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 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.
Man I feel for both of you in this situation. Obviously he could have made a decision at some point in his life to stop being shitty, and he didn’t, so that’s on him and I don’t blame you one bit for not having a relationship with him (or much of one). But I can also imagine a kid with really shitty parents who gets “rewarded” for essentially alienating their older sibling in this manner, so he does that in the hopes that it will strengthen an otherwise toxic bond with the parents. Which of course it really doesn’t, but no kid is going to understand that. Any kid wants good parents who love them. Oh man, I’m so sorry, for both of you but mostly for you.
I’m 59 and have a sister who is 61. She went all out Trump Christian years ago and we barely talk
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.
I have two older brothers. One is an unhinged hypochondriac that’s gets off on fighting with people, and the other is a white supremacist. Haven’t talked to either in about 5 years. I have a brown daughter.
Two younger sisters. The age difference is quite big, I am 8 years older than one and 13 years older than the other. That’s just a possible side-effect of being born when your parents were VERY young.
The older of the two I barely speak with, no real animosity we just simply have nothing in common.
The youngest one I speak with a little bit more often, as we do share some similar personality traits - I see a lot of myself in her from when I was younger.
The final complication is that I live on the opposite side of the country from them. So no in-person visiting.
