Adult Siblings - How many are not on speaking terms?

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My brother is my best friend. Of course, there have been times when I have been annoyed with him over 60 years, but we have always stuck together. He was very supportive through our parents dying and my cancer. We don’t live close enough to see each other all the time, but we check in by phone about every week. I can always call him when I am depressed and he cheers me up with goofy jokes. 🙂
 
Hurting People Hurt People

My mom and dad were both the youngest in their families. They were both terribly hurt by their siblings following the death of their parents. I have two older brothers and I’m the only girl. My parents always told us, "If you kids ever behave like this after we’re gone, we’ll jump out of our graves to slap you all up the side of the head. We all get along just fine.

When I turned 50, I wanted to do something really special, so I took my brothers to the Dominican Republic. Just the three of us. Best money I ever spent. We all got a little tipsy at the pool bar the first day there. My older brother threw his arms up in the air and yelled, “My baby sister brought me to paradise”! My younger brother kept saying, “This is a once in a life time experience”. They don’t know we’re doing it again when I turn 55. Don’t worry mom and dad. We all get along just fine.

Blessings - Chochy
 
Chochy said:
Hurting People Hurt People

My mom and dad were both the youngest in their families. They were both terribly hurt by their siblings following the death of their parents. I have two older brothers and I’m the only girl. My parents always told us, "If you kids ever behave like this after we’re gone, we’ll jump out of our graves to slap you all up the side of the head. We all get along just fine.

When I turned 50, I wanted to do something really special, so I took my brothers to the Dominican Republic. Just the three of us. Best money I ever spent. We all got a little tipsy at the pool bar the first day there. My older brother threw his arms up in the air and yelled, “My baby sister brought me to paradise”! My younger brother kept saying, “This is a once in a life time experience”. They don’t know we’re doing it again when I turn 55. Don’t worry mom and dad. We all get along just fine.

Blessings - Chochy
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I am hoping to use your parents example to my kids, thanks for a great post!!
 
I have 2 brothers younger than I. I have a loving relationship with both, though not a close, close relationship with the older of the two.

I’m 5 years older than the youngest so was gone from home by the time he entered his teens and only really got to know him when he was in his 30s. We have similar interests and love of the arts so have that in common.

The older of the two is my junior by only 13 months and as pre-schoolers we did everything together. At this point in our lives we have absolutely nothing in common and he often infuriates me with his attitudes towards people (he was a police officer for 27 years and the world to him consists of police officers, criminals and potential criminals). He also has no love of family, if I can put it that way. I think he finds many of us annoying and not up to his standards. For all that, I still love him to bits and am always happy to spend time with him, unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often since we only get to his area every 12-18 months. We have developed a way of avoiding conversations that make both of us unhappy and stick to light subjects.
 
i have one brother that i haven’t talked to in almost a year. he doesn’t return my phone calls. the last time i spoke to him was to tell him about the birth of my fourth son.

i used to worry about it a lot, but in the past few years i have learned to let go of what could have been. i still sometimes mourn the loss of an extended family and feel sorry for myself, but for the most part i try to be thankful for the amazing “new” family i am a part of now.
 
steph410 said:
i have one brother that i haven’t talked to in almost a year. he doesn’t return my phone calls. the last time i spoke to him was to tell him about the birth of my fourth son.

i used to worry about it a lot, but in the past few years i have learned to let go of what could have been. i still sometimes mourn the loss of an extended family and feel sorry for myself, but for the most part i try to be thankful for the amazing “new” family i am a part of now.
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Dear One,

Does your “new” family have a close relationship to the extended family on your husband’s/wife’s side? I ask the question, because I believe children who grow up, exposed to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins grasp the importance of extended family. When those relationships are developed, strengthened and maintained they are more likely to keep them up when they are adults raising family’s of their own. It’s a wonderful environment to raise a family.

We have an enormous “extended” family and I am so proud of them. I married my brother’s best friend. Somehow most of us ended up living in the same small community. We like to tease “newbies” when they are around us. When we introduce each other, we say things like, “This is my sister-in-law’s sister- in-law, or this is my niece’s, husband’s grandmother”. Actually, my niece, (the daughter of my husband’s brother) and my nephews (the son’s of my brothers) grew up thinking they were all, actually cousins, and for the most part they are!

Blessings - Chochy
 
I have 4 adult siblings - One I am very close to, 2 I have a distant but civil relationship with and 1 that I’ve had to detach from due to her addictions and abuse. I’ve always held to Jesus’s words in the Gospel where he says 2 will be divided against 3 etc.

I’ve come to understand that we are all at different places on our spiritual journey and at different levels of understanding about truth and our responsibilities in following Jesus. As we are in the throws of our Parents dying I’m beginning to see some shifts in the relationships and continue to have hope that we each grow and gain in our abilities to offer compassion, love and forgiveness from the ebbs and flows of family life - eg. things are exactly as they should be and part of a purpose greater than our own.
 
My brother went to jail in 2009 for attempt sexual assault on a woman.

When I was in high school he assaulted me and constantly made sexual gestures towards me. Even though I reported this to my parents, my brother would say he didn’t remember doing these things and that I was exgeratting. Unfortunately,my parents didn’t believe me.

After going to jail the truth came out and they are dealing with mountains of guilt. The struggle I have is not with my parents, since I know they did the best they could, but with my brother. He has written to me from jail, telling me how attracted he was/is? to me in graphic detail. I forgive his actions (hate the sin, not the sinner) but I don’t want to see him again, as I will never be comfortable with him. This has ripped my family apart silently.

Isn’t okay to forgive him but not wish to have contact with him? I worry about the day he gets out and my parents wanting their family back.

What would Jesus do?
Thanks Sue
 
I have 2 sisters and a brother. My brother and I used to be close but something happened in the past 5 years or so and we rarely talk anymore, and don’t do the same things we used to do, hang out, talk, etc.

One of my sisters I’m very close with, we share our faith together, and conservative views as well. Which is weird, because we didn’t get along too well for a number of years.

My other sister and I used to be very close. But when I met my wife she didn’t like her and pretty much told me so. Days before my wedding she told me she was using me for my money and we should get married. I pretty much ignored that, never told my wife, but it damaged our relationship.

For years, when she was going to church(while her children were young) she used to try to get me back to church. When I reverted and started going to church and was really on fire for my faith, she went the opposite way. She used to call me “the priest” behind my back to the other siblings. I think she got jealous and resentful that I came back to the church. And then when i disagreed with her liberal views, she and I really deteriorated. To the point we were fighting all the time, verbally and via email.

I made an effort to change that and apologized and stopped responding to her, refused to talk religion and politics with her. Our relationship is on the mend, but it’s not like it used to be. I don’t get it. Especially my brother. He doesn’t talk much with my sister that’s close to me, and really could care less about most of his family I think. He never wants anything to do with the extended family, and is almost ashamed of them. He really hated my dad, but the funny thing is he is so much like him he could be a clone.

Family is weird. My wife has a brother that never speaks to any of his sisters, ignored him mom even while she was dying. What’s with people like that?
 
I have nine siblings. One is a sociopath who is in jail again. Most of the others have abandoned the faith and look at me with disdain. My wife and I have one income and eight kids. They mostly have two incomes and two kids. For my parents anniversary, they scheduled an event that costs far more than we can afford to pay. It would require a day’s travel for us both there and back, and is scheduled to last three days. It is scheduled for when I have finals at the end of spring term, as I’m working on an MBA to further my career. I will have been in the program for a year and a half, and if I take a break my student loans will evaporate leaving me with a year and a half of work and debt with nothing to show for it. They refused to consider changing either the location, or the date. If they changed either it would be doable for my family. But they won’t even consider it, and blame me implying I don’t really want to attend. My mom threatened to disown me if I didn’t attend. Luckily, she backed down when I told her I could not and explained why.

I have to wonder why I am treated this way. I try to get along with them, but I don’t share the same lifestyle because of the kids and our lower income due to having to have a non-working spouse to care for the children. I hope my children do not treat each other like this when they are adults.
 
I have just one sister, and we are not close. She is a very nice person in her own way, but she has poor social skills and a tendancy to speak without thinking. Also, she has odd interests – she likes to talk about blood, guts, disease, bowel movements, etc. She is in the medical/biology field, so this is just shop talk to her, but it makes me queasy and anxious. I speak to her a few times a year by phone, and I usually see her once a year at a family gathering. I really can’t take her into my confidence about things because in the past she has made disparaging comments about my husband or our stepfather when I have opened up. I forgive her for these comments (especially since I know she lacks many social graces), but I don’t want to invite further comments like that either!
 
I do not have a relationship with either my brother or sister (6 and 8 years younger, respectively). I haven’t seen my brother in 7 years, or my sister in over 4 years. I never met my brother’s wife, and they have since divorced. I have not met my sister’s second husband, whom she recently married. My brother has never met my children. My sister has met my oldest and second oldest, but not my third child. The only contact we have is on Facebook, and that is limited to merely viewing each others’ posts, no chatting or personal messages.

Despite the fact that we have each individually moved to the same region of the country, we have never had any sort of get-together, nor is it likely for that to occur ever.

Our parents’ divorce, and the mental health problems that my siblings suffer from contribute to the estrangement. My brother is downright dangerous. My sister is rather unstable. they are the ones who decided that no contact is best, mainly because they just want to find some happiness without any reminders of shared painful family history. Each of us left home, moved hundreds of miles away, cut ties with most back home, and started a new life. I am in complete agreement with their choices to do so, but I do miss what the three of us had as children. We loved each other and spent a lot of time together. It was our parents who really screwed everything up, and ruined any chance for us to have a healthy relationship with each other until each of us finds healing and learns to trust again. As far as I know, they do not blame me and I certainly do not blame them. It just IS. For now, we are all okay with that, as sad as it is.
 
agirlscout said:
My brother went to jail in 2009 for attempt sexual assault on a woman.

When I was in high school he assaulted me and constantly made sexual gestures towards me. Even though I reported this to my parents, my brother would say he didn’t remember doing these things and that I was exgeratting. Unfortunately,my parents didn’t believe me.

After going to jail the truth came out and they are dealing with mountains of guilt. The struggle I have is not with my parents, since I know they did the best they could, but with my brother. He has written to me from jail, telling me how attracted he was/is? to me in graphic detail. I forgive his actions (hate the sin, not the sinner) but I don’t want to see him again, as I will never be comfortable with him. This has ripped my family apart silently.

Isn’t okay to forgive him but not wish to have contact with him? I worry about the day he gets out and my parents wanting their family back.

What would Jesus do?
Thanks Sue
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Sue,
My brother and sister had an incestuous relationship during most of their childhood, as a result of one or both of them having been molested by a grown up. As my brother grew up and became stronger, the encounters became more violent. It was horribly damaging and traumatic for the both of them. Today, they love each other and have offered forgiveness to each other, but they have minimal contact. Their relationship was and would still be dangerous, so they give each other the time and space to heal and find happiness.

I share this with you so that you know that families with sexual assault and abuse can have members who improve their own mental health, but that it usually is without the siblings in their lives. Sexual abuse between family members drives a wedge into the family, and it is unlikely that the victims, or other vulnerable family members, would ever truly feel safe around their abusers, even if the abuser repents and asks forgiveness.

I am so sorry this happened to you. Hopefully, your brother will have time to reflect upon his disordered desires and behaviors and come to a place of repentance. But whether he does or not, you should not be expected to put aside personal safety and emotional wellbeing and pretend like nothing has happened. I do believe that your parents owe you an apology for not believing you, and I think they would be wise to place no pressure upon you to conform to unreasonable expectations. This is a hard thing and you have already had to overcome much. It is time for them to support you emotionally and physically.
 
This is an interesting one for me. I am the youngest of 4 with 3 step siblings. I am not close even in the slightest to my step siblings. I barely know them. I’ve seen my eldest step brother maybe 4 or 5 times, same with my step sister, my other step brother is another elusive being. I was 13 when our parents got married, I didn’t live anywhere near my dad. When I would go over to visit on breaks, most of the time they were visiting their father. To be honest I kind of forget to include them when asking about how many siblings I have.

Now my other siblings I am extremely close to. Technically my two eldest are half-siblings, but I have never thought of them that way. My brother is 18 years older than me and my eldest sister is 16 years older. They were like a second set of parents. If I couldn’t go to my parents about something, they were there for me.

My full blood sister, is a completely different story. Growing up we fought a lot, to the point of being abusive. I actually have scars from her. I certainly am just as guilty, although I didn’t do as much emotional abuse, but I did dole out a lot. Our relationship didn’t really fully heal until my sister had her son. His personality is a lot like mine. It made her suddenly see our childhood from a different point of view.

I never held a grudge toward her. I blame a lot of it on our very different ways of looking at the world.
 
I was a “mistake baby” conceived eight years after my parents tried to stop having children. My mother was an alcoholic at the time and after I came she got much worse and started beating up my dad. My 4 siblings did not want anything to do with me from the very beginning and all but one associated and blamed me for their lives being so difficult. My mother got sober when I was seven but my two brother have never really had anything to do with me unless forced by my parents. and my parents divorced when the forth (last planned) child went to college. One of my older sisters told me about six months ago that I was the worse thing that ever happened to my family and my mother, that they would be better off if I had never been born. Needless to say we no longer speak. I rarely talk to my other sister although we were close at one time.

Of course, this caused me great sadness growing up and at 15 yr. I started a mission to starve myself to death. At 21year old I weighed 65lb at 5’5. I have struggled with my weight for the last 30 years and am not close to any of my extended family.
 
I’m not sure where I fall in this.

I am not close to, but I speak with my 3 brothers. They are typical guys though…not much for communication.

I don’t speak to my biological brothers at all. I left that life behind and have no interest in them.

I have lost touch with foster siblings…it’s such a weak bond, though I don’t feel guilty about it.
 
einna said:
I was a “mistake baby” conceived eight years after my parents tried to stop having children. My mother was an alcoholic at the time and after I came she got much worse and started beating up my dad. My 4 siblings did not want anything to do with me from the very beginning and all but one associated and blamed me for their lives being so difficult. My mother got sober when I was seven but my two brother have never really had anything to do with me unless forced by my parents. and my parents divorced when the forth (last planned) child went to college. One of my older sisters told me about six months ago that I was the worse thing that ever happened to my family and my mother, that they would be better off if I had never been born. Needless to say we no longer speak. I rarely talk to my other sister although we were close at one time.

Of course, this caused me great sadness growing up and at 15 yr. I started a mission to starve myself to death. At 21year old I weighed 65lb at 5’5. I have struggled with my weight for the last 30 years and am not close to any of my extended family.
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:(:(😦 God bless you!
 
Since I left Mormonism I haven’t had much contact with my two sisters and my Mom. It’s tentative at best. Mostly facebook contact. It’s been difficult to tell my children why their only Grandma doesn’t want anything to do with them, but Jesus has been worth it! I wouldn’t change a thing.
Steph
 
There isn’t really an option in the poll for me. My oldest sister goes through phases where she plays the “guess why I’m mad at you game”. No one has spoken to her since my other sister’s child was in a serious car accident. (August) She loves the drama, the emotional blackmail (since this involves keeping her three kids away from family members), and the eventual prodigal son routine. At this point, I don’t really care much if she comes around. I wish I had a stronger relationship with my nieces and nephew though.
 
I guess I am truly blessed. I have 2 sisters, one 2 years older and one 7 years younger. We were raised in a rural setting for most of our childhood. Our mom was an only child, our father one of four brothers. When normal fights and disagreements occurred, my parents would sit us down and remind us that in the end there would just be the three of us… we would be the only ones who knew our shared life. We are now all approaching late middle age and we are best friends, we have each others backs and love each other unconditionally. We do not live close together currently but I think that my older sister has a plan for when we are all retired, she wants us to move closer (maybe so she can keep an eye on us.) We all talk several times per week. Our children are like siblings… the same way we were raised with our cousins.
My heart is breaking for all of you who are estranged from your siblings…
 
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