Help with problems at home please

preciousb

I hope this is the right place to post this

My brother and his wife are going through a divorce. She has got to the decree nisi stage.

The problem is that my brother isnt coping. We live together with our parents. His wife has returned back to her home.

She has taken, money, car and things that she believes was hers.

The problem was, she claimed that my brother forced her to marry him, he made her life miserable etc. Everyone has asked the question why marry him then. She had a choice and those claims she made are not true as she was really excited at her marriage time. She has totally ruined his and my familys life.

Anyway he still loves her a lot, and its been a year and a half since she has gone. She goes through the court and doesnt contact him for the first year but eventually decides to meet to exchange stuff. She doesnt bring anything and takes everything of my brother who is so silly for just giving things without getting his own stuff back.

Anyway with her not bringing a few peices that is my brothers, he feels she will change her mind. Even though everything thats happened, shes gone through the court for the first years but over the last few months texting him mixed messages etc. She has totally ruined him.

Anyway less about her, i want to know what i can do to help my brother. No one from our side can seem to get through to him. He wont eat. He goes work and is always depressed. He doesnt have a normal conversation with anyone and at work they have been saying he needs to talk up etc (they dont know his situation and think he doesnt like to socialise) - that what my brother claims. If he does talk to anyone its about her and how he thinks she will come back and why she went. Sometimes i think he is really going crazy.

He still beleives she will return to him and somehow (i dont know how) seems to think there is some hidden message in the things shes doing. To be totally honest, i just think hes blind and he cant see the truth that she has ruined him.

Any advice is welcome. I am at a stage in my life where i want to get married to my other half but my parents are waiting on him to get better. We are a very close family.

Sorry all, i just needed to rant and let it off my chest too.

tandraig

your post is a bit garbled but i think this is the situation - your bro is gettin divorced - she has (in your opinion) the lions share of the property etc. your bro seems to think she will come back to him? and this has been through the courts and they are waiting decree absolute?
and your bro is still thinking she will come back?
he is in denial - shock maybe - but right now he thinks she will come back. oh dear.
set aside who got what - your bro is in real trouble here if he thinks she is coming back.
you are right to be worried - he isnt facing up to reality. he may not until he recieves the decree nisi - and some people still dont accept that.
hun, all you can do is try to get him to accept she is gone. divorced him and gone on. then keep a careful eye on him and try to get him to accept his situation. sugggest councelling, but at the end of the day - YOU are not his keeper. just do the best you can hun.

preciousb

Thanks for the advice, i really appreciate it.

Its such a downer this situation. Sorry that my post was a little all over the place. I wish he would accept the situation.

paddy's_mum

How on earth is the breakdown of your brother's marriage preventing you from getting married to the person you describe as your other half?

Why would your parents be waiting for his divorce to sort itself out?

Why is your wedding conditional on him "getting better"?

You state three times in a relatively short post that his wife has "ruined" him ... how? Has she stolen every last thing he owned? Has he borrowed huge amounts of money to spend on things that she has taken with her? What do you mean when you say she has "returned back to her home"? Did they own a house and if so, how has the divorce court apportioned this? How has she "ruined" your family's life, as you claim?

I don't decry his heartache but I do suspect that the wife is kicking over the traces of a traditional (Asian, Romanian, Traveller?) culture and heritage.

I'd also point out that there is many a bride who is thrilled to bits to be getting married to a man she has fallen for only to discover later that the dream turns to dust and that she is treated badly. On what basis - exactly - do you assert that her claims that he treated her badly are untrue? Were you in their bedroom night after night? No? So how do you know what went on?

I don't wish to deny that you are feeling very worried and distressed on your brother's behalf and no doubt wish you could wave a magic wand to make him happy again but at the same time, I find it hard to believe that a UK divorce court would order a Decree Nisi on no evidence whatever. What response did your brother give when his wife left/started legal proceedings?

I respect your wish to rant but I'd also ask you to think about this. If your brother can't confide in you without getting another load of talk about his "silly" behaviour, and his dreadful wife, you have effectively left him with nobody to talk to. Maybe the way to "help him" is to stop saying such hurtful and dismissive things as "anyway, less about her"

Have you a sympathetic doctor or priest that would lend your brother a sympathetic and understanding ear? Eighteen months isn't that long a time for a broken heart to heal if his whole life and confidence was shattered by the break-up of his marriage, and you must bring yourself to see that it is not your place to decide who is to blame! I wish him well.

Lotus-eater

See if you can get him to talk to his doctor, who may be able to get him to talk to someone else, who may help.
But as said above, you aren't his keeper, you can't force him to get better.

Lots of people are blind to the person that has hurt them (if that's true) and it takes time to get over it. And he probably won't start getting better till the divorce has gone through and he realises it really is all over.

diable

Lotus-eater wrote: »

See if you can get him to talk to his doctor, who may be able to get him to talk to someone else, who may help.
But as said above, you aren't his keeper, you can't force him to get better.

Lots of people are blind to the person that has hurt them (if that's true) and it takes time to get over it. And he probably won't start getting better till the divorce has gone through and he realises it really is all over.

As Lotus Eater said get him to go to the Doctors and get him to ask for a referral to a Psychiatrist as you should be allowed X amount of sessions on the NHS, you may have to wait for it though. Explain to him that in this day and age there is no stigma attached to it and they may help him understand why e is thinking the way he is.

Gemsgalore

I'm not going to take sides here as no one knows what really goes on between man and wife. However, I really feel for men at times like this as they often feel they have to be strong and don't want to look like a wimp by talking to mates about how bad he is feeling. Us women will bawl our eyes out with friends and they will think nothing of it and probably cry with us between feeding us lots of tea and chocolate.

You are right to be concerned as we all know that the suicide rate for males after breaking up is much higher than for women so I do understand how worried you and your parents must be. I truly hope he isn't thinking that way but I do think it's worth asking him to see his GP about the possibility of some counselling. Can you encourage him to go, or even offer to go with him as that would give you something positive to do and may make you feel better too.. Explain to him thats it's perfectly normal to feel like your life has fallen apart when someone you love leaves you, but that he shouldn't bottle it up. Tell him to tell people in work and explain that he will probably be feeling a bit off for a while...........it's amazing how people will then rally round and try to help keep his spirits up.

At the end of the day, all you can do is let him know you are all there for him and encourage him to go out with friends and family.....the rest is up to him I'm afraid. Stop putting your life on hold too. You need to carry on with your life as normal as when he sees your life moving on, this will help him to move his along too.

Good luck, and don't forget guys needs hugs just as much as us girls

Proc

Sounds like your brother needs to grow a set of balls and stop acting like a door mat. No wonder she's leaving him - any chance that he ever had of getting back with her has been totally ruined by him rolling over and submitting to all of her requests. Surely women want a man that can stand on his own two feet?

He needs to forget her altogether. If she wants any more stuff from him she can swivel. Don't answer her calls, don't answer her texts. Just get the divorce out the way and move on in life. But seriously, moping around isn't going to fix anything. Tell him to take up a hobby - preferebly something that involves other people; a dance class, a martial art, football, rugby, yoga, whatever. Get him doing enough stuff so he can forget about his failed marriage, move on, and maybe even meet someone else.

But one thing's for sure, as long as he's holding onto this false hope that they'll get back together, as long as he's living with his parents, as long as he's not really doing anything with himself, he ain't ever gonna find himself moving on in life.

preciousb

I forgot to mention that we are an indian family so cultural issues play a huge part. My parents are strict and very religious and view divorce as a really bad thing. It is a norm in our culture for one persons marriage to settle or in this case, dissolve before any other member decides to get married - hope that makes sense. She has returned to her mothers home.

Also she has ruined him in the sense, that he gives 75% of his monthly earning to her in the hope that she will come back. They had 25k of debt which he has paid but she keeps bringing up new figures from god knows where. He just agrees to pay in the hope that she will change her mind. He cant even afford to pay for petrol to go to work. Hes always askin me or my parents to bail him out with money but i try to explain that you have to stop the payments since its cleared now.

She also claimed that he didnt treat her badly. She has even said that its not the family that she is annoyed with. Its like she has just changed her mind about it all. Everyone states she is very immature. Always out and about and was never home to deal with her marraige. She only came home to practically sleep.

She wouldnt sleep with him at night either. She would use the spare bedroom. She had messages on her phone which were of a very bad nature - sexual. My brother showed my parents for advice when she left her handset at home.

My parents still tried to support their marriage to make it work by telling him to try and work it out then. She covered the claims by saying - it was a friend telling her what she can forward to my brother to get him excited etc... (for some reason i didnt buy into it, but i still treated her normally with respect and hoped she was telling the truth.

We couldnt prove anything and left it at that. Then she started staying out for days in a week. Claiming she was going away from work. At this point we could sense she was going to do something like leave.

The divorce petition claimed that my brother accussed her and that he forced her to get married (by the way this was a love marriage). In the petition she wrote, When they were at uni, she claimed that he said if he doesnt marry her, he will tell everyone about her history. She had previously cheated on him in the first year they met. There is also a lot of other stuff in the petition, like he didnt let her visit her family, kept accusing her etc. Am not sure what happened in their room but she was never around in my opinion to have a proper argument with him. The indian wedding lasted 8 months at max. They were registered 2 years before but never lived together. In our culture they can only live with each other after the indian wedding and in those 8 months. According to my brother, It is like she never tried.

At that point when the petition came, my brother was fine and also upset with how things were going in their marriage. He agreed to the petition, as long as she is happy is what i remember him say. Now he probably regrets even signing it.

I guess your right about not to blame. I think am just so angry with how someone could treat him. We are a close family and it just hurts when someone does this to him.

Thanks

paddy's_mum wrote: »

How on earth is the breakdown of your brother's marriage preventing you from getting married to the person you describe as your other half?

Why would your parents be waiting for his divorce to sort itself out?

Why is your wedding conditional on him "getting better"?

You state three times in a relatively short post that his wife has "ruined" him ... how? Has she stolen every last thing he owned? Has he borrowed huge amounts of money to spend on things that she has taken with her? What do you mean when you say she has "returned back to her home"? Did they own a house and if so, how has the divorce court apportioned this? How has she "ruined" your family's life, as you claim?

I don't decry his heartache but I do suspect that the wife is kicking over the traces of a traditional (Asian, Romanian, Traveller?) culture and heritage.

I'd also point out that there is many a bride who is thrilled to bits to be getting married to a man she has fallen for only to discover later that the dream turns to dust and that she is treated badly. On what basis - exactly - do you assert that her claims that he treated her badly are untrue? Were you in their bedroom night after night? No? So how do you know what went on?

I don't wish to deny that you are feeling very worried and distressed on your brother's behalf and no doubt wish you could wave a magic wand to make him happy again but at the same time, I find it hard to believe that a UK divorce court would order a Decree Nisi on no evidence whatever. What response did your brother give when his wife left/started legal proceedings?

I respect your wish to rant but I'd also ask you to think about this. If your brother can't confide in you without getting another load of talk about his "silly" behaviour, and his dreadful wife, you have effectively left him with nobody to talk to. Maybe the way to "help him" is to stop saying such hurtful and dismissive things as "anyway, less about her"

Have you a sympathetic doctor or priest that would lend your brother a sympathetic and understanding ear? Eighteen months isn't that long a time for a broken heart to heal if his whole life and confidence was shattered by the break-up of his marriage, and you must bring yourself to see that it is not your place to decide who is to blame! I wish him well.

Tamsin_Temrin

Concentrate on getting him to give up hope - ie who would you like to marry, can you meet someone else.

What does her family say? Could her family be persuaded to say that she will not be allowed back to him - might give him closure.

paddy's_mum

I'd suggest that family are perhaps too close to help the brother with this and can only repeat what I suggested earlier. Is there a doctor or religious adviser to whom your brother can talk, one who will fully understand the cultural issues but who is sufficiently distant not to let personalities get in the way of giving support and advice?

Sad for everyone involved and I hope that it can soon be sorted out. Good luck.