Sorry to hear about the young man you know in hospital @Mazarita .. hope you are dealing with it ok.
I think your idea about not having too much expectation on friends or other people is fair. i am not sure what all the expectation is about ...
Hi @Billamba
It is not right that you had to endure your brother's aggression. A lot of people still seem to have a bias towards supporting males or letting them off the hook for bad behaviour .. even if they think sexism is wrong ... whether it be under the lovable larrikin moniker or they have an illness. A lot of people with aspergers are not at all aggressive or violent.
I dealt with similar bias toward the male boy in my family. I didnt realise its importance. Not that my brother was violent to me as a boy, he tickled a bit hard, that was all, and I thought we were good mates, but after my father died he was always indulged by my mother and he became more and more controlling and then violent, mostly to the church and my mother. Mostly I trusted in him and me and I often tried to talk him down from anger or violent converations but sadly 6 weeks before he died he turned on me, and I was really his best friend on the planet.
One reason it was really weird and unexpected ... was that he started getting angry to me when drunk because I had done maths .. it was so out of left field ... I was older, had helped him a bit with math homework ... I didnt realise he was jealous, he had never been so sexist before, but mother had just bought him a car and he had had an overseas trip with his second wife ... he started on about ... that maths was not useful for women to know ... and then suddenly he flew at me ... I couldnt fight back I just went weak at the knees and submitted .. I was exhausted anyway from driving kids across town and then still had 3 hour driving trip to pickup oldest child from access with her biological mother.
My mother allowed him to seriously abuse me in front of my kids... I dont know if you can change your family dynamic too much .. I did all I could to help mine... in the end survival is all I managed ... my trust and love of my family in tatters. The only thing that kept me a quarter sane was starting a music degree part-time.
As a piano teacher I have also seen the gender bias often between siblings .. boys are allowed to be more assertive or aggressive or competitive .... sometimes its subtle... girls usually manage it by stopping the argument... but that means compromise or acceptance of abuse.
Yet men can be good human beings too.
