{"id":302029,"date":"2025-08-11T21:46:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T02:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlslife.com\/?p=302029"},"modified":"2025-08-11T22:13:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T03:13:48","slug":"dear-carol-confused","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/crushes\/302029\/dear-carol-confused\/","title":{"rendered":"“Dear Carol, My BF opened up to me about an incident, and I don’t know what to do”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Two<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dear Carol,<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My BF and I have been going out for almost a year. A few months ago, he called me in the middle of the night. He told me that twice when he was a kid, his older brother beat him up and he had to go to the hospital. Since that time, he hasn\u2019t seen his brother (their family kinda broke apart over it). By chance, my BF saw his brother earlier that day in a store. He was surprised but oddly happy about reconnecting. Since then, we\u2019ve talked about it a couple times\u2014mainly about how he wants to see his brother again. I don\u2019t understand why he would ever want to. The other day I blurted that out, and he snapped back at me and said I didn\u2019t understand. Well, I don\u2019t understand why he was mad or why he wants to see him so much.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

-Confused<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dear Confused,<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Families are complicated. The fact that your BF\u2019s brother attacked him is awful, but I\u2019m not surprised he doesn\u2019t want to end their bond forever. When someone is abused by a stranger, there is usually a way to remove yourself from the situation, but when it\u2019s a family member, it\u2019s more complex. Your boyfriend probably hopes he can smooth things out or get better closure. I get why you feel the way you do, but going forward, just keep listening and telling him you\u2019re there to support him\u2014especially if you want the two of you to stay together. At some point, I hope he can get the therapy he needs to work through his labyrinth of feelings.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Carol Weston is the author of 16 books, including\u00a0Girltalk<\/em>,\u00a0Speed of Life<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ava and Pip<\/em>. Follow her on Insta\u00a0@carolwestonnyc<\/a>\u00a0and visit\u00a0carolweston.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Dear Carol, My BF and I have been going out for almost a year. A few months ago, he called me in the middle of the night. He told me that twice when he was a kid, his older brother beat him up and he had to go to the hospital. Since that time, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2399,"featured_media":302030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[286,284,283,313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crushes","category-dear-carol","category-life","category-tough-stuff"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}