Do you have siblings? What is your relationship with them like?
One of the things that absolutely FASCINATES me is siblings and sibling relationships. I think this is because my brother and I are so far apart in age that we are more like two separate only children who were raised by the same parents and shared the same home for twelve years.
When I left for college, he was in sixth grade. Sixth! Grade! That is a vast distance, when you are a kid. He is sort of stuck at age twelve in my mind, with the glasses and the sticky-uppy haird, which is quite hilarious now that you consider he is a six-foot tall law enforcement agent with a wife.
Anyway: I went to college, and then I never really came home (beyond a summer or two). And then when I graduated college, I went to grad school. And after I graduated grad school, my brother went into the Army and served in Iraq. We never lived less than 2,000 miles away from one another, and currently we are separated by a distance of 3,900 miles and three time zones.
The time zone thing prevents regular communication, by the way. That plus the fact that he often works nights. I don’t remember the last time we talked on the phone.
I love the kid (Army veteran with a beard and a Master’s degree), but we aren’t what I’d call close.
When we went on vacation, my brother and his wife were there – which was FABULOUS. I have a real idea of what to get each of them for their next birthdays, for one thing. But one notable observation I made was that my sister-in-law has a VERY close relationship with her brother.
They are closer in age – three years – and they text each other all the time, talk to each other on the phone at a whim (a whim!), and my sister-in-law has flown out to see him in grad school several times. My brother has never even been to my home! And I’ve lived here for a dozen years! Listen I am not jealous or upset – my brother and I get along, we love each other, we would be there for each other in a heartbeat – I just find it fascinating!
My parents each have multiple siblings, and they talk to those siblings… occasionally. The siblings show up for major life events (milestone birthdays, birth of children/grandchildren, funerals, weddings), but they are scattered across the country and rarely see each other in person.
A good friend of mine lives near her sister, and they work from home together, share a nanny for their combined kids, own a vacation home together, and take vacations together. That is so wild to me!
What must it be like to have a close relationship with a sibling? And what if you have MORE THAN ONE sibling? Are some siblings close and others not as close? Do your sibling relationships emulate those of your parents? If you DON’T have a sibling, do you wish you had one? Sometimes I feel terrible that Carla doesn’t have a sibling (and many, many people have shamed me/us for not giving her one), but there’s no guarantee that siblings will like each other, let alone be close!
The whole thing is very interesting to me! And, unless my brother and I jointly agree to drastically change our lives/personalities, it’s something I can NEVER KNOW or experience!
My brother and I are 3 years apart and have always lived in the same city, except for the 7 years that I was away at college / law school. We actually live in the same high rise apartment building, 7 floors apart. This was because we both needed to live near the same train station for our commutes. Even with all of that, we were never close until my son was born, and my brother decided he wanted to be a very involved uncle. Now at ages 37 and 40 we are much closer than we have been our whole lives!
I have one sibling, my brother, who is four years older, which means we haven’t lived in the same house since I went into high school. In fact, when I was in college, he moved to California, and I’ve always been on the east coast, so the time difference thing is real. We don’t talk on the phone much, though now that I live with Mom, she talks to him weekly, so I do hear his news (and he mine, presumably). We get along well in person, and have a lot of shared history and family jokes, plus the same sense of humor. We’re very different people but good friends.
I’m an only child. I think of siblings as a spectator sport. I watch what you all do then try imagine what I’d do in a similar situation. You’re endlessly fascinating from an outsider’s perspective.
My brother is almost exactly 6 years younger than I am. We haven’t lived in the same house in 20 years (the 6 months after i graduated college/found a job). I am married with 3 daughters. He is single and not really dating even. And yet? We could not be closer. We literally talk or text every single day. Last year he offered to watch my girls for a week while my husband and I went on vacation. He just bought a house 20 minutes away and my husband spent the weekend helping him install new light fixtures an rewire some stuff. Growing up, we fought like cats and dogs. I didn’t want him hanging out with my friends (what kid wants a 6 year younger tag along?). I was annoyed to have to drive him places. we argued a lot. But that all evolved when I moved out. I took him on a just the two of us trip when he graduated high school and I was 25 from the midwest to California and after that we were very close. Pre pandemic, when we worked in the city, we took the train together a lot. We call each other about recipes and problems and just every day stuff. It’s really, really nice.
We are planning to go to Disney (our family of 5 and him) in October. I cannot wait!
I have one brother. I live in MD, and he lives in IA. Even though he is older than me by two and a half years, we see each other at least once a year. We talk on the phone some and text some (particularly the Wordle thread) but when shit goes down with either of our parents, we are ON IT together. We have, when parental health has been in question, shared rental homes, hotel rooms etc. We have done family trips so that our kids know each other (even though I am the younger sib, my kids are 26, 23, and 20, while his are 13 and 11.)
I can’t imagine not having him in my life, even though our communication waxes and wanes. He is the only person, besides my parents, who has known me my whole life and who can help me remember my earliest years.
I have a sister and I have it on my calendar to text her once a week. She sometimes texts back. We’re 3..5 years apart – she’s older – but we’re drastically different people with different lives and priorities and we’ve never been close really. I try to see her once or twice a year, but it’s always me going to her and she’s never been to my house. I sometimes feel terrible about that because…
My husband is one of five. They have a near-daily active text thread with all of them. We see his family about once a month. I don’t know what their secret is, but sometimes I’m a little jealous. Ha!
I am one of four siblings, and we are all close. My brother and I are eighteen months apart, and our sisters are ten years younger than each of us respectively. Same parents, they just had a second round years later. We call/text/share news, see each other regularly, and, to varying degrees, take care of our mom. All our kids are close as well. Sometimes we get annoyed with each other, but it’s in general a very nice and supportive thing and I’m very glad to have them actively in my life.
My husband is also one of four and his sibling dynamic is totally different, even though the age spread and geographic spread is pretty similar. They all like and love and wish for the best for each other, but they pretty much only see each on major holidays and even that is spotty. We spend time with his parents for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and it’s 50/50 if the others are going to come and it’s literally been years since we were all together. They almost never call or text each other, and our kids barely know each other.
It’s such a curious thing, I don’t know what drives it. Maybe the cohesiveness of the family growing up? We were always up in each others life and my husband and his siblings were more doing their own thing all the time. I know that I am very hopeful that my own two children, who are three years apart, will stay close, but I don’t think it’s possible to force it.
I loved this and find the whole subject interesting too! I have one sibling, a brother two years younger. We love each other but have always been very different and not particularly close. In contrast, I was fascinated after I met Dave to see how close he was to one of his sisters; she donated bone marrow to him when he had leukemia in the early 90s (before I met him). He lived with her and her family for a while after he got out of the hospital. They talked on the phone all the time. He always expressed surprise at how distant my brother and I are.
OTOH, the day after Dave died, my brother drove my 83 year old mom here from Illinois and they spent the entire day with me. We had a wonderful time. (It was his second time at my house since I moved here in 2017.) I never expected that because he and his wife are conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and believe if you’ve been vaxed for covid, it will affect the people around you. He knows I’m vaccinated. (My mom hid the fact that she is vaxed from him.) He did call his wife on the drive home and ask her to make some kind of pine needle tea for him to drink to counteract the effects of being around me. (sigh) But he was there for me! And has been texting regularly since then, just to check on me.
It’s love but not closeness, if that makes sense.
I can weigh in on this as an only child! Please please please do not spend one nanosecond of your life feeling bad about Carla being an only child and please please please feel free to tell anyone who has an opinion on how many children that you should have had to go ******** themselves. In fairness, I think that everyone gets grilled about not having kids/only having one kid/having too many kids…it never ends.
I have the best of all worlds because I married into a large family. My husband gets to see my life as an only and I get to be a part of his world with five siblings.
This post is VERY timely, as a few of my siblings have recently upset me, to put it mildly. I am the middle child of 5. My mom had 5 kids in 7 years. My two older sisters are very tight, and don’t believe in original thoughts and live and breathe our folks’ mindset. My two younger brothers are practically Siamese. I’ve always been the black sheep of the family. I wouldn’t say that I am close to any of them. They act as if we are part of this close knit family. I’m always envious of people who post birthday wishes to their ‘amazing, supportive’ sister.
I’m one of six kids and my husband is one of six kids, and I would say that he is close to his only brother but not very close to his sisters, who are much younger, and I am close to my sisters (especially the closest in age sister) but not to my brothers, who are much older. I pray and tell my seven kids that they are each other’s best friends, and hope it “sticks” when they are adults! They definitely have closer relationships with others based on age and interests, but so far they all seem to love and like one another 🙂
Sibling dynamics are an endlessly fascinating topic for me. I am 1 of 5 kids and it is crazy that us 5 all came from the same 2 people because we are SO DIFFERENT. There is a 17 year age different from the first to last. I’m # 4 of 5 and there is a 10 year span between the oldest and me, so I never felt like I knew my oldest brother all that well. Then my parents had my younger sister when I was 7 so we have a similar age gap to you and your sister. I would guess that the age gap and the difference in gender is a driving force in your level of closeness. Of all of my siblings, I am closest to my youngest sister, but we are very similar – the most similar all 5 of us kids. And oddly, we have kids that are closest in age as she just became a mom last year and had her baby 2.5 after I had my younger child. We text pretty frequently, especially since having kids but WE NEVER TALK ON THE PHONE because we both loathe it. I’m not at all close to my eldest brother and we have nothing in common honestly. I was closer to my other brother years ago but that has sort of waned as he is so busy with his kids and their activities as they are 14 and almost 17. And I am really not close to my older sister because again, we have nothing in common… I love all of my siblings but I’m just not super close to them. My husband had 1 sibling and they were close/played together when they were young, but were also completely different people so were not friends as adults and sadly his brother passed away in 2020. So there really is no guarantee that giving Carla a sibling would have meant she had a lifelong friend…
I have 2 kids but they are far too young to tell if they will have a lasting relationship. I hope that they will be friends/get along but it’s hard to say if that will be the case or not. There are so many factors that impact siblings relationships!
I am the youngest of 10. Growing up my big brothers and sisters were nice and spoiled us young ones a little. But they were out in the world before I was in junior high. The younger ones were close , especially if they were in the same school.
Now I’m in closest contact with my twin and 2 sisters.
Twin and I Skype constantly- our quordle.com solutions and cat pictures every day.
One sister is the best aunt to my kids and visits at least once a year. They always have fun with her. She’d bring my dad out too so he could see the kids.
The others share occasional emails or calls. I’m not on social media which they use to share news . ( I rely on other sister to keep me updated!) But when we are all together, it’s always fun.
I came from a family of 4 children but was the only girl. (the eldest) I lost two younger brothers in my twenties, so the only surviving one is nearly 15 years younger than I am. We are very close and live near to each other but our politics and religious views don’t mesh at all. As long as we stay off those topics, we’re fine.
I have one sibling, a sister two years younger than me. We exchange a few words when I’m home for holidays. We went to the same college and occasionally saw each other. We are Not Close.
Helpful context might be that I have a similarly distant relationship with my parents, who do not live far away yet I text my mother once every month or two, and occasionally a phone call. I’ve invested more energy in my chosen friends and support network. I function as an only child and have for years and years.
This is wonderful and I read the post and some of the comments with intense interest (I haven’t yet read all the comments because I am so excited to reply but I will). I have three sisters. One is my dad’s daughter from a previous relationship and she is a year and a half older than me and lives in Europe (always has for the most part). My next sister is three years younger and has nine kids, and my baby sister is eleven years younger, in a relationship but no kids, and doing her PhD. They both live in Canada where I grew up and I live in Texas. Add to the situation that my dad is very ill with Parkinson’s and the family is somewhat in crisis mode. I was not close with either younger sister growing up – the middle and I mostly grew up together and due to her personality she acted more like the older sibling. She was also popular and a mean girl (WAS – not anymore, she’s a delight) and I’m a math nerd. The younger one was too young to really know growing up. Fast forward 20+ years and I am extremely close with both sisters. Especially middle, we DM constantly and talk on the phone whenever we want, which can be several times a week or every few months, but we are pretty much in constant communication. My youngest sister and I FaceTime at least once a week. My older sister I only found out about at 16 and we met when I was 28, and then I started having kids (she is married but no children) and kind of fell out of touch. We reconnected recently and have FaceTimed a few times and it was so fun, but it’s so strange because I kinda feel like I’m in a new relationship and it is so fraught. Like if she doesn’t email for x days, when is it appropriate to email? Is she ghosting me or just busy? I should also mention that my younger two sisters have no relationship with the older, I am the only one. Whew. My husband has a brother three years younger and they rarely talk. It’s all so fascinating. Thanks if you read this long comment! And if anyone has advice on the whole older sister thing, I’d love to hear it. 😉
I have two brothers, one is 3 years older, one is seven years younger. Without saying much – there are eyes everywhere – I am always envious of my friends who are best friends with their siblings, and they travel together and raise their kids together. This is not the case with the three of us, not even a little. However, as an adult I have made very close friendships with women who I consider to be my chosen sisters. We do the best with the hands we are dealt, right? My sons are actually the best of friends with each other; I do not know how this happened or how I came to be so lucky, but that’s the way it is. They are as close as can be and because they are so close in age, they also have the same circle of friends. If one of their friends is organizing something, it’s always M&J invited, like they are one person, so that is lovely and heartwarming.
My younger brother and I were closer when we were growing up, but incidents over the past decade have been…a great sadness in my life, I will just put it that way. I get along fine with my older brother, but we are in very different places in our lives and I have different values from him, which precludes a certain closeness.
What a great topic…again!!
I have three siblings – all older by a lot. My closest sibling, a brother, is 8 years older than me and my oldest sibling, a sister, is 13 years older than me.
So we’ve had very different relationships over the years. First I was the baby everyone doted on, then they left for university, and now we’re all married and things have leveled out.
We stay in touch via a family text; my Mom writes to us all this way EVERYDAY with the minutiae about what my Dad/she are doing. The rest of us chime in occasionally.
When we see each other we get along well (sort of; I get along with everyone but my two of my siblings DO NOT get along well), but we don’t do “hard’ together. Like if I had a bad day it would never cross my mind to reach out to a sibling. We’re there for big events, we love each other…but we don’t have much day-to-day interaction.
That said, I think distance is a big reason for this as we’re literally scattered all over the globe!
Like Nicole said, I’ve made friends that have become like sisters to me, and I love that. And it also gives some familial distance; we don’t have a shared history which can make it easier to give each other advice.
I wish we were closer, but I don’t think about it a lot.
My kids fight like crazy but they are really, really close as well. Two was enough kiddos for us, but I sometimes do wonder what it would have been like with just one child and no sibling dynamic because it can REALLY impact personality development (I can see this in my own siblings and between my two kids). OR what if would have been like with a bigger family with more sibling interactions…
Such a fun post <3
Such an interesting post! I have 3 older sisters & 1 younger brother. I’d say we have always been ‘close’ in a way, sometimes not talking for a few weeks, but very supportive of each other. There are definitely 5 different personalities but we somehow manage to love & accept each other without judgement.
At the beginning of covid my eldest sister had just lost her husband and we were worried about her mental health as she has a history of depression. I suggested a weekly zoom cocktail hour and it’s still going on 2+ years later. We don’t all make it every week, but it’s a regular check-in & 45 min chat. It’s been great to have this regular time-slot to catch up.
I grew up with an older sister and a younger brother. I was, and am still, very close with my older sister. My younger brother and I were never very close for many reasons, but mainly personality. He was not close to my older sister either. My brother recently transitioned and is now, therefore, my younger sister. I think in their mind they would become a part of “The Sisters” and automatically have a close relationship with me and my older sister but that’s not really how life works is it. I have a lot of thoughts about siblings too!
I have a younger brother (13 months apart). We are not close AT ALL. When my dad died, we kind of tried – but his views/outlook on life and all the issues wildly differ from mine (to the point that I had to mute him on FaceBook). It is wild how two siblings raised in the same home and with the same education are so vastly different. I’ve always wanted a sister though – who knows how that relationship would have turned out.
My mother was from a very large family and the sibling dynamics there were (and I presume, still are) crazy. Half the time this one wasn’t talking to that one and then it would all flip. Truly nutty.
As someone else said, currently I tend to focus on the “family I chose” (close friends).
Oh boy. I have one older sister, 6.5 years older. She went to college when I started 6th grade, but then she moved back into the house until well after I went to college and grad school. (She is once again living with our parents.) We are Not Close. Mostly personality and I am honestly not included to try to change that. I love her, but I don’t overly like her. I dread health issues with our parents because I am not going to have someone to help out, but someone who will make things harder and argue over everything. There’s always the chance she will surprise me, but I don’t hold a lot of hope about that.
My husband has a younger sister, almost exactly 3 years apart. They are super close, text and call each other very often. It is bizarre for me to see their relationship and for him to see my relationship with my sister, as they are pretty much opposite of each other. I love my SIL and got super lucky on that front. Plus, my best friend since kindergarten is basically like a sister.
I find it endless fascinating too! Especially people with multiple siblings and the crazy family dynamics that follow. I have one sister and we are quite close – we live about a five-hour drive and they drive here more because my parents moved here when my kids were little. We text and email and talk on the phone, and the only reason we don’t communicate more often is that she’s more of a phone person and I’m more of an email person. My daughter is very close to her and her daughter is very close to me. I would love it if we lived closer, but we are both very settled in our cities. Our husbands also get along really well and when we’re together with my parents everyone clicks fabulously. I would love if we could get in at least one more group vacation with my parents.
This is interesting to me too. I’m the oldest of four siblings and with an age difference of 4 (sister), 10 (sister), 12 (brother) years between us. I’m closest with the siblings that are 4 and 12 years apart. I have one sister that lives across the state, one that lives a couple of states away, and my brother lives in the same town as me. I’d say we are all relatively close – though I have the least in common and the least communication with my sister who is 10 years younger. My brother and I largely became friendly as adults living in the same town, had we not, I think we’d be much like you and your brother. My kids are just about 2 years apart and I’ll be interested to see how close they stay as the continue to get older.
I have sister, four years younger than me. I would say we are pretty close. We live on opposite ends of the country (me in Maryland, her in Oregon) but when my academic career crashed and burned, I started working in her copywriting business so we’re in almost daily contact by email and frequently work talk spills over into personal talk. We vacation together at the beach every year or two and that’s pretty much the only time I see her in person. Well, we’ve been to Oregon a few times in the last eight years, mostly for life events, like when she adopted her daughter and when my stepfather died.
My kids are five years apart, so North was in middle school when Noah left for college. They get along and are fond of each other, but they don’t have a lot in common.
I have a brother and we are just 14 months apart, so we grew up super close. It was really fun to have that built-in buddy who could show me the ropes at high school and play with me during summer breaks. Don’t get me wrong, though: We fought CONSTANTLY! I don’t know how my mom survived our teenage years, lol. (We have a funny story about how we got in this huge argument when we were in high school and his girlfriend was over at our house. He threw a purse that he thought was mine across the room and everything spilled out of it. Turns out, it was his girlfriend’s!)
Now that we’re adults and went through a fairly traumatic estrangement with our father, we’ve become even closer and I consider him one of my best friends. We don’t text daily or anything like that, but he’s really good about checking in with me (much better than I am) and I see him weekly during football season and twice a month the other times of the year. I’m really glad he lives close by and there is something very comforting about knowing he’ll be there to help whenever my mom is at a place where she needs more caretaking (hopefully not for decades!)
That said, not all sibling relationships are healthy and I don’t understand anyone who shamed you for not giving Carla a sibling. That’s such a personal decision! (And if you HAD been trying to give her a sibling but it just hadn’t worked out, how terrible would that line of questioning make you feel!! Ugh, people). My nephews are 6 years apart and they don’t get along at all. I hope that changes when they’re adults, but it might not – they might live on separate coasts and only see each other on holidays, if that. Having a sibling doesn’t mean you automatically have a best friend.
Yes, it’s an interesting topic. My kids are almost as far apart in age as you and your brother- my son went to college this year and my daughter is in seventh grade. In a lot of ways it’s like you described- I kind of have two only children. Plus the fact that they’re different genders and have extremely different personalities- it’s almost like they’re complete opposites of one another. I hope they have the level of closeness of you and your brother when they get older.
On the other end of the spectrum, my sister and I are two years apart. We fought a lot when we were younger but became closer and closer as the years went on. Now we text every day and travel back and forth to visit- she’s in Illinois and I’m in Florida.
Btw, it seems that most only children are pretty happy with that- so don’t feel guilty in any way about your daughter!
My brother and I are only 18 months apart and have never been close although we love each other very much. We have an older half sister (like, 22 years older) who was more like an aunt to us until we were all adults and I talk to her more than I talk to my brother! All that to say, sometimes being close in age means you’re close in other ways…but not always!
Wow, that is a big age difference and I can imagine that it’s harder to form a close bond – especially when it’s a brother/sister situation (for some reason, I imagine sisters to be closer).
It’s wild to me to think that your brother has never been to your home.
Well, come to think of it, my sister hasn’t been to my (current) home either, but that is because we live 6000+ miles apart and I usually visit back home and she only travels overseas every few years (she has a family and travel overseas is expensive). Having said that, we’re very, very close, because we’re twins (fraternal though). I could not imagine not having a close relationship with my sister, but then again, we experienced life side by side for many, many years.
Sibling relationships definitely are fascinating. My husband is not very close with his brother (he’s three years older), but they do get along.