Man Says His Brother Kept Showing Up Drunk at 3 A.M. — Then the Family Told Him to Block the Ex-Wife Instead

A 31-year-old man says his brother has been showing up at his apartment drunk, anxious, and unannounced for weeks, but when the family finally confronted him, they focused on something else entirely: who he was allowed to talk to.

He explained in a Reddit post that his brother and his brother’s parents had recently found out he was still talking to the brother’s soon-to-be ex-wife. The poster said he and the woman were friendly and cordial, and that she already knew a lot about what was happening because she still spoke with the family due to the children involved.

That part mattered because, from his point of view, he was not sneaking around with a total stranger or stirring up drama for fun. He saw the relationship as friendly, not romantic or malicious. He also believed the ex-wife had a reason to know some of what was going on, especially since she and his brother shared children.

His brother and the parents did not see it that way.

They picked him up to take him to lunch and, according to the poster, told him to stop talking to her, block her number, and never contact her again. Their reasoning was that she was a liar who lied about everything.

The poster was furious. He said he is a legal adult and did not appreciate anyone trying to control who he talks to. To him, the demand felt childish and controlling.

But the argument about the ex-wife was only one layer of the situation.

The poster said he had also been considering cutting his brother out of his life because of how stressful things had become. According to him, the brother had been showing up randomly at different times of the day without warning. Recently, he showed up drunk and anxious at 3 a.m.

On top of that, the brother had been coming over almost every day for a month and getting drunk while hanging out with him.

That had started wearing the poster down mentally. He was not simply annoyed by one family lunch or one demand to block someone. He was exhausted by a pattern of emotional chaos, random visits, drinking, and pressure from multiple sides.

In the comments, he added that his brother had become “real paranoid” about things missing from his house and other mental issues. He also said the brother had not seen his children in more than a month because he had been staying at the poster’s place drinking the whole time.

That detail changed the weight of the story. The brother’s soon-to-be ex-wife was not just some outsider the family disliked. She was the mother of his children, and the poster seemed to believe she had some reason to know what was happening if his brother was spiraling and absent from the kids’ lives.

At the same time, commenters pushed back on the way the poster was keeping her updated. They questioned whether he was making an already painful divorce messier by passing along information about his brother’s behavior.

That was the difficult part. The poster was right that he is an adult and can choose who he talks to. But family members were also right to be concerned if private information was being shared with someone in an active breakup.

The whole thing seemed to leave him caught between two bad dynamics. On one side, his brother was leaning on him heavily, showing up drunk, and creating stress at all hours. On the other, his family was trying to dictate his contact with the ex-wife instead of dealing directly with the larger crisis in front of them.

The poster’s frustration seemed to come from the fact that nobody was focusing on what he felt was the real issue. His brother was drinking at his place every day, showing up in the middle of the night, and apparently becoming paranoid and unstable. Yet the family lunch became a command session about blocking the ex.

He asked if he was overreacting, but the answer was not as clean as some of the other threads. He had every right to be worn down by his brother’s behavior. He also had every right to set limits on 3 a.m. visits and daily drinking in his apartment.

But keeping the ex-wife updated on his brother’s actions was a more complicated choice, especially during a divorce.

The post did not include a neat update saying he cut off his brother, stopped speaking to the ex-wife, or set a clear boundary with the parents. It ended in that tense middle ground where family loyalty, divorce, addiction concerns, children, and personal boundaries were all tangled together.

Commenters were more divided on this one than usual. Some understood why the poster was angry about being told who he could and could not speak to. They agreed that as an adult, he did not need his family ordering him to block someone.

But many commenters also said the ex-wife was not a neutral friend in this situation. They pointed out that she was his brother’s soon-to-be ex, and continuing to actively update her about what his brother was doing could make the divorce and custody issues even more painful.

Several people told him to step back from both sides. They said he did not need to be his brother’s drinking buddy, emotional caretaker, or unofficial messenger to the ex-wife.

A few commenters focused on the brother’s drinking and paranoia. One suggested looking into Al-Anon or similar support for relatives dealing with someone’s drinking, because the brother’s daily drinking and 3 a.m. appearances sounded serious.

Others said the poster might be focusing too much on proving he had a right to talk to whoever he wanted and not enough on whether staying in the middle was actually helping anyone.

The strongest advice was to stop being the bridge between the brother and the ex-wife, while also setting firm boundaries with the brother. No more drunk 3 a.m. drop-ins. No more daily drinking at his apartment. And no more letting the family turn him into the cleanup crew for a crisis they all seemed to be avoiding.