I have one sister who’s 4 years older than I am. We talk on the phone 3-4 times a week, and email a lot. Neither of us has a lot of friends or does much socializing - I don’t mean that in a “poor pitiful us” way. It’s an observation. We also have very similar tastes and senses of humor. She is keenly interested in my son and will ask about whatever his current activity is.
Also, if she didn’t have a cell phone I don’t think we’d talk as often. She has a v-e-r-y long commute and those 3-4 calls per week occur when she’s waiting for the second mode of transportation. The calls only last 5-10 minutes.
Much of what we share in these calls and messages is recommendations for things to read or watch, or recipes.
My mother, by contrast, talks to her brother once a twice a year. Less now that there’s caller ID - but she hear’s his voice on her answering machine about that often. They do not share any common interests and have remarkably different personalities. His wife, on the other hand has two sisters she speaks to about once a month.
Between my parents’ divorce and subsequent remarriages, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of a half dozen siblings, half-siblings and step-siblings. I go years between speaking to most of them but it’s not because of any strained relationships. I just don’t have that much in common with them.
The lone exception is my youngest half brother. Even though he’s 10 years younger than I am, we have a lot in common and hang out together pretty often. I talk to him at least once a week.
My wife talks with her sister easily ten times a week. Usually I’ll participate in a couple of those. I love her dearly, she’s just a doll.
I’ve two sisters myself. Older sis and I will call maybe once a month or so. Gawd she cracks me up. The younger and I haven’t talked on the phone in ten years because she’s… you know… a bitch.
I have one brother, two years younger, who lives about 2 miles away from me and to whom I speak maybe once every three months. Although we have many interests in common, we have never gotten along, and to be honest, I think if our family life had been less stable, he would be a sociopath. He’s very charming (to people other than me and our parents), lacks a conscience, and cannot empathize with anyone. And to include his point of view, he thinks I’m neurotic and in need of professional help. (I disagree.) So neither one of us respects the other, and we can be civil to each other only for a very short period at a time.
Maybe one day things will change, but I don’t hold my breath.
I talked to my Brother last night and I was at his place on Sunday. I talked to my oldest sister on Saturday and my other sister last Tuesday. A week very rarely goes by where I have not talked to one of my siblings.
My family is very close, my brother is one of my best friends. He was also my best man. My sisters are great people.
I talk to my brother reasonably often. We aren’t great friends, but we get along well.
Most of the time I talk with him because my Mom called and I’m around. It’s generally 'How’re you doing? What’s new? Not much here either." When we are face to face we talk more, but that’s only a couple times a year because he travels around the province for work though rarely in our direction.
If it weren’t for Mom calling him all the time, I’d probably talk to him every few months. That’s about the normal for me.
My brother (two years younger) and I are in pretty good contact - we email, IM, or chat on the phone for a few minutes several times per week when I’m at school. When I’m home I see him a few times a week - usually when I’m over at my parents’ house (he still lives there), but we also see each other socially every week or two. The two of us, plus our significant others get together to play board games, or see a movie, or go to dinner. He and I share tons of interests, and he can make me laugh like no one else.
This is certainly what’s normal in my family. My parents have three couples that form their core social group - my maternal uncle and his wife, my paternal aunt and her husband, and a third couple. I know my experience isn’t universal, though, and I wouldn’t consider you ‘weird’.
My eldest brother is a bit of a recluse. I talk to his wife occasionally, and then he’ll suddenly be on the phone for a solid minute and then disappear. He’s great, and one of the funniest people I know, but as he gets older he gets more insular.
Brother number two is also funny as hell, and one of the most decent people I know. I occasionally get emails about his projects, and since he’s a doper, I know his opinions about the allied victory in europe, the relationship between craziness and hotness and the cooler of death. So that’s cool.
My sister is a lot like me, but without the emotional governor. I adore her, but I can’t take much of the raw emotional stuff. I think we have a relationship kind of like the one between Humans and Vulcans. So we email occasionally.
Unfortunately, they’re all over 5000 miles away, but that will change next year. Ms. Attack doesn’t understand why we don’t communicate more, and, frankly, neither do I. I think its the fact that each lapse would require doing something to overcome, and the inertia, plus the thought of a conversation that ends with “we should do this more often”, is more than I can take. I’m not sure that they all communicate, and they all live in the same area. If not for the CC function on email, we’d probably have to phone.
I adore my brother and he lives in the same town. We talk by email kind of daily and on phone fortnightly-ish. We probably swing dinner once every couple of months.
My brother is 13 years older, married and moved out of the house when I was 8, so we’ve never been close. We get along, but he acts more like my father than my brother. Not so much now as when I was little. I see him every few months, usually when I’m visiting our folks. He lives 1/2 mile from them and I live about 30.
When I lived in CA, I never talked to either of my younger sisters. One got way too freaky and religious on me, and the other one, who is six years younger than I am, was a huge brat. Just spoiled rotten. I didn’t like either of them that much and we had nothing in common. I don’t think I talked to my youngest sister more than one time in the five years I lived in CA.
Then I came to Utah to visit and realized that one sister calmed down and the other sister grew up! Now I live with my youngest sister and she’s like my best friend. To quote Bender “I can’t stay mad at what is essentially me! I love me!” My other sister lives about 40 miles away and I talk to her several times a week.
My closest sibling (sister) lives 1700 miles away. My company is based in her area, so we see each other a couple times a year. We rarely talk on the phone. My brother lives 5900 miles away and my other sister is 9400 miles from here. We email occasionally (pictures) but rarely talk. On the rare occasions that we are all in the same country, we make every effort to get together with all the cousins.
There are six of us, and I think we paired off pretty evenly: the oldest two, the middle two, and the youngest two are all pretty close to each other, but none of us are that close to the others. I am happy to see them, and I like seeing and talking about their kids, but we aren’t really involved in each other’s day-to-day lives. But I am very close to my sister and get together with her at least weekly. No one in the family is a phone talked (our mother raised us all that way), so really it’s all about visiting, not phone calls.
My mom, on the other hand, is amazingly close to most of her 11 siblings–like 8 or so of them will go on vacation together, usually backpacking into the wilderness for a week at a time–which is a lot of togetherness. It’s pretty cool to see, and interestingly enough, it’s a bond that has really strengthened now that almost all of them have reached the empty nest stage of life—when you have small kids of your own, they fill up most of your emotional energy, I think. Now that they are empty nesters they have a lot more time for each other.
My brother is nine years older than me, and lives three miles away, and I work with him one or two days a week during landscaping season. If we weren’t working together, we would normally speak or IM once a week or so, depending on when he came to church.
My sister is 5 years older than me, and lives in Nebraska (we’re in Ohio) She calls me, or I call her, on average once a week, though lately it’s been every night, and sometimes we go for a month, though she does talk to my mom (who lives downstairs) once a week.
My sister and brother don’t talk to each other much…maybe once every three to six months.
I have six sisters and three brothers. I’m not very close to my brothers; one is a jerk and the other two are sort of distant. But I am very close to my sisters and would say they are my best friends. I talk to a couple of them multiple times a week and call the others for one reason or another every month or three. It doesn’t seem to matter how often or not I call, though, because we just pick up where we left off.
My next oldest sister set up a family message board that nearly everyone participates on, and that’s been nice for keeping in touch without disturbing anyone, since our work schedules are so varied.
My sister and I only talk at family gatherings, once or twice a year. We were never close, and are just way too different. She is very Idaho blue collar, and I am very California gay liberal Plus, she has her own reality which doesn’t correspond with the one the rest of us grew up in. Very up and down, you are either her best friend or worst enemy, often both during the same day. I got along better with her when she was seeing a shrink and taking meds, but she stopped and I don’t put up with her insanity. So we just leave each other alone most of the time.
