Man Says His Family Keeps Pressuring Him To Spend Holidays With the Brother Who Betrayed Him

A man said he has spent years refusing to attend family holidays because his brother damaged his career, defended the betrayal, and never truly apologized.

The 33-year-old man shared the situation on Reddit, explaining that he and his 35-year-old brother once worked at the same company. The poster had been there for three years. His brother had been there for two, after the poster referred him when the company was hiring.

At first, there did not seem to be any major tension between them. When a management position opened, both brothers applied. According to the poster, they told each other there would be no hard feelings if one of them got the role and the other did not.

The brother got the promotion.

The poster said he was genuinely happy for him. He was proud of his brother and thought he deserved the position. He did not resent him for being chosen.

Then, a few months later, the poster learned what had happened behind the scenes.

A former boss, whom the poster still had a good relationship with, invited him to lunch. During that conversation, the former boss told him something confidential. The reason the brother had been chosen over him, the boss said, was that the brother had forwarded an email the poster had sent him while venting about a work issue. The brother used that email to argue that the poster was not a good fit for management.

The poster was stunned.

The email had been sent privately to his own brother. It was not a formal complaint, a public outburst, or something he expected to be used against him. He had been venting to someone he trusted. Instead, that trust was handed to the hiring manager as ammunition.

When the poster confronted his brother, the brother admitted it.

But according to the poster, he did not seem sorry. He argued that forwarding the email was not underhanded because it simply proved the poster was not “meant for” management. In the brother’s view, that was not how managers acted.

That response devastated the poster even more than the promotion itself.

He cut his brother out of his life completely. He told him he was no longer his brother and to forget he existed. His brother tried to justify what he had done and downplay it, saying it was not as serious as the poster was making it out to be. The poster refused to be persuaded.

The family, however, kept pushing him to make peace.

The poster said his relatives seemed to view the betrayal as unfortunate but understandable. His brother had children, and the family argued he needed to make more money to provide a better life for them. The poster said his mother made that argument almost word for word.

That response made him feel even more isolated.

From his perspective, his brother had not only cost him one promotion. He had damaged his reputation inside the company and possibly his future there. If the email sat in people’s minds as proof that he was not management material, it could follow him beyond one job opening.

Eventually, the poster left the company and found another job.

But leaving the job did not repair the family. He remained no-contact with his brother. He also pulled back from the rest of the family because he felt they had shown little sympathy for what had been done to him.

Over the years, the brother attempted to contact him several times. Once, they ran into each other at a store. The poster ignored him and kept walking.

The distance carried into major life events. The brother was not invited to the poster’s wedding. The brother and his wife had never met the poster’s wife or his first child, who was 10 months old when the post was written.

His parents were still allowed to visit, but the family pressure had not stopped. His mother told him the holidays were not right without the whole family there. His parents begged him to put the past behind him and let it go so they could be a family again.

The poster and his wife chose to spend Christmas with her family instead.

He brought the situation to Reddit in a post titled “AITA for continuing to refuse to attend family holidays because I am no-contact with my brother over a betrayal that happened 5 years ago?”: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/koocqh/aita_for_continuing_to_refuse_to_attend_family/

The conflict was not really about holiday dinners. It was about whether a family gets to demand reunion when the person who caused the damage never took real responsibility.

The poster’s brother did not accidentally hurt him. According to the poster, he took private information and used it in a professional setting to make himself look better and his brother look worse. Then, when confronted, he defended it as a reasonable judgment of character.

That is what made the family’s “move on” argument so hard for the poster to accept. They were asking him to pretend the betrayal was old news, but the betrayal had changed his view of his brother permanently. It had also changed how he viewed the family members who excused it.

The brother’s children became part of the justification. The family seemed to believe that because he had kids to support, he could be understood for doing whatever it took to get ahead. But to the poster, needing money did not justify sacrificing your own brother’s reputation.

There was also no clear sign that the brother had ever admitted the severity of what he did. He had reached out, but from the poster’s account, he had not shown the kind of repentance that would make reconciliation feel safe.

That left the poster with a painful choice every holiday season. He could protect himself and spend the holidays elsewhere, or he could walk back into a room where the person who betrayed him would be welcomed as if nothing had happened.

So far, he had chosen distance.

Commenters overwhelmingly sided with the poster and said he was not wrong for staying no-contact.

Many said his brother’s behavior was a serious betrayal, not a small workplace misunderstanding. They pointed out that venting privately to a sibling is different from acting unprofessionally at work. The brother used private trust as a tool to get ahead, and commenters felt that revealed more about the brother’s character than the poster’s.

Several people also criticized the company for rewarding that behavior. They said a person willing to damage his own brother for a promotion would not inspire much confidence as a manager.

Others focused on the family’s reaction. Commenters said the mother’s argument about the brother needing to provide for his children did not make the betrayal acceptable. Having kids, they argued, does not give someone permission to hurt a sibling’s career.

A common point was that forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. The poster could eventually forgive his brother for his own peace without inviting him back into his life, introducing him to his child, or spending holidays together.

Several commenters also said the brother could not be forgiven into closeness when he still seemed to believe he had done nothing truly wrong. To many of them, an apology would need to include taking responsibility, admitting the damage, and not minimizing what happened.

Some people said the poster was allowed to keep attending family events while simply ignoring the brother, but most agreed he was not obligated to put himself in that position for other people’s comfort.

The strongest advice was to hold the boundary and stop letting the family turn his absence into the problem. The problem started when his brother chose a promotion over loyalty, then defended that choice afterward.

By the end of the discussion, Reddit’s message was clear: holidays do not erase betrayal, and family pressure does not create trust where trust has already been broken.