I rarely talk with my brothers. They live several hours away and unless I’m visiting, we don’t see each other. None of us like long phone conversations, either.
My brother lives ~3 hours away and my sister lives in Arizona. We talk on birthdays and Christmas for the most part, and sometimes comment on each others’ Facebook posts.
My husband would talk to his brother and sister on birthdays and at Christmas, for maybe five minutes tops. My older brother lives in Arizona and I talk to him maybe one a year. My other brother and my sister live closer, and I talk to my sister once a week or so, and my brother once a month or so.
I’m the oldest of 5 - we’re now 59, 58, 56, 52, and 48. I left home at 19 to join the Navy, and except for 30 months that I was stationed near home, I haven’t lived in the area since. Even now, my closest sib is an hour and a half away and the farthest is a bit over 2 hours away. I’m not all that close to any of them - not for any reason other than I’ve spent most of the last 40 years living pretty far from them.
I can’t recall ever calling any of them just to chat. The sister who’s closest to me in age called once or twice just to talk, but despite our ages, we were never really close - she’s so different from the rest of us, I used to seriously think my mom brought the wrong baby home from the hospital… There are no hard feelings between any of us, and we see each other a couple of times a year. But since I’ve not really been a part of any of their lives, they’re like strangers. Plus a couple of them drink way too much, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m I middle child in my 40’s with the others spread out over 10 or so years.
As kids we all had our own sets of friends and never really hung out and that carried on into adulthood.
We’ve never been in each other’s pockets and probably only speak on the phone a few times a year.
I live many hours away and get to see them all a couple of times a year and that’s fine.
That said, I am very fond of them all and they are all wonderful human beings. The gaps between talks, drinks and get-togethers are long but I never laugh so much as when we do catch up. The two things I cherish about my dad’s funeral earlier this year was the chance for me to stand up and give a speech on the children’s behalf about what a fine man he was, and also the laugher we had at the wake. Maybe it just works because we are all very similar people and are happy to pick up where we left off after several months without any of us thinking “he should phone first” " she should phone first" etc. Fuck that shit. We are all low-drama and low-maintenance people.
The moral of this? if it works for you all, don’t worry about it. There is no right or wrong.
This. I used to fret about the fact that I only talk to one of my brothers once or twice a year, especially when I saw how close my husband’s siblings are. But my brother and I might as well be from different planets. We love each other but we were not meant to be close.
A few months back I had coffee with a childhood friend. He is currently living back “at home”; my brothers live in the same town as my mother and my house is on the mountains, about 1h away. He asked me “do you ever wish you’d bought your house here?”
“Not really. First, one of my reasons to pick that location was that I figured either the job I had close by panned out (and then I’d want to live there), or it didn’t (and then it was a helluva vacation spot, the women complain it’s “so horribly hot! we’ve almost reached 30ºC!”). Second, sometimes I start thinking “gee, maybe if I was in T…” but I never finish the thought, because you see, I realize that if I spent more time here, my brothers would just take my help for granted even more than they already do. Because hey, Nava since you don’t have anything to do pick up the kids, Nava since you don’t have anything to do let the plumber in, Nava since you don’t have anything to do take my suit to the laundry, but Nava we’re not going to invite you over for coffee or to dinner with friends you’ve known for 20 years :p”
He laughed. His sister pulls the same shit with him. If “talking with the Bros” is going to mean “walk on eggshells” with Mr Easily Offended, or “Nava do this” from either one, fuck that shit. I’ve been known to answer with a “what do you say?” (Please. You say please). The times we have actual conversations? Those I’m grateful for them when I get them.
My one sibling is gone, so I’m answering for my husband. He has three sisters and a brother, all older. He talks to his sisters at least once a week, even the one he doesn’t like very much. He doesn’t talk to his brother at all.
He’s just plain sociable. He talks to his kids frequently too, and goes to coffee every morning to chat with whoever is in the cafe.
When my brother was alive, we saw each other when the family got together, but we never chatted on the phone. He was three years older, we didn’t live in the same state for most of our lives. We liked each other and got along well though.
I wasn’t very close to my siblings when I was a child, but we all became much closer as adults, especially during my father’s illness and after his death. We remained in generally weekly contact for years after that, but now I never hear from 2 of them and only get a phone call from the other a few times a year. (I took his child in during a rough time, so he feels an obligation to me.) One year my aged mom let it slip that they were all getting together for Thanksgiving without me, so that told me pretty much all I needed to know.
My siblings and my husband are the only people whose opinions of me matter, so losing their friendship has been devastating. I don’t know what caused them to disengage; no doubt I said something Sheldon Cooperish and caused offense, but I have no idea what that was, and they’ll never tell me.
On the bright side, I am free to stop worrying about them dying now :D.
I have 3 brothers - 2 older, 1 younger.
Oldest brother and I talk 2-3 times a year. My birthday, his birthday, often around one of the holidays. There is occasional email/facebook/twitter interaction, but not a lot.
Other older brother and I a little more often - birthdays, most holidays,and I’ll often see him when visiting the parents.
Younger brother and I probably communicate the most - albeit mostly through facebook, but also texting and the like.
We’re just not a super social family, even with each other.
This is a pretty good description of my situation, only my brother is 12 mo older (he was adopted). After our dad passed, I found it difficult to maintain any sort of relationship with him, so I have put some space between us.
I used to dwell on not having a “normal” sibling, too. In recent years, I have started to look at my long-term friendships more as the brothers I never had.
My wife has both parents nearby, and a (normal) sister an hour away - they speak even less than me and my estranged brother. Go figure.
I was raised as an only child, as I was adopted, but I have four half siblings that I’ve gotten to know extremely well as an adult.
I’m the oldest, at 27.
23 year old brother. Mostly see each other at family functions, but enjoy each other’s company when we do see each other.
21 year old sister. We were very close several years ago, but she got married, and had some kids, and we stopped talking as much as we used to. She does drop in to see me at work about once a month.
18 year old brother. What can I say, he’s an 18 year old boy! I rarely even see him at family events, and he’s not super talkative when he’s around. I chalk it up to age, but who knows? I get along with his roommate pretty well though. (He lives a few blocks from me).
15 year old sister, who’s going through a pretty rough patch. See her only occasionally, when she’s not in trouble of some sort, but we get along quite well.
I get along with all of them, and have seen most of them grow up, so to speak. We just don’t hang out socially all that much.
I’m the oldest of three brothers and I very, very rarely talk to my brothers. We get along fine but we’re not close. I really only talk to them when I visit my parents who live nearby, and that’s maybe once every couple of years (usually my parents visit me).
On the other hand, my wife is the middle child of five siblings (4 sisters and a brother) and she talks to each of them every day. All three sisters live very close so she sees them all the time, usually daily, and her brother is in another city but they call or text often.
I visit my older sister once a week, sometimes more.
I visit my younger sister a couple times a year.
Life is weird.
One sister is a year older. We talk a few times a month on average I guess. We might go a couple weeks without talking, then talk 3 times in one week. She refuses to text, so that cuts it down, but we chat in email occasionally.
My other sister is 10 years younger and we usually talk a few times a week, a lot of it in text. She also lives with our mom, so I see her when I go over there.
I talk to my baby sister (ten years my junior) at least once a week. She lives several states away, but we have an tacit agreement to call one another each Wednesday evening.
My older brother (6 years my senior) and I talk about once a month. We also live several states apart but still make time to chat, though not with any implicit schedule.
My little sister (five years my junior) and I talk maybe once a month. We live in the same city.
My older sisters and I all live in the same city. In two cases I speak to them with some regularity, as we swap off on taking care of our father on Sundays; the third I consciously avoid and communicate, if at all, by email. The next-to-lat time we spoke, she called me an asshole for the crime of not wanting to wake our father up to see if he wanted to go to Sunday school; the last time was when she apologized for that.
My oldest brother and I never talk. No, I’ll take that back. He called me on my last birthday to say Happy Birthday, which sounds nice but in fact was an expression of the depth of our estrangement.
I have just one sister, lives with her husband in another state. I’m unmarried. Our parents are getting on in years, in elder care. My sister and I talk by phone about once every week or two. A lot of our talk is related to our parents. But a lot is other stuff, too.
Very close with my sibs, even though we’re scattered throughout the lower 48. We get together at least once a year (often twice) for some shared activity (Bears game in Chicago most recently). Text messages several times a week. Two or more (out of 4) of us seem to get together every several months.
One more than I would like, the other less than I would like.
I’m 36, my only brother is 30. We live in the same town and talk to each other about once a week.