If you have a bad relationship with your siblings

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How do you deal with it? Do you find it upsetting?

I was very close to DB growing up but we now only see each other at xmas at DPs. I have reached out to him in between but am mostly ignored. It's still upsets me so I have stopped contacting him because he clearly isnt interested. I have a toddler who he doesn't see or have any interest in - she nearly died as a newborn and he really wasnt bothered which I found hard, wasn't supportive of me or even send a text. I think he's exasperated by my life - married, child, public sector job and small business, see DPs regularly and help them out whilst they also help us out with childcare. He has a big IT job and makes a fortune but lives very frugally and treats his GF with disdain. We live frugally but he's extreme and obsessed with % of income he should/shouldn't spend on whatever. Thinks nothing of moving regularly and the associated costs though but lectures me for going on a spa day that we could afford but he decided we couldn't because of the % of our income it was irresponsible?? He is living his life as he wants I guess.

I'm NC with my eldest brother, who does have a good side, but his dickhead side became too much for me to continue to uphold. It became too much for me.
Yes, he was a complete a-hole in my youth. He is a drug addict. And he's gone through many clean, successful years, but that awful thread (that becomes the entirety of who he is when he falls off the wagon) running through him is always there. There's always that dishonest, abusive guy who will throw you under the bus and humiliate you to all and sundry lurking underneath the nice guy.
NC is easy for me. We're thousands of miles apart. If we were a few miles away with lots of family around, it would be harder.
My brother is the golden child. My relationship with my mum is low contact and emotionally very difficult for me. It's all very toxic and being NC with my brother gives me the peace I so desperately need.
What's hard for me is my unresolved anger. He drained my parents of their love, their resources, their care and they had little leftover for my other brother and me. We were left to resolve so much dysfunctional shit on our own. And the fact that my mum is such an enabler and in total denial literally hurts my heart. I get palpitations when I think about it too much. NC is essential for me. I can't believe my brother has never thought to apologise or take responsibility for any of his heinous behaviour.

Worse than that though, he has interred my mothers ashes somewhere and won’t tell me where despite him admitting that he hated her.

That is pathologically controlling and so manipulative- like he can hold that pain over you for all time. What a truly awful message. This is incredibly sad to read. I hope you can find some peace with this.

I am very close to my DB, however I grew up with my cousins as ‘step brothers and sister’. I was close to one who died, the other two, we don’t speak and haven’t for quite some years now. Actually my fault really, I was young, angry with the world and full of my own self importance. I’m different now but haven’t attempted to reach out, things are best left as they are.

I'm one of 5 siblings. We grew up in a very chaotic, dysfunctional, single parent household. 2 are now no contact with anyone from the family. I have no idea where they live, what they do etc. Which means when mother dies they can't be informed.
One brother is abroad and we get on fine, and one sister (in her 60s) still lives with mother in a very strange co-dependant relationship. I'm in regular contact but keep them both at arm's length. DH is an only child from a very conventional family and my family set-up baffles him.

I've been NC with my older half-brother for about 17 years now. At the time the rift happened, I was devastated, but once I got over the shock, it came as a relief. I thought we had been close, but it was only because I did what he said. Now he lives in the US and could be dead for all I know. He's cut off his entire family, including his 2 kids.

My DDs don't get on at all. DD1 is jealous of DD2 and DD2 takes no prisoners.

Much older brothers. They aren't trustworthy or nice to be around, is the short summary. No, I don't mind. We don't have things in common.
I guess I'm sad for them, the sad twists and turns of their lives. Everyone is born an innocent baby, so how does it go so wrong for many? But I don't think about it.

Very interesting thread.
Would be interesting to read about those who do have good relationships and how they think they were fostered as children.

Or if parents could have done anything differently to foster better relationships? What went wrong?

Amazing so many people on here have such bad relationships, but not surprising. I have brother who lives quite a long way from me, see him occasionally, but ring and text. The other was a nasty idiot who got into the drug culture young and it destroyed his life. Ended up in a horrid prison abroad. He married a toxic, evil woman who thought my father should pay for her life, no contact with her for years.

@sauvignonblancplz

In my PP I said I am very close with my brother. There were two years between us and right from a little baby I apparently always adored my big brother. My mum tells me that when she and my dad were fighting, my brother would sit on the stairs upset and I as a toddler would sit with him and cuddle him. When we were growing up, he struggled academically seen as a ‘problem child’ but was actually autistic. I found school a breeze so I would help my brother any way I could, help him learn to read, learn lines for plays and would stand up for him when the teacher would pick on him. My dad and step mum didn’t cope with my DB very well at all and I was often his only defender.

I don’t think any one thing made us close, I think it was just a natural happening, as my mum says, we were close from the word go.

I now have 5dc, 4 are teens or nearly teens. I think ultimately they are all close but I don’t know how much they would stay close when leaving home. They are all very different. My DD used to absolutely dote on her younger brothers but in the last year or so, really clashes with them and has no time for them now really. My eldest is aspergers and cares about her siblings in that she wouldn’t want anything to happen to them but that’s probably the extent of it. My oldest DS loves all his siblings and is very laid back and my middle DS is autistic so his relationships with his siblings isn’t always an easy one. I also have a 10 month old ds, my eldest acts like he doesn’t exist, dd2 dotes on him like she used to her other brothers, DS1 dotes on him and my autistic son thinks the baby is disgusting but quite funny.

I think whilst closeness of siblings can definitely be affected by circumstance, I also think it’s just nature too. We don’t always get on with other people, family or not.

I have two sisters from my dm the older one I'm very low contact with she only appears when she wants something , the younger one is no contact she moved when I first split up from my stbxh and seen or heard nothing since ,I also have 3 more siblings from the biological father and am no contact with them all . Sometimes it upsets me that I don't my have a relationship with them but it's been through their choice , the siblings from my dm don't speak to her either .

I have one ds and for the last 6 months I have reached my limit with her. She's devious, controlling and a bully. She manipulates us all and always forces us to do as she says but does it in a way that people think she's a 'good person'. Since lockdown I've kept her at arms length and I'm going to carry on this way. We were very close however, I won't let myself be close to her again. I do believe that what you deliver usually comes back and bites you on the arse. I'll get great satisfaction watching this happen.

My brother and I are ok, we live a long way from each other. I stay in contact by WhatsApp and his children are in their mid-teens so we exchange messages too. We are not very close. My parents are not too warm either.

My dh is NC with his brother now for about 3 years. Sad, because we also have nc with DH's nieces, one is 14, and one is 2 (dbil has had two long term relationships). We have never met the younger niece. The brothers have a long history of resentment from their teenage years until one day DH just gave up. They are two very different personalities, with very different approaches to life. I still send the nieces presents and cards but other than that, we have no contact.

My mother always said that my sister was jealous of me from the day I was born. She bullied me all through childhood and has attempted to carry that on into adulthood. She ruined every single one of my birthdays - even announcing her engagement at my 21st party. She has been unspeakably cruel to my eldest child - again jealous because I married and had a baby first. Despite this, I have always tried to get on with her, but about four years ago, I got a little weary of always having to be the one to call to arrange a get together over Christmas, so I thought I’d wait for her to contact me. She didn’t. I didn’t see her again until I had a big birthday last year and invited her to an informal party. I honestly didn’t think she’d come, but she did. I had warned my friends about how awful she was and joked that she would arrive and be utterly charming and that they would all say, ‘What on earth was Blinky going on about?’ They didn’t, because she was as bad as I’d predicted. At the beginning of the lockdown, I texted her to say I hoped her family were alright. She replied briefly, but hasn’t bothered to ask me if we are OK. Most of the time I can laugh or roll my eyes about her, but it’s astonishing how she can still reduce me to tears with her behaviour. It will always be the biggest regret of my life that I couldn’t be friends with my only sibling.

I have lots of half siblings from both of my DMum’s and DDad’s first marriages (I am biologically an only child) but I don’t have great relationships with any of them. I do find this upsetting, I’d love to have a DSis to be close to and a DBro I could look up to but sadly it will never be. I think they all found their DP’s divorces traumatic (and to be honest they were for various reasons) and never got over it and so there was a lot of resentment towards me growing up (there still is really). I think they resent the fact that their parents marriages broke up where as mine has lasted for 40 plus years so far. I often wonder why my DP’s had me really as they had plenty of children between them and were quite old when they had me so there is also a big age gap between me and my siblings which made me feel even more like the odd one out. My siblings other parents also went on to form new relationships and had more children and they don’t have much to do with those half siblings either. It’s all a bit of a mess really and that is why I would say that blended families are unhappy to grow up in (in my opinion anyway).

Sorry to see so many have bad relationships.

My mum and dad would love me and my brother to get on, but it’s not going to happen. We see each other but don’t speak. I can’t stand him or his wife unfortunately.
We’re very close in age and were very close as children - the best of friends, we always played together.
It went wrong when my brother was a teenager. He was rude and obnoxious and aggressive. Started throwing his weight around and making threats without actually carrying through on the physical violence. He was very rude to my mum especially.
My mum and dad excused all his behaviour because he had problems. He was bullied and depressed. Unfortunately their kindness didn’t have a good result. Because he got away with everything, he carried on being rude. He didn’t ever help out. Also you couldn’t say anything to him without being scared he might take offence and get aggressive.
He’s still like that now. Goes round to my parents - he and his wife sit there doing nothing while my mum and dad (in their 70s) run around after their three children. Never wash up, or offer to help. They don’t even take their mugs out when they’ve finished with them.
You never know how he’ll react if you talk to him, so I find it easier to say nothing at all.
Plus he’s always been jealous of me, which doesn’t help either.

I have three siblings, one DB and two DSis (DT’s).

I am the oldest, there are a couple of years between DB & I and just short of ten years between the DT’s and I. I am also adopted.

I have no relationship with DB, we’re civil to each other but we have nothing in common at all, we clashed a bit as teenagers but nothing out of the ordinary. We don’t text or ring each other, occasionally we might comment on each other’s FB posts but that’s it. He doesn’t know me really and I don’t know him really either, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

DTSis’s are obviously very close and live in each other’s pockets and Im just sort of on the side. I can go weeks without speaking to either of them in person, we do have a Sisters a Whatsapp group that we chat on occasionally. They are close with DB though.

I don’t know whether my feelings are because I’m adopted, I’d obviously be upset if anything happened to any of them, but we don’t really have any sort of relationship at all.

One brother I haven't spoken to in a year, he has a lovely wife I do speak to. The other brother I saw at Christmas when he ranted at me on Christmas Day that I wasn't checking mums emails that I didn't know she got.

I have massively stepped back in my efforts with them both, I will update them about mums health and that's about it. I asked them both three years ago to help me with all her admin, as I was diagnosed with MS and could no longer do it all. Neither of them bothered to help, so last year I had to start dump stuff on them. After years of them criticising my choices, now they have control they have made even less of an effort and done worse than they complained about me doing!

I realised that I was very much the unwanted sister, and they both outcast me and made everything my fault. I realise now a lot of their behaviour was abusive, the eldest hit me as he was naughty as a child and got smacked (it was the 60's) whereas I did what I was to,d so he decided to smack me when he could.

My dad said before he died he was worried we would loose contact after they both went and sadly I realise now he's right, as I can't keep contacting them both for neither of them to care in return. One of them still hasn't acknowledged my MS diagnosis even now and yet he would shout at his kids for treating each other the way my brothers treat me.

I don't have a close relationship with my brother or sister. We didn't get on very well as children, we regularly fought and as I'm the youngest I usually came off worst!
We now all live in different parts of the country and see eachother rarely. We do get on when we are together, but probably because we've all got lots of space from eachother now!
My mum was recently lamenting that we don't see enough of eachother. I guess she's forgotten our childhoods. All the fights, yelling matches and so forth.

Yes I think it’s hard for parents when they have certain expectations.