Brotherly love

My brother is almost 10 years older than I am and growing up, the age difference was always a problem. We didn't really have much of a relationship and to him I was always the annoying little sister. He moved out when I was around 10 and I have basically almost no memories of him as my older brother.

This week I went to visit him and to see my nephew (so cute!) and was pretty much disappointed by the whole thing once again. We don't fight or anything, yes, we do tease each other and banter each other, but basically, we get along. Only, he is so much not interested in me or my life that it just makes me really sad. I asked him a few things, about his job and we talked about which car they are going to buy and stuff like that and not once did he ask me anything about my life. I think that probably the only thing he asked me was "How are you?" and that was it.

Yes, I realize that we are in different places in our lives, he just became a father and I'm at university, just starting to live my own life and be independent. But I still think that if I can be interested in his job, then he can also ask me how university is going. He went there too, it's not like my life is so much different to his 10 years ago, so he should be able to at least somewhat put himself in my situation. But he seems completely uninterested in that. I mentioned my girlfriend a few times, saying that I wasn't sure when I'd visit the next time because I didn't know when she would come visit, and he didn't ask me anything about her at all. In German, we don't have a word for girlfriend, so the basic distinction between friend and girlfriend is that you say 'A friend of mine' for friend and 'My friend' for girlfriend. I'm not sure if he has realized that I'm gay yet, I never really told him. But the fact that I'm talking about my friend in America, who will come visit me, should spark some interest, I would think. It's not like it's the most normal thing to have a friend on a different continent who travels that far mainly to visit you. I don't know if he's trying to deny the fact that she might be my girlfriend or something like that, but it just really annoys me that he so doesn't care. When I left he said "Thanks for visiting." and I felt like the whole visit was just one giant joke. We didn't really talk much, we played a boring strategy game and basically, his wife seemed ten times more interested in my life. The whole point of the trip was to visit my nephew, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to talk to him.

What hurts me the most is that there is nothing I can do. If he's not interested in getting to know his sister, he's not interested.