You don't need to apologize

Casadena

Dear Prudence,

I had a serious falling out with my younger brother after he became extremely aggressive toward my then-boyfriend. Several months later, I discovered a tracker in my bag and finally understood that my boyfriend was a controlling douchebag.

The problem is that my family is now pressuring me to apologize and make up with my brother because he was “looking out for me” and I was “wrong” about my boyfriend. I just don’t believe that is how this works. Whatever his intentions, my brother crossed some serious boundaries, became physically violent, and insulted both my partner and me. I’m not willing to draw a line under that, and I am also sick to death of men behaving badly. Am I wrong? Do you have a script for telling my family to back off? They don’t seem to be getting my point of view at all.

banana468

Can you talk to your brother?? 

You don't have to get over it but reading this makes me wonder if your brother was privy to more information than he let on.  And violence is never OK but there's something in this that is not passing my smell test in terms of why the brother got aggressive.

That said, if the brother just got aggressive out of the blue then I'd be clear that his behavior was not OK.  I'd also want to know how he insulted the LW.

downtondiva

I don't think you have anything to apologize for, but I'd need to know more about what set your brother off and what he said during this altercation. If he was truly trying to protect you, then I'd encourage you to talk through what happened with him, but your family may be assuming too much when they claim that's what he was doing. And I think even if you reconcile, setting boundaries about how he interacts with your future partners is in order.