To ask what your relationship with your siblings are like

[Tellmelies65]

I’ve got one sister our relationship has been affected by her complex mental health problems. I envy people with good siblings relationships.

I have five siblings, including a twin sister. I'm not in frequent communication with the eldest two we were never close because of the age gap but we message or call every now and then and check in. There's no animosity. I talk with my other three sisters all the time and we get along well. I see my twin pretty much on a daily basis -- she's the other half of my soul.

Vile sister. Six years older than me. Parents favourite. I was an immediate failure as parents wanted a boy. Sister spent her life disqualifying all and any successes I had, married a controlling, sexually abusive man and completely cut me off when I suggested that he might be sexually abusing their daughter. I was a highly professionally qualified child protection specialist at the time. When I told her I had gained this level, (MSc) she laughed and asked me if that meant "they let you go out and see people by yourself now?" Controlling husband stopped any contact between us.

I am very close with my sister, we see IKEA h other all the time and work together although not closely. Our children are very close too.

I have a good relationship with one brother although he’s 11 years younger than me and away a lot as he’s in the armed forces. DS is a carbon copy of him and he is DS’s godfather and role model and a great role model at that.

My other brother moved 3 hours away 2 years ago and hasn’t been back since. They often don’t respond to family group what’s app messages and SIL’s family have all moved over to join them so I guess they’re closer with them 🤷‍♀️.

DH has one sister who he doesn’t speak to at all after she didn’t invite him to her wedding.

It's a good relationship. As kids we fought really badly. I think I was probably terribly jealous of him although I didn't recognise it at the time.

Now we are both in our early 30s and really started to pull together in our mid twenties. Our mother died when we were teens/tweens and our father was an alcoholic. The family broke down and we didn't have much of a relationship.

But we got a lot closer over the years and now enjoy spending time together.

Two brothers, one older and one younger. I live on the other side of the world to them both. We get on as adults but I never really hear from them. As children I regularly got the crap beaten out of me by my older brother. I looked after my baby brother a lot and even once stopped him from falling into a pool (my mum was busy with something and the pool gate had been left open).

My mother preferred her sons to me and that was made blatantly clear when she kept hoping that her third and fourth grandchildren were boys. She left me largely to fend for myself as a child because she thought my older brother was looking after me

I have a half brother. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in 20 years. Facebook search indicates he is still alive out there somewhere. That’s about it. No interest in ever having any sort of relationship.

I have a younger brother and don’t really see him anymore since he met his new girlfriend. It’s very sad as we used to be a lot closer. I do try to stay in touch but only get the odd text or phone call nowadays.

1 sister, love the bones of her. She’s great. Would do anything g for her and she’s the one who will look after our kids if anything happened to us.
DW has a poor relationship with her sister, despite trying. Her sister is insecure and jealous and actually just not a very nice person unfortunately. The parents fostered competitiveness between them when they were little and although DW has moved on, her DSis hasn’t and is full of resentment.
I think she has MH issues that we aren’t fully aware of as her behaviour is so bizarre at times I truly question what is going on in her head. But The parents enable her and DW is so desperate to maintain the relationship ( the DSis can go off on non speaking, non contact sulks for months) with her DSis and her nieces and nephews that I keep my month shut.

4 of us and we get on great, my parents did a brilliant job raising us. People always comment on how nice it is to see how close we are. We've never had falling outs, we don't spend hours on the phone or live in each others pockets but we are very close to each other.

2 siblings here. They are decent people but we live several hours apart & I have very little to do with them.
As kids we played together a bit but from about 8 onwards I just wanted to play with my friends.

DH has 2 siblings, one he gets on fine with but I wouldn’t say they are close. The other one he has a slightly tense relationship with.

I'm the eldest with a younger sister and brother.
Very close to them both, see my brother loads as we have same social circle, go on holiday together a lot (I have adult dc, he has none, sister has young dc).
I would genuinely call him one of my best friends, we are so similar. But that's not to say I'm not really close to my sister, our lives are just different. When we're all together it's great.

This thread is making me feel less bad about DC being an only child

It’s ok but we have different lives so don’t see each other often.

I only know of one person with a really close sibling bond, so it’s not unusual.

Not great but not terrible. My brother is an incredibly selfish person with a controlling girlfriend who puts her needs above everyone, so much so that he happily left our DM alone this Christmas.

He’s not really a bad person but just has no conscience apparently.

One sister. We text once a day and before all the covid stuff we would meet up once a fortnight usually.
We get along well and have the same sense of humour but we don’t have much in common and I disagree with a lot of things she does (the way she parents, her recklessness with money etc). I don’t voice these opinions to her as it wouldn’t go down well with her at all, but it does mean I have to bottle up my irritation around her all the time and it can be very draining.

Golly @Thebeachismyhappyplace, apart from a few tweaks you could be writing about my relationship with my brother. It is so familiar to me as my own 'D'B is a horrible bully, who seemingly takes great joy in insulting & humiliating me when we (thankfully) rarely meet at Christmas. Well done on going NC, it's a hard decision to make (or it was for me) but it's the right one, to protect your mental health. Good for you.

I think my situation was down to my DPs very toxic divorce in our early teens & resulting fall out. I've decided to go LC (at least) for now, and it's cutting me up inside because it likely means I'll never meet my recently arrived DN. I'm unlikely to have kids of my own, have an 'auntie' to many of my friends kids (my bedtime story reading skills have been requested on several occasions!), and it upsets me to think I won't be able to be around for my actual niece. That said, maybe it's for the best. After bouts of depression, anxiety and then years of therapy to rebuild myself I've realised it's too damaging for my mental health & self esteem to be around him. Plus I wouldn't want her to grow up seeing that behaviour towards anyone and thinking it's acceptable or normal because her dad does it. Apparently fatherhood is 'softening him' according to my DPs, though I'm yet to see the evidence.

I'm lucky, after many years of his bullying behaviour, my parents recognise that my withdrawing is for the best for me & support me in standing up to him in that way. I know they both feel incredibly guilty for enabling his behaviour for the last 25 years, especially during their divorce fallout. It's just a really sad situation all round. I see friends & family who have great relationships with their siblings, and wish that were the case in our family. Alas it's not.

I get on well with my brother, but don't see him often.

My sister, I am coming to realise, is a hideous narcissist. You cannot have or do anything without her passing comment or judgement. She lectures. She isn't nice/kind, never asks how we are or takes joy in our lives going well. She believes herself to be something akin to Nigella Lawson- but without the tongue in cheek- just does this horrible, over embellished descriptive lecture. And she doesn't like my children, I get snide comments about them, she refused to buy them gifts from their list for Christmas and has bought my 5 year old something he already has and won't provide a receipt...and yet for her daughter everyone had to buy from a very specific list. Presents had to be given pre-Christmas to be opened in a zoom call. It's like we are all characters in the stage play of her life.

God that felt good. I am seriously reducing contact in 2021, not in a blaze of fire but just a quiet retreat as I am finding myself increasingly getting upset by her.

I've only just got back in touch with my sister in the last 3 months as she was pregnant and I wanted a relationship with my niece, and my DD to know her cousin, I don't think the kids should miss out just because we don't get along. It's very strained and 1 sided after years of virtually NC but it's a start.

So all those on here that don’t have a close sibling relationship, would you go to their funerals?

I’m asking as my siblings are/were not close to each other, my sister who I adored doesn’t want to know, very hard work to keep in contact with, if I don’t bother there wouldn’t be any contact. I had minimal contact with my brother, once a year I might see him, definitely not the sort of relationship whereby you could ring for a chat. We are all very different people brought together by my mum who died many years ago. Sadly my brother passed away, he was in his late 50’s, my sister who had no contact but hadn’t fallen out never went to his funeral which I have found quite hard to deal with, it’s more or less the last straw with my attempt to keep in contact with her, I suppose I think whilst we have all grown apart there were good times to remember when we were all growing up, it makes me sad that she probably wouldn’t bother to come to mine☹️

Two sisters, relationship is non existent. Well, I guess we talk occasionally but we are not close at all. No falling out just very different people very spread out geographically. I envy people with close relationships.

4 of us, I’m the eldest. Very close to my brother (2nd born) and NC with all the rest including parents. It took a very long time to come to terms with an abusive upbringing, the younger 2 adore their parents ans almost seem to need the drama of it all. My mental health cannot cope with it so I went NC with 1 brother about 4 years ago, sister and parents a year ago, was easy to do- I just stopped contacting them and they’ve never asked why or tried to contact me. I’ve never been so mentally well and totally at peace with the past.

I put up with my siblings but they are not top of my list and I wouldn’t trust them to help me if I needed it.

In my experience people seem to accept behaviours in siblings they wouldn’t accept from friends or even work colleagues.

Yes it fun as kids but gradually as you covert independence and grow you can’t get away from them fast enough.

As an oldie now I don’t know anyone who is close to their sibling. Oh yes they eat their Christmas lunch then expect a birthday card but very little enjoy spending time with each other and prefer to socialise with friends.

NC with brother.
Sister - Reasonably close - it fluctuates, but generally speak weekly, (& see each other maybe monthly although not recently), although she grew up living with her father, and a ten year age gap.

1 sister - very close growing up (normal kid fighting / arguing but had each other’s back) She knows me well and me her. We have a mutual understanding of our own parents’ misgivings when we were younger (and now!) and it has bonded us more over the years that only us two understand.

We would see / speak to each other more but she lives in another country now. I miss her every day.

Handful of step siblings, very little relationship with them but all civil and nice. They’re good people but life is busy and the relationship isn’t the same as with me & DS. We’d normally just see each other at Christmas or step parents’ birthday but that hasn’t happened this year.

Non-existent really.

I haven’t seen my sister for almost four years, before that I would only hear from her if she wanted money or somewhere to sleep.

My brother very occassionally gets in touch, I’m talking maybe once a year. We’re very different people, if we were put together we would never be friends. He is also deeply religious, to the point that he puts religion before his own happiness.