Who Am I To Tell Him He's Crazy?

Weee-e-e-e-ll.

Another one bites the dust.

Another one of Big Little Bro's girlfriends, that is.

The latest one, the very new and very serious one that he's been dating since the beginning of the year.  I must confess that I'm relieved and disappointed at the same time.  Disappointed because she seemed perfect; but relieved because he had confided to me about a month ago that they were talking the "M-word" and everything.  I've never ever heard him talk about the M-word before.  E-ver.

I told him that I thought he was crazy but if that was what he wanted, I was happy for him and I would support his decision.

Who am I to judge?  I mean, yeah... Hubby and I were friends and work colleagues for a couple of years before we ever started dating so we did have some sort of an established history together; but we only dated for seven or eight months before we got married.  And when I say "got married" I actually mean "decided to get hitched, told our parents that we were getting hitched, booked the first Friday afternoon they had open at the courthouse, got married two weeks later and I jetted for boot camp six weeks after that."

I'm sure everyone thought we were crazy and I'm sure at least half of those everyones thought it would never last for long; so I'm not really one to go around pointing fingers and calling names.

Also, you can't tell your brother who's convinced after only one short month that he's in love with "The One" that he's loony.  He won't listen, or ~  if your words do manage to penetrate the cloud of cupidic infatuation surrounding his brain ~ he'll get defensive and possibly end up hating you for judging him.  Or both.  And then if he actually goes through with it down the road and marries her, you are always going to be "The Bitch" because you lovingly and level-headedly told him in no uncertain terms to run away screaming.

So instead I kept my mouth shut and waited to see where it went.

It went right down the drain.  Immediately after the family fell in love with her and my mother insisted she be in the family pictures (!), it flopped.

What went wrong, you ask?

I asked him what went wrong after he broke the news to me over the phone the other day.  As best as I can decipher it, the deal-breaker seems to be that she just wasn't serious enough.  About what, I'm not sure.  In his words, he became so bothered by her flippancy every time he tried to have a conversation with her on a serious topic that he finally couldn't take it any longer.  When he broached the subject to her, she took it to mean they were breaking up.  Bro isn't one to put up with nonsensical melodrama if he's already not getting a good vibe to begin with.  So they broke up.

But this got me thinking?  Is it really ever a good idea to mess with other people's relationships?

This girl seemed perfect hence everyone was okay with him being so crazy about her.  But what if she had been a psychotic, controlling bitch?  Then what?  Would I have told him to run away, even at the cost of him hating me?  In my (own personal past) experience: the more unhealthy a relationship is for someone, the more unwilling they are to listen to negative input about their relationship.

Also in my own personal past experience, I did confront Big Little Bro about something once before and he did run away.  To Cali.  For two years.  It was ugly; and some of the things said between us still hurt me.  I don't flatter myself that I drove to him to run away to the opposite side of the country for two years, I think I just happened to be the person who put the icing on that particular cake.  And that's a long and somewhat painful story and best left alone for right now.

And I'm rambling again.

I think my original thought was that I'm finally begin to learn where the line is between 'voicing my opinion' and 'judging.'  It's okay to care, and it's my job to care because there will come times where I will have to be the terrible asshole who voices the unpopular truth that the loved one doesn't want to hear and no one else has the balls to say to them.  But it's not my job to try to interfere or force my opinions on others.  That only ever leads to ugliness.

So... here's to hoping that Big Little Bro eventually finds The Real One.  I knew she seemed to perfect to be true.  Maybe she was a Fembot?  Er.... sorry... rapidly deteriorating train of thought... *yawns*... goodnight.