Grown Sibling Estrangement....... is it just me?

I am sorry that so many Peas have struggled with difficult/impossible family members. I can only imagine how tough it has been.

Exactly! I describe it as there is family and there are relatives. My husband and I are estranged from family members on both sides. Every now and then someone says they are family…. No they are just relatives, nothing more.

I find this statement to be really interesting, especially if you are talking about estrangement between siblings. I feel like my parents were pretty decent people who tried to be fair, did their best and tried very hard to treat all of us kids equally. But there were eight of us, and I think any time there is a greater number of individual people like that, there are going to be one or more a-holes in the mix, you know?

I don’t blame my parents for the fact that two of my siblings are total jerks. In fact, in my sister’s case, I know that her loser DH was a major driving force behind many of the decisions she made and much of the greedy, manipulative behavior she exhibited after our mom died. And who knows what the deal is/was with my brother other than he did a lot of drugs in the 70’s and his brain is likely scrambled as a result. 🤪

I understand this and I am sorry. Sometimes there is judgement on "well if they just....." somehow parent him differently he would be better. a friend has 2 siblings that she has basically no relationship with because of this exact reason. one sis and her husband bought her mom's house and the mom stayed and lived with them (the dad died with a ton of unexpected debt, no insurance, a mortgage she wasn't aware of...). the sister mandated if their mom wanted to see my friend and her son, she would have to visit them in another province as they weren't welcome in her home. she has lost a lot of friends and potential relationships because of this boy, and her own family doesn't want them around.

Not full estrangement but more just stepped way way back with 1 sibling and their family.

Has zero to go with the age gap, zero to do with parents, zero to do with other siblings.

It has to do with their partner, what they have said about my kids, what was said about me, the hurt they have caused my parents, and their lies.

I tolerate them enough when I see them maybe 1x a year. I just nod my head and listen to the BS.

It does suck though because I enjoy 1 of the kids.

And sometimes you might not even know what those things are... I was in my 30s before I put two and two together and realized my oldest brother's birthday did not line up with my parents' wedding anniversary... there was some other pretty bad stuff that went on related to my parents' marriage (his siblings / family thought my mom had 'trapped' him and he could have done better) that I had NO idea about until my mom was basically on her deathbed. But the "undercurrent" of that stuff had been around my entire life growing up. I just had no idea the reason behind it. To this day, I only speak to my brother a couple times a year, and basically my relationship with my other siblings is pretty superficial. It wasn't my parents 'fault' necessarily - it wasn't on purpose - but it did have to do with how we were raised.

I agree with the basic sentiment that siblings don't necessarily warrant a closer relationship 'just because' you happen to have the same parents. But then again, that kind of goes along with how I was raised, so some people who had a lot of familial closeness might see my viewpoint as lacking compared to theirs. 

My brother and I have been estranged from our two sisters since our mom’s death and funeral 5 years ago. There’s a lot of different reasons: through the years many family get togethers ruined due to rudeness, their pushing their political views on anyone whether they want to hear it, the way they treated and gaslighted Mom in the last years of her life.

My final “line in sand” was being accused of “drugging and overdosing Mom” because Mom took 1 and 1/2 Ativan in the last week of her life (prescribed through hospice). That’s right, 3 half pills in a week killed Mom. Now Mom never did anything she didn’t want to do even to her last conscious moment.

I got through the funeral and Mom’s burial, then other than emails about settling Mom’s estate (my brother and I were co-executors), I’ve not communicated nor seen them since.

My life is just fine without them and I’m sure they feel the same way.



I don’t agree that estrangement between siblings is the fault of the parents.



I validate your feelings and actions.

I'm so sorry. I was estranged from my brothers for about 15 years before their deaths. They were addicted to drugs - I could write a book.

it is why I had ONE kid. Not sure that made any sense but the idea of siblings made me ill.

You need to protect yourself and your mom if needed. good luck to everyone. I will admit I was relieved when each of my brothers finally died (fairly young).

I would doubt anyone would call me pretentious, but I made a lot of mistakes and figured it out as I went.

The result is this damn crab got out of the bucket, while the rest of the family is in the community bucket. My family members don’t even try to get out of the bucket.

The result is that I have a really really nice life, but I have a ton of baggage. I didn’t know what an actual respectful kind relationship was and was raised with no warmth, no hugs, no kind words, only derision. I have a severe poverty mentality and I have to remind myself over and over that that is no longer my life, and it never will be again.

I mentioned upthread that my sister and I had a pretty contentious couple of years- and it was so strange and felt out of the blue. We were extremely mean and disrespectful to one another.

It took a while to realize it was (for me) exactly what Olan said upthread. We WERE raised the same. I’m the older sister and I got out of the bucket. Not unscathed- for sure. But on some level, with other things going on, I was redirecting my stress at always having to be the one to make the effort to travel to my hometown, even though I KNOW her finances were such that it wasn’t possible for her to travel to me… but at the same time, my parents stopped making any effort (granted they aren’t aging well) and other things came together to make me feel isolated and othered (not their fault- covid, kids growing up etc) and I was upset and it was triggering a lot of old wounds.

I eventually realized that I was holding it against my sister that she seems to choose to stay in the crab bucket and it made me mad. She raised her son (struggling young adult with all the low socioeconomic issues that that brings- same as I had) and he’s trying so damn hard to get out of the bucket. But he’s so ill equipped. He’s smart, a good man, but man is he struggling. I hope he makes it. Now my niece is coming up that way. I will say my sister has raised some amazingly smart, kind, respectful good humans kids. I’m so proud of her and them!

But for some ridiculous reason I was redirecting my anger at being separated from the family (of course my choice where to live…) and was also (weirdly) angry that I am no smarter than her, no better equipped for life outside the crab bucket that she was, and she chooses that.

The funny thing is, at the height of this whole sad disaster, I missed her terribly and loved her incredibly and I know she was going through her own (very significant) stuff. Some of which played into my resentment, frustration and anger.

Living far away, the only things I could do were pay for certain things that were quite expensive and needed in a timely manner. I did a lot of that behind the scenes because she never in a million years would have asked (she’s very proud of her life and independence and totally should be. This was a lot.)

I wanted to BE there though, and even if I physically was, our relationship sucked and it was probably better than she could lean on her crab friends.

Anyway- even in all that- she never has or would call me pretentious or the like.

I ended up reading a book I just can’t recommend enough, Running on Empty, by Jonice Webb. It’s about the effects of different types of neglect. Wow. I would swear I was a case study for the book. It helped me to actually see and understand what in the world I was feeling, and my sister, a lot better. It certainly didn’t heal me overnight- lol but it definitely allowed me to understand the intense anger in my bones that I knew in my heart was misplaced.

Again to Olan’s point, every time I tried talk about it, with anyone- our history, our “unique” parents, and the texture of the crab bucket was impossible to convey. We had too much shared history that no one on earth but each other could understand. Not even our brother. Most people would say that she was jealous of what I have and that she was insecure etc. Just really couldn’t have been further from the truth, and it just frustrated me more. I KNOW my sister and she is not jealous and never has been. We are completely different people and value different things. So I felt really alone with it, because even people who were trying to support me and “be on my side” were totally not helpful. I mention this, because I’m sure anyone she tried to talk about it with would distill it down to what you said about your sister mommaho .

I’m soooooooo glad to have my sister back. I love her dearly, just as she is.

And I’ll tell ya what- if she threw my missteps and mistakes and general hard knocks in my face…. It would have been a lot harder to heal the relationship- if at all possible.

And I would never do that to her.

*Please, read the book, Running on Empty.