Close Friend Dating My Older Brother Part 2

[stlyogi9]

I posted on here a few weeks ago about my close friend dating my older brother. We finally talked last night and I just feel so sad. She really yelled at me and put a lot of the blame on me. Her feelings are valid. Her perception of the situation was that I hated her and didn't want anything to do with her, which is not true at all. I'm going through a really big transition right now, living in a new city and trying to get a job and not knowing anyone. So I was in my hometown for the weekend and everything just felt off. It wasn't enough time to really talk with everyone or actually have any fun because there were so many things we planned. So I was projecting my negative emotions onto other people and apparently I was giving her dirty looks and shooting down her attempts to talk to me which I didn't even know I was doing. I understand that I need to work on that.

Like I referenced in my first post, she has a lot of difficulty dealing with emotions and communicating. She was walking around with all these pent up feelings and got it all out last night, but my feelings are really hurt. I'm so sad for her and for me. I'm sad that she doesn't know how to deal with her feelings in a healthy way and just bottles them up. I'm sad that she saw the situation as something it wasn't at all. She blew up at me based on feelings that originated from a huge misunderstanding. She feels like I've been blowing her off for over a year, but she never told me that. I can't read people's minds. I thought our friendship was completely fine and we were still close, despite her dating my brother. And they are 100% getting married. I told her that we can work on getting better at communicating together because the way that she communicates about her feelings is not going to go well in my family. We talk about things right in the moment, especially my mom.

I'm glad she got it all out. It needed to happen. I think it was honestly inevitable. But I'm hurt because I was completely unaware of her feelings and tried so hard to respect her boundaries, and she talked to me like I had really done something wrong. I think the next time we talk I need to explain to her that she can be upset with me, but raising her voice or losing control is not okay. That's disrespecting my boundaries. We should be able to calmly and rationally talk about difficult emotions. She's not emotionally mature enough for that yet but I hope we can get there someday. I'm used to having these kinds of talks with people who have healthy habits with themselves and know how to express themselves calmly. So it just really caught me off guard. I'm going to move forward from this and try to be as understanding as I can be with her, but I've never really been spoken to like that before. My brother wants us to be a really close family and he wants me to be the aunt for his kids that we never really had growing up, but I don't know if I can do that if my friend is so so terrible at communicating.

I can't be her emotional babysitter. It's not my job to always be checking in with her. Of course, I would do it every once in a while. I just feel like there are these expectations on me right now from both my brother and her and I don't know if I can live up to them. I'm only one person and I'm not perfect. I feel like my side of the story isn't even being considered. Last night was just all about how I made her feel. And my feelings were an afterthought. And that's not okay.

I'm going to try and just be as calm as possible around her while standing up for myself too. My feelings are just hurt.

[Sam W]

Hi stlyogi9,

Thank you for the update, and while it didn't go the best way I agree with you that it needed to happen. It can be jarring and can really suck to be on the receiving end of a blow-up like that, but at least now you have more information about how she's been perceiving the relationship. Is your plan to let the issue lie for a bit and maybe approach it again in the future? Or are you planning on bringing this up with her again soon?

You mention feeling like both she and your brother have a lot of expectations for you around how you'll act or your role in their relationship (and maybe the bigger family unit). Can I ask what your hopes or expectations around that role are?

[stlyogi9]

I’m going to let things be for a little bit and then let her know very calmly that the way she talked to me really hurt my feelings. And that it can’t be a normal thing that happens all the time.

I feel like they both want to have this close, involved family when they have kids in a few years. And I am all for that. But I can’t do that or do it well if she doesn’t work on handling her emotions. Healthy family units are ones where communication is open and a priority, even if the topic is uncomfortable.

[Sam W]

Got it. I think, if you bring it up again, it would be best to keep the focus on how you two can adjust how you communicate with each other overall and if there are expectations around the friendship and communication within it that are changing. You can, of course, include the fact that you felt hurt and blindsided by what happened before, and encourage her to bring that kind of stuff up with you sooner rather than later so you don't feel stuck trying to mind read and she isn't feeling slighted.

What I also suggest is that, in that conversation, you don't focus on (or really even mention) the fact that you feel she's communicating wrong. If emotions are running high, or a person is feeling vulnerable, one of the last things they want to hear is that they're expressing their feelings wrong (in my experience, that usually makes the person more upset and does little to resolve the issue). This is especially important if she's still trying to figure out how she fits into your family; figuring out how you fit-in with your in laws can have a steep learning curve and can often make someone feel more defensive if someone else explains how things are done in that family (even if that person is trying to help). Keeping the focus of the conversation on what you and she both need communication-wise within the relationship is likely to be more successful than trying to explain to her how she's sharing her feelings incorrectly on a broader scale.

It may also help if everyone, your brother included, focused more on how things are going now in terms of relationship dynamics and less on how things might be in the future. While planning for the future is sound, bringing it too much into focus can add extra pressure on an issue and can mean people are busy trying to address problems that actually haven't happened yet. Does that make sense?