SIBLING ISSUES - DO YOU GET ALONG WITH YOUR SIBLING??

[Progster]

I have two sisters, one older and one younger, and an older step-brother. I never got on with my older sister. She is very different to me and bullied me a lot when I was very young and completely destroyed my self-esteem. To make things worse, we had to share a bedroom which was a disaster because we fought tooth and nail. Now I never hear from her beyond the usual Christmas and birthday wishes and it's better that way. I never could relax around her. My younger sister is also a lot different and isn't an easy person to get on with but I get on a lot better with her than my older sister - she actually seems to care and contacts me once or month or so. My brother has Tourette's, learning disabilities and various undiagnosed issues, so he has problems of his own. He drives me crazy sometimes with his special interests, but I get on ok with him.

 

[photoaddict]

I have a brother. He's two years younger than me. We're both on the spectrum, which, I'm sure, affects how we interact.

When we were little, we were best friends and totally inseparable. He had a really severe speech delay and I was the only one who could understand him (I even did better than my mom and she understood most of what he said), so I became his interpreter at an early age. I never minded that, though. We moved when I was 8 and had *no* friends in the new town. There's a lot of prejudice there, so we didn't have much chance to make them, either. We just stuck together and were happy. Then I made one friend, who felt that younger siblings were evil and meant to be abused. She drove a wedge between my brother and me. Now, as adults, our relationship is pretty solid again, but not like it was as kids. He's very selfish and can't see beyond his obsessions, so if I can't fit within the current obsession, I don't exist. Right now his obsessions are finding a girlfriend and movies/shows that I don't watch. I tried to start watching one of the shows, but I couldn't keep up with it, so I'm mostly ignored. Mostly, it's just that he really doesn't know how to do normal social interactions, so I don't stress about it. There are things he does that, for him, are the equivalent of saying he loves me. Others don't see it that way, but that's what it is. Like, he sent me home with a movie last week. No one touches his videos. Ever. But he loaned one to me. (When we were both living at home, on the rare occasions I was allowed to watch his stuff, he put it in and took it out when I was done to "protect" it.)

So, do we have the perfect sibling relationship of movies? No way. Are we friends who love and support each other? Absolutely. Most of my relationships look a little different than the norm. A large portion of my family is not NT, though not all have ASD. There's a wide range of variance between us all. I only have a couple friends, if you don't count relatives, and they seem to adapt to how I interact pretty easily.

 

[HappyHermit]

I have a slightly younger sister with whom I am no longer in touch. We're now both in our 30s, and we spoke until a couple of years ago. However, contact had to happen on her terms, and only if she needed or wanted something from me. I would have broken off contact with her earlier, but she was going through an extremely stressful time in her life, and despite her using me, I decided to wait until it was over to tell her how I felt about the dynamics in our relationship. When I did, it didn't go over well and led to our loss of contact.

ASD is only partly related to what happened. My (now-estranged) parents were never, while I knew them, in good mental health, and I strongly suspect that they have personality disorders that they have not been formally diagnosed with (to the best of my knowledge). Against all better academic knowledge, they tried to drill my autism out of me and strongly favoured my neurotypical sister. As a result of frequent abuse, I learned to pretend around others (at high costs to myself), and my sister got to enjoy having her whims indulged. Obviously, there was no way that this could lead to a balanced sibling relationship, in childhood or later.

But, I have also met quite a few (NT!) people who don't have a close or any relationship with their siblings without any abuse having occurred in any direction. They wish them well, but stopped being involved in their lives once they hit young adulthood. And the reason is that you don't choose your family: sharing some DNA and/or the same parents does not lead to compatible character, interests, political stances and lifestyles.

Obviously, staying away from one another completely while sharing a household as children isn't an option, and the OP seems to be talking about children. My takeaway from experience and observation is, though, that a lot of problems can be avoided when people stop forcing the Happy Family Narrative on one another. While I am sure there are areas for compromise, and I'm equally certain that others are able to explain them, I would like to advocate for the option that is mentioned less often, namely simply staying away from one another if incompatible. People can and do set one another off without anyone doing anything wrong, and where demanding behaviour modification from one or several would infringe on their rights to be their own individual person. I just want to put that out there because it's rarely mentioned.

 

[Grumpy Cat]

My brother lives a walk away in the next condo building and I see him maybe once a year for Christmas. Hardly ever talk unless something bad happens and I need to inform him. He's not dependable. I might as well be an only child. He didn't even call to see how I was doing after losing my job and going through the worst time if my life. Oh! He did call me right after I lost my job but that was probably to make sure the Christmas get-together was still on. He's heavy into his entertainment. He did call 3 times after my Ma told him to - which doesn't count. I never listened to his messages and I never called him back. The Christmas get together will be off too this year where he and I are concerned.

Just because you live close, doesn't mean you are close.

 

[Nick12]

i think i do get along very very very well with my half brother and my half sister but my half sister live in arizone and my half brother lives in vietnam so i harldly see them ever and i miss them.

 

[Zhantera]

Unfortunately, no I do not. I have an older sister. She is very religious- I have my own beliefs as well, but she tends to carry it to the extreme. She follows Greg Locke, if any of you are familiar. She has told me I'm demon possessed on several occasions. When I asked for her support with my eating disorder recovery, she simply told me, well, you haven't died yet. The thing is, I feel I've looked for her approval my entire life. And I keep sabotaging myself because I can't seem to win her love or approval. I've tried to be involved in her life, but she just shows over and over that she has no interest. When I told her about my diagnosis, she decided she needed to protect herself, as she said. She blocked me on fb to do that. I'm getting to the point that I'm sort of tired of trying, I won't force someone to be involved with me, so we are pretty much no contact at this point. It makes me sad, and I wish it was different, but for now, it seems to be what it is.

 

[Slim Jim]

I don't know, I'll have to meet her one day.

Spoiler

Half-sister.... know of her, never met her, maybe many years ago...can't remember.