Sibling relationships

[Jersey Girl]

Hello All,

Putting this here because I think it will gain more traction and provide insight. What the heck is up with sibling relationships? I ask this for a number of reasons: observing various sibling relationships and also raising siblings. The thing is this. I'm an only child who has siblings. I met my siblings when they were very young but we weren't raised with each other. (There's a story there.) Much later, we reunited as adults. Our reunion was Ah-Mazing! I couldn't believe how comfortable we were with each other and it was SO strange but wonderful to be with people who looked like me. I can't explain that to anyone who has never been in that situation. Upon our first group meeting, as I was leaving, my brother said, "See ya, Sis." and I was moved to total tears. That was the very first time anyone had ever called me sis in my entire life. Again, I don't know how to describe what that felt like.

Here's the thing. I don't know what it's like to actually grow up with a sibling. I had a best friend (still have her) growing up who was also raised an only child but actually has siblings. Neither of us had siblings in our life so I always thought our relationship must have been what it was like to have a sibling. We played, we fought, left each other...and the next day one of us would call the other and say, "Hey, wanna play?" and off we went again.

I have watched adult siblings behave in ways that are completely foreign to me. Not talking to each other for months, icing each other out, bad mouthing the other. My two sisters didn't speak for several months over something that I felt was simply a mistake/miscommunication. One was in tears over it. The other was stoic like...eff you.

When the stoic one had a grand baby, I happened to be visiting in Jersey and she invited me to come with her to see the baby. The more emotional/more caring sibling had not seen the baby yet on account of the rift. I didn't know what the hell to do. Do I accept the invitation and stay out of the conflict or do I decline because I think it would be a betrayal of the other sister who was iced out?

I realized I was in over my head siblings-wise. I felt like I was being put in the middle. I ended up going and I have to say, I felt dirty. I *did* feel like I betrayed the other sister. I *did* feel like I was being put in the middle and when I felt that, I felt like *I* was being betrayed and used to hurt the other one who had not seen the baby before me. None of this may have been intentional. I'm only stating how it felt. WTH.

Is it that easy to ice out your sibling because you think they'll always be there? Have you had that happen with a sibling? Did you make up or do you have a sibling that you will never speak to or see for the rest of your entire life? What kind of offense does it take to distance yourself from your sibling....forever?

I don't understand these things. I only got rid of one friend because I decided she was toxic. There was no fight. I just stopped engaging the toxic. She lashed out on social media (Facebook) and finally blocked me--thank goodness! Otherwise, I try to understand what happened in a relationship, how the other person might feel, that a rift might have nothing to do with me at all and try to extend grace to others based on that possibility, and I apologize when I need to. I put a lot of thought to how I communicate with loved ones--friends and family, in order to prevent a rift from ever happening in the first place. I hardly have any rifts ever with people and I think that's because I put in the effort to make sure that doesn't happen.

But none of those are sibling relationships. So...how does it go for you and your siblings? Do you love your siblings? Are you close? Do you despise each other? Do you treat each other like crap and do you do so with the assumption that the both of you will always be there so you can afford to screw with each other? Or do you even care if your sibling exists at all?

Is it different if it is brother/brother, sister/sister, brother/sister?

I think about this from time to time (like today) and I truly don't get it. One of my sisters will ask me what I think about a certain situation and all I can tell her is that I don't know what it's like to grow up with a sibling in your life every day of your childhood or transition into adulthood with a sibling. I don't know what it's like to fight with a sibling or make up...or DO you make up or just drift back to each other again? Or do you cut off communication like forever and does it bother you?

I don't get it. Help me get it if you can. Is it even possible for me to understand? I have book knowledge of this stuff but I lack in real life experience with it. And like I said, it gets on my mind sometimes. I don't know if I dodged a childhood bullet or missed out on something important that I should have had.

Maybe I should stop overthinking everything, right?

[MeDotOrg]

Jersey Girl, chances are on a Mormon Discussion Board you are not going to find a lot of Only Childs.

I was raised with a brother (deceased) and a sister. I was with my brother when he died in 1989 (hospital, post surgery complications). My brother and I had a complicated relationship. He was 3 years older, which was just old enough to make me a pest for him and his friends. In 1965 he enlisted in the Marines at 17 years of age with my father's blessing. He served as a radio operator in a platoon. He returned addicted to heroin. The bitter irony was that after 20 years he had finally gotten sober just before he died.

In his life there were times when I didn't want him to know where I lived, because he could steal, but I never stopped loving him. Relationships with siblings can be incredibly complicated. As I get older, I often think about my brother and my mother, who both died young. I think about all of the years that I have had, and that I have had 30 more years on this earth than they had.

My sister and I have a good relationship. She lives in Bellingham and I live in San Francisco, so we don't see each other as much as when she lived in California. She and her husband have health problems that make it difficult for them to travel.

A few things you haven't experienced in sibling rivalry: Being compared in school or (in my case) sports. Being thought of as more or less smart, good looking or talented. Comparing yourself. But if you grow up together, you share a common thread of experiences.

I have 2 stepsisters. I haven't been in contact with them since my father died. It's not that I dislike them, but familial blending can be a hard thing. I was 14 when my father remarried into a very large prominent Mormon family. When I say large, imagine having 50 relatives for Thanksgiving. My mother had died, my brother went to Vietnam, we moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Both my sister and I felt lost and bewildered, this small identity bubble within a much larger one where we weren't that important. And honestly my father didn't handle the situation very well.

My answer my fall under the category of 'too much information', but what the hell.

[Jersey Girl]

That took a hell of a lot of courage to post. Thanks, MeDot!

It's late and I've changed my sleep schedule (pretty tired as I write this) but I want you to know that I read your post and should probably read it tomorrow again before I reply to anything specific.

I think I have a multitude of problem trying to process sibling relationships. I know what my education has to say about it, but I don't know what it's actually like to be inside of it and live it. I don't have anything to draw on except my best friend and I was never compared to her, though we did have healthy competition with each other. She was two years older than me and so I was always challenged to reach higher and keep up, if that makes sense, and I did. Then again, all sibling relationships must be very different and as unique as their circumstances. I'm probably trying to find answers I can never find because it's all subjective.

I'll overthink this again tomorrow and see if I have more to offer in response. I know I think too much but I don't know how to make myself stop. Probably need to snap a rubber band on my wrist or something.

[Jersey Girl]

MeDot I forgot to say this. One of my brothers is a recovering heroin addict. My other siblings wouldn't let him come to their houses either for a long stretch of time because he stole irreplaceable items from their house so they had to draw the line. But as you say, they never stopped loving him and would give him rides to rehab and hospitals when he needed to go. Based on the few times I've been around him, I like him, but I would never invite him out here for the same reason.

[Some Schmo]

Wow... I have a ton to say on this subject but I'm not sure how much I should say.

Among Mormon families, we were as Mormon as it gets in terms of "letting god decide how many kids my parents should have." I have as much sibling experience as one could get. I had siblings, step-siblings and half-siblings. When there are that many people, your relationships with them will run the gamut from love to contempt. I remember when I was about 18, I told my late sister that I thought of family as people you associate with that you wouldn't if you weren't related. I wish I hadn't said that to her, because she clearly thought I was telling her I didn't like her. I was just being youthfully philosophical in front of her. She was a sweet lady (the eldest child, and 11 years older than I am), and I had nothing against her. We were too far apart in age for us to have a close sibling relationship, though. She was off to college when I was still a young child. And she sadly died in her early 30's of cancer.

When my dad divorced my step-mother, I stopped considering my step-siblings my siblings. I don't even know where they are today, and I don't care. One thing I will say about mixed families: those are all about the parents, and very little about the kids. At least, that's how it was in our house. After the divorce, there was nothing but contempt for each other from everyone. The half-siblings are the big victims here. I don't have a relationship with any of them for a couple reasons, but mostly because of the age differences.

But here's the thing: out of all my siblings, there is only one I have maintained a regular relationship over the years. I would say the primary reason for this is religion. None of them can stand to hear my thoughts on it. They take my ideas about religion personally for some reason. They can't seem to separate the ideas from their identity. Because of this, every conversation with them is a minefield. I have two basic choices in any given conversation with them: speak freely and risk offending them, or guard everything I say and end up saying nothing. I don't see the point of either.

I have a brother who I can't talk to anymore because to do so is to sign up for emotional leeching. He is the prototypical grievance-ridden conservative, and everything is a conspiracy to make his life worse. I feel sorry for him, but not enough to subject myself to him whining about the various phantoms he imagines. He's also not a very giving conversationalist. He likes to talk but listening is a challenge. He's one of those guys who wants to get his point in but doesn't want you to follow up or rebut it. Again, I have to ask myself, what is in that conversation for me?

My relationship with him when we were younger was... complex. He used to hit me a lot (he is 3.5 years older than I am), but if some big kid in school was trying to bully me, they would stop if they found out about my brother, because my brother liked to fight, and he was good at it. I suppose he felt he was the only one privileged enough to pick on me.

These days, I have a relationship with only one sibling because I actually like him. I don't talk to him because we share the same parents. I talk to him because we're friends.

So it turns out I was right all those years ago. I associated with most of my family simply because we lived in the same house. There's only one out of many siblings with whom I care to keep a regular relationship.

This may not really answer your questions, because religion is a major wedge issue in our family. I suspect you were looking for sibling relationships that didn't suffer that dynamic, but then again, what family doesn't fall victim to their dynamic/narratives?

[Physics Guy]

My family has always seemed bizarrely normal to me, with everyone getting along very well. Some of that may just have been luck. We all come out quite similarly on personality type tests. Things haven't always been so harmonious in the generation of our children but my brothers and I have always been close.

Part of it may have been that we moved every few years because of my father's job. So the nuclear family was the one stable thing for us all. We had to get along because we were all we had. That didn't seem weird, because we almost always moved to communities in which everyone else was moving around a lot, too: army bases. Getting along with the rest of the family didn't seem hard, though, either. If there was an element of necessity involved, we all had it pretty internalized.

The thing is, in one respect my family has always been really unusual. Both my parents are only surviving children, whose only siblings died in childhood. No doubt this could have been part of what drew them together. Whatever effect this tragic backstory had, though, it never seemed overt to me, growing up. Whatever it was had been internalized long ago, too.

[Res Ipsa]

Naw, keep overthinking. I learn stuff from it.

I don't know the answer to your questions. My siblings and I grew up together with our second cousins. My siblings and I have always got along just fine as adults, with no drama whatsoever. (My second cousins are nonstop drama, with long bouts of not speaking to each other, being angry, etc. It's baffling to me.

[K Graham]

I stopped talking to my sister four years because she's a sociopath.

My brother and I still talk but rarely. He calls a couple times a year because he needs help moving furniture or help with his computer. We both have 15 year old boys so that's probably the main reason we stay in touch, so the cousins can get together sometimes. He married someone who doesn't like anyone on his side of the family so they socialize primarily with her friends from HS and his fraternity brothers.

Our sibling relationship fell apart gradually after my parents divorced. I was 12, Kerry was 10 and Kerin was 8 at the time. Mom remarried my stepdad a few years later and he moved us out of state which had another traumatizing effect on us all. And we all three started to drift our separate ways.

[Jersey Girl]

I've read all of the replies and taking it all in. The example I gave in the OP is only one example I could draw from in real life. There are many more. Truth be told, all is not well over here and the family relationships issue is bigger than just siblings though that is part of it. I can't bring myself to write about it publicly. I'm trying to find a rational explanation for something that is happening that is clearly irrational. I promise I'm not trying to be cryptic. I'm trying to be discreet and guarding my privacy is all. And my heart. I am not okay and I haven't been okay for several months now. I am dealing with something bigger than myself over which I have no control and it's killing me.

I've tried all ways I know to try to make things right and I'm out of options. The fact that people often discuss their challenges with me and that I can't find a clear path myself--that great irony is not lost on me. I have prayed like crazy, gone into the Word, I keep recalling pertinent portions of scripture and trying to remain true to it. Mainly that God is not the author of confusion and that I should let patience have her perfect work because I truly believe that God could be working in the life of a family member right now and I have no part in it but to wait. Other principles in scripture as well. I have NOT missed an opportunity to let that person know I love them and that I am there for them.

But right now it is damaging all of us.

I have alternately cried my eyes out, raged to God (I mean full on cussing my brains out to God) and then directly running to Him, found my sense of balance again and maintained inner peace, contentment, gratitude, and joy in the middle of crisis. When I started with the OP and siblings relationship, it was on the heels of more rage, and what I wrote about is only the tip of the ice berg in trying to understand something I don't understand.

I rejected calling my sister that I'm very close to because I didn't want to betray a family member here. I don't have anyone in my life like me...for me. If that even makes sense. But she comes close. I struggle with feeling like I'm betraying confidence of someone I love.

I'm basically a mess right now. I thought if I could open the issue of sibling relationships I might hit on something that would open my eyes. That if I could better understand that relationship it might help me understand all the rest of it.

I appreciate all the replies here. Keep commenting as you see fit. I think one of my issues is that I idealize what a sibling relationship is and even what a family should be. That things feel like they are coming apart is hitting me hard and that is a gross understatement of fact. After all we have been through together, I don't understand what is happening or why.

I'll try to gather my thoughts together enough to reply to each of you individually. I'm so out of sorts and at loose ends right now. But not to worry, I'll pull it together and try to zoom in on the content of your posts as best I can.

Uh, I'm posting this. I can't believe I'm posting my mess of a self in full public view but here it goes.

[Res Ipsa]

Damn, Jersey Girl. I'm sorry you are going through something this personally painful.

If it helps you to share your pain publicly, please keep doing it. If I could offer a real hug, I would. Right now, all I've got is the cyber kind. {{{{Jersey Girl}}}}

I totally get the search for a rational explanation of the irrational. I've driven myself crazy in the past trying to do just that. It's one of many things I've had to try and just let go of.

Please do your best to take care of yourself. The heart stuff sounds scary.