T
TheCatholicGryphon
Guest
First post here; I’ll try to keep it as quick as possible, but it’s a pretty long story. In any case, my older brother by a couple years (he’s eighteen, but still lives under our parents’ roof) has “come out” as transgender to some mutual friends of ours on the Internet, and I just really need some help.
I. He’s been playing a sort of game with the topic around our friends for the past two months. Saying things but never confirming things - until yesterday. When he first started doing this two months ago, I was concerned and informed our mother. She was understandably distraught, and when my brother found out I had told her, he effectively stopped talking to me for a while (we were pretty close before then, and things are a bit better now). My mother’s been talking to him on and off for the past two months, and she took him to see our pastor a few weeks ago. He recommended a psychiatrist, but according to my mother, my brother hasn’t called.
II. My brother hasn’t told our parents about this. My mother knows to some extent, but she didn’t know that he officially came out to, quite frankly, random strangers on the Internet. Meanwhile, my father apparently knows something’s up, but he has done nothing. It seems that my father’s in denial about the whole thing; he doesn’t want to admit my brother is having these troubles, possibly because he thinks it makes him a bad parent (my mother already thinks this, despite my attempts to convince her otherwise).
III. My brother seems to have been dealing with this for a while - at least within the past two or three years. Several years ago, my parents took him to see a deacon, and things seemed to calm down almost entirely until about two months ago. These days, he doesn’t seem to want any help; as I noted above, he hasn’t called that psychiatrist; he hasn’t told us why he wants to live as a woman so we can identify any problems and help; and I believe the reason he told our friends first is that he was looking for validation. Now our friends are very wonderful people; mostly conservative Catholic with the exception of one guy who wasn’t there when he came out. I’m honestly a bit angry my brother has put our good friends in this really awkward position - none of us want to ostracize him from the group, but we also don’t want to make him feel bad.
IV. Last point. My mother is reluctant to take him to counseling since he doesn’t want to go. As I said above, my father seems to be playing oblivious. Finally, I’m questioning whether or not he wants help. Every time he’s brought this up, I’ve always brought good, Catholic arguments to him against this sort of stuff, while still trying to be charitable. He’s never been able to counter any of them, and he doesn’t seem to care that he can’t defend his position.
(continued in next post, whenever it gets approved… mostly just says that we’re all Catholic)
I. He’s been playing a sort of game with the topic around our friends for the past two months. Saying things but never confirming things - until yesterday. When he first started doing this two months ago, I was concerned and informed our mother. She was understandably distraught, and when my brother found out I had told her, he effectively stopped talking to me for a while (we were pretty close before then, and things are a bit better now). My mother’s been talking to him on and off for the past two months, and she took him to see our pastor a few weeks ago. He recommended a psychiatrist, but according to my mother, my brother hasn’t called.
II. My brother hasn’t told our parents about this. My mother knows to some extent, but she didn’t know that he officially came out to, quite frankly, random strangers on the Internet. Meanwhile, my father apparently knows something’s up, but he has done nothing. It seems that my father’s in denial about the whole thing; he doesn’t want to admit my brother is having these troubles, possibly because he thinks it makes him a bad parent (my mother already thinks this, despite my attempts to convince her otherwise).
III. My brother seems to have been dealing with this for a while - at least within the past two or three years. Several years ago, my parents took him to see a deacon, and things seemed to calm down almost entirely until about two months ago. These days, he doesn’t seem to want any help; as I noted above, he hasn’t called that psychiatrist; he hasn’t told us why he wants to live as a woman so we can identify any problems and help; and I believe the reason he told our friends first is that he was looking for validation. Now our friends are very wonderful people; mostly conservative Catholic with the exception of one guy who wasn’t there when he came out. I’m honestly a bit angry my brother has put our good friends in this really awkward position - none of us want to ostracize him from the group, but we also don’t want to make him feel bad.
IV. Last point. My mother is reluctant to take him to counseling since he doesn’t want to go. As I said above, my father seems to be playing oblivious. Finally, I’m questioning whether or not he wants help. Every time he’s brought this up, I’ve always brought good, Catholic arguments to him against this sort of stuff, while still trying to be charitable. He’s never been able to counter any of them, and he doesn’t seem to care that he can’t defend his position.
(continued in next post, whenever it gets approved… mostly just says that we’re all Catholic)
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