Do you have a sibling? What is the relationship like?
I’m male aged 19-22, I have an older brother about 4-5 years older (giving age ranges for better anonymity). Relationship is… not good (read: it’s terrible, horrifyingly terrible, arch-nemesis). How about you?
We didn’t really get along when we were young. Fought over things - games, TV remote, CD player, etc.
But when he left for college, we grew closer. He still lived nearby, and my folks encouraged us hanging out. It was sort of an escape. Home life wasn’t great, and he and his friends were fun. He was around for a lot of my pivotal life moments. When I finally got to college, I moved in with him as roommates. Worked well.
We’re friends, basically. We have very different personalities - but we understand each other very well.
Now we live in different cities, hours apart. He’s married with a kid. I’m married and childfree. We see each other a few times a year. We text and call regularly.
I have a brother who is younger than me by 6 years. Our upbringing was a bit weird. Our parents basically forbid anything that might cause them inconvenience, irritation, or expense - which was most things that might interest a kid. (No, they're not religious, which is the first question that everyone asks. They're just raging assholes who are also a bit stupid. I can't really explain it much beyond that.)
In addition to the manipulation and emotional abuse, they rewarded us if we informed on each other. I seldom did. Not through any great virtue or integrity of my own, but because I routinely got punished for the stupid shit he did. For instance, I didn't tell them when our adult neighbor shot little bro with an air rifle because I knew he would catch absolute hell for being in the position of getting shot with an air rifle. Even if I didn't catch hell about it, it was miserable to watch him get screamed at. For context on this story - we had been told to stay away from Steve's yard because Steve was a known psycho with a hatred for neighbor kids. On that glorious summer day, Steve had dropped a $5 bill on his driveway just inside the property line... and was waiting for a kid to come by and be dumb enough to try to pick it up.
I might actually tell that one at their funeral.
By contrast, bro was younger and never got any blowback if I was doing something wrong. He actually recorded me talking on the phone with a friend when I was in middle school. He picked up the other line and held one of those shitty '70s tape recorders to the earpiece. Talking on the phone was forbidden and he was collecting proof to use against me. My friend and I weren't plotting shit, I wasn't grounded (the concept was foreign because we were never really allowed to go out or do things like talk on the phone anyway), it was just forbidden to talk on the phone.
I could excuse it when he was eight, but he passed along "dirt" on me well into his late teens and my twenties. He was under pressure from them as well, but he basically shredded any idea of trust between us for far too many times to count. I forgot what the final straw was, but I remember thinking, "I can never confide in this person and feel trust." In every meaningful way, I've ignored him for the last 20 years.
He's probably the least shitty thing about family gatherings, but that's not saying much.
Man I feel for both of you in this situation. Obviously he could have made a decision at some point in his life to stop being shitty, and he didn’t, so that’s on him and I don’t blame you one bit for not having a relationship with him (or much of one). But I can also imagine a kid with really shitty parents who gets “rewarded” for essentially alienating their older sibling in this manner, so he does that in the hopes that it will strengthen an otherwise toxic bond with the parents. Which of course it really doesn’t, but no kid is going to understand that. Any kid wants good parents who love them. Oh man, I’m so sorry, for both of you but mostly for you.
I don’t really speak to my brother. I see him a couple of times a year when the family gets together but we don’t have anything to talk about anymore. He’s autistic so maybe he can’t help it but he’s impossible to have a normal relationship with. He’s never had a job because he cant be trusted with any kind of responsibility. He can’t stay away from alcohol if it’s available and he can’t handle it at all. It’s always the same when he drinks. First he gets overly excited and it’s very awkward because his whole personality changes. Then he gets easily irritated and gets into arguments about petty stuff nobody cares about, but he just can’t let go.
He regularly texts family members about how they have let him down when he’s getting drunk at night. He gets way more support than he deserves though. Once he just texted me “I’m sorry” and turned his phone off. Naturally I got worried when I couldn’t reach him so I called mom, she told me not to worry though, turns out he just does that sometimes.
My sister and I get along much better but I worry she’s losing it. She’s easily the smartest and most socially capable of the three of us but she’s never had a job outside of telemarketing and now she’s too depressed to work at all. We don’t have many relatives but the few we do have have a tendency to end up alone, bitter and severely unhealthy as they get old, and it’s starting to seem like that’s where she’s heading.
I’m very worried they’re both gonna come ask me for money when our parents are gone.
As a child, I had horrible relationships with my brother and sister (I'm the oldest of us three). We'd be constantly fighting over this and that. As we grew up and matured however, we've all gotten really close. We've been each others' best friends since early adulthood, and hang out all the time. Sure, we may disagree about things, or do something mean to another sometimes. But we forgive and move on. I really treasure my relationship with them now.
I appreciate that everyone doesn’t have perfect relationships with their siblings.
Growing up, my parents made me feel horrible for having a bad one with my sibling. As though there was something wrong with me.
To this day, I carry a lot of shame around it, as in, how can I expect to have healthy relationships with friends and professional relationships at work if I couldn’t even manage one with my sister?
So, thank you all for making me feel less like an anomaly.
Looking at my parents and their siblings (varying degrees of almost no contact to some contact with one exception that is good), and looking at my sibling (really good), it has nothing to do with you. It's just, two people that shared an environment growing up, and those two people can be close or not.
I feel very grateful for my sibling, but that's just it. We happen to have the personalities that match.
Younger brother 3-4 years younger, it began as me basically taking my anger out on him when we were kidd (I pushed him into the street once). But now? We’re at a neutral stand point, however i do get uneasy when I don’t hear him in his room. He works now and him being gone feels like i’m missing part of my “pack” to make things simple.
I'm 34 (male) and my brother is 31. He's my best friend (besides my wife) but he moved like 10 hours away so we try to fly a couple of times a year to hang out. We text every day multiple times.
Got an older sibling by 2 years. We don't talk weekly, but we are still quite close when we do talk. Always have been close. Never big fights and usually got along really well.
As kids we used to "manage a business" together (it was plushie based) - we entertained ourselves during long car rides with that business.
I get along really well with their partner, I am like a mix between the two of them. We can talk about everything. They called me when they had shit going on (like their gender), they took care of me when I was suicidal.
I have a younger sister, and we pretty much get along great. We live next door to each other (and near other family and friends), and her and her husband and I tend to go on trips semi frequently. We text frequently, and hang out etc.
My younger sister is FTM. She's always been a loud asshole, and I had hoped that maybe living as a man was the cause of it. Nope, still a loud asshole. Just with different hardware. Love her to death, though.
Way better than my crackhead Trump-supporting older sister.
Two younger sisters. The age difference is quite big, I am 8 years older than one and 13 years older than the other. That’s just a possible side-effect of being born when your parents were VERY young.
The older of the two I barely speak with, no real animosity we just simply have nothing in common.
The youngest one I speak with a little bit more often, as we do share some similar personality traits - I see a lot of myself in her from when I was younger.
The final complication is that I live on the opposite side of the country from them. So no in-person visiting.
Older sister, drug addict, lost her first kid and second kid is now permanently in the custody of my mother. We don’t speak, it’s hard to talk to her, she thinks shes a god and that she sees spirits and she’s just totally out to lunch.
I am very sorry to hear that. I have a friend who is an addict. We have really tried everything but it was futile - multiple withdrawals and all that. He ultimately ruined himself and his family. I wish you all the best, but please be careful.
I appreciate the kind words. I myself am a recovered addict, was very addicted to Xanax and cocaine (which my sister introduced me to at a young age). It can be frustrating at times especially for myself to see people deal with this, because I was able to stop myself and change my life.
Ultimately you can’t help those that don’t wish to help themselves, and trying to do that will accomplish nothing except for ruining your own life.
a bro and a sis, live in different countries all of us. crossed water and fire, internal conflicts from time to time, but if somebody dares to touch from the “outside” - we become one buddha palm ;)
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