How do I begin to discuss this?
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Long time lurker but this is my first post. The offender is my brother. He is currently in prison for online offences of a pretty serious nature. I am still navigating my relationship with him. I accept his phone calls when I am in the right headspace to talk to him and have visited him once. I don't know what I want our relationship to be in the future and whether I want him to have any type of access to future children I may have (I don't have children yet) even supervised be myself or family.
To top all this off, I have just gone through a break up of a fairly long term relationship. He was with me through me finding out about the offence and has been mostly supportive through the process. However, he did say that one of the reasons behind the break up was that he was uncomfortable with how my family navigated the situation and that he has concerns that the reasons behind the offending are either genetic (ridiculous in my opinion) or within the family dynamic (possible but I really can't see anything sinister in my loving family).
Although there were lots of other reasons behind the break up, this has really knocked me when I'm down. My worry is that if he's having these thoughts while knowing me and my family well, surely others who don't know me will draw similar conclusions. How am I ever going to be able to date again with this hanging over me? How do I bring it up in conversation because it is going to be a part of my future and the future of the father of any children I have whether I like it or not. Walking away from my brother would mean walking away from my parents and I would never do that when they have gone through so much already. It's all so unfair. My brother has no idea the far reaching affect of his actions.
To top all this off, I have just gone through a break up of a fairly long term relationship. He was with me through me finding out about the offence and has been mostly supportive through the process. However, he did say that one of the reasons behind the break up was that he was uncomfortable with how my family navigated the situation and that he has concerns that the reasons behind the offending are either genetic (ridiculous in my opinion) or within the family dynamic (possible but I really can't see anything sinister in my loving family).
Although there were lots of other reasons behind the break up, this has really knocked me when I'm down. My worry is that if he's having these thoughts while knowing me and my family well, surely others who don't know me will draw similar conclusions. How am I ever going to be able to date again with this hanging over me? How do I bring it up in conversation because it is going to be a part of my future and the future of the father of any children I have whether I like it or not. Walking away from my brother would mean walking away from my parents and I would never do that when they have gone through so much already. It's all so unfair. My brother has no idea the far reaching affect of his actions.
Hi, it's NOT genetic. Family dynamics could play a part but that's impossible to say with any degree of certainty. I suspect it's a mixture of things that come together at a particular point in time. We simply cannot second guess what others think about this situation we find ourselves in. For me, my biggest frustration was "friends" who insisted I "must've known what he was doing". He was my husband and no, of course I didn't know! No one knows what someone else is doing online 24/7. What it did tell me though was that these friends were thinking about their own husbands and were revealing much more about THEIR relationships than mine. In a similar way, the remainder of my "friends" disappeared when I decided to support my ex and visit him in prison. I did so because I wanted to teach our children that although he'd done something terrible and illegal, we could show him care and compassion. The friends told me that if it were their husband, they'd never speak to him again let alone support him. Again, this said much more about their relationships and marriages than it did my own. People will judge but they don't know all the details. They don't know what they'd do in the same situation. They'd like to think they do, but they have no idea! Also, we don't know what leads them to their opinions. We don't know what they haven't divulged about their own encounters with abusers etc. One thing my ex's family did that blew my mind was play down what he'd done saying how harshly he'd been treated. I was staggered by this! As for the future, you WILL navigate it and find your way through. Wishing you all the best. X