Today we had "Grandma's Xmas" at my mom's house - a tradition that got started because of the difficulty of getting the whole family together on Xmas, so she usually holds it on a separate date.
My older brother - who left his third wife quite unceremoniously just before my H dropped the bomb - and who is now engaged to another woman (who we have never been quite sure if she could have been the OW or not) - came. I haven't seem him since last Xmas, when he brought his new girlfriend (now fiance) for us to meet for the first time.
She seemed nice enough at the time, and everybody was very polite, although I'm sure it wasn't the welcoming "gee, isn't this great" response she might have expected. (My brother wasn't even through with the divorce before they got engaged). Still, I thought we all did pretty well at being polite to her.
So my brother shows up at my mom's today with just his D20 - no fiance. Then he mutters something to my mom about how the fiance told him she didn't want to be "forced" to come. Apparently, according to what my younger brother told us later, she feels like we were rude to her last year so she doesn't want to come.
My older brother proceeds to be a glum martyr throughout the proceedings, casting a definite pall over the day.
The irony of course is, we really didn't have anything against his fiance (who probably is not the OW, as near as we can tell). We just felt extremely uncomfortable, knowing what the future held for her, as it did for his last 3 wives: after the dopamine high of new love wore off, he would fall back into his chronic depression, turn from a white knight into a tv-watching couch-potato who snipes at his wife and puts her down in public, allow himself to feel like some kind of put-upon martyr, and when his grumping doesn't get the desired response, dump her without any attempt at marriage counseling.
He's 51 years old, and it's pitiful. His fiance is a grown woman whose kids are college age - so wouldn't you think she would wonder about a man who has been married three times already? Wouldn't you think she'd understand his family not jumping into her lap?
It's just sad and difficult to watch and frankly, we were all ready to give her the benefit of the doubt until now. Unfortunately, this seems to just confirm my suspicion that there must be something wrong with someone who would jump into a R with my brother without questioning his history. And of course, this means she is probably not the person who is going to help him get the psychiatric help he really needs.
On a better note, though - my younger brother also brought his new girlfriend (he's been seeing her for several months). My younger brother's wife dumped him right after my H dropped the bomb - it was a heck of a year. He took it really hard. The new girlfriend seems really nice, though - on the way home, my kids all raved about how they liked her and hoped my brother would "keep" her
Well - off to Mammoth tomorrow for a few days snowboarding with the kids, while my poor restless H has to stay in the condo - he's not allowed to ride or ski, his surgeon is afraid of him getting a hernia in one of the incision sites for his appendectomy. Think of the most wiggly grade school boy you know, and then you'll know why this is hard for my H I think I'll have to sneak back while the kids are still on the slopes and distract him
