and I haven’t heard from him since he’s been away. Any advice on how to handle this? 

Regardless of what is or isn’t happening on this trip, your feelings are valid, and his reaction to them is (to my mind) a much bigger problem than the woman he is with.  

There are lots of worlds in which you really do have nothing to worry about with her.

For a start, it’s unlikely that he would be so blatant as to cheat on you in front of his friends, least of all while he knows that you know where he is and who he is with.  

It’s natural that the two of them would gravitate towards each other in pictures etc as they are the only two without a partner on the trip, and they’ve probably cultivated a friendship because of that.  

And that really is probably all that it is; contrary to the confusing messaging of When Harry Met Sally, men and women CAN just be friends. Just because they are ‘a man’ and ‘a woman’ together, does not mean that an affair is inevitable, and I really want to stress that, at its core, their dynamic within the group is not an immediate red flag to me.  

What is more of a concern is your boyfriend/long term situationships’s resistance to placate your feelings of anxiety about the trip as a whole. I understand that he might not have been able to wangle you an invite for whatever reason, but I don’t understand why he hasn’t contacted you since he has been away, particularly given as he knows how you feel about him being there in the first place.  

This is a conversation you need to have with him when he is back. It sounds to me that you need a lot more clarity surrounding your relationship and you are well within your rights to ask for that. If the idea of pushing him for some sort of solidified commitment is scary to you, I think you need to have a big think about why that is.  

Sometimes we are scared to ask the question because we don’t want to hear the answer, but in lots of other ways I think this guy is telling you a lot about where you are at right now, and it’s not where you deserve to be. Ultimately, you deserve to feel peaceful and you deserve to feel safe, and it doesn’t sound like this relationship is evoking either of these feelings for you.  

Don’t worry about the girl in Paris; I don’t think she’s the key to this at all. Instead, try to push your boyfriend when he gets back to have a conversation with you about the feelings of anxiety you felt, what he could have done to put your mind at ease, and why he didn’t do any of those things at the time.

There’s a quote I love that says, ‘rather alone than lonely with you’ and I think that might be something to think about here. Sending you loads of luck and love xx 

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