'AITA for telling my brother's fiancée to grow up and stop putting anger and trauma on me?'

"AITA for telling my brother's fiancée to grow up and stop trying to put her anger and trauma on me?"

My brother "Matt" (30m) is engaged to "Evelyn" (32f). Matt is our parents bio son. I'm (25f) their adopted daughter. We have another sister who is a bio and two more brothers who are adopted. Our parents fostered many kids and adopted some of us. I always knew I was adopted.

I was removed from an unsafe environment and didn't have any safe bio relatives. My bio "family" is tiny in terms of known and none of them are good people. I'm glad I was adopted. I feel so lucky to have found a family who embraced the fact we were not biologically connected but loved us the same and didn't try to make it shameful.

Those of us who were adopted have our own circumstances for being so. One of my brother's was orphaned and his biological parents wanted a family who would love and take care of him and he got that with us. Matt's fiancée Evelyn was adopted as an infant and she has a lot of feelings about that.

I understand why she has some complicated feelings regarding being adopted, and why she feels like her parents bought a child because they wanted one vs wanting to give a child a good life. Her adoptive parents wanted to erase her bio side and shamed her for ever having an interest in it and they talked badly about her birth family her whole life.

I don't think that was right or okay. But Evelyn is obsessed with making every adoptee feel the same way she does. She has spoken negatively about my parents "r-bbing" three kids of their rights to have legal access to their biological family history and identity.

She has suggested I was brainwashed by CPS into believing I was removed for safety reasons from my birth family and had no safe birth relatives (spoiler alert, all my known birth relatives have all been to prison multiple times and yes I looked them up). She has told me I'm just traumatized and afraid to speak out and say I was denied my real family.

I told her that's not how I feel. She told me it's how we all feel. That adopted kids are products in the US. I told Matt I couldn't take that. And I'd need to see him and Evelyn less if she can't stop. She keeps seeking me out though and on Saturday, while she was in my parents home and tried to bring it up again, I snapped.

I couldn't stand her talking like that about the people who was in the home of and I told her to grow up and accept people are different because only kids think everyone should feel the same and that she needed to stop putting her anger and trauma on me because we don't feel the same. She said I was spiteful throwing that in her face. AITA?

The internet was invested in the dynamic.

lgwp45 wrote:

NTA.

What does your brother do while she sits in your parents home and talks s-t about them? Do your parents know?

OP responded:

He doesn't say anything in front of us. Our parents know. I didn't know it but they were aware before too. They feel bad that her experience left her feeling as she does.

gordonr23 wrote:

NTA. The point is that there's a topic the 2 of you have a strong disagreement about. It doesn't even matter that this is specifically about adoption; it could be about anything--adoption, politics, religion, etc.

You've very reasonably asked that she stop talking about it, and she (very rudely) refuses.

You are absolutely correct that she's projecting her s-t onto you. She keeps bringing it up because she's not trying to convince you.

She's trying to convince herself that her entire worldview is the correct one because she's invested so much mental and emotional energy into it over the years. You are WELL within your rights not to want to spend time around her anymore. You've made the situation clear to your brother, and it's really up to him at this point if he wants to speak about it with Evelyn, but it's no longer your responsibility to do so.

Particular-Try5584 wrote:

NTA. In advocacy spaces there’s a few golden rules, things like “don’t talk about us, without us” ie don’t represent us without letting US talk too. And a big one is “experiences may vary, and I cannot talk for you because I haven’t walked in your shoes” ie what you’ve experienced I cannot imagine because I haven’t lived your life.

Evelyn is failing on both of those. Probably more.

Has she got an adoption fetish? Is that why she’s with your brother? How does HE feel about all this nonsense? (Not her, but the crap she’s talking) And how will he reconcile this with having children with her?

OP responded:

I think she has become so bitter about the flaws in the adoption system and the bad outcome she got, that she can't accept there are people who have benefitted from it too. I don't believe adoption is part of the reason she's with him because she found out about some of us being adopted months into their relationship.

Token_or_TolkienuPOS wrote:

Aside from the lunacy, what's truly troubling here is what on earth your brother is doing with her? I mean, he's the bio son of a family that adopted kids and he's marrying a woman that resents his own family values?

This is very odd and calls into question just what kind of man HE is. Does he agree with her? How does he respond when she's doing this in private, let alone at his parent's place? What a spineless man. NTA.

OP responded:

They both claim he does speak up when it's just them. But he never says anything to her in the moment in front of us.

Krish1986 wrote:

NTA next time just look at her and ask her if she truly thinks little kids should be left with people who are hurting them because blood is more important than safety. There are a host of reasons why kids are adopted.

Parents pass with no living relatives, parents give the child up for adoption, parents can’t or won’t keep the child and no other relatives want the child, etc. what are we supposed to do with these children?

Are they better off going up in orphanages or group homes vs being adopted by another family? Is the world of adoption perfect? Absolutely not! But rarely is anything perfect because people are not perfect and I’m sorry she got people who just wanted a baby and couldn’t cope with the fact that she wasn’t biologically theirs but that doesn’t mean they’re all like that.

Hot-Concentrate-4448 wrote:

She believes adoption should be off the table because it strips people of their rights to access their biological relatives. She believes in placing kids within biological families or their local communities through people who know them and their culture, etc.

She said as a last resort foster care like what my parents did should be allowed but guardianship over US adoption. She said I should not be okay with my identity being changed like it was when I was adopted.

NoRazzmatazz564 wrote:

NTA. She is gonna learn the hard way that people have different views than her, you gave her a pretty gentle start. Seems like you did the best you could to try to handle her on this. You are right she should not be disrespecting your parents by second guessing their motives for adoption so what you did was appropriate.