Dopers with siblings: Did you wish you didn't have them?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m the oldest of four. I was born in 1958. I have two brothers, born 1964 and 1965, and an adopted sister, born 1969. I always had a good relationship with #1 but not much of any with #2. My sister was 7 when I left home, so I didn’t really get to know her as a person. Brother #1 and I are both musicians, and we spent a lot of time playing together while he was in his teens to twenties.

Fast forward to the present. Both of our parents have died. I’ve moved 1200 miles from my family. Brother #2 has moved 4000 miles away. My relationship with #1 has cooled greatly since the old days, and is being diluted mainly by the passage of time away from each other. He has a son whom I’ve never met. I’ve developed a great relationship with #2 since we became adults. He flew from the other side of the continent to be at my wedding. I’ve talked to him on ICQ and/or MSN Messenger nearly every day for the last 6 years. He’s visited me four or five times, whenever he comes to Florida for a vacation. As for my sister, we have no relationship at all. She’s been through two bad marriages and has a son I’ve never met. I heard that she recently moved, but I was not on the list of people to tell where. I don’t even know what the reason is - we’ve never had an official falling out - although I hear she has had a major falling out with Brother #1. It’s a soap opera, I tells ya, and I don’t miss that aspect of familial closeness.

I wouldn’t wish my siblings away. I miss how it used to be, but life takes you where you want it to. Everybody has to deal with how it is, not how they wish it was. I do treasure my relationship with my little brother, who is now 38. He’s my only real connection to the family I used to have.

22

I have one sister, almost three years younger than me.

Like most siblings, there were times growing up when we wished the other one had never been born.

However, we went through our parents’ divorce together starting when she was six and I was nine. In many ways, the experience helped bring us together. Of course we still fought through our teens. I still remember my mother often telling me (after an argument with my sister) “Sure you hate each other now, but mark my words, the day will come when you will be very good friends.” Of course my thoughts at the time were “yeah, right, Mom…” But, as usual, my mother was right. Once we both hit adulthood, we learned to appreciate each other and have become very good friends. To this day, I have a relationship with my sister that I don’t have with anyone else, not even my wife. I know, for example, that I can call my sister up at any time (no matter how crazy the hour) to discuss matters (although, as a rule, I won’t call too late). I can kid with her and every year, I make sure to give her birthday punches (as I’ve been doing for over 20 years now). We both know that we can count on each other for practically anything.

There was one time (about seventeen years ago, I would say) when I was cutting the challah (a braided loaf of bread traditionally used) at a Shabbos meal. She complained that I always cut the slices too thin. Since that day, I always cut her a HUGE slice (while giving everyone else normal sized slices). Even by my wedding, when I cut the challah (and they use those BIG challahs by weddings), I sent a HUGE chunk of it to her specifically.

In short, we have become very good friends, in addition to siblings. It’s fairly common for all four of us (my wife, my sister, my brother in law and myself) to get together to either hang out, go to a movie, etc. When we move (soon) we’ll only be three blocks away from each other as well.

Zev Steinhardt

23

I have a brother almost 4 years older and a sister a year younger than him. We did not get along as children (mostly because my sister was difficult and that strained everyone else). She and I got closer after she left for college (she finally grew up a bit); my brother and I are cordial to each other. But that’s about it.

We don’t have a particular reason to not get along but we just have nothing in common at all. (One time we went out to dinner together without our parents. We spent most of the meal in silence until someone finally mentioned baseball and that was our topic of conversation for the next hour.)

When my sister asked me to be her maid of honor at her wedding, even my mom was surprised. I told my sister that I thought it should be her best friend, and she didn’t need to pick me because she felt obligated to. She told me that she picked me so that she wouldn’t have to choose between her friends. So, we both knew where we stood and it was ok. (I had no attendants at my wedding so no problem there!)

Do I wish I never had them? Sigh. I certainly wished that growing up. *Do I wish it now? * Well, I don’t wish anything bad to happen to them and I would be sad if it did, but you mean if they had never, ever been born? I’d have been ok with that, I think. I talk to my brother just a few times a year (when I am planning to be in MD) though now that he has a kid I do try harder; my sister and I talk maybe once every few weeks and that is enough for us. I wouldn’t really have missed their presence, though, if that is what you mean.

I feel like a really bad person for saying that, but it’s true.

24

I have three younger brothers and a very-much-younger sister. My brothers and I didn’t get along at all as kids; we fought all the time, over everything and anything. When we were very small, my brother and I once fought over a dry pinto bean–next to a whole canister of them.

When I was about 11, though, my youngest brother (age 5) disappeared from a school fair (he had gone off with my dad, but no one knew that). I hadn’t previously thought much about loving my siblings, but boy did I realize it then, when I thought he might be gone.

As teens, we pretty much ignored one another. As older teens, we started to get along. When my little sister came along, we all doted on her, but we all moved out, too. The youngest brother is the only one she had a real sibling relationship with.

Now, we are all very very different, but we get along fine. My oldest brother (he of the pinto bean) drops by at random to borrow books or hang out. The next one lives across the country, but we get along fine and I just love his wife. The youngest is just fine too. Baby sister is high school, and we try to encourage her and stuff. It’s nice having them. So, nope, I wouldn’t want them gone, even when we didn’t get along very well.

25

I have an older brother by 6 years who is schizophrenic and was a beast of a person most of the time, verbally, physically and emotionally abusive from my youngest memories. That said, I can’t recall ever wishing that he wasn’t my brother. I wished and prayed he didn’t have the emotional problems he had though.

I also have a younger brother. We were less than two years apart. Now and then we fought like cats and dogs, but we knew we had each others back. We stayed quite close until he married someone that brings too much bitterness and bickering into any social situation so I don’t see him much because I get the shakes trying to be civil while tolerating her shrewish tongue, but I love him dearly and have never wished he wasn’t my sibling.

26

My sister beat the shit out of me when I was younger. She had real anger management problems. But, we’re close now and I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

27

I love my brother. I’d have hated to be an only child. We used to argue when we were kids, but what siblings don’t? We now get on great. A few years ago when he got knocked down by a car, the doctors wern’t sure he would pull through. I was devistated. But luckily he made a full recovery.

28

I have two younger sisters. One is 18 months younger, one is six years. I don’t really know my youngest sister that well. We were never close when she was young–in fact, she was an impossible brat the vast majority of the time–and when she finally started developing a personality and becoming interesting, i got married and moved out.

My other sister though, we were extremely close growing up. We fought a lot, but we rarely ended up in physical violence. It got to a point that yelling and shouting was just how we communicated. But now things are more difficult. We’re exact opposites in every way, and in fact, we just got in a fight the other day that has had me annoyed/angry ever since.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll have a relationship with her in the future. The more religious/devout she gets, the more difficult it is to talk to her. On the upside, Lindy seems to have more in common with me, so maybe my relationship with her will get better.

I never wished i didn’t have them though.

29

I’m the youngest of six. I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. The oldest sister is 18 years older than me and was already at college when I was born. The next is 14 years older than I am. My two brothers are ten and 8 years older than I. The closest in age is my sister who’s six years older than I am. Except for one brother, we’re all very close. I don’t fight with him, but we just never saw him. He’s my half brother and spent most of his time with his mom. My two oldest sisters are also half sisters not related to each other, though it’s not something we pay attention to. When the four of us sisters get together, it’s dangerous. I’m also close to my brother who’s 8 years older than I am. He and I used to gang up on my sister when we were little kids.
-Lil

30

I’m the youngest of 4 – my siblings are 9,11, 15 years older. No relationship with them at all (there are family gatherings at holidays, weddings, etc – I’ve never been included or invited to any of them).

The closest thing to a ‘relationship’ was with the 9 years older brother – he left home when he was 16, but was always back to the house to spend time and work with my dad; he was a bullying, abusive person to me, and never missed an opportunity to be mean to me, whether to speak cruelly or physically hurt me. I haven’t spoken to him in maybe 20 years – but he still blames me for anything that goes wrong, even if I were 400 miles away when it occured. Example: I sent my mum emails to her home PC. He claims that me sending emails screws up my parents’ phoneline (only my emails, nothing else), and that he lost a sale on some property last month because he gave the potential buyer my parents’ phone number instead of his own, and my Evil Emails from Hell somehow or another caused him to miss this phonecall. My mum has broadband, by the way. My brother is 47 years old.

My sister (15 years older) will actually tell people she’s an only child. My siblings were close growing up, especially my brothers, but now they are all three barely civil, and one brother and my sister will not speak to each other at all (for reasons myriad and bizarre). Strange stuff!

I honestly cannot remember ever having had a conversation with any of them, or one of them answering me when I asked a question or made a comment at the family hols I attended before I left home – it would be literally as if I hadn’t spoken. I was so accustomed to this behaviour growing up, I am still a bit surprised when I meet people who have good relationships with their brothers and sisters.

31

Any particular reason you’re dredging up childhood trauma Rilchiam?

32

I don’t think I would want to live my life over again with the same siblings. I am the youngest of seven children. I have five older sisters and one older brother. There is eight years difference in age between me and my eldest sister. My siblings were born in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, and 1981. I was born in 1982. My parents weren’t exactly young either when they started a family. By the time I was born my mother was over 41 and my father was nearly 60. This and other factors made growing up in my family a complicated mess.

When I was four they got divorced, which added to the problems. My father had been an alcoholic for many years and was often prone to fits of rage. It was difficult to be around him because you didn’t always know what sort of mood he was in. My mother would just leave when she couldn’t take it anymore. So as children we did a lot of stupid and dangerous stuff through a lack of supervision.

It was not much fun to be the youngest child and another girl as well. You get almost nothing new and what you do have is shared with five sisters. My brother, however, never had to wear hand-me-downs, always had his own room, and generally could do no wrong in my father’s eyes especially. There was also the teasing and tormenting I experienced, which was merciless at times.

When most of my sisters became teenagers they were out of control. They would fight with each other constantly and I hated being around all of that. I was afraid they were going to kill each other sometimes. When this became too much for my parents to handle they were sent away to foster care types of placements. Their situations didn’t improve for many years between the suicide attempts, smoking, drinking, and teenage pregnancies that occured. With all of this happening when I was just a kid I felt like I was loosing my childhood by having to deal with all these family problems before I was ready.

Now that we are all adults family relations are friendly for the most part, but there is still some underlying tension between a few of us. My father’s death 2 years ago has sort of brought us closer. When I look back though I can see that most of the personal problems I’m dealing with now are a direct result of growing up with my sisters and brother. I can say quite honestly that I would have relished being an only child.

33

No; no particular reason. Just something I’ve wondered about for a long time.

34

I’m the eldest of 3. My brother is 16 months younger than I am. We were really close when we were little. I tended to follow him around a fair amount when we were kids. (I was a tomboy, and he and his chums were doing interesting things!) As we got older, we didn’t do as much stuff together, and our lives have been pretty different. But I still think the world of him and love him dearly.

My sister is 10 years younger than me. She was pretty small when I was home, and I think for a while she looked up to me. But she got over it. :wink: Now I’d say we’re pretty good sisters without being really good friends. I think she disapproves of me, and I think she’s a bit of a prig, but I love her anyway. I just don’t like her all the time.

But mostly I do. I was actually pretty lucky in the family I grew up with.

35

My brother is five years older. Growing up, we fought, but other than fighting, we never really communicated. It was the kicking under the table, or a smack upside the head when we walk by each other. I was the younger one my parents spoiled. He was the older one that they were lenient with because he was paving the way. He was cruel like big brothers usually are. The type to think that just because he’s older, he is better.

I’m 18 and he’s 23 now. We’re both living at home, but we never speak. I don’t see him much either. When I wake up, he has already left for work, and when he comes home, we’ve already had dinner, and I’ve locked myself in my room. I work during the weekends, and I possibly see him for the fifteen minutes we have dinner if neither one of us is out with friends. So growing up with my brother, it’s like I never really had a brother. It’s just like a stranger living in the same house. Even though I’m used to it, it’s still weird, and I wouldn’t wish this relationship on anyone else.

36

I have one sister-she’s 19 and I’m going to be 26 in a few weeks.

Basically, since I have clear memories of being an only child, it’s almost like I got the best of both worlds, because for the first seven years, almost, I was an only child. Then…Baby Sis came along.

When she was little, she was an absolute pest-always following me everywhere, my friends, always wanting to hang out with us, getting in my way, in my stuff, messing up everything I had-she was a total little tease, too. Once, she got so annoying, I tied her to a chair with an old scarf. My mother found her five minutes later and had to duck out of the room for a second she was laughing so hard.

Then…when she hit puberty, it was the opposite-all of a sudden, she hates me, I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m nerdy, I’m smelly, whatever, she just does not like me. Okay, fine, it’s the age, but as she got older, and in high school, she got really, really nasty, and even now she can be extremely hurtful with some below the belt marks.

But, since last year when she went away to college, we started to get along-e-mailing each other, talking on the phone, that sort of thing. Until she comes home for more than two days…and we fall back in the same pattern.

Now she’s home for the summer. We’re STILL getting on each other’s nerves, but lately we’ve been getting along. Keep your fingers crossed.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s a sweet kid-she just has a talent for finding people’s buttons and hammering on the fucker. And she never really stopped being a tease-even now, only instead of getting in your face and following you around, she’ll insult you just for the sake of getting on your nerves. She likes to make me blow up-which I must confess, is pretty easy to do. And we both are smartasses and very opinionated. Put us together with my mom, who’s the same way, and it’s like World War III.

But when all is said and done, she’s my baby sis, and I love her. She’s a pain in the ass, but she’s MY pain in the ass, and no one else is allowed to insult her like I do. They’ll be in for a world of hurt if they do.

37

I have two brothers and a sister. I’m the youngest. My brothers are 15 and 10 years older than I, and my sister is one year older than I.

I can remember my brothers carrying me around with them like a mascot - teaching me how to camp, play sports, fix a car, shoot a gun, swim, ride a bike, and, later, drive a car and ride a motorcycle. My father was a very busy businessman who didn’t have much free time, he spent every minute he could with his children, but he was working much of the time. If it weren’t for my brothers, I would have missed out on a lot.

When my oldest brother enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps and shipped out to Viet Nam for several years, it broke my little heart. When he was wounded so severely that he couldn’t be airlifted back to the states for several months, it was pure hell waiting for him to return.

I love my brothers and my sister with all of my heart, and would not hesitate to give my life to save any one of theirs.

38

I am the eldest of 5 and only girl; the age differences are 3, 4, 9 and 10 years younger. Needless to say, I’m not as close to the two younger brothers as I am with the two in the older set; the younger of that set, who was the baby but became the middle sibling, was the worst teaser and tormentor, though! It wasn’t our parents who showed favoritism but our grandmother (mother’s mother), and it was pretty plain that I (the eldest grandkid) was her favorite. (Hey, it wasn’t my fault!) So I think he probably teased me to get attention from her, even if it was mostly negative attention.

Today we’re spread out across the country–I’m in the DC area, the older brother is in CA and the middle one in TX. We’re still close, but most of our communications are via email. I have a niece & nephew (TX) that I’ve never met; my SIL (who I also have not met but have spoken w/on the phone a few times) is, unfortunately, a terrible shrew–I have no desire to meet her. :frowning: My two younger brothers are in the Philly area; the youngest is, unfortunately, an alcoholic and has been out of work for over two years. I wish there was something I could do to help him; the most I can do, though, is to be supportive of him emotionally–any money would just go down that black hole of enabling.

Since our Mom passed away last summer (her death was June 14; the anniversary of her funeral is the 21st), we’ve gotten closer once more and it was a good thing that we had each other to lean on. So I’m glad that I had my brothers and wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. Although I did wish that at least one of them had been a girl… LOL

39

No. I wish I was closer to them, actually.

My oldest sister and I rarely saw each other growing up to her living with her mother, me living with mine, and my dad living with his wife. We’d see each other half a dozen times a year at most and were basically strangers.

My other two sisters lived with me growing up but the older one was ten years my elder, give or take, and was married and moved out before I hit double digits myself. The other is literally retarded and thus hard to bond with.

It would have been nice to have a peer/friend.

40

I have one little sister - I’m 21 and she’s turning 20 in a couple of months. I think maybe we fought when we were little, but ever since the very early teens we’ve been really good friends. To be honest, I don’t know anyone who has a closer relationship with their sibling than we do - I think that if we weren’t sisters, and I just met her at uni or something, we’d still be close friends. We have the same interests, we share clothes, we give each other lifts, that sort of thing. It helps that we’re around the same age and have similar interests.