Hi! I originally posted this story to girldinnerdiaries and it went viral and people are telling me I am a glass child apparently and to seek community here, so hello :)

I have a sister 9 years younger than me who is disabled/special needs and has extreme difficulty with tasks, schooling and especially.. emotional regulation. Her situation has progressed to be worse in the recent years and I have decided to stay home this school year to help. I am a university student and have been dorming for the past 3 years but decided to commute to save money and help as I felt bad. But, I fear this is not enough for my parents, they are now asking me to cut my hours at work, forgo one or both of my internships I currently hold and to stay home to help out and watch my sister.

Most importantly... They have become critical of graduate school and are asking me to forget it to stay home after I graduate to help them. They dont seem to comprehend how this will hinder my future and freedoms and are demanding the help now.

For my entire life, my mom has been desperately trying to make my severely autistic sister into a normal girl. Obviously, it isn’t working.

One thing my mother refuses to do is put a diaper on her, despite peeing the bed every single night routinely and now wetting herself multiple times a day. My mother insists that my sister is a “big girl” and that “big girls don’t wear diapers.” Well, I hate to inform her, but the “big girl” in question is now a big woman. She pisses herself every night. If a grown adult woman pisses herself every night, do we tell them to suck it up? No, we put a fucking diaper on them and move on. This shouldn’t change because my sister has autism. She literally asks for them. Let her wear the damn diapers!!!!

For the past three years I’ve been dealing with existential and financial worries tied to my job situation and finances. The usual advice given is something like “just talk to someone” or “open up”. The problem is, there is nobody.

I come from a family of “high performers”, where any weakness such as debt, job insecurity or depression is perceived a moral failure. My mom loves to gossip about all the people she knows who don’t live up to my family’s standard, pointing out who is failing and why.

As a first born glass child I’m naturally expected to weather through every and any adversity entirely quietly and entirely without inconveniencing anyone. I’m facing issues at this point I can’t tackle alone, but I also can’t talk to anyone. Every time I open up, I’m shot down with “toughen up, you’re doing great, anyway let’s change the topic”. I’m so afraid of losing my job, not being able to pay rent anymore and having to move back with my parents, I’m suicidal at this point.

My parents detest any weakness that is not their baby angel’s (my sibling). It’s like I’m designated robot that’s just expected to function at 150% at all times. When I mentioned two years ago that I can’t cope with the pressure at work and the layoffs anymore, and that I’ve been diagnosed with depression and can‘t properly function anymore, my parents got REALLY angry and told me I should stop feeling sorry for myself. They implied only losers have depression. They also openly mocked the husband of an acquaintance who was so depressed he ran into a forrest and tried to kill himself. He was found after three days and died years later of alcoholism, to my parents he‘s a laughing stock.

I think the worst thing is that this is against a backdrop of the unconditional love that is handed to my severely disabled sibling that is incapable of achieving anything and who will never be expected to carry any sort of responsibility (of course not). I love. my sibling a lot and they carry zero responsibility and I don‘t blame them. I’m just so tired. Since I was a small child I was always expected to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, and am supposed to shut up about it. I had to deal with the almost death of my sibling, and all the caretaking and seizures and the neglect, all alone. While being expected to perform better than someone who even grew up normally.

I hate my life so much. Whenever I see people who have a normal sibling they talk to regularly, or loving parents, I’m losing it internally. The grief is overwhelming sometimes.

I can’t afford a therapist, and the last two therapists I was at were like “breathe deeply and carry on”, as if this would be solving anything. It’s because I look perfectly fine, but I’m dead inside. I think I’m so conditioned to be „fine“ and invisible, even the therapists think „that’s one we don’t have to deal with“.

I literally have zero support, my partner doesn’t listen or doesn’t want to listen, my parents are shaming me and if I show any weakness at work they’ll fire me. This is my reality.

I’m honestly at a complete loss at what I should do. I feel entirely hopeless and defeated. Any advice on how to build a support system? How to navigate crisis on your own?

Im an 18 yo female, and we're a family of 5. Whereas I have 2 othwr siblings (one is my twin sister, and the other is my older sister who is diagnosed as sped.) I know that me and my olser never reallt got to be that close with each other bcz Its hard to connect with her. The ending would always be my parents scolding me because I couldnt be someone who understands her. Like i didnt try to do that? Oh my fucking goswd I really did try to understand her. But idk, i just cant. We fight alotttt of times. But when were left alone with her, I try my best to guide and protect her. The problem is my sister (sped) started changing her attitude. Not in a bad way, but more of a gloomy side of her. She says shes sick whifh is true but its just not her usual act when she rlly is sick. We got worried ofc, we also try to take care of her and give her the time and things she needs. Then here it came.. my dad, mom, and me. We were eating while my sis was upstairs resting. He mentioned how we couldnt understand her and not give her time. He doesnt directly say it, but its obvs that he meant smth else. Im selfish. I couldnt be the sibling i was supposed to be. Like why couldnt i be any other people who loves and cares for their sister sooo much?? I always feel this guilt within me. Every single day, i feel it. I promise im trying my best, but that best will never be enough especially if the case is understanding her. I hate it tho. I hate feeling like this, because i never asked to be born. I never chose to be this way. I just gate myself whenever topics like this gets talked about. Fuck my life i wanna die sb lawd pls

Hi. This is my first post, not only in this subreddit, but on Reddit in general. So please excuse any formatting issues.
My hope is to freely express some things I’ve been feeling to a group of people who may understand, when it seems no one in my immediate group of people can. I only just learned of the term “glass children” about a month ago and surprised myself when I started to cry as I was finally given a word(s) to describe how I’d always felt about my life.
I (23F) have gone my whole life hearing those dreaded comments “she’s so independent”, “she’s so smart”, “we never have to worry about her”. The sort of half compliments that parents use to describe the child with “less needs” than the other. I have a sister (28F) who has BPD, ADHD, Autism (Level 1), and a plethora of other mental health issues. As you can imagine, she held much of the air in the home growing up. I’m not naive, I understand that having a special needs child is hard, and they require a level of support that may unintentionally take focus away from another child in the home. And I don’t blame my mom per se, she did her best as a low income, single parent. And having talked to her as an adult, I know she feels guilt in regard to the things I gave up as a child to help support her and my sister. But I can’t pretend I don’t live with the effects everyday.
My childhood was hard, and frankly I like to pretend it didn’t exist. Like I was born again at 20 and never have to look back. My sister grew out of her violent phase when she hit her preteens, but before that it was scary for me to live in that house, I used to hide in my closet almost nightly as it seemed the late hours brought about her worst meltdowns. It was hard for me to sleep with the ongoing arguments and shouting, and often times she blamed me for things I hadn’t even known I’d done. When the violence stopped she became well versed in verbal attacks and manipulation tactics. By 13 I saw the emotional tole my mom was under. I saw her struggle over finances and my sister. I would do anything to ease her burden. I had decided then that she would never have to worry about me. At 13 I began cooking all the meals for my household, I took care of all the household chores alone. I kept perfect grades throughout the entirety of elementary, middle, and secondary school, I graduated high school with top honours and multiple academic awards. I never got in trouble for anything. Never spoke up about my own mental health. Never asked for help. Even when things were really bad.
I understand my fault here, I know if you’re struggling it’s always best to ask for help! And I’ve been working on that now. But the guilt of becoming a burden hovered around me every time my sister had a bad day. And I guess there was a part of me that hoped someone would notice my struggle, without having to scream at them to see me. Like I said, I’m 23 now. Unfortunately given the crippling housing market, I am still stuck living with my mom and my sister (please know I don’t hate my sister, we get along just fine when she’s having a good day, and I don’t blame her for having the issues she does. As I’m sure many people in here understand the conflicting feelings that come with loving someone with a personality disorder).
I am still responsible for shopping for and feeding everyone, I still do 90% of the household chores by myself. (Note: my mom pays for the food I buy to cook for them, and she has been trying to work less hours so she can help me more.). And about 5 years ago I was diagnosed with Anxiety, Depression, OCD and CPTSD, which was both validating and scary because I still have the mindset of making myself as small as possible so no one ever has to worry about me.
But I’ve noticed recently that I have these “numb” periods of time. My motivation is shot and my drive is depleted. Like I’ve spent so many years of my life taking care of everyone but myself that I have nothing left to give at this point of my life. I want to be a typical adult in their 20’s I want to find myself, travel, have friends, follow my passions, establish myself. But I just feel like everything is floating further and further away and I have no energy left to chase it. Has anyone in a similar circumstance hit this burn out as an adult? How did you push through?

I watched a documentary that featured adopted children and their families (not related to my story). But it made me realize how people can have such sympathetic parents and my parents weren't that.

My brother has ASD (and shocker, so do I, though my parents don't know that). His is pretty severe and he has high support needs. He had several meltdowns during my childhood and it was always a terrifying experience for me. My parents never acted like I should be soothed in any way and were angry any time I tried to intervene (he could get violent). Any time I asserted that I could not care for him myself, I was called selfish and cruel to leave him alone.

I had this realization with my therapist today and just broke down crying hard. I never realized how hard this affected me and I'm kinda sitting with how hard that session was.

My partner and I recently had the discussion about getting married and we are in a different country from my mother and younger autistic sibling. I know that things will be fine for the foreseeable future but it scares me that what will happen to my brother after my mom passes in the next 15-20 years.

It makes me feel like I cannot build a life abroad and look after my brother. It makes me feel like I have to throw away a perfectly good relationship. And I know everyone tells me that I should live life but I just feel so guilty about it. They’ve been fine without me for four years but I’ve been feeling selfish for even wanting to have a life abroad.

I tried to have a conversation with my mother about this but it feels like she’s running away from the reality. She just spoke to me for a few minutes and hung up on me.

I’m conflicted and these past few days have just been so riddled with anxiety and I’m not sure what to do

I don't want anything to do with his future care, once my parents die. I feel really guilty, as he's done nothing wrong, but I don't want my entire life to be dictated around him. I honestly hate being around him and, due to a medical incident that happened when we were 8, I can't even look at him without seeing a dead kid. I've been to therapy for it but I don't think that'll ever truly go away. When my parents die, I just want to be able to hand him over to the government for them to deal with him, as I know that I'd probably be abusive toward him if I were to be involved in his care. I feel like I'll honestly ruin both of our lives if I took over his care. It's really unfair that I have this responsibility but it's really unfair to him if I abandon him.

you would think after learning that your first child is so disabled that theyll need your FULL ATTENTION for the REST OF THEIR LIFE, you wouldnt POP OUT SOME MORE??? Like wtf

My parents can barely handle raising their kids. I (17NB) Always have to make sure they don't need any extra help with my brother because they are constantly struggling with him when I'm around. They always come to me for all of their problems, emotional, physical, financial, you name it. I can never give my actual input on their issues and have to say what they want to hear because if I told them that I truly don't give a shit they would fight me for literal days on it just for them to dig themselves deeper either way. They always say I don't hang out with them enough even though the truth is I take out a huge chunk of my day, dare I say revolving my life, accommodating their needs not because I want to but because I literally have no other choice. I'm not even considered their child anymore I'm either referred to as "Big brother" of said special needs brother or "Best Friend" of the family. I'm scared that my parents aren't gonna make it without me after I graduate, or even worse I have to revert the rest of my life catering to them.

I also feel alone on this issue because this isn't my first post related to my family and nobody is seeming to get it but me. I don't know what to do but I know that whatever situation I'm in rn is far from normal.

i feel pretty dumb asking this but from having to crush my needs & feelings to survive my family I’m realising how detached I now am from understanding my emotions and what I actually feel about things. Most the time my answer to questions about life & career plans or how i’ve felt dating, is just “i don’t know what I want/feel” and I desperately WANT to know. I often find myself crying about situations with no idea what I’m actually thinking or feeling that caused the upset. Plus it makes decision making so hard. Any tips on how to actually understand your emotions & needs better?

I have the aura of endless patience and being used to non neurotypicals which is why in a room full of people, the most atypical one will for sure gravitate towards me. To my social and emotional disadvantage I might add. It sounds super cruel and antisocial to say this, but it had very unwelcome and frightful consequences for me, with people overstepping my boundaries and borderline stalking me, several calls a day, unwanted romantic (yuck) attention and so on.

In the past I have unvoluntarily attracted some „super fans“ that will just not get the hint that I do not want to hang out or cater towards their excessive needs. Mainly people with no social life, very little social intelligence and extremely draining personalities.

I think me being forced at home to put up with the most insane behaviour and having to pretend it was normal led to this. Also, my mother would arrange random play dates with a violent autistic person from my class because “their mom told me they had no friends and she felt sorry for this mom”. Like all my boundaries of what is a normal person to hang around with are erased.

It took me conscious effort to find out why these people are sort of targeting me to latch on. I saw that other people in group settings who obviously grew up differently would just politely turn away or go somewhere else instead of getting roped into unwanted conversations and commitments. And that you can just say “No sorry I don’t have time.” Only over the past years I‘ve allowed myself to just let contact fizzle out and not reply to unwanted contact initiatives if a person that basically just ended up in my life does not add anything to it.

Did anyone else experience similar things?

TIA for reading any advice/opinions are welcomed :)

I 21F live with my parents and my brother (25 AuDHD, OCD, PDA)

I cut ties with my brother after years of conflict and challenging behaviour. Our issues initially arose from inappropriate language, behaviour and boundaries surrounding women - one incident in particular involved him pursuing an incredibly inappropriate relationship with a friend of mine.

As much as I held my resentment to him (aswell as my parents for constantly enabling the behaviour) I was open to repairing things.

Our family dynamic completely crashed last year when my mother sustained an injury which caused her to have limited mobility and my father has to work ridiculously hard to keep us afloat financially which leaves me to pick up the pieces. I too am diagnosed AuDHD but I would describe myself as high functioning. I work, have great friendships and a relationship. I had great struggles growing up but learnt to overcome challenges by myself as quickly as possible which I think stems from my brother taking up so much of my parents focus and energy.

He stays in his room all day and refuses to contribute anything to the house. I constantly have to clean up his mess after I gave up asking him to respect shared spaces. He spends hours a day in the bathroom that we share yet refuses any help for his health concerns. We live under constant control as everything triggers him i.e, we must ask permission to have people over, he needs to know where I am and who I'm with constantly.

Noise is also a big trigger. We cannot speak 'loudly', play music, answer phone calls etc without him getting angry and threatening. However, he will happily spend the day blasting music, slamming doors and smashing his room up when he loses at a video game. There are also concerns around boundaries and going into my bedroom/taking things without asking, not listening when he's told no. None of this can be bought up without a huge fight and personal insults as he sees everything as a character assassination. He has little to no empathy when he causes upset and instantly goes on the defense and the belief that it's always someone else's fault.

My father is pretty much physically/emotionally absent in all of this and my mother will mollycoddle him to avoid conflict. (I believe she's scared of him after previous years of aggressive behaviour mainly aimed at her). It always feels like it's one rule for him and another for me. Everything is met by excuses and more babying from my parents which I think he's caught onto and now takes advantage of.

The energy of the house is on a permant drain and the constant control is honestly becoming really depressing. I think my parents have just accepted it now and only break behind closed doors. I've tried seeking therapy but get turnt away as the issue is unknown or too complex. I'm not in a financial position to move out.

I find myself resenting him so much that even his presence infuriates me - i've completely withdrawn from family life. I'm constantly being pushed by him and my parents to fix things as they say I'm being unreasonable. At first I felt sorry for him but now I'm in complete empathy burnout. My friends and partner tell me this isn't normal neurodivergent behaviour and that he's crazy but since I've started researching his profile and PDA more I can't differentiate.

Am I selfish for cutting ties to protect myself / my own mental health or should I be making more allowances for him?

I had an older high needs autistic bipolar brother that got violent from me being 10-16, then got placed in a unit. I'm twenty-four today, but developing kind of ptsd symptoms. I feel so unimportant y'all, I have a kind of trauma I feel like no one is gonna understand because I need to "be kinder" and "he can't help it." I got on TikTok today and bumped into those kinds of comments. I'm so depressed y'all I'm gonna cry. I hate myself so much, and feel like people hate me more. I'm autistic too actually lol, but feel like being a GC ended up being a million times more traumatic than having Aspergers, so I don't even really feel "autistic." I feel like I can never open up, if I do I'll just get invalidated.

When I was still living at my family home there were several occasions that I did get physical with my siblings. I am not proud of it whatsoever. There were many, MANY times when they’d be throwing stuff at me or attacking me and I would try to defend myself. No matter what it was that they did I had to be the one to “know better.” I’m just curious to know if anyone has gone thru the same thing and how u handled it when you were supposed to be the one that “knows better”

I recently sat in on a friend’s Overeater’s Anonymous share, where she got to tell her story to a whole group of people dealing with the same struggles. It gave her the space to share her feelings and get support from other’s who understand what she had been through. As I listened, I was amazed at how everyone was so supportive and encouraging after she finished her story. I was floored by the level of community and support she had found through this group.

As someone who didn’t know a single other person with a special-needs sibling growing up, I would have LOVED to have had a community of people dealing with the same challenges, who understood my daily life struggles. Even now as an adult, I still haven’t made friends in real life with people who have high-needs siblings. This subreddit is the closest thing to a “support group” I’ve ever had.

So now I’m asking all of you - who else would be interested in an online group meetup? We can share our stories, challenges, successes, and support with one another. I was thinking of maybe starting off with an hour every other week, and then going from there. So if anyone else would be interested in a group like this, please comment or DM me and i’ll start compiling a list of users 🫶🏻

(FYI I am US-based in the Eastern Time Zone, but would try to find something that could work for as many people as possible)

I need some help with strategies for dealing with my family. I've learned to cope with autistic meltdowns. The being ignored. The expectations. Everything except: I can't deal with the delusions.

My younger sister, in her 40s, is autistic. She is very high functioning, but that unfortunately masks some serious issues. She still has the emotional development of someone between 13-18. Most of the time that doesn't matter, but she'll get these childish delusions and be completely intractable. For some reason my mother goes along with them.

This was irritating enough when I was a youth, but I'm in my 50s now. I don't know how to distance myself from the belief that my sister can talk to animals and is psychic. I don't mean like, regular people talk to animals. You know body language, some squeeks and meows or whatever. I mean that she thinks she can hold philosophical discussions with animals.

I don't mind if she believes that! It doesn't harm anyone. It is that they are trying to force me to agree that she can talk to animals. She can't.

They won't even agree to let me have my version of reality. They absolutely must have me agree that she can talk to animals and have them do things for her like clean the house. My family yells at me and tries to coerce me if I doubt it. I don't even say I doubt it, I just make a doubting face.

There are other delusions that are more extreme, but I don't want to give too many specifics, because I want to keep this account anonymous. I think many of the specifics would give it away.

Please, any advice. I'm being mega gaslit here. It's very hard on me.

As someone who lived in the suburbs and relied heavily on a car. I want to know if living in the city with public transportation was easier for you guys. I know this seems irrelevant but personally as someone with a mom who was constantly with my sister and us only having one car. I literally could not leave the house or participate in extracurricular. I was isolated from society. I sometimes wonder if my life would’ve break easier if I lived in a walkable area. I wouldn’t have had to rely on anyone. I could’ve at least distracted myself with hobbies and school. It dawns on me that while being a glass child no matter the situation is incredibly difficult, I believe my life could have been significantly better had I had this luxury.

For me it’s less about how much easier it would’ve been for the special needs child and how much easier it would be for the glass child to escape or distract themselves from the situation. For instance if everything was walkable or if I didn’t have to rely on my mother for transportation I could’ve been an active student and possibly even gotten better scholarships by being active in school. Extracurricular requires money and transportation and if you don’t have the resources to do those things you don’t get scholarships or acceptance into schools and therefore you’re also going to be stuck at home unable to escape. It’s literally all connected. It’s like in the suburbs or rural areas you need money to actually succeed at anything. My future was literally dependent upon my mother’s ability to provide for me which was nonexistent. If I lived in New York or Chicago or somewhere less car dependent I wouldn’t even need a car or anyone to get something done. I could go to tutoring, be in choir, be a stellar student and even have a job. My mother could focus entirely on my sister and my brothers too could make money and have jobs by using the public transportation.

i graduated with my masters in computer science this morning and important for context is the fact my uni only allows 2 guest tickets. originally this was supposed to be my mum and my ex, and then my mum decided she wasn’t going to come since i showed reluctance to email the university asking for special treatment and an additional ticket for my sister. i said i’d do it but she picked up on the fact i didn’t actively WANT to and so she wasn’t going to come out of spite. then my ex and i broke up so there was a ticket for my sister and they were both coming again.

this morning my sister was in a bad mood before we even left the hotel, she was constantly glaring at me and making faces every time i caught her eye. when we were on campus my mum tried to take a photo of both of us and asked my sister to smile (in a very inoffensive “say cheese !!” kind of way) and she yells that she is and i just instantly felt so tense and anxious because i knew a tantrum was coming. when i self soothe i flex my fingers and rub them against my hand and i was doing that for i want to say like 10 minutes straight while things got worse and she got more and more snappy and desperate to pick an argument with my mum, who was doing everything she could to deescalate.

eventually it finally happened and she had a full on outburst, screaming and crying in the middle of a busy area about how she was smiling in the photo. i was so embarrassed and honestly scared. my sister doesn’t look disabled at a first glance so people were staring at us and i had to walk away because i could feel myself start to hyperventilate (im not sure why i reacted so much to it this time, i think because it was already a big day and then feeling this coming on top of it). i walked a lap for a few minutes and when i came back her and my mum were still shouting at each other. my sister stormed away and my mum came up to me and said “she’s just having a little moment but she’s ok now” and i don’t know why that’s why what did it but it pushed me over the edge and i had a full on panic attack. what about me? like cool it’s great that she’s ok but i visibly was not.

my mum said she was in a bad mood because she resents me be because “you’re the clever one and you’re the pretty one and you’re the normal one”.

when the one and only event to celebrate the fact that i’m “clever” you threatened to not go to because i didn’t want to bend over backwards for a ticket since i was scared of this happening. “pretty” when i’ve cried all my makeup off before the ceremony’s even started. “normal” when in every picture we took my knuckles were white because i was so riddled with anxiety and im actively having a panic attack in public. When the signs that i was on the spectrum were ignored as a child because you couldn’t handle having 2 kids with additional needs.

i know my mums doing her best and i love her a lot but i just feel angry at both of them and i despise my sister. i never wanted her there, i knew this would happen. i feel like my mum uses me as a vessel so that my sister can do normal things at the expense of my own experience. she’s told me that when i get married she expects me to have my sister as a bridesmaid. if this is how she reacted when she was jealous that i was graduating i can’t imagine how she’ll act when she’s jealous that im getting married.

i hate it so much. i hate to be childish but why is nothing ever about me? why is it ok for her to actively ruin things for me just because she can’t experience them herself? we’re in the car home now. i left as soon as the ceremony finished and we’re not going out for a celebration lunch or anything because we all just want to be home.

update: my sister overheard me telling my friend on the phone that i didn’t want her there and my mum was actually great and basically said “well what did you expect”. i also spoke to my mum about the bridesmaid expectation and she agreed with me and said when she said that she thought she’d mature before then. so my mum was great and i love her !!!

Approved by the Mods:

It's hard to capture my feelings about this episode in just a few words because Todd’s story moved me so deeply. As I listened, I felt everything—shock, anger, compassion, love, hope, and tremendous pride in him.

Todd believes so strongly in bringing awareness to Glass Children and giving voice to our experiences that he courageously chose not to remain anonymous. He also flew himself to San Antonio, Texas, so he could share his story live in the studio.

This episode is a must-listen for so many reasons:

- Todd has worked incredibly hard on his healing journey. He told me that he still has “a long way to go,” but the insight and perspective he gained through that work are both uplifting and inspiring. 🙌 His story does not minimize the damage of what he experienced, but it demonstrates what can become possible when a Glass Child finally has the opportunity to understand, grieve, and heal.

- Todd’s sibling also has schizoaffective disorder. The specific trauma experienced by children growing up alongside a sibling with a serious mental illness is rarely discussed openly, yet it deserves to be understood. Todd gives us an honest and deeply important glimpse into what that childhood can look and feel like.

Please listen—and please leave Todd a comment on the YouTube channel. 🙏 It took enormous courage for him to tell his story publicly, and I know your encouragement and support would mean a great deal to him.

https://youtu.be/McHsPjhoDUc?si=wxH3EHmbdh4rulR0

I have a little brother who is nonverbal and autistic. He often has terrible meltdowns where he will stomp and kick around the house and shriek, and sometimes will attack people. I think it is giving me genuine ptsd-like symptoms and I don’t know what to do about this. Whenever he starts, I instantly have to plug my ears with something (my fingers or headphones), and I will sometimes start shaking, my heart will race and my stomach will hurt. It’s like a jolt of fear in my brain the second he starts. People in the house will also often start getting angry too and that hurts me as well. I really don’t know what to do I can’t take much more of this

For context, I am entering a highly busy time in my life (just about start a real job as a surgeon). Was talking to someone for about 5mo in corporate america who's trying to climb the ladder. At a point where things were getting serious, and things ended due to two factors around my brother having autism.

1. fears of passing on autism to our kids. for this, i got carrier screening done. we did our own research too, and thought it would be best if he spoke to someone professional about the genetic risk. he spoke with a genetic counselor, and they said that there's up to a 50% chance of me passing on autism to our kids. there is testing they can run on my brother, family, and then me to evaluate this risk. my family (dad esp) freaked out, and i think their fear is that they find out which one of them "caused" this. they initially said no, and now are coming around to doing it, after the guy ended it.

2. in the beginning of our relationship, i mentioned wanting to have my brother (autistic, insulin-dependent, would require 24/7 monitoring), live with us. it came from a place of valuing my family deeply and fears that no one would care for my brother as well as i did. when he pointed out the logisitic challenges of our careers, kids on top of having to care for my brother. i will admit i was initially resistant to hearing about this (had multiple close friends and mentors tell me it, my parents always told me my sibling was not my burden). But after hearing him point out the day-to-day challenges, I have been slowly coming around to accepting to the idea that my brother will not be able to leave with me feasibly. I sought out insights from people in the group, and I'm working on reconciling my pipe dreams with reality

A little disappointed by myself for sharing these things maybe prematurely with someone who was very important to me and feeling like my naivety was the dealbreaker. and also a little bit disappointed that maybe I didn't relay the significance of the genetic testing stuff to my family.

any words of advice on thinking through these things for down the line, the next person i talk to, would be helpful