Asklemmy

We're besties

I’m 59 and have a sister who is 61. She went all out Trump Christian years ago and we barely talk

Older sister by the same age range as yourself, OP. As kids we fought, when she made it to college we became closer, when she entered adulthood things got strained as she and my family did not approve of my SO (they were right, she was terrible), and once we were both adults we are friendly. We don't really have much in common as she very much lives a "Leave It To Beaver" type life (kids, house in the burbs, stay at home mom) and my SO and I are DINKs, do extreme sports like rock climbing and backcountry ski/splitboard, and have no plans to have kids (vasectomy on the horizon). So we keep in touch but don't connect on a lot of things besides our shared family members / updates on my nephews

I'm 34 (male) and my brother is 31. He's my best friend (besides my wife) but he moved like 10 hours away so we try to fly a couple of times a year to hang out. We text every day multiple times.

I have a brother who is younger than me by 6 years. Our upbringing was a bit weird. Our parents basically forbid anything that might cause them inconvenience, irritation, or expense - which was most things that might interest a kid. (No, they're not religious, which is the first question that everyone asks. They're just raging assholes who are also a bit stupid. I can't really explain it much beyond that.)

In addition to the manipulation and emotional abuse, they rewarded us if we informed on each other. I seldom did. Not through any great virtue or integrity of my own, but because I routinely got punished for the stupid shit he did. For instance, I didn't tell them when our adult neighbor shot little bro with an air rifle because I knew he would catch absolute hell for being in the position of getting shot with an air rifle. Even if I didn't catch hell about it, it was miserable to watch him get screamed at. For context on this story - we had been told to stay away from Steve's yard because Steve was a known psycho with a hatred for neighbor kids. On that glorious summer day, Steve had dropped a $5 bill on his driveway just inside the property line... and was waiting for a kid to come by and be dumb enough to try to pick it up.

I might actually tell that one at their funeral.

By contrast, bro was younger and never got any blowback if I was doing something wrong. He actually recorded me talking on the phone with a friend when I was in middle school. He picked up the other line and held one of those shitty '70s tape recorders to the earpiece. Talking on the phone was forbidden and he was collecting proof to use against me. My friend and I weren't plotting shit, I wasn't grounded (the concept was foreign because we were never really allowed to go out or do things like talk on the phone anyway), it was just forbidden to talk on the phone.

I could excuse it when he was eight, but he passed along "dirt" on me well into his late teens and my twenties. He was under pressure from them as well, but he basically shredded any idea of trust between us for far too many times to count. I forgot what the final straw was, but I remember thinking, "I can never confide in this person and feel trust." In every meaningful way, I've ignored him for the last 20 years.

He's probably the least shitty thing about family gatherings, but that's not saying much.

Older brother... Grew up together, hated him for a long time, perhaps unfairly as mother is really responsible. Kinda fine with him now

Younger sister. Love her dearly. She's off keeping her distance from the family and so am I and so we never really talk.

Younger sister 2. Adores me. Makes bad decisions. All I can do is support her. Love her to bits.

Younger sister 3. Living the standard good life. She's fine, doesn't need anything from me or vice versa.

Younger brother. We get along great. Reconnected recently. Look forward to seeing him again. We have a lot in common.

Younger brother 2. We worked together for a few years, weird being his brother and his boss but we'd had so little contact it wasn't too weird.

Now I write this down I realise there's so much story here. Really interesting!

For reference, I'm in my early 40s and I helped raise most of my siblings to different degrees. Taught them to read, to use the toilet, that our parents are pointless 😁

Older brother, we live halfway across the country from one another. We play video games almost nightly in Discord as a way to keep in touch. Visits are a couple times a year it wasn't always good but the 5 year age gap gets easier to overcome the older we get. Both in our 30s and we align on most things these days.

My younger sister is MTF. She's always been a loud asshole, and I had hoped that maybe living as a man was the cause of it. Nope, still a loud asshole. Just with different hardware. Love her to death, though.

Way better than my crackhead Trump-supporting older sister.

Younger brother 3-4 years younger, it began as me basically taking my anger out on him when we were kids (I pushed him into the street once). But now? We're at a neutral stand point, however i do get uneasy when I don't hear him in his room. He works now and him being gone feels like i'm missing part of my "pack" to make things simple.

a bro and a sis, live in different countries all of us. crossed water and fire, internal conflicts from time to time, but if somebody dares to touch from the "outside" - we become one buddha palm ;)

Got an older brother. We were very close growing up, sharing hobbies and friends, and it’s been our foundation for keeping in touch since then. We don’t see each other as often as I would like, but I would say our relationship remains strong. We’ve both kept in touch with the same group of friends. “Life”, however, has imposed on us both; we live in different countries, both with family (mine is large, his is small but his lovely son unfortunately has a set of issues) so finding time to both talk and meet is very, very difficult. I’m definitely the one keeping in touch (can’t remember the last time he called me, other than a few times where he needs IT support) but that’s understandable given what’s going ok with his son.

I appreciate that everyone doesn’t have perfect relationships with their siblings.

Growing up, my parents made me feel horrible for having a bad one with my sibling. As though there was something wrong with me.

To this day, I carry a lot of shame around it, as in, how can I expect to have healthy relationships with friends and professional relationships at work if I couldn’t even manage one with my sister?

So, thank you all for making me feel less like an anomaly.