Contact by email every week or so? Heck, you are not at all unreasonable, but your nosy interfering friend is. My siblings live a bit closer to home than Australia but we only talk on the 'phone or by email most weeks, in the case of one, and every few weeks in the case of the other. If illness strikes, that’s different, of course, but I think your “person” there was being very rude.
If this friend pulls this again, ask P. why someone in this close family hasn’t gotten around to discussing good manners.
And don’t let someone else control your feelings. No one makes you feel bad without your cooperation.
no, the person was not being reasonable. The two family members I’m closest with are my brother and my cousin. My cousin has a bad relationship with her parents and basically thinks of my mom as her mother figure. She’s slightly older than me and ever since we were little we’ve had a brother-sister type relationship. The point of all that rambling is, I text message back and forth with my brother everyday, its just something we do. I don’t talk to my cousin nearly as often, and now that we’re both adults weeks can go by without any contact between us. This doesn’t bother either of us and doesn’t make us any less close.
In short, whoever said that to you is an idiot.
Your coworker is a fruitcake. I mean, I know I’m probably pretty close to the “abominably antisocial” end of the scale (I talk to my parents in England about once a month or so - my brother maybe a couple of times a year) but expecting that everyone would necessarily be in contact with a sibling every day after FORTY YEARS sounds seriously deluded to me.
My own sister, only a year younger than me, lives literally four houses down the same street I do. Sometimes I don’t see her or talk to her at all, for a few weeks at a time. It was the same, even when we were roommates in the same house (due to different shift work, Day/Night, overtime shifts, etc). I think I’d go nuts if we were in each other’s faces daily, and if I emailed her daily I’d never have anything to say.
Of course, I care about her. But that doesn’t mean we need to be communicatorily-conjoined at all times.
The person grilling you seems ridiculously unreasonable.
Wow. Here’s a conversation I think you should have with her:
“What surprise did you get for your aunt today?.. Don’t you give your aunt a gift every day?..Oh.Don’t you think that’s sad?”
She’s unreasonable, rude, and sadly myopic. All families function differently, and as long as everyone is happy with how things are working out, it’s fine.
I talk to my siblings, each of whom live five or fewer miles away, maybe once every couple of months at most. Really, the only time we have significant interaction is on holidays and at family occasions. And we’re all good with that. We love each other, but we don’t really have much in common, and we don’t have loads to talk about. My best friend (whom I’m much closer to than I am to my siblings) and I can easily go a month or more without talking. We each have families, jobs, social lives, and we’re freakin’ busy! It doesn’t mean we don’t care, it just means that when we DO get together, we have stuff to talk about.
With the exception of my daughter, there’s no one I need to talk to every day. I probably won’t feel the need to talk to *her *every day once she doesn’t live here anymore. My life and my loved ones lives’ are not so exciting that we all need daily updates.
Thanks for these replies. I didn’t really think she was being reasonable, she just got my goat on that one occasion.
A couple of weeks ago my brother and sister-in-law came to visit; I’m always glad to see them (particularly my sister-in-law, who is the nicest person on the planet). But after a few hours we’d both run out of things to say to each other. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if we were required to talk every day.
Another vote for unreasonable, and I have moved this thread to IMHO, which I hope was not unreasonable.
I have a brother who lives about 25 miles away who I don’t call, email or communicate with very often in general. We’ll go weeks or longer without talking if I don’t visit. If somebody asked me “Don’t you care about him? and Isn’t that sad?” I’d wonder what made the questioner such a lifeless, nosy jackass.
Jiminy Christmas, Alive. How does anyone who has a life (work, spouse, children, pets, hobbies) of their own have time to stay as tied up in their parents’/siblings’ lives as she apparently expects you to be?
I’m in a somewhat similar situation…
I’m 38, I have a 22yo brother. I live in NH, he goes to school in AZ, and I don’t see him having any plans to come back to New England, except to visit my parents.
We’ve never had much of a relationship, even while “living” in the same home. I was in college as he was learning to speak… just too many years apart.
I’d help him if he asked (and it was a reasonable request), but I’ve no real desire to strike up a relationship with him.
My mother, however, is always on me (and has been for the past 22 years) to develop said relationship, by phone/email/etc. I usually ignore her requests. In fact, my wife has far more contact with him than I do, via email. I think the last time I actually spoke to him was last Christmas, when he was home to visit. I’m not sure if he’s coming back to NH this winter or not.
I don’t see it as odd, it’s just the nature of the age differences, and distance. YMMV.
She sounds like the type of person you hope never gets your email address. She also sounds like some of these younger adults and kids that would die without the use of a cell phone for an hour.
Not reasonable. My brother and I live ten minutes apart and we see/talk to each other maybe once a month. I don’t have a close relationship with him. I’m not bothered by this and if someone else is… well, they can spend the time worrying about it. I don’t lose sleep. 
Person is not related to you. Until Person is, it’s not her business to dictate the way that your family chooses to communicate with each other.
My family and I don’t talk often. It’s usually the occasional email. Hell, my brother and I don’t talk more than a few times a year. We all live within about four states of at least one other immediate family member.
Response to Person: “I’m sorry you feel that way, but you and I are not related to each other. Butt out.”
Actually, **Zoe’s **response is perfect.
Unreasonable.
For a while I was only talking to my parents every few weeks and they just live a town over.