Trying to Make Friends With Estranged Aspie Brother-Advice?

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I am neurotypical, female, 35. My brother is HFA, undiagnosed, unaware of his HFA, 24. Our mother has bipolar 1, unmedicated and my brother lives with her. My brother and I have been estranged since he was 6 and I was 17 and we haven't gotten to see or talk to each other very much since then.

My brother has classic HFA symptoms and as I studied autism in school I realized that he had it. I did not tell him because I felt it would be unethical. I have not seen him for several years by his choice, but we do email. He is a very nice person in person, but very angry online. He also has a lying problem online. He has been telling me that he has a job, is married, and doesn't live with our mother.

I randomly went over to our mom's house during the week and from many subtle but iron-clad signs I determined that none of that was true. When our mom has bipolar freak outs, she focuses her anger on me and my brother seems to get caught up in this and piles on with her. I think she pulls him into this because she doesn't want him to leave her or to have anyone else. I think she is taking advantage of his autistic good nature (I hate to say that but I think many on this forum will know what I'm talking about) and he does not see that she is manipulating him. I don't think it's ethical to tell someone the ONE person they love is manipulating them so I haven't done that. I have instead told him that she is easily upset and he shouldn't take her seriously.

But problem one is that I think he is seeing me as "The Enemy" because my mom often talks about me negatively and I think he sees things as very black and white and cannot understand that people with bipolar 1 who are unmedicated can lose touch with reality, or have a "flexible reality." I don't think this makes sense to logical people, such as systematic thinkers. Am I on the right track here? Does anyone have advice for how I can get around this? Is it a good sign that he still occasionally emails me despite all this?

The second problem is this lying thing. I have never known a person with autism to lie. I just don't understand how to deal with it. My brother and I also had an older brother who my little brother and I both idolized. This older brother had a VERY inflexible sense of justice. He eventually killed himself and I know this had a big impact on my little brother. One of his most notable personal characteristics was that he refused to lie about ANYTHING. I might expect that my little brother would learn lying from my mom, but I would have also expected him not to lie because of his natural sense of logic and then his sense of justice from our late brother.

I have said, hey, I know what you said is not true because of X and Y and my brother just ignores me and says, "actually I'm on my lunch break now so this is short." I just don't understand it. How do I deal with that?

Does anyone have any advice on how to stop being the enemy in my little brothers mind and also how to talk to him when he's obviously making up things? I love my little brother a lot. It's okay with me that he doesn't seem to love me back. He doesn't owe me that. I just can't stand to think of him being in that house with my mom and having her not letting him have a life. I just want to make friends with him so I can be sure that he's okay and so he can know that he has another place to go in case he ever wants to go to college one day or do something else with his life. Also I feel like sooner or later he's going to figure out that he has autism and I'd like to be able to point him towards positive resources and not have it be a negative experience for him, you know? I want to be a big sister to him. Anyway, any help would be very much appreciated.

Aspies can lie. I've done it myself, mostly when young to avoid unpleasantness.

Keep in email contact with your brother at least once a week or two. Also, does your brother have any interests that you can share with him--like take him to a ball game, or to see a movie, or to an amusement park, etc.

Decades ago, on my first birthday after getting my first car, I wanted to go to an amusement park, but didn't want to go alone. I took my younger brother and his friend along, although we were not close. They used up their money long before I was ready to go home, so I had to finance the rest of their time there that day. On the plus side we get along better now.

Basically, just keep in touch, and offer to take him fun places he might like to go. That will get him out of the house and give him a break from your mother.

He probably tells lies because he has learned to lie to put others' minds at ease, like his mother's. He probably has to tell her happy, reassuring lies so as not to worry/ stress her. Just spend time with him. It might be better not to tell him about the manipulation until he starts to see it himself. It's not unethical to tell someone though, actually quite the opposite, but telling him now, since he seems to idealize and believe his mother, could do a lot of damage to his and your relationship due to his loyalty to her.

I'm not sure what to do about the lying.......no advice in terms of that............but as others have said Autistic people can lie.............and I read in one book about Autism that sometimes they will tell ridiculously elaborate lies that are obviously untrue.....this is due to a lack of theory of mind (not understanding about what other people know or are likely to surmise).

In terms of connecting with your brother, I suggest you find out what he's interested in and try to connect with him over that........especially if he has intense narrow interests.

Thanks all. Those were some very helpful points I hadn't considered.

The wildly untrue lies being due to lack of theory of mind- that makes so much sense but I hadn't thought of that before.

I emailed him back and just conversationally asked him what he was interested in these days. He hasn't answered yet. It's hard for me to spend time with him because he lives with our mom but pretends he doesn't, so when I go over there he just stays in his room quietly and pretends he's not there. Meanwhile his shoes are like right outside the door.

I do see that it would be helpful to him to know what he has so that he can have access to forums like this and other things to help him figure out how to live more successfully in the world. The problem is that my mom is paranoid because of being bipolar and since I'm a sociologist specializing in social psychology that seems to be making her more paranoid. Because I have called her "bipolar" in the past she says I'm "always going around diagnosing people" and now my brother says the same thing. So I feel like if I say, "oh hey btw you have AS, here's the link for WP, you're welcome", he might be like "oh there she goes again diagnosing people..."

So I think I'll try to work on the interests thing and get in that way. Then if I can show myself to be non-threatening, maybe he can accept me as a friend? Should I just not mention the lies? Like not contradict them but also not go along with them?