Do you care how your sibling/s live their life?

[NotMyBusinessMaybe]

Genuine question.

Do you care how your sibling/s live - their choices, values, relationships, finances, health, politics, whatever?

Do you feel protective? Judgemental? Indifferent? Do you find it hard to detach if you think they’re making mistakes?

Or are you someone who believes “it’s their life, not mine” and really means it?

Just wondering what the general sentiment is, especially among people who are close to their siblings vs those who are more distant or estranged.

Suppose it depends on the relationship.
Are not bothered about the relationship with your siblings or annoyed as you feel they should be more involved in your life?

I am not close at all to my sister and really don’t care what she does but I hate the impact her choices have on my nephews and my parents.

I care that they’re happy, & my sister & I have supported each other through a lot of shit. I only give advice if it’s asked for though.

Well I'm very close to my 4 siblings. Very luckily, all of our moral and political views align (thank you mum), but if one of them told me they believed illegal immigrants ate swans and then started voting reform, I would definitely be rethinking out relationship.

Totally agree, i used to care but they have turned into a manipulative, lying drunk.

the effect on my mum and niece and nephew is horrific,

This ^^ except no nephews.

Yes and no.
I don't judge choice of career, partner, what they eat. I do however judge when they commit crime, or decide to live a life on benefits, or continue to have children in an unhealthy relationship when money is a struggle and they're already unhappy.
Mostly because we had the same upbringing which wasn't easy, we know how hard it was on us as kids, so why the fuck are they making the same mistakes and not learning from them?

I am not close to my sister, I think she makes strange choices in her life. She has political views I don’t agree with.

But unless someone asks for advice you cant change them. So I just accept how she is and distance myself whilst staying civil/kind.

I’m more just wondering how common it is for people to feel invested in their siblings’ lives. Whether that comes from closeness, obligation or just habit. I’m not annoyed or anything but I do sometimes wonder how much emotional space we should give family, especially when values/lifestyles diverge. Thought it’d be an interesting one to put out there.

I used to care a lot but not so much now. Too much water has gone under the bridge. I keep my distance a bit now.

Completely indifferent. But we’re not close. There’s no animosity or falling out, but if we weren’t sisters but were colleagues, or had gone to school or something, we wouldn’t be friends. They are just people I see at Christmas, we don’t speak otherwise as we don’t have anything to talk about. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them, but I have little interest in the life decisions they make.

Yes I do care. The main things in the short term are I want them to be happy and I want them to respect our parents and treat them kindly as they age and need more help.

Longer term I want them to be financially secure. We never talk about finances but I earn a lot more than then do and I have no idea whether they are lining up a decent pension for example. They don’t have children so I do worry about who will look out for them when they are elderly. I want them to have a good relationship with my children so that my children are happy to support them in their old age. If I go first, I want to know that someone will continue to care about them.

This all comes from a place of love but we get on very well if that makes a difference. I just want them to be happy.

If they were a twat I might feel different.

I am not close to my brother, whilst I care about him how he lives his life is up to him doesnt bother me long as hes kind to his wife/my sil as shes lovely.

I don’t feel close to mine at all, not sure if it’s because they are male. I’m not interested in them or what they do.

I care about as much as they do.

In other words, I couldn’t give a fuck.

I’ve not seen or spoken to my sister for many years. I couldn’t care less how she lives her life. We had a very toxic, over invested relationship for years and I was really judgemental of her life choices. Now we each lead the lives we’re comfortable with and they don’t involve each other.

I care but I’m past the point of judging my one sibling. My DH though, has a tough time with his brother. I think he cares too much about his brother’s choices, and the impact on his niece/nephew. Whereas his brother just feels judged and it’s all quite detrimental to their relationship. Kind of wish DH also got past it all just to keep the peace.

I want them both to be happy and ok. They are really different from each other and me so I can never tell what will be right for them or how they are going to react to events. That would be ok if we weren’t jointly involved in our remaining parent’s care. I hope once that’s over that we will just be in contact without any emotional component.

I used to worry hugely about my brother, it's only the 2 of us. We lived together at various points during our 20's, took holidays together and were pretty close. I also worry as he struggles to hold down jobs due to poor time management, struggling to take feedback etc - he is privately educated, then university and masters, but works in a minimum wage job, our parents helped him to buy his house as he couldnt afford it on his own. His now wife is quite manipulative and controlling and whilst the logical part of me should have felt 'he is an adult and responsible for his own choices', I worried about him and never fully trust her - she somehow got him to remove my parents from the deeds of his house and add her, and then at some point remove himself - sold it to him as 'good financial sense'. But he seems happy so I have managed to put my worry aside, but only to some extent by distancing myself from him emotionally.

I’m close to some but not all of my siblings. I don’t judge their life choices however hard that is. Except once when my sister lived with a guy who assaulted her. Then I wanted to go over there and physically harm him. And had to stop my cousin doing that or he’d get arrested. We got her out and she’s well away from him now. She had no choice. We absolutely weren’t going to let him do that to her again and we staged a bit of an intervention. This was many years ago and she has a lovely partner now. That’s really the only time I’ve intervened when she was unsafe. Rest of her life is her choice.

Bit of both. My brother is a family man first. Adores his wife and children. We see eachother less now were grown with commitments and responsibilities but hed drop everything if I or our family needed him.

Those values match mine, theyre important to me and if I thought he was behaving in a way that may damage those relationships Id feel concerned protective and judgey. But I doubt he would. And that alignment on the most important things means I have little interest in his preferences about the inconsequential ones, if hes happy thats enough.

One of my siblings is financially dependent on my parents. She can’t hold down a job or even get one since she got let go the last time, and she’s very close to becoming homeless.
We had a tough life growing up and as adults we aren’t close but we mostly get along.
I worry about what’s going to happen to her as she gets older or if anything happens to her, especially once my parents are gone. She’s late forties and has no pension, is in a lot of debt and doesn’t seem to have any relationships outside of the family.
I don’t judge her for her lifestyle or her decisions but selfishly I do worry about the consequences of her choices for selfish reasons.
I will refuse to take over where my parents leave off - if she ever asks if she can live with me and my family, I will say no even if it means she has nowhere to go but I obviously don’t want to have to do that.
She has asked to borrow money from me in the past and I’ve always said no because I’ve seen that if you do, she just keeps coming back.
She is very bad with money.
It never occurred to me when we were younger but now that she’s close to fifty, I tend to pay attention to what’s going on with her and get worried about things like she’s got the sack or she’s doing something reckless. It only began to dawn on me a few years ago that she has no way of managing without my parents and now I wonder what will happen when they aren’t around.
If she was independent, it wouldn’t occur to me to care what she does, as I don’t with my other siblings.

I want them to be happy and doing well. I'd be upset if they were doing something that harmed other people. If they were in an abusive relationship I'd want to do something. I think that's about as far as it goes though. If they make bad financial or employment decisions that's their choice. My siblings do have different political views to me, again their choice. Their choice in partner or career is theirs to make, their lifestyle choices are theirs to make, one of my DBs smoked cannabis, he knew the risks and didn't do it in front of me, it didn't impact on our relationship.

I care very much about my siblings but I tend to love my life with a ‘live and let live’ attitude - they make different choices to me but they have different lives to me. I love them both and we would all do anything for each other. My brother is a brilliant dad, my sister doesn’t have kids but is a wonderful confidant for my dc, they are very close with her and her partner.
We all have different financial setups, broadly similar views on politics and family values and wildly different opinions on health.
I keep judgements to myself but would say something if I thought it was necessary.
I’m very close to them both. I don’t see my brother as much as I’d like to but life gets in the way. He’s only a 15 minute drive from me! My sister lives about a 30 second walk from me and I see a lot of her.

I love my siblings very much. All quite different but close and accepting of each other. There are aspects of their lives that i wouldn't like for myself but I keep those views to myself.