To ask what you sibling relationships are like

[Beatinghearts]

Do you feel parenting had an impact on them

Not particularly close, we see each other for birthdays and Christmas but have no real relationship outside of that, we don’t go to each other’s houses for tea etc.

We were all parented the same, we’re just four different people.

My sis and I had a dreadful relationship growing up, not bad people just parented by two loving people sadly ill equipped for the job as lacking in some key life skills.
Now we're adult we get on ok but could not discuss our childhood as there are too many things viewed through two very different perspectives that it would just be a total can of worms to try.
Sadly that means that there will always be a limit to how close we get as the unresolved wounds create a certain amount of distance. Add to that we are now geographically far apart.
So yes, the way we were parented set the trajectory of our relationship forever.
On the plus side this meant I had very low expectations of how well my own two DC would get on, so am hugely surprised and delighted to find they get on great... The mistakes my parents made taught me a good deal about what not to do, so maybe that helped this generation.
I daren't hope that they will continue to get on so well as they become adults ... but I would be beyond delighted if they did.
So my parents failings (unintended though they were) have caused me much sorrow and pain for years but are now coming in very very useful.

I had 3 big sisters growing and one has now died.

The 2 oldest were like extra mums. The nearest I fought with but we became good friends as adults. I love them dearly and love to visit (we live at opposite ends of the country). I miss my departed sister very much.

My parents treated us all the same, as far as I can remember. Unconditional love for all. I'm sure that contributed to the good relationship we share now.

Would I be friends with them if they weren't my sisters? Probably not, we're different in many ways, but that bond means more than anything else.

Brilliant. I have more in common with dsis than with any other woman I've known, and I've never had a female friend whose company I've enjoyed half as much as hers. I've never told her that, but hopefully she knows. We're not very touchy-feely hearts-on-sleeves types!

We message and talk fairly often, but unfortunately live hundreds of miles from each other. We were very different as children though, and had a nearly 5 year age gap, so we didn't really get on that well until she was early teens. There's nothing I can think of in particular that our parents did to affect our relationship tbh. We all got on pretty well.

My older sister was as bully and parents let her. She's still a bully and our contact is very strained - at best. Very close to younger sister. Yes I think lack of good parenting of my sister is why she is a bully and that is why we can't be close.

@Amdone123

There are 4 of us and we all get on brilliantly. I think parenting had an impact because we were left to our own devices, in regards play and entertainment. Us 3 girls all shared rooms right up til we left home to marry. Childhood was spent on a big council estate playing out from morning til evening, til my dad shouted us in. We had a whale of a time ; camping, building dens, team games. We were also brought up as Catholics and whilst we've all lapsed, it was good for instilling values, morals and a sense of community, of looking out for each other. A friend commented recently how generous we are with each other ; time, money, encouragement. This is so true. We've lost our parents now, but were a tower of strength for each other. We dread anything happening to any of us and say if we could all go together, we would !

I love your post I am also so envious as my sister and I have no relationship left to speak of. Not through my choice but her peculiar and irrational obsession with my relationship with our mother and how it makes her feel but our mother has gone above and beyond for both of us. The rest of my life is so bloody hard and lonely I don’t know why she is this way. Everyone walks on eggshells around her snd tried their best, overcompensates, keeps their opinions to themselves but I’m still shit on her shoe

I have always loved her and tried my best but she has gone and I can never get her back. It used to break my heart. Now it’s so shattered it hurts less weirdly enough

I'm mid 40's and have 1 sibling 3 years younger, traumatic childhood and parents divorced. We are super close. Mum remarried and had 2 more DC, 12 and 14 years between me and them. Although we only lived in the same house for a while, we've always seen each other regularly and are also very close.

Dad remarried and had 1 DC (12 years younger than me), they were brought up in a different UK Nation to me, and strangely we were closer when they lived there to when they're now much nearer.

While we didn't have much to do with each other outside family Birthdays/Christmas, we have a great relationship, entirely due to how well she has always treated me

I only really noticed when DF first showed signs of really ageing. We worked together to support DM and get stuff done really well through his short illness and thereafter. It really felt like having someone who had my back.

Then, looking after out widowed mother there was a natural split with me doing finances and DSis getting landed with all the day to day stuff. I was happy to slip into my role as apprentice, doing anything she suggested without fuss. It seemed the best way to support her (and she wasn't confident with online finances anyway).

I love and feel loved.

Growing up, I completely missed how lucky I was that my six year older sister treated me so well, with so much love, more like a daughter than a sister.

It appears that I'm much more like my mother in personality and as a child, it was much too often me and DM being naughty together against my sensible elder sister.

Even so, I still managed to be jealous of the freedoms she was allowed (six years older, well obvs.) and ignored that I was allowed to do pretty much everything much earlier than she had been.

Parents pretty much treated us, and explained that they would treat us, equally, not exactly the same.

Then, when she had her own DC, I managed to be jealous of how her attention switched to her own children, when they came along, as if I was the trial run.

Horribly entitled child that I was, I just understood that having the full on attention of all adults around me was natural and only ever wanted to be independent.

Seeing her with her grandchildren I see how much she relishes the mother role and is so effortless good at it.

I’d not pee on my sister if she was on fire. I hate her, true hate.

Awful. It is all my mother’s fault, she was always comparing us negatively against each other, the only times you would hear her say something nice about you was when she was putting another sibling down. Therefore all of us feel like the “outsider” in the family
and we are so traumatised by the experience we cannot even talk about it as we all are convinced she had a golden child while hated the rest... even the golden child!

I really adore my brother. Shame I absolutely hate my SIL. I'm forever hoping they break up.

There are 4 of us and we are all best friends, the youngest has a bigger age gap so we see him as the youngest brother as well so slightly differently. Mum and dad always worries about us getting on as dad has fallen out with his sisters over money, yet they fail to see this as a possible problem for us in the future as dad plans to leave everything to the boys. I don't think about it but sister seethes at the idea (she doesn't need the money but it's the morality of it all). I am confident we will get past it though when parents pass