DEAR JANE: My mother GROOMED me to be my brother’s keeper – he treats me like his servant and I don’t know how to escape this abusive situation

Dear Jane,

My mom spent years grooming me to be my brother’s ‘pseudo-mom’ after she died, and I’m really struggling to carry the burden of this job – which I never wanted in the first place.

My brother is seven years older than me and has been bullying me for years. As we grew up, he physically and verbally assaulted me, and the insults continued into my 40s, although he stopped the physical torment when we reached our teenage years.

But throughout our childhood, my mother insisted that I be a better sister to him. That I needed to help make sure he was taken care of – and she would make me do all the cooking and cleaning with her because she said it was our responsibility to look after the ‘men of the house ‘.

As we got older and moved out of our parent’s home, we would go back for dinner once a week and it would be the same. My mother and I cook, my brother and father sit and watch TV.

When my father died, my mother focused all her energy—and mine—on my brother, insisting that I offer to pick up his groceries, pick up his dry cleaning… and for whatever twisted reason, I have.

A few years ago, our mom got sick and I was the one who took on all the responsibility of handling her care, sorting out issues with her health insurance and making sure she had a nurse to look after her when I couldn’t.

Then, when she died, he moved into her home – which she left to us both in her will. But he refuses to take care of it or take care of any maintenance and insists it’s my job.

It stinks of damp, the floors are dirty, there are leaks in the roof… and he does nothing about any of this, instead he just tells me to hire professionals to come in. He also said I should make myself available to clean it for him once a week because ‘we both own it’.

I have told him I will go 50/50 on the price to have the more serious damage repaired, but he refused. He has also refused to help clear away our mother’s things and has cruelly said that when he dies I can clear her things and his everything at once, which is just too depressing a thought to handle.

I’m already taking care of paying his utility bills and fixing his insurance and I’m at my limit with what else I can do.

I feel the weight of this commitment every single day – but would I feel so guilty if I just gave up doing all the things I do because I really don’t know if he would make it?

I do not know what to do.

From,

My brother’s keeper

Dear my brother’s keeper,

We don’t live in the 1950s anymore, and unless your brother has some kind of disability that requires a significant amount of help, you need to remove yourself from your job as your brother’s contract employee.

I know how hard it is because as you say you have been trained. But your teaching was wrong and you have no responsibility to look after and pay for a grown man who – unless something is missing in your letter – is perfectly capable of looking after himself.

He can tell you he isn’t. You may think he is not, but what you do to carry on your mother’s tradition enables him; he can keep being a kid, letting the women in his life pay for him and do everything for him as long as you keep it up.

If he really isn’t able to take care of himself, and it’s unclear why that would be the case other than people have always done it for him, then the two of you can find a part-time caregiver to help pay bills and take care of household things.

You are not only giving up your life for him, you are preventing him from living a full life.

Please find a therapist to work through these issues, to get to the root of this codependency, to give you the tools that will enable you to go out and live a full life for yourself.