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There is no right answer to any of the stuff I'm about to post, but I would be really grateful if people could suggest some ideas for what I could do, because as you'll understand after you've read this, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Part 1:

Spoiler:

Some of you may remember me posting a while back about a dilemma I was having; my family has spectacularly fallen apart, and at the time I didn't really give too much away because it was a very sensitive topic, and I really, really appreciated all the advice and kind words people had for me, and now I'm ready to talk about what happened.

The reason I'm turning to TiBB is because I can't ask my family and I can't ask my best friend (more on that in Part 2) and it somehow feels easier talking to people who don't know any of the people in question, because I feel like you'll give me more honest responses than any of my family or friends, who will only tell me what they think I want to hear.

My older brother met his girlfriend when he was 21 and she was 18, in 2000. In 2008 they got married in Italy - her family hired out a massive villa for all these extended family members and we were there for a week. My parents threw a massive wedding reception party when we were back home. I really like my sister-in-law, I have a laugh with her, and they seem to have a really, really good relationship. As far as I knew, things were fine and it wasn't something I ever thought about.

My sister-in-law seems to have an alcohol problem, or perhaps it just seems that way, but there's a lot of evidence stacked up in favour of that idea. She got really drunk on her wedding night and went to bed early. She got so drunk at the wedding reception my parents threw that she was put to bed before half the guests turned up. She turns up to dinner pissed as a fart and goes home again. She quit her job over a year ago because my brother's earning so much money, and I think the assumption was that she was going to have a baby. That's not happened, she just gets drunk with her mum or her sister or her friends all day, every day. She can't drive, she doesn't cook, she doesn't clean, she doesn't normally leave the flat... what does she do? This was a question my parents had privately been asking themselves for years, but my mum was of the opinion that if she made him happy; bringing it up would only drive him away.

That remained the case until one particular occasion when she turned up drunk to a family meal and went straight back to their flat (obviously my brother had to drive her) without so much as saying hi to anyone, literally she came in the door and left again. But then, my brother came back. He sat and spoke to my parents for a very long time about how worried he was, and they listened. My mum gave him some advice. He went home.

His birthday last year was the real breaking point. His wife's step father needed to go to a hospital appointment on my brother's birthday; and my brother volunteered to take him. My mum had gone to a great deal of effort to make him a birthday meal, and at the last moment he'd cancelled and said it was because he had to take his father-in-law to this appointment. My mum was furious at him and asked why he was so determined to bend over backwards for their family and not be a part of his own. My brother then decided to tell his wife everything my mum had said about her; which, I should stress, she'd only said because he'd asked her for advice. Well, that didn't go down well, and things went from bad to worse to hostile in a very short space of time. This was February 2012. I was still away in Germany and really honestly didn't know about any of this. My parents were still keeping quiet and my brother has always been distant from my other brother and I. My parents went on holiday for my mum's birthday in summer; and I spent my birthday with friends here in my flat; so the absence of my older brother at these two events did not occur to me.

December 2012, I was home for Christmas and wanted to see my older brother. I hadn't seen him properly in 12 months. I went over to his for pizza and a couple of drinks, I had a really nice time, then I went to hang out with my friends. I came home the next day and my mum was crying her eyes out because I'd gone to go see him, which is when I started to find out some of what had been going on in my absence. Even still, all I felt was bad that I'd put my foot in it, I didn't know or feel enough to be taking sides.

I returned to uni, and received an email in January from my dad (and posted on here at that time) basically telling me that he and my mum had written my brother out of their will. In their eyes, he's no longer part of the family, and my other brother and I are not to have anything to do with him, because if we do, it will greatly upset them. At the time, I felt like I was stuck between choosing my parents or my brother and I didn't know what to do. That feeling has changed over the last two months. I've never been close to my older brother. I'm much closer to my younger brother; but out of the two of us I'm closer to our older brother. Standard middle child outlook. As I said, I don't see him often. It's not difficult for me to avoid seeing him for great lengths of time, but I don't want to fall out with him because I don't have a problem with him.

My dad, the next time I saw him after he sent the email, told me some other stories that I didn't know about. My sister in law and her sister had seen my mum in the supermarket on Christmas Eve. They were (naturally...) drunk. They shouted abuse at her, in public. I came home for Christmas on Christmas Eve, after my mum had been on the receiving end of some abuse, and I wouldn't have ever known had he not told me. She's put on such a brave face throughout all of this.

My mum brought my older brother up by herself. Her first husband, his dad, left her and my brother when he was only a kid, and she worked some really ****ty jobs, scraping money together to buy a flat, a fridge, a sofa and a TV. And that's all she had. They didn't even have beds. My brother slept on the sofa and my mum slept on the floor. She refused to go on benefits and let that become her life. She had to leave school when she was 16 because her family was so poor and they needed everyone to bring income into the house. She saved and saved and did everything for my brother. Then she met my dad, and he looked after my brother as if he was his own. But it was always my mum who had brought my brother up, and my dad takes no credit for the money she's saved over the years by working her ass off. I love my mum so, so much and I'll always be grateful to her for everything she's ever done to me; and to see my older brother turn around and betray her so badly; to let that manipulative drunk mock my mum, has devastated my family.

He doesn't have friends anymore. All of his other friends have wives, they're starting families, they live in houses and they all hang out when they can. My brother goes to work, he does the food shopping, he cooks the dinner, he cleans the flat and he goes to bed. They live in a flat. He's absolutely loaded, money's not a problem for him anymore, but he lives this reclusive lifestyle where his entire world is looking after his 31 year old wife who's acting like someone my age. Actually, no, not even someone my age (21 years old) would be getting so drunk on such a regular basis. Absolutely no way.

My parents and I have had long discussions about this. They wonder if they should have said something to him, about her, much sooner than they did. I told them it wouldn't have made a difference, the reaction was always going to be the same; but the timing of it has meant that their relationship has only grown stronger while his relationship with us has diminished. If they'd told him she was trouble when they'd been going out for a year, perhaps it would have ended. Perhaps it wouldn't have. It breaks my heart knowing that my brother, whether he thinks it/realises it or not, is trapped in a dead end marriage. His wife couldn't be a mother. She couldn't give up alcohol for 9 months, or smoking, or care for another human being. She can't even care for herself. She can't expect my brother to look after the baby as well, because there isn't enough time in the day. She'd probably get her mum to look after it. And that would only break my mum's heart even more. Their family take priority over ours; Christmases and birthdays aren't divided between families, it's always them over us. My mum just looks sad all the time. She's living her dream right now, studying photography, and she always looks like she's about to start crying. I want to punch him in the face, I swear to God, he's breaking her heart every single day. Why the **** is he doing this to us? All she ever did was try and help him, try and do the best for him, and he does this to her.

But this leads me onto Part 2 of my problem...

Part 2:

Spoiler:

My best friend and I have been inseparable since the day we met. It was our first day of secondary school. We were 12 years old. I know the exact date we met, I remember our first conversation. We were in the same form class at school and mostly the same classes, we've been on holiday together, we lived together for two years, people know us as a duo.

I went abroad to Germany as part of my degree. I knew things would change while I was away because that's life. I had been living with him before I left, but while I was away, I knew that I couldn't live with him again because he graduates this year, whereas I still have another year to go, and I'd be without a flat and flatmates in my final year which isn't ideal. I'm sure I could have found something else, but some other friends of mine wanted to get a flat with me; friends who were going to be around for the same length of time as me, so I decided that was what I was going to do. In November of 2011, he started seeing this girl, and I met her when I was at home for Christmas and again when I was back home in February. They seemed (and still do seem) like a great couple. I've never seen him so happy. They spend all their time together, and seeing them together now, you can tell it's probably going to last for a long time.

Since coming back to uni, I've started to get the feeling she doesn't like me. She won't look at me or talk to me if I'm in a room with her. But I'm not often in a room with her. I barely see my best friend anymore. I came back from Germany and he was away for most of the summer on holiday with his parents, and his girlfriend. By August, we were both back down here at uni, and almost any time I wanted to hang out, he would bail, saying he had to work on his dissertation. A little early, but fair enough, better to get it started before going back to uni. He's consistently used it as an excuse to bail from hanging out with me and the rest of our friends ever since. The dissertation was due in earlier this week; the last time I'd asked him to do something he bailed, again. So I asked him if he wanted to hang out tonight, and he said he had a driving lesson early in the morning, but did I want to go for lunch on Saturday. This has become the routine now. We do lunch together. I'm not part of his life, I get updates on it. I see him less and less. The really sad thing is that we still get on as brilliantly as we always have done. We've not changed as people so dramatically that we no longer have anything in common. He just won't hang out with me anymore.

I started to feel really needy after a few months of this sort of reaction. At New Year, he said he would "probably" be able to come to mine for a bit, but then he'd have to go elsewhere. He ended up coming and staying past the bells until about 1am. I was so pleased. Then I found out his girlfriend was in Spain. No wonder he had time for me. Is it needy to want to see your best friend more often than just a "catch up lunch" once every four weeks? Is it needy to want to tell him about everything I just mentioned in Part 1, and to get a response beyond "oh really?" when you mention that your brother's fallen out with your parents and it's a really big deal? He acted like I'd just told him my car had broken down. He's known my family since he was 12 and he didn't so much as ask what had happened.

What I really want to do is ask him if his girlfriend has a problem with me; what can I do to fix it; why won't he hang out with me anymore? But all I can see is the situation with my brother and his wife repeating itself. I don't want to lose my best friend because I didn't try and do something, but I don't want to lose him because I tried to do something. My mum tried to tell my brother that his wife was alienating him from everyone, and it just drove him further away... but if she kept quiet, it would have kept happening anyway, just it would have gone unspoken and it would have been even sadder. I don't know what to do. I can't even turn to anyone to ask them what to do, because the people I'd turn to, i.e. my family and my best friend, are the exact people I can't ask about it!!

I'm just so upset. I don't know what to do anymore. Advice?! Therapy!?!?!