'AITA for cutting off my family after they kept my brother's wedding a secret from me?'
"Brother didn’t invite me to his wedding, family kept it a secret, I cut them off. AITA?"
I have a large family that started falling apart when my parents passed away 11 years ago. I was 19 and my siblings were all much older. Since then, my siblings and I have had rocky/strained relationships due to various reasons and I slowly became the outcast of the family.
With my brother specifically, things changed when he started dating his now wife and they had a son. He was the first baby in our family, and I love babies so I wanted to be there to help. Things quickly went downhill when they would ask me to babysit for a couple of hours that turned into 12+ hours. Or a day would turn into a weekend. This happened several times.
So I talked to my brother about how I felt about them doing this and how it felt like they were taking advantage. This turned into them telling our family that I thought that the baby was a problem and I didn’t want anything to do him anymore.
I talked to the rest of my siblings to clear this up, but this changed my relationship with my brother and his family. There were also other situations after this that caused even more of a rift between my brother and I.
Since then, I only interacted with my brother and his family at gatherings. From my end, I forgave and still bought them gifts for their birthdays, Christmas, etc. but I never received anything from him. Not a text, a phone call, anything. Fast forward to three years later, Thanksgiving day.
My whole family was there, including my brother and his family. Everything seemed normal. I will mention that my relationships with my other siblings had improved a lot over the years and were better. We all had small conversation about the food and discussed Secret Santa participation for Christmas.
That was Thursday. On Saturday, I see pictures on social media of what appears to be my family at a wedding. And my brother appears to be the groom. Confused, I take a screenshot and send it to my sisters to ask if our brother had a wedding? They confirm. My brother and I don’t have a good relationship, but I didn’t think it was so bad that he wouldn’t invite me to his wedding.
And my relationships with my other siblings have gotten better so I thought that someone would’ve mentioned that our brother was getting married. Especially when we were all together just a couple of days prior. Apparently, they were all in on this big secret for months without me. And that hurt. It made me feel like even more of an outcast in my own family than ever before.
This isn’t the first time that my family has done something like this. It’s been a slew of issues and situations over the past decade, and this was the cherry on top for me. My sisters have reached out to try to explain and apologize. I haven’t heard anything from my brothers. So AITAH for finally cutting off my siblings?
This is what people had to say to OP:
icannotbelieve99 said:
NTA. You should never take their crap. Not inviting is shitty, but the whole family hiding it? That's beyond shitty.
nursepenguin36 said:
NTA. You put your foot down at being his unpaid nanny so he tried to ruin your relationship with the rest of the family, you forgive and still make an effort to send gifts while he ignores you, then the whole family hides his wedding from you knowing you will find out after in social media and feel betrayed? Screw all of them.
Funny-Technician-320 said:
Blood does not equal family. I had a massive blow up with my brother and I'm no longer speaking to him. My SIL is cranky I interacted with my niece cos she's put them through the ringer but I'm just the aunt. Cbf for trying to please them when they don't talk to me outside important family stuff first bro not at all.
Dear_Parsnip_6802 said:
I’d cut them all off. I don’t think your sisters are sorry. They are just sorry they got caught and called out.
lonelyheartdreamer said:
Your answer was there in that picture with the whole entire family but you, cut them all off even the nieces and nephews.