Would you be friends with your sibling(s) if you weren’t family?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve had no communication with my brother in 10 years, maybe 15, so no, we’re not friends even though we are family. He’s a leech, and mostly an asshole, so no great loss there.

My sister has a GREAT sense of humor and I love her dearly; I would love to be friends with her, but her wife doesn’t like me, and that puts a damper on the whole sibling relationship. Add to that the fact that our parents are gone, so anytime we get together, it’s because she’s come to see the in-laws… I’m added as an afterthought.

“Hey, we’re coming to Ohio to see her family, if you have any time, come see us.”
So I go, hoping to spend time with my sister, and no, I’m just an add-on. Worse, the in-laws seem to commiserate that I get no time with my sister. They see that I’m being treated as a hanger-on, but my own sister doesn’t get it. Or doesn’t care. Not sure which.

22

I would love to see my younger sister someday. Any day. My 2 younger brothers, nah - we just don’t get on. I’m really kind of a flake in their eyes and I can see that. My older sister died in 2010 and she was… DON’T SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD, JIM!

Okay.

23

I’m sure they’d prefer that we were, but it’s not like it’s a new development. I’ve never liked her, even as kids.

24

No chance, I can barely stand being around her now, (and /i expect the feeling is mutual)

25

My siblings are awesome. I’m lucky to be their sister.

If we weren’t siblings, my brother and I would probably be friends. My sister is way cooler than I am; she’d probably be a person I kind of liked and admired, but not someone I got to know well (which would be too bad for me, because as I said earlier, my siblings are awesome.)

26

Absolutely not. In fact, once our remaining surviving parent passes away and my brother’s had his share of the inheritance, I don’t plan on ever seeing or speaking to him again.

27

With the youngest yes; at the very least, he’d be that guy at work with whom meetings always take an extremely short time because we understand each other so quickly.

The middle one, I seriously doubt it. Among other things, because he’s very, very self-henpecked* and his wife likes me even less than I like her. He’s also become very sexist in latest years. If we worked together, he’d be the asshole who’d keep referring to me as “the girl” even if I was in my 60s.

  • one of the traits he inherited from Mom was this stupid idea that one should never say or do anything to which one’s partner might, perhaps, depending on which direction the wind blows from, object. He keeps doing it even after his wife has actually expressed displeasure at this the few times she’s caught him doing it; instead of cutting it out, he’s gotten better at it
28

This is an interesting thread for an only child. I always hear about parents saying “Oh, we want little Jeanna and Louise to be BEST FRIENDS when they grow up, so they can rely on each other forever more.” My SO wants her two sons to be best friends…which they assuredly are not.

Whenever I hear parents saying that I always want to say…you know it doesn’t always work out like that, right? Of course I never do. And I admit, even though I wanted a sibling most of my young life, now I am kind of glad I don’t have one.

29

That’s pretty much my story as well; I don’t know that my brother and I would be as close as we are, if we weren’t family (I’m 7 years older), but if say…we weren’t family and ended up working at the same place, or lived in the same neighborhood, I think we’d be friends.

Part of the reason I have this feeling so strongly is because the majority of my friends also have befriended him over the years, and in some cases are as close to him as they are to me, and the same goes for his friends and me. I can’t help but think that we must share a lot of qualities with our respective friends, so we’d be friends as well, even if we weren’t family.

30

My two younger sisters were always more like acquaintances even when we were growing up. We’re friendly and we have fun at family gatherings, but I’m really not sure if I’d socialize with them in another context. The two of them are BFFs. They’re much closer in age to each other than to me.

31

Yeah, I think we would. My sisters and I have the same odd sense of humor, so when we are together things just click. I don’t see them nearly as often now that we are adults with families of our own, but I do enjoy the times when we do reconnect.

32

I probably would’ve been friends with one of my brothers, if we’d ever had the chance to meet. Which would be practically impossible, but still. The rest of them I have nothing in common with.

33

I absolutely would. He’s an awesome person who I have a ton in common with that don’t involve family. Oddly enough, we hardly ever talk. He has his life, I have mine - they haven’t been intertwining for the last twenty or so years like they used to - but we’re still good friends. We have a blast when we DO get together. It’s kind of hard to explain.

34

A few years ago, I would have said I would have nothing to do with my brother if we weren’t related.

Now I think we would be casual friends. We have the exact same sense of humor and very similar tastes in movies/books/TVs, so he’s fun to hang out with once in a while and talk about the new things we’re reading. But our values and personalities are very different, he’s very mercurial and unreliable, frequently passive aggressive, and evidently his Theory of Mind never developed to the point where he can recognize that other people have their own inner lives with their own thoughts and perspectives. I’m sure he can come up with his own list of my irredeemable flaws, too.

So no, I wouldn’t want to be close friends with him, but he’s fun to see once in a while, which is basically the relationship we have now.

35

I’m too different from my 4 sibs. First off, I’m the only one of the 5 of us who dared to leave our hometown, thanks to being in, then working for the Navy. I’m the only one with a scientific education and mechanical abilities, the only one who learned to sew, the only one who learned a musical instrument, the only one who spent any real time overseas… To this day, I’m the one who lives the farthest from all of them - not due to animosity, but because my husband and I really like where we are.

The sister who’s closest in age would never have been a friend - we’re just too different. We shared a room for 18 years, and that was quite enough.

My brother is a bit of a snob - not that he snubs people, but image is a big deal with him, the labels on his stuff are important, plus he plays golf and I can’t imagine anything more boring. :wink:

The next sister is 7 years younger than I and she’s really weird about going places and doing things. She pretty much told her husband not to take a promotion that would have required them to move out of state because she didn’t want to move. Screw his career, she wanted to stay put.

The youngest sister, 11 years my junior, is the most outgoing and the most blatantly caring, but as far as I’m concerned, she drinks way too much and gets way too loud and doesn’t think nearly enough about tomorrow. I’m glad she enjoys life, but being around her more than a couple of hours is exhausting. We do better as FB friends.

I’d do anything I could to help any of them out, but if we weren’t related, we wouldn’t hang together.

I wouldn’t be friends with my husband’s sibs either. His one brother has an overly developed sense of entitlement and an excessively right-wing point of view about everything. His other brother has mental and emotional problems - I don’t think he’s capable of forming friendships.

36

Of my four brothers and a sister I could be friends with the youngest of my brothers. The rest I wouldn’t be negative towards, but I couldn’t be friends.

37

I’m not friends with my sister now. Why would us not being relatives make that any different?

38

My brother (15 months older) is a good guy but we live 1,00 miles apart and lead very different lives. A few years ago, at his invitation, I spent a four day weekend at his place (he’s single with grown kids). He taught me to play darts, which he loves, and we went to the movies and played scrabble. He tried to get me interesting in meditation and healing cystals and NLP and other woo-woo stuff he’s into. It was a nice, one-time experience. No, we wouldn’t be friends.

39

My siblings, are two brothers – close to each other in age, but most of a decade younger than me. Nowadays, we see a good deal of each other and basically get on well together. However – I and the younger of the other two, are “on the same page” about a considerable number of things, and have basically always enjoyed each other’s company – if we had happened to meet, without having been family, we’d likely have become friends.

I and the older of my two brothers, though – he’s a most staunch and excellent guy, whom I greatly respect; but aside from coming from the same parents, and a certain amount of shared and known family history, he and I have almost nothing in common. (Whence some awkwardness in earlier times – we have, essentially, mended fences.) If we’d happened to meet, without being family – no reason for us to have hated each other, but I could no way see us becoming close friends. Youngest-of-three has a fair few things in common with middle bro, which I don’t have with either – I can see them becoming friends with each other, even if they hadn’t been family. Weird altogether, how this stuff works out :confused:.

40

Have talked to either sister in close to 5 yrs. I truly believe they dislike me so no, I dont want friends around me who dislike me that much. Im fine without them in my life.