prayers and advice requested on family problem my brother has been alienated from my parents and me since shortly after his marriage to a domineering and insecure woman about twelve years ago we ve kept things on a painfully polite christmas card sort of level for most of this time attempts to see each other end disastrously with his wife throwing a screaming fit and storming out over either our imagined slights to her or his inattention or insensitivity to her i mean this ll happen by the end of a single restaurant meal he seems from what i ve seen to live in a state of quivering anxiety hoping futilely to keep the next storm from breaking he has sacrificed not only meaningful contact with us but also other friends and outside interests now this is his choice and i need to accept it even if i deplore it but it s hard from time to time i ve wanted to drop the pretense that we have a relationship by cutting off contact or trying to have a real if painful relationship by talking honestly with him but i ve always thought why be dramatic and you know he ll only get evasive and then find some excuse to get off the phone just leave the door open in case he ever decides to come back it s been an unsatisfying choice to allow us to go on with the superficial trappings of a relationship but it was the best i could think of now this weekend my mother finally decided that she wasn t going to pretend any more and has cut off relations with them this was the outcome of a phone conversation in which my sister in law screamed and raved at my mother blaming her for everything wrong in their lives and in which my brother evaded temporized claimed the situation was beyond his control and as always expected my mother to make all the allowances and concessions mom said she would not that she would not quietly take abuse any more and that if these were the terms of their relationship she didn t want to talk to or see them any more and she hung up i have never seem my mother lose her temper and i think that this is the first time she s ever hung up on someone mom says she feels as if she s divorced my brother and that it s a relief in some ways to have the break out in the open and done with i have mixed feelings i m proud of mom for sticking up for herself angry at my brother and sister in law for hurting her for being jerks for persisting in such a wretched life which hurts us all and is warping their children angry at my sister in law for being so hateful and angry at my brother for being a coward and having so little respect for himself or us that he s willing to throw us aside and use up all his energy trying to appease an unappeasable emotionally disturbed woman pained for their children who are a mess scared for the future since this marks the time when either things will change and improve or the break will become irrevocable nastily self righteous over this bit of proof that they can t get away with treating us or each other this way and then disgusted with myself for even beginning to gloat over others misery and finally mostly sad sad sad to see my parents hurt and my brother and sister in law trapped in a horrible destructive situation that they can t see a way out of or they can t bear to take whatever paths they do see and i m frustrated because i don t know what if anything to do and doing nothing drives me up the wall i try to pray about my own feelings of rage impotence and vindictiveness and about their situation but i am not free of the desire to do something concrete the desire to do something to define a problem and fix it is one of my besetting vices i m having a terrible time quieting down my internal mental chatter enough to listen for god do you thoughtful and kind people on the net have advice for me is this a time to reach out to my brother to let things be how can i conquer my rage at him enough to be there for him here s the big question i ve been evading throughout this long long post is it ok as a christian and a proponent of faith hope and charity to accept the destruction of a relationship to give up on my own brother or at least to accept that i am powerless to help him and can only wait and see what happens do please answer by e mail or post thank you julie jjmarvin pucc princeton edu
