Background: I am 35 & female. I have 3 older siblings, each being 3 years (give or take a few months) older than the younger. (For those not good at math – that means my sister is approximately 38, one brother is approximately 41 amd the other brother approximately 44.) We all live in different areas. I live in TN, sister lives in TX, one brother in Spain and the other, well, he is somewhat of a nomad (last I’d heard he was living in TN again).
We don’t speak very often. I occasionally speak to one brother (the one in Spain) via email, and while my sister occasionally sends me forwarded crap emails, I don’t ever actually speak to her. The other brother I haven’t spoken to in several years – since 2004, to be exact.
It’s not that we don’t get along or have any malice, I just don’t really have anything to say to them. I guess I figure they must not have anything to say to me, or they’d contact me. This doesn’t bother me, but it seems to make people give me the :dubious: look when I mention I have siblings. I guess I don’t talk *about *them much more than I talk to them. Does this make me weird – not feeling the need to speak to someone with whom I share nothing more in common than a few genetic bits? Some of my friends tend to think it does.
What say you, oh denizens of the Dope? Am I weird for not “keeping in touch” with my siblings? How often do you speak with your siblings?
My sister and I are very rarely in contact with each other. There are only two years separating us, but we weren’t close before she left home for college, and didn’t really develop a relationship after that. I like her fine, but not enough to make a huge effort to keep in touch (and clearly she feels the same way). :shrugs: I don’t feel any compunction to socialize with someone just because I am related to them. Which is good, because I dislike most of my relatives, who by and large belong to the unpleasant Texan sub-species of Southern Baptists.
I have one brother living in the same city as me that I only see when our parents visit.
Really I only talk to them when we are planning something.
I generally see them a few times a year, but it would not be unheard of to only see them at Christmas. We vary in age from 37 to 26 and while there are some significant others, there are no children.
I speak with my sibs about once or twice every couple of years when we get together for Thanksgiving or Christmas (but not both). As I explained recently in the suit to a wedding thread, my oldest brother and I just don’t have all that much in common, and we’re not geographically close. I adore him, I’ve always had bad case of the hero-worship where he’s concerned, but we’re not pals. We have a great time when we are together, but we don’t go out of our way to keep in touch on a regular basis. Occasionally he’ll email me something about a movie he’s working on or got coming out as part of a mass email, and I’ll check out the new website and tell him what I think and we have a short flurry of communication and then nothing for years.
My other brother (the middle kid) still scares me a bit. He’s kind of a sociopath - although I think they call the diagnosis something else these days. He honestly doesn’t think other people have any rights to anything he wants - property, money, space, *life *- and views those less intelligent than he (which is pretty much everyone) as insignificant and worthless. I’ve forgiven him for things he did to me when we were kids, but I don’t really want him around me or my kids very much. It’s cool at Thanksgiving in a group, but I’m not going out of my way to cultivate a close relationship with him.
I am 25 and my brother is 19 (almost 20) and we sort of keep in touch, but just barely. We are very, very different people and honestly if he and I just happened to have gone to school together or something and hadn’t been related we would probably actively dislike one another. As it stands we like one another just fine and we speak every so often but really we don’t have anything to say to one another. He doesn’t care about the opera I saw this weekend or the book club meeting I have next monday and I really don’t care how much vodka he can drink in one sitting or how many reps he did on the weight lifting machines down at the gym. We love one another the way you love family but we just don’t get along the way some siblings do.
I don’t think it’s weird at all. I have virtually nothing to do with any of my family other than my mother, father and stepmother/younger half brothers. I have 11 aunts and uncles and over 20 cousins and I don’t speak to any of them. Even my younger brothers I only see twice a year (we’re not geographically close - 350 miles away), although once they’re older and assuming they live closer to me I can’t think of a reason why we wouldn’t get on with each other but we’re quite similar and share quite a few interests (which counts for far more than our shared DNA).
My mother occasionally attempts to convince me I should make some effort with the rest of my family but she can’t get through the barrier of reinforced apathy that I maintain around this topic.
Actually, the one relative with whom I most enjoy spending time is my grandmother’s brother’s son, who is about 15 years my senior. Every time I come into town, we go out and see how much sushi we can eat. (A lot, I can tell you.) It has nothing to do with genetic proximity.
I have two younger brothers that live about 2000 miles from me. The one that is 3 years younger than me has always been incredibly different from me and doesn’t talk much at all so I don’t even try. My little brother that is 9 years younger than me has turned into a real asshole over the years. I can’t stand his new bride nor can anyone else in the family so that relationship is toast to me. All I care about at this point is that they acknowledge me young daughters in any way and we try to be good long-distance relatives to our nephews. I don’t even think I really love my brothers any more let alone having a desire to chat every now and then. I don’t hate them but I would greatly prefer not even seeing them for the holidays because it is disruptive and my own family is infinitely more important than they are.
I only talk with my brother on holidays when he calls my parents’ house. He’s in the Army and doesn’t get enough leave to travel very often, so we see him about once a year at most, even when he isn’t deployed. The most I’ve spoken to him in the last 20 years was when my dad was hospitalized a couple of years ago and we sat in his ICU room together for a few hours.
We were close as young kids, but he got into a bad crowd as a teenager and had to get over some drug and alcohol issues, so we grew apart in high school. Then I went off to college and he went off to Germany for a few years.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen when my parents are gone. Either we’ll get closer or we’ll never see each other again. I heard recently that he has a girlfriend for the first time since his divorce about 10 years ago, so maybe that will make a difference. He’s also fond of my kids, especially since he doesn’t have any of his own yet.
This makes me feel better. To clarify – while I actively loathe my mother and could care less if she were to continue her existence on this plane (but it would honestly be too much work to do so, so I don’t), I don’t actively dislike any of my siblings. I just have nothing in common with them.
While I do think my sister harbors a personal grudge against me because I have lost all of my excess weight (and she has found it!), I don’t really care one way or the other. I have asked her to stop forwarding all the crap to my email (this is a person who is quite internet-savvy, so I don’t know what’s up with the forwarded crap) but she never responds and just keeps spamming me.
I had thought about this quite a bit after someone said “wow, that’s really weird that you never talk to your siblings” and the truth is, I honestly never talked to them when we all lived in the same house! My oldest brother is like 9 years older than I am and a total loser, so that speaks for itself, but while my sister and other brother are ok people…meh…I just never found them to be very interesting.
Even when Dad was still alive, I would go a couple years without seeing, let alone talking to my siblings, but now – I guess I am more surprised when I actually do speak with any of them than at the idea that I don’t speak with them. Does that make sense? I guess with how dysfunctional my family always was, I never got the concept of continuing a relationship with someone just because they’re related to me. I wondered if I were as alone in that as some of my friends seem to think I am. Guess not.
I have one brother, two years older. He lives a time zone over from me. I haven’t seen him since April and last talked to him around Christmas. As the OP said, I don’t feel like I have anything to say to him.
I’m the youngest of six. Except for one sister, I have almost no contact with any of my siblings except when we gather for some reason. Truthfully, I really don’t like them much so why go out of my way to have a relationship with them. I don’t see the point. I stay in contact with my parents more out of duty than any real interest.
I just got back from a family gathering for my parents 60th anniversary. There are stories there, but that’s another thread.
I get news about my one younger sister through my mom, so I only speak directly to her maybe 4 times a year max (each other’s birthdays, Christmas, and then perhaps one other random time). We’re not necessarily on bad terms, but we’re not on particularly good terms either. But even before that, I’ve never really had anything to talk to her about. Our life (careers, movies, travel, culture) is quite foreign to theirs (kids, church). I’ll ask about my nephews and niece, and we’ll cover the general bases, but it’s rare if the conversation lasts more than 15 minutes (maybe 20 if the kids get on the phone to say Hello). My mom wishes the two of us were closer, but I’ve made a good faith effort–with decidedly problematic results–so it is what it is and my conscience is clear.
Nah. Pretty much sounds like the relationship my sister and I currently have. We just don’t have much in common - aside from having popped out the same womb three years apart, that is.
If it wasn’t for blood ties, she’d be that one random acquaintance I’ll occasionally talk to on MSN or invite to my parties, but that I won’t exactly go out of my way to hang out with. As it is, the only extra effort I make is to offer to pick her up on en route to our mother’s house for the usual Easter/Thanksgiving visitations (and it’s really no effort, considering we practically drive right past her front door on the way).
I haven’t spoken to my brother in 2 years, since he became homeless. I’ve heard he’s not homeless anymore, but I have no desire to speak to him. He’s an alcoholic with ah, anger management issues, and possibly a drug addict. I only mention him when asked if I have siblings, but otherwise never talk about him.
He’s 4 years younger than me. We were close when we were younger, but once I was in high school, we drifted apart. I miss my little brother sometimes, but that person is long gone.
Youngest of four girls, three of us live within a stone’s throw from each other. I talk to the out-of-state one fairly often, and at least email regularly, and am close to one of the neighborly ones as well.
We’re a close family. My parents retired 8 years ago and moved nearly 300 miles away, but I host them here at least once a month for holidays, birthday parties, etc.
This thread makes me feel better about our decision not to adopt a second child. We keep thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice for our daughter to have a sibling! She’d always have a playmate, and a friend, and she’d have extra family even after we’re gone!” But I guess that’s the movie version of having a sibling. In real life, it’s hardly a safe bet.