How to avoid a 'Family Holiday'?

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Ok, the back-story to this: my brother and I didn't have the most successful family life growing up. I left home early to get away from a lot of abuse. He wasn't abused but he's devoted his life to building his own family. Kids, wife, perfect home, it's his universe.

He doesn't know that I have aspergers or that I was abused. He escaped all that. I don't want to share it with him. To be honest, because he's put so much time into constructing his new family that he's never really noticed a lot of things that should have been obvious (yeah, vague I know...I don't blame him for constructing his own life but he's never been there for me in mine either).

He's got this plan for a 'family holiday'. He is insisting that I go along. I am GOOD at avoiding such social occasions..very good..he knows this and is insisting to a degree that is almost impossible for me to refuse bar telling him to 'f**k off'. He means well and I don't want to hurt him but the idea of spending a week IN A SMALL RENTED COTTAGE WITH 3 TODDLERS, MY BROTHER, HIS WIFE, AND THE MOTHER WHO LET ME BE ABUSED BY HER BOYFRIEND..../gasp...I just can't do it.

The only ways out that I see are to tell him the truth (which I won't because he hasn't earned it), or to be rude. He thinks he wants to know me better but he doesn't understand what he's asking.

I reached the end of my social skills a while back...help me here.

...Wow. Egads. Could you explain to him that you need a lot of alone time and if you spend a week in a tiny cabin with six other people/with your mother you might go batshit insane on his kids? Maybe you could compromise and just go for two or three days? (In my experience that's an okay time to be on family holidays, you can fill things up with activities and you don't have much time to get on each other's nerves.)

Well I certainly don't blame you for wanting to avoid the reunion.

This is when white lie/excuses come in handy. Let them know that you're needed at the office for the whole week (or if you're in school, say that you've got midterms all that week), or even lie and say you're flying out of state for business travel.

Be prepared with some background information to support your lie. (For instance, if you're needed at work, think of a background story like this: "We're working with a huge client, so we need to ship at least 3300 packages out by Friday. There's no way I can do this remotely."

And then apologize and state that you really do wish you could make it and "promise" that you'll make the next gathering. And don't forget to say something, like "Well give everyone my love for me!!" Or some sentimental parting wish.

The truth is usually preferable to lies, if for no other reason than it's the easiest thing to remember.

But that doesn't mean that you need to reveal all of the truth. You don't want to hurt your brother's feelings, but probably will if you don't have a good, honest reason. So why don't you tell him at least part of the story (telling him that you have AS seems like a good enough reason not to be cramped in a small cottage), and hopefully he'll understand, and you two can come to some compromise about it. Since AS isn't a disease, and you've been that way since birth, it might also help explain some of your other past behaviors to him.