My sisters are all 9+ years older than me, so we have little in common. I like the oldest one the best, but she works odd hours, so we are seldom awake at the same time. I haven’t talked to any of my sisters for at least 2 years, and none of them have ever seen my two youngest children. I don’t think some of them even know about my youngest son.
We just don’t share common interests, or values, and we have little to chit-chat about. There’s only one that I actively dislike, and the last time I saw her was 10 years ago.
RedSister1 - 2K+ miles away, 13 months younger - talk a couple of times a year on the phone. Sometimes, we wind up visiting the parents at the same time. I just heard through the grapevine that she’s married again. We have very little in common and never have.
RedSister2 - 900 miles away, 3 years younger - talk at least once a week for a couple or three hours. She’s the only one that I would ever consider living with. We see each other a couple of times a year and usually take one vacation together.
RedSister3 - 500 miles away, 4 years younger - talk every couple of months or so on the phone, see each other now and again at the folks. She’s gotten a little on the weird religious side and we don’t have much in common now, although I do enjoy being around her kids.
My sibs & parents & in-laws & in-law sibs all get along fine. Nobody hates anybody, nobody’s a jerk. We all live in different parts of the country & have different carreers, kids, etc. If we ever get a gaggle in one place we can all happily yak until sunrise.
Every month or so I’ll call somebody & every month or so somebody will call me. Ditto for email for the half that use it at all. Thats it.
While it’d be pleasant to talk with almost any of them at any time, it just never occurs to any of us to want to.
Suits me fine.
I also have probably 20 cousins on my Mom’s side that I’ve never met, don’t know the names of, etc. She had a bunch of older sibs who each had 3-4 kids & all lived on the far side of the country when I was a kid. Never met 'em, don’t give a crap about 'em any more than I do about their next door neighbors, whomever they might be.
My younger sister and I are very close. We speak often and get together at least twice a month to shop or catch a movie. My brother and I speak a couple of times a month and I see him around that often.
We all live in the same state having all relocated as adults to Florida.
Personally, my life would have a huge void if I did not have these folks actively in my life at all times but that is just the dynamics of my family. We are a close knit group.
I’m the oldest of 4 guys. Two of my brothers are on active duty in the USMC and are damned near impossible to get ahold of period, but they come home once or twice a year for a week or so and I’ll see them two or three times while they’re here. I’d like more contact, but Uncle Sam is a bitchy boss so we’ll see how things change when they (if they) leave the service.
My brother in San Fransicso and I will talk at least once a week, but we’ve always been the closest. I think all of my brothers are good guys and funny as hell, but if I don’t talk to them for months at a time it’s no big deal.
That sums it up for me. We’d see each other a lot more often if we lived in the same city. As it is, we see each other at least a half dozen times per year, and e-mail/phone pretty often.
To be honest, it is refreshing to hear stories of people who are close with their families and speak often. It is comforting to find that I am not the only person who doesn’t, though. Of all of my friends, I am the only one who is not close to my siblings. Funny enough, my husband used to talk to his younger brother a lot, but then the brother really went into the downward spiral of addiction & crime and we prefer having no contact with him. His older brother, we both like and speak to when we can, but he is something of a recluse.
I love my brother, but my husband speaks to him more often than I do. I’m just not much for phone calls, we never email, and we see each other in person once every month or two. I didn’t even know he was back in the hospital again until my husband called him for something or other.
I have two older sisters, two and three years older than me. I talk to the oldest once a month or so, more when we’re planning something. The other one is pretty independent of all of us and we just talk a few times a year. She never was like the rest of us.
I get most of my news about my sisters from my mother, and I think my parents are part of the reason we speak as often as we do. We try to organize a family vacation together at the beach every year, but one sister or the other sometimes have conflicts and can’t make it. We also will get together for Thanksgiving or Christmas when schedules and competing obligations allow.
I’m not sure what will happen when my parents are gone. I have the feeling it may result in my oldest sister and me getting closer, but the middle sister might disappear from our lives altogether.
My brother - he’s 20 months younger - and I are very close, however, we don’t talk to each other all that often. Usually it’s only when there’s some kind of family drama going on (he has some major problems with his oldest stepdaughter that mirror some of the type of problems I had at that age so he talks to me about her issues and stuff like that) or we’re trying to set up a time for a family gathering if my mom is in town.
My husband talks to his brother and sister about that often too - and they all are very close too.
Our lives are all kind of separate - if that makes any sense.
I talk to my favorite sister just about every day. She and I are much alike and recap our TV watching (Did you see that dress on Project Runway! Christian is such a drama queen") and I talk about work and my animals and she talks about her daughter and friends. The twins I see or talk to a couple times a month. Identical twins - they’re each other’s favorite sib. My brother far less often. He travels for business, plus I don’t really like or understand him.
I had one brother. We got along fine but we were never close. The only time we’d talk on the phone is if there was a reason, like “It’s mom’s birthday, what are you getting her?” We had nothing in common, so the relationship (such as it was) wouldn’t have existed if we weren’t related.
My husband has three sisters and a brother. His brother is a bigot and a religious fundie, so they never talk. One sister calls about once a month, and the other two maybe two or three times a year.
My daughter is close to one of her three brothers, and two of the brothers are close and see each other fairly often.
I have two younger brothers who live in another state and whom I rarely speak to, unless I see them when visiting my parents (who live not far from them). Not because I don’t like them; we just don’t have a whole lot to talk about, I guess. I talk to my parents a couple of times a month, though.
My wife, on the other hand, has four sibling – three sisters and a brother – and she talks to each of them pretty much every day. Three of them live nearby, so she sees them almost daily, but still talks to them on the phone all the time. The one who lives about three hours away she doesn’t see as often but talks to very frequently. It’s foreign to me.
My wife also keeps in better contact with my family than I do. She talks to my mom more than I do and she also emails one of my sisters-in-law pretty regularly. I’d probably never know what was going on in my family if not for my wife.
I didn’t talk to my brother for years, and my sister for different, overlapping, years.
But in both cases they had started a feud with my parents and stopped speaking to them, and I sided with my parents.
Then we were on speaking terms again like nothing had happened.
But this past year I haven’t spoken to my sister because her husband is a snob and a religious zealot besides and I’m avoiding the sneers and lectures that come with that.
I have one brother. He’s a year older. Through most of our childhood and teen years we didn’t get along. We were friends for a while in our mid-to-late 20’s. Since then we drifted back apart. I talk to him when he comes to visit our parents. I tried giving him a call at Xmas, but he brushed me off. He did the same thing to our parents.
Although I’m irritated at his treatment of mom and dad who just wanted to talk to him on a holiday, mostly I don’t talk with him because we have nothing in common and nothing to talk about.
Last year, my parents rented a beach house and we all spent a week together. I took the kids (my daughter and his son) crabbing and fishing and swimming and shell collecting. He mostly sat and dicked around with his laptop computer. I said to him at one point “shut that thing off and come crabbing with your son.” He (literally) snarled “I’m working!”
at me. I shrugged and said “whatever you’re doing on that isn’t in real time, so you could do it tonight after your boy’s in bed, but fuck you very much anyway.” We didn’t exchange another word for the rest of the trip.
His priorities and mine, his interests and mine, are too different for us to have much to say to each other.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I got noticed by Czarcasm! I’m finally real.
I see my siblings at weddings and funerals. We’re all in our 50s, our lives are full, and the annual check in is sufficient. My children (ages 17 to 32) seem to keep in touch constantly.
I also have one brother who is a year older. We talk every few months, maybe. He sends me emails with goofy dog pix and random fun news stories, so we do keep in touch in some sense.
But nothing much happens to us to have to talk about it.
I have a brother 5 years younger in school in SC, we talk maybe once a year. Sister 5 years younger than that, also in school in SC, same deal. Brother another 7 years younger than my sis, still lives at home. We chat briefly when I talk to my mom. (I’m 32, then 27, 22 and 15)
Like several people have said, I just don’t have that much to talk to them about. Our lives, interests and general philosophies of life just don’t intersect that much. It’s not that I don’t WANT to communicate, it’s just that there isn’t really that much to say.
To be fair though, I’m like that with a lot of people. I have a number of people that I consider good friends that I can go months without speaking to. The only friend I talk to to all but daily rides the same commuter bus with me, if not for that we might go 6 months without talking much or meeting. I just don’t really do the ‘talk on the phone every day, meet for lunch and shopping’ thing.
None of us live anywhere near another one; no two in the same state even. I’m very, very close with my younger sister and my half sister (Half sis was the product of an affair my dad had, and we’re only months apart in age. We started kindergarden together and have been best friends since. We didn’t know we were sisters until we were much older.) We email nearly daily. My younger sister and I email weekly and try to get on IM at least every 2 weeks, but she has a new baby and is quite busy the last few months. I see those two about once a year if I fly back to visit. Another sister emails me several times a week, but she has uh, issues, and she’s mostly venting about her bad relationship, job, whatever. I only write back if there is a direct question. We have nothing in common, agree on even less, and quite frankly, she’s probably not someone I’d like much if we weren’t sisters.
There are 5 others. I saw them all last Thanksgiving, which was the first I’d seen or talked to any of them in at least 5 years, closer to 10 for most. There’s no bad blood between myself and any of them, but we’re all around 30-40 and our separate lives have kind of taken over. Distance accounts for most of the lack of communication; we all used to be very close when we all lived in the same area. Most of us even went to the same college. It’s a little sad, as we all used to be very close, and since there were so many of us, it was always fun.
My husband almost never speaks to his brother, and they live mere blocks away. Their son was two weeks old before he even learned they were expecting. They used to be extremely close, BIL’s wife did some horrible things to my husband and I when we were first together, and the relationship between the brothers faded quickly. It’s really a shame.