I’m male aged 19-22, I have an older brother about 4-5 years older (giving age ranges for better anonymity). Relationship is… not good (read: it’s terrible, horrifyingly terrible, arch-nemesis). How about you?
I’m male aged 19-22, I have an older brother about 4-5 years older (giving age ranges for better anonymity). Relationship is… not good (read: it’s terrible, horrifyingly terrible, arch-nemesis). How about you?
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.
Looking at my parents and their siblings (varying degrees of almost no contact to some contact with one exception that is good), and looking at my sibling (really good), it has nothing to do with you. It’s just, two people that shared an environment growing up, and those two people can be close or not.
I feel very grateful for my sibling, but that’s just it. We happen to have the personalities that match.
It’s not your fault.
That’s a very even way of looking at it. I can’t tell you how much that perspective means to me, and how much that makes sense.
I think that’s the lens I’ll try to embrace when I look at our relationship moving forward.