At eighteen years old, a man made a completely reasonable decision to cut off the brother who stole his girlfriend. His parents responded by cutting him off for it, which worked out great for everyone until twelve years later, when they discovered he had gotten married and had children. Suddenly the estrangement that was supposed to teach him a lesson started feeling a lot less like a punishment and a lot more like something they wanted to undo as quickly as possible.

The brother and ex-girlfriend situation would honestly be enough standalone. Stealing your brother’s girlfriend and then immediately dating her is not a gray area regardless of how many times you describe the relationship as unstable. The technical argument that it was not cheating because they were sort of off at the time didn’t work for Ross from Friends, and there’s zero reason it’ll work for anyone in real life. Shout «WE WERE ON A BREAK» as loud as you want: it did not work for Friends, and it’s not gonna work for gamily.

The fact that his parents deciding this was worth losing a son over is just an extra frustrating addition to this story that just tells you everything you need to know about where these parents’ priorities landed.