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AITA for not being more involved in my mom's new family and not taking on a role as an older brother?
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This guy isn't a kid…he's 18-years-old. He's a legal adult, and he has his grandparents to rely on as well. He doesn't really need the pressures of his mother and her idiotic boyfriend. He isn't obligated in the slightest to feign “older brother” to people he barely knows and doesn't care about.
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It's good on him that he blocked this woman. Who does she think she is? He's so distantly related to her, and she has no business talking to him like this. He's her son's girlfriend's son. They're not even married yet, so what is all this talk about merging families? One thing happen before the other.
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18-year-old refuses to play older brother to his soon-to-be stepsiblings, their grandmother gets involved to pressure him into a relationship: “[She] texted me again and I quickly blocked her”
With divorced parents, it's a miracle if you even tolerate stepsiblings and stepparents, much less like or respect them. No one can force a relationship with you that you don't want, even if you're young and have a certain amount of responsibility towards your parents, it doesn't mean they can make you bond with their new boyfriend or girlfriend. They may not understand how incredibly difficult it is to not only see your parents split up, but that it can add insult to injury to see them get with someone new. It may alter the entire notion of love and relationships for the individual, causing their path to change drastically once they reach adulthood and start forming relationships of their own. Our entire psyche and emotional attachments are deeply rooted in our home life, our upbringing, our relationship to each parent, and their relationship with each other.
In the story below, an 18-year-old's mother has a new boyfriend. He has kids from another marriage, and according to the protagonist the 18-year-old doesn't mind this dynamic. What he does mind is being forced to act as a "big brother" to kids he has actually no relationship to.