I am NOT OOP. OOP is u/Prize_Blueberry_6407, account now deleted

Originally posted to u/TrueOffMyChest

My (19 m) brother-in-law (26 m) is convinced that I’m in love with him.

Editor’s Note: added paragraph breaks for readability

Trigger Warnings:

Editor’s Note: In the original post, OOP made a mistake of using 2 different names for one person in the posts, I am using the 2nd name mentioned since it is used more frequently than the 1st name only used once.

Original Post : May 10, 2023

Pretty much what the title says. I've never posted on here before, but I do like to read the stories sometimes. Lets call my sister Diana and her boyfriend Mike. I’m the youngest of my three siblings, Diana, and my brother, who we’ll call Carlos. I came out as gay when I was 14, and my immediate family: my parents and siblings, were all supportive. My extended family, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents are less accepting, so I don’t tend to be as out and open around them. I graduated high school and started college two years ago when I was 17. I go to the same college that my sister is doing grad school at, and to save costs, I’ve been staying with her and her then fiancé at their apartment.

Mike had always been really nice, and I was happy that my sister was with a nice guy. My siblings and I have always been super close, and that closeness didn’t go away when I started living with Diana, so I would often end up hanging out with them and their friends sometimes. The semester just ended for the two of us, and we all went home this weekend to stay with my parents. We had a big family dinner, during which Mike kept making little jokes about me liking older guys (my bf is 23) and how he would try to keep me away from him and his buddies. Me and my siblings questioned him about these jokes he was making, until he finally stopped making them. That was last night.

This morning, my siblings and my parents went on a hike, which is a family activity that we usually enjoy thanks to us living close to the woods. I slept in and no one wanted to bother me, so they went without me. I figured that everyone had gone, but when I was eating my cereal in the living room and watching TV, Mike came out of the kitchen and sat next to me. I was surprised to see him, as I figured that he would’ve gone on the hike, but I guess not. He started by apologizing for making fun of me, and then said that it was just a nervous tick of his when he didn’t want to talk about something serious. He said that it was wrong of him to joke about my crush on him. I was super confused and asked for clarification, and he said that he knew about the crush I have on him (which I don’t).

I asked him why he would think that, and he cited a few things that he took as me liking him: 1) That I would always hang out with him and Diana. 2) That I chose to live with them instead of dorms. 3) That he barely knew my boyfriend. And 4) That I didn’t bring my boyfriend to their wedding. I tried to tell him that he was insane and that none of that meant I liked him, and they all had real explanations, but he just insisted that I was just trying to cover up the fact that I was in love with him. That was a few hours ago. I haven't told anyone in my family this yet, and I didn’t have lunch with my family since I've had plans to be out with high school friends all day. One friend suggested that I post this here, so I guess that's why I'm doing this. I’ll be sure to update if anything serious happens. Thanks for reading, lol.

Small Update (Not sure if I should've made this its own post, but if I should've, let me know!):

Hello everyone! I had no idea that this would take off the way it did. I have a bit of a small update. I spent the night at my friend’s house last night (this was planned before any of this). This morning I woke up and saw all of your comments and speculations. I took some time to reflect on the two main possibilities that ya’ll seem to have come up with.

Either A) he's one of those straight guys that thinks that all gay guys are attracted to him (definitely met a few of those), or B) He likes me and is projecting it, or trying to make it sound like my idea. After thinking about it a lot, I think that it is more likely to be the second option. I am a person who really loves physical displays of affection, like hugs and cuddles and stuff. My siblings and I are super close like I said, so I was used to showing my affection this way.

Looking back, I realize that Mike was more than willing to show affection this way, as my sister is the same. Mike and Diana had been dating since high school, but I only really got to know him in the last two years at college. He was always open to physical affection with me, right off the bat. There have been many comments that he has made that I took as harmless at the time, but now with the context, I realize may have been clues. He would almost always ask me how he looked, like, before he went out for the day, and would, in turn, compliment me back. I took things that he said as jokes, like when he told me that my ass looked good in an outfit, or he would tell me that I looked just like my sister (who is gorgeous). I always took this as him being nice, but now I’m not sure if that was his only intention.

Anyway, to the actual update. This morning, I called for a sibling meeting at a diner that we like to go to. Sibling meetings are something that we’ve been doing since we were kids, where we’d talk about things like convincing our parents to get us a pet or splitting the household chores.

We met at the diner for brunch, and my brother immediately went on and said how weird it was that Mike was making jokes about me. Diana said that he was still making jokes to her privately after dinner and that it wasn't the first time he had made those types of jokes. She said that she figured that he was one of those guys who thought that gay guys liked him, but then I told them about his “apology” yesterday morning, and all the comments and other jokes he’s made, and we all think it was pretty weird. I showed them my post and they briefly read through the comments as well. My sister said that she would talk to him about it, and told me that no matter what happened, she would never hold anything against me, or blame me for anything, so that was reassuring. We had food and I went back to my friend’s house and my sister said she would let me know if anything happens.

I also texted my boyfriend about all this. He's British, so we have a bit of a time difference. he hasn't responded, but I want to be sure to keep him in the loop as well. I’m currently with my friends, watching them play a video game and pretending to know what’s going on lol. I’ll keep y’all updated.

Comments

Orphan_Izzy: By Mike’s theory with every example he gave you you also have a crush on your sister so I might point that out to him unless you think he’d actually believe it.

o_Olive_You_o: Did he stay behind in hopes of talking to you alone? Maybe the real issue is he has developed a crush on you... If he continues making jokes or what not then I might consider saying something to your sister, but if it ends here.. I would try to bring your BF around a little more. I don't even understand why he felt the need to bring it up to you.. kinda weird.

 

Update : June 27, 2024 (1 year and 1 month later)

Hello everyone!

I would first like to say thank you all for your support in the comments of my last post and in your guys' private messages to me. After the last mini update, I had logged off of reddit and a lot of things have happened so I honestly kind of forgot that I even had this account still.

Coincidentally, I was on TikTok a while ago when I found one of those ai voice accounts that read reddit stories over someone playing Minecraft parkour. Those types of videos are like weeds, once you see one of them, your entire timeline gets flooded with them. Earlier today, a video with part of my reddit post came across my fyp, and the comments were full of people asking if there was any updates.

It has been over a year, and I am so sorry for keeping you all in the dark. I saw that my last post was archived and nobody could comment on it, so I figured I should make a new post, for those of you who might be seeing me for the first time ever, I believe you can find my first post on my page. I would recommend reading that before you read this one. I would also like to issue a trigger warning for sexual assault. Now, onto the whole mess that was the past year for me.

So, the last time I updated y'all was in May of last year. Me and my siblings were all on summer break from college, and were home for the summer. So, the day after I talked to my siblings at the diner, I returned home from my friend's house and everything seemed normal. My sister informed me that she had talked to her boyfriend, that he had seemed more receptive to her concerns, and he was a lot more calm towards me. He stayed with us until the end of that week, where no further incident occurred between us, before he left to go visit his own family (he's on the complete other side of the country as us).

A little after his departure I noticed that I couldn't find my favorite pair of underwear after doing a load of laundry. At the time, I just chalked it up to it being lost in the wash, or maybe mixed up with someone else's clothes. (They were a pair of pink briefs, which I find to be more comfortable for my body type than other forms of underwear, and unfortunately for me, considered mor "sexy"). I'm sure you can all understand what actually happened to them.

My sister only stayed with us for two weeks, as her job was only allowing her so much time that she could be remote. From what I knew, her boyfriend had returned to our apartment around the same time as her. I stayed for the whole month, before I too had to return to the city our college is in because I had gotten a summer internship in that city. So I was back to staying with my sister and her boyfriend.

A few weeks into that, my sister was out for the night because of her friend's bachelorette party, and her boyfriend was out at a bar with his friends, which left me alone in the apartment for the night. I had a movie night, and went to bed early. I awoke in the middle of the night to my sister's boyfriend in my bed, touching me. When he noticed I was awake, he held me down and assaulted me. The whole time he was doing it, he was threatening my and my sister's lives, saying that if I told her, or anyone, he would kill both of us. My sister ended up staying the night at her friend's place, and her boyfriend assaulted me two more times before she came home. I was pretty broken by that point, and his threats against our lives we ringing in my ears all the time. This cycle continued, where my sister's boyfriend would act withdrawn from me when around others, especially my sister, then assault me whenever he could, threatening both of our lives if I ever spoke up.

It's such a difficult thing to describe, the rational part of your brain tells you that it is just a manipulation tactic, that he was lying, and that I needed to speak up, but the irrational part of my brain was so scared. I don't know if that makes sense to you all, maybe those of you who have been through a similar situation as me might understand it. I also began to change, my usually happy and bubbly personality changing to a more withdrawn, moody, almost depressed one. I took to wearing less revealing clothes, especially at home, think from tank tops and booty shorts to t-shirts and pants (A reminder that this was happening in summer, so my previous wardrobe was better for the weather.)

About three months later, in September, when I was back to school and done with the summer internship, my sister was doing laundry one day, and decided to surprise me by doing mine too, because she is a sweetheart like that. She also decided to wash my sheets for me, and that's when she saw that there were bloodstains on my sheets. This immediately raised concerns with her.

So that day, when I came home from campus, I found my sister on the couch, with the sheet next to her. She tentatively asked me if I had been self harming, as she herself had been though that struggle. She has scars on her thighs from doing it. She told me that my recent change of mood, and the fact that I had changed my wardrobe to be more covered up, especially my legs, had her worried. I told her I was not, but could offer no explanation as to why the sheets were bloody. It was then that I broke down and had a huge panic attack.

My sister tried to calm me down at first, but when that didn't help, and I was still struggling, she decided to take me to the ER. The attack lasted for about 45 minutes, only going away when they gave me some sort of medication to help me calm down (apologies, my memories from this particular part are a little spotty).

Once I calmed down, I was allowed to stay in the hospital room for a little bit, and when it was eventually me and my sister, where I confessed it all to her. She was extremely comforting, and asked me when the last time he had assaulted me was. It was the night before, so she pressed the little doctor/nurse call thing, and told them that I was going to need a rape kit. For those of you who want the specifics of that process, please google it.

After that, I just wanted to go home. My sister took me, and left me in her car at first, then came out and ensured that her boyfriend was not there yet. She texted him and told him to not come home, as the two of us were really sick and we did not want to infect him. The next day, instead of going to our classes, She took me to our local police station to file a police report.

This whole process was also long and laborious, and honestly my memory surrounding it all is kinda hazy (something my therapist says can happen with traumatic experiences) but with the evidence found from the rape kit, and my testimony, he got a sentence of four years and a fine, and he has to register on the sex offender registry.

I am doing much better now, my schooling was only a little bit affected, but nothing too bad, and I'm on summer break again. My sister and I are both close still, we are both in therapy, and I am getting through things day by day. I am currently writing this from home, and I'm flying out to London next week to see my boyfriend. I will try to not forget this page again, haha.

Additional Information from OOP on how Mike was confronted

OOP: Yeah, so he was at a friend's place while we were at our apartment. My sister was still maintaining that we were sick. we told the police which friend he was likely to be staying with, and he was Taken from there. Since I got the rape kit, they were able to get dna from that, plus we submitted the sheets as evidence, and there was some dna on there too. The police to his dna to compare to the dna found and that was what nailed him as guilty. He maintained his innocence until his sentence was delivered. He threatened me when they were taking him out.

OOP shares details from Mike’s family after they found out what happened and their reactions

OOP: His family was a bit of a problem at first. His parents sort of had the "my son would never" attitude. They attended all of the court sessions, and as more and more of our evidence (dna from the rape kit and the sheets, pictures of the bruises he left on me and of the sheets themselves) was shown, and at my testimony, they admonished him. They sent my sister a message apologizing for his actions and sending me their sympathies. He has a sister from what I know, but I haven't seen her. She might be estranged or have little contact based on what my sister has told me.

Comments

here4mysteries: I’m so heartbroken that this happened to you.

I am SO SO proud of you for coming forward, that is outrageously difficult and not something everyone is able to do.

I’m so very thankful your sister listened, believed you and supported you.

There are no words to adequately describe the strength and love you and your sister have shown. All my love 💚

OOP: Thank you! I really wouldn't be anywhere without my sister, I had no idea of what to do or how to report it or anything. Thank you for your words of encouragement!

Initial_Obligation55: No the update I expected nor wanted but I’m glad you got some form of “justice”. I really am praying for your recovery honey. You didn’t deserve that and neither did your sister. I can only imagine how you feel and I truly hope that you heal from all the hurt physically, mentally and spiritually. Sending you and your sister so much love pa.

OOP: Thank you so much! I'm doing better every day :)

 

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