Featured on @StorylineReddit: November 28, 2025
At first, it reads like a practical decision. A younger brother loses his sight. An older sister rearranges her life so he can recover somewhere quieter, less exposed. The girlfriend moves in too. On paper, it looks like care consolidating under one roof.
Then it’s just small things. Early morning footsteps. A voice raised too suddenly. Hands placed on shoulders without warning.
The girlfriend calls it helpful. Training. Awareness-building. The brother begins to shrink a little when she’s nearby. He laughs less. He asks to be left alone. The sister starts noticing how the room feels when certain movements happen behind him.
This isn’t an explosive betrayal. It unfolds through repetition. Through who gets to decide what is good for someone else. And through the shift that happens when “I’m helping” stops sounding neutral.
The conflict develops through pattern rather than spectacle. A teenage boy, newly blind and medically vulnerable, moves in with his sister during recovery. Her girlfriend joins the household. Soon after, the girlfriend begins deliberately startling him approaching quietly, grabbing his shoulders, shouting greetings under the belief that this will sharpen his awareness.
When confronted, she defends the behavior as beneficial. She references outside advice that later turns out to be unverified and partially fabricated. The sister sets a boundary. The girlfriend agrees to stop. The behavior continues.
The brother initially says nothing, not wanting to disrupt the arrangement. His withdrawal becomes noticeable before the sister understands why.
Over time, the disagreement shifts. It becomes less about the tactic itself and more about priority and authority inside the home. The girlfriend frames the sister’s protection of her brother as disloyalty. The language escalates. The dynamic clarifies.
The outcome is practical: the girlfriend leaves the house, and after further confrontation, the relationship ends. The emotional accounting is less tidy.
Text Version
I had to kick my girlfriend out of my house because she was scaring my brother
REPOST
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/ThrowRA89340927
I had to kick my girlfriend out of my house because she was scaring my brother.
Originally posted to r/relationship_advice
BoRU 1 Posted by u/bestupdator
TRIGGER WARNING: Abusing a blind person
MOOD SPOILER: Appalling but ends as positive as possible
Original Post July 16, 2020
I’d like to start saying that english is not my first language, so if I make any mistakes I would like to apologise beforehand.
So onto the situation. My girlfriend (23F) and I (24F) have been together for 2 years now, my familly allways loved her and she even had a good relationship with my brother (16M) as well. Last year my brother was diagnosed with a certain disease that almost took his life, my brother allways have had a low immune system, wich made everything even worse, my brother are still recovering, but in a much bettet condition right now, but unfortunately he ended up losing his sight on both eyes, legally speaking he can be considerated blind right now.
When social isolation started to happen because of the most recent events, I decided to speak with my parent’s about how it would be better if my brother lived with me by the time being. My parent’s agreed happily, they both are essential workers and they wouldn’t have much time to stay with my brother, he is still getting used to his “new life” as a blind person, and still adapting on how to live with it, if he needed help with anything my parent’s wouldn’t be able to help, and also because my brother already have a bad immune system and it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to live in a house with our parent’s who would constantly be dealing with patients who may or not be “sick”. I can work from home and I also have a lot of free time, so if he ever needed help I would be more than avaible to help him, so it was a win win situation.
I also invited my girlfriend to live with me, she have a very good house of her own but we could be together so why not, right?.
Everything was good and fine, but recently I started to notice that my brother became to not be himself anymore, I mean, even with all of this happening with him he was allways cheerful and happy, and allways “trying to look at the good side in all of this”, but recently he started to become more shy and introverted when my girlfriend was around, and I found that strange. Yesterday I was a my living room reading a book and my brother was at the kitchen drinking a cup of water, my girlfriend approached him sand just said good morning (she just got up almost 7:30AM) I noticed my brother get scared, I thought that was just a isolated incident, she must have caught him by surprise so I didn’t pay much attention to it.
But today I was hearing music while preparing our lunch and my brother was sitting on the kitchen talking with me, I noticed someone approaching and I saw that it was my girlfriend, when she noticed we where hearing music she started to walk slowly as if she didn’t want to make sound, she bot behind my brother and quickly hold his shoulders and shouted “hello there, how you’re doing”. My brother said he wanted to stay alone and went to his room.
I was pissed at her, I asked her what did she thought she was doing by scaring him that way, she told me that she have read on the internet and also from her mother that scaring a blind person is a good thing because it makes them more aware of their surrounding. I started to connect the dots, and asked her for how long she have been scaring my brother like that, she told me around 2 weeks, up to 3 times a day if “possible” in her words. I was seeing red at that moment, I asked her to never do that again. It didn’t take much, It was almost 4 PM today and I was watering my garden when I heard my brother shout, when I got back inside he was shouting to my girlfriend leave him alone.
I ended up getting in a fight with her, I tried every single thing that I could to show her that it wasn’t ok to do that to a blind person and she needed to stop or else she would have to come back to her house, she promised me to never do it again. Tonight I was making dinner and she did again… I didn’t know what to do anymore, we got into a huge fight and I ended up telling her to go back to her house, she argued with me that I was being unfair and the is just trying to help, I still refused to let her stay, and she just went to her home. She have been bombarding my celphone the entire night about it was wrong for me to do that and I should have never kicked her out because something so trivial as that, I haven’t been answering and I don’t even know how to.
I feel like I shouldn’t have just kicked her out of my house, but I don’t feel like it would be a safe space for my brother if she just goes around scaring him, my brother told me he didn’t say anything to me before because he didn’t want cause problems as he was a guest. I don’t think she would stop if she came back, she have a history of being a little bit stubborn sometimes but never something like this that would affect other pople.
I don’t know how to respond to her, should I let her back at my house but setting some ground rules? should I not allow her back until my brother are back to my parent’s house? otherwise than this she was allways a loving girlfriend and allways treated me and my familly with nothing but respect and love, I don’t know how to go on from this.
TL;DR: My brother became blind recently and have come to live with me, my girlfriend also have come to live with me but she started to randomly scare my brother because he is blind and refuse to stop.
TOP COMMENTS
the_last_basselope
Do you honestly want to be with someone who thinks it’s okay to emotionally traumatize a blind person, especially someone who is recently blind and already dealing with more than enough emotional trauma from that?
Your girlfriend is cruel. Knowingly, deliberately, maliciously cruel.
At the very least, never have her around your brother again or he’ll stop trusting you like he no longer trusts her.
~
tamponbiscuit1720
Both you and your brother have clearly let het know that what she’s doing is not okay. She makes you feel bad for even asking her to stop, lies and says she won’t donit again, then scares him the same day. This is clearly having a big effect of your brothers life. He is vulnerable and is already having a hard time and now he feels the need to fight off someone who is bigger, older, and abled. She is being borderline abusive.
My advice: break off any connection with her and keep protecting your brother from any harm.
Update July 19, 2020 (3 days later)
Hello everyone, I would like to thank you all for your time and of course for commenting on my original post and would like to thank you all a lot for your advices.
The Original post: HERE
I would like to start by saying that I decided to get in contact again with my girlfriend, and I decided to talk to her. Of course I didn’t let her back into my home and I wanted to talk on any other place than there, she called me to go to her house.
I started by asking her where did she get the “advice” that she saw on the internet that said that scaring blind people was a good thing to be done. She was very reluctant to tell me, but when I pressured her a little more she ended up telling me. Apparently there’s is no article, no research, no elaborated study, nothing… The advice she got came from a friend of hers on facebook chat, and she just went along with it. She also told me she lied about her mother telling her that, to clarify, her mother is a social worker where we live, so she thought that if she said that her mother had also said that it would maker her “friend” advice a little more credible because she couldn’t find any article or study. I tried to ask her about why would she think that her friend advice was good when she could nothing to corroborate it, she didn’t want to answer.
I asked her them why would she ignore me when I told her to stop and kept scaring my brother. She told me that she didn’t thought that I would find it that bad, and that if I really loved her I would just ignore it because she was trying to help and that she feels that I don’t love her because I would choose my brother over her just because now he is a “crippled” (her own words) on something so “trivial”, and that he should grow up and deal with his problems himself, and I as her girlfriend should be on her side allways. Of course I was very angry at this answer and we ended up getting on another fight. On her words I shouldn’t have asked my brother to come live with me, but as I ended up asking he should just be quiet and obey and accept what we do because we “know better” for being adults.
Before going to her house I took some people advice and I decided to ponder abour our relationship until that moment. And looking back I could see a lot of things I believe I didn’t want to see. First, every single approach on our relationship was taken by me… want a date? I was the one inviting her, let’s go see a movie? I allways had to be the one to invite, romantic time? I had to start allways, looking back the entire relationship look’s one sided… Second, she doesn’t look like she care much about “boundaries” from the start, she disregarded every single boundarie I’ve had before, I never took much action about them because they were small things, I believe that if I had made myself more clear before it wouldn’t get to a point where it would cause problems to my brother.
I made a decision, I didn’t want to break up, but if we were to continue a relationship with her, all of this would have to change. I talked with her and told her that I didn’t want to break up, but if we were to continue a relationship, first she would not be allowed near my brother and wouldn’t be welcome to my house when my brother is there, second she would have to apologise to him and promise and this time respect that promise, that what was done wouldn’t happen again, and third she would have to go to counseling with me. Those where my terms and if we were to continue together things had to change.
She got mad at me, cursed me, told me I was and idiot to choose family over her, and that I was crazy to end a relationship over this, I talked with her about those things I mentioned earlier and she call me stupid, that this is what a “good relationship” look’s like. Of course we got on another fight.
In the end she wasn’t willing to compromise and make the relationship work. So, I decided to end things… yep we broke up, of course I left her house being called a lot of names, I blocked her on both my cellphone and social media, and right now I’m focusing on my brother. It hurts a lot that the person that I’ve been calling the love of my life recently could be that cold but I guess it was for the better.
A lot of you recommended therapy and counseling for my brother, he is already on it. Before coming to my house he already was on it.
I would like to thank you all for advice, I don’t think I would have ever looked back at my own relationship if I haven’t got to that point and I don’t think it would be safer to continue in that relationship anymore, she already disregarded boundaries with me, I didn’t do nothing about it, and it got to a point where it ended affecting very bad my brother and I feel very guilt for that.
Thank you all for your help, and for your kind words of confort
Edit: It look’s like a lot of people are misreading or didn’t see on my original post, I am also a woman, and my girlfriend is a woman as well.
Source
The escalation doesn’t begin loudly. It accumulates. First it’s described as an experiment something read online, something a friend mentioned. Then it becomes routine. Two weeks. Up to three times a day. Quiet steps. A sudden grip on the shoulders. A shouted greeting.
Music playing in the kitchen. A body turning toward the sink. Someone moving closer without being heard. Hands landing. A startled breath. “I want to be alone.” A door closing.
For a moment, that’s all there is.
What shifts the center of gravity isn’t the first incident. It’s the repetition after objection. The sister doesn’t immediately expel her. She asks her to stop. She explains why. A promise is made. Then it happens again the same day. And again later. The pattern becomes less about surprise and more about refusal.
Midway through the confrontation, something sharp enters the language. The brother is described as someone who should deal with it himself. The sister is told she is choosing family over her partner. The conversation slides from method into hierarchy. Who comes first. Who defers. Who obeys.
From the girlfriend’s perspective, there may have been a belief that resilience requires discomfort, that pushing him would accelerate adaptation. There may also have been resentment space in the relationship narrowing as the brother’s needs expanded. That tension hums underneath, even if it’s never named directly.
Still, the daily act remains concrete. Walking up behind someone who cannot see you. Doing it again after being told not to.
Later, the sister recognizes earlier boundary patterns in her relationship small ones, easy to overlook at the time. That realization sits there, not fully unpacked.
The breakup follows argument rather than revelation. The house becomes quieter. The brother continues therapy. The sister is left holding two things at once: relief, and the slow understanding that repetition can change the meaning of a room.
