I can't help but think life would be better if I didn't have a sibling, and I'm not alone
- I have one brother, and people are often surprised to hear that we have no contact.
- Having tried for almost four decades to foster a relationship, I've come to terms with our estrangement — and I'm not the only one in this situation.
- A number of people I spoke to described how nonexistent relationships with their siblings boiled down to resentment, or simply having nothing in common.
- It's certainly possible to mend things if both of you are willing, but sometimes cutting ties completely is the best way to protect yourself.
- Editorial note: The author of this personal essay has remained anonymous for safety reasons. Insider has confirmed their identity.
- *Names have been changed.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
People often pity the only child, but I can't help but think that life would have been so much better if I hadn't had a sibling.
I haven't spoken to my brother, Jake*, since Mother's Day 2019, when we had the worst explosion in a string of arguments stretching back a lifetime, right in front of our mother. Now, neither of us seem to want to break the deadlock.
While I have accepted the estrangement — in many ways it has brought me a lot of relief — it also aches, especially now during this period of self-isolation, when the absence of relatives feels most obvious.
Though it may sound strange, sibling estrangement — dating all the way back to the days of Cain and Abel — is surprisingly common.
Actresses Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine famously feuded for 40 years, with the latter telling People: "You can divorce your sister as well as your husbands. I don't see her at all and I don't intend to."
Meanwhile, Madonna was estranged from her brother, Christopher Ciccone, for a long time after he published a tell-all bestseller that painted his sister as bossy, sweaty, mean, and moody.
Olly Murs was cut off by his brother, Ben, when the singer missed his twin's wedding due to his commitments on "The X Factor." He emotionally opened up to Sir Tom Jones on an episode of "The Voice" earlier this year: "We had a big argument. I feel like the next time I'm going to see him is when we lose somebody close in our family ... I've got no idea where he lives."
There have even been ongoing rumors of a rift between the once-close Princes William and Harry, with the Duke of Sussex telling documentary maker Tom Bradby in October 2019 that they are "on different paths at the moment."
The struggle can start in childhood
I'm exactly 12 months older than my brother, and we were close when we were kids, but sibling rivalries surfaced daily when we entered our teenage years. Jake became the proverbial teenager — moody, rebellious, reckless, angry, and aggressive.
Once, he charged down the street after me wielding a golf club belonging to my mother, swinging it wildly and leaving my school friend and I scared witless. When I told my dad, he was relentless in his insistence that nothing happened, and that I must have been exaggerating.
Unfortunately "Jake the teenager" didn't grow up — there was the Christmas he hurled the lunch mum had spent hours slaving over in the kitchen at the window, with all the force he could muster; the time, aged 16, he moved his girlfriend into his bedroom for 10 months; and a refusal to do anything as a family that continued well beyond adolescence and into our adult lives.
I've always partly blamed my brother's narcissistic teenage behavior for the breakdown of my parent's marriage — they were invariably arguing about how to handle him.
I thought our relationship would change as we got older, ideally becoming one of friendship, but that never happened.
Rather, it got worse as we forged completely different lives. I left for university and subsequently spent eight years living and working overseas, while he stayed at home with my dad right up until the ripe old age of 37.
Jake now lives with his girlfriend in a large three-bedroom house and works as a gym teacher in a private school, while I've ended up in a shoebox flat that I adore, pursuing a portfolio career. We have no contact.
Our situation is more common than you might think, according to Clinical Psychologist Dr Illan Ben-Zion.
He told Insider: "As siblings grow up, their priorities change and they start to discover new priorities elsewhere.
"This can result in new priorities taking precedence and increased likelihood of estrangement, particularly where there is no shared roof to ensure the relationship is maintained."
A bad sibling relationship can be rooted in resentment
Howard*, 50, knows just how difficult it can be when your sibling is a thorn in your side. His brother, Darren*, is older by seven years.
He told Insider he has never been comfortable with his brother, but growing up thought it was due to the fact that Darren always saw him as an "annoying little brother hampering his fun."
Darren's primary attitude towards Howard, then and now, is deep-seated resentment.
"It was a massive shock to me to learn that he begrudged my going to university and the support I got from our parents to do so — even though Darren never showed any interest in higher education and our parents helped him in other ways; from buying him a car, so he could cart his drums around during his budding musician days, to providing financial assistance when, after a breakdown, he embarked on a second career."
Howard never addressed Darren's bitterness.
London-based Counsellor and Psychotherapist Ulrike Adeneuer-Chima told Insider: "Siblings who saw themselves as the less-favored child don't necessarily shrug this off, as we would perhaps expect, in adulthood."
Things came to a head between the brothers when their father, Ted, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago.
"Despite the fact that Darren had always been dad's favorite — I was mum's special son — my brother never went to visit him in the hospice. Dad was at death's door and Darren never went. That was unbelievably painful to watch."
Their father died in 2018, and Howard hasn't seen his brother since the funeral, where Darren washed his hands of all the attendant bureaucracy.
Their mother is now in a care home for dementia but, once again, all the arrangements have fallen to Howard and his spouse Kathy*.
"It has never occurred to Darren or his wife to send mum a birthday, Christmas, or Easter card, so we send one every year on his behalf so as not to break her heart," Howard told Insider.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the next and final time I see my brother is at my mother's funeral."
Sometimes you just have nothing in common
Meanwhile, sometimes there is no drama, just a dawning awareness that you're different people with little in common and little reason for connection, as is the case with Hope*, 44, and her brother Curtis*, 49.
"We were never close as children, largely because of the age gap," Hope told Insider. "When I was 10, Curtis was 15 and out with his friends. By the time I was 15, he was 20 and had left home and started work."
The ties had always been thin and so weren't hard to cut, even when they were both living and working in London.
"I've always just thought that if we met in a bar, we wouldn't be friends," she said.
When she moved to Barbados, where both her parents were born, three years ago and Curtis remained in the UK, "the distance — both literally and metaphorically — grew even bigger," she said.
Yet while the siblings don't speak and are unlikely to anytime soon, there's no bad blood. "If Curtis called me up to ask for a kidney, I'd say yes — 100% — and I'd like to think he would do the same," she said.
Psychotherapist Siobhan Murray told Insider: "We expect siblings to have a strong connection but more often than not we'd never pick a sibling to be our friend, and that's OK.
"We grow up watching all these American films which portray siblings as the best of friends, but that's a myth. There are no guarantees that siblings will share common interests or even like each other."
Each family member perceives things differently
I've often looked enviously at my friends' relationships with their siblings — they see, call, or text them all the time. My friend Mary* and her brother Lionel* chose to live together until their 30s, share friends, and even holiday together.
Having witnessed the bond between the pair, in recent years I've reached out to my own brother in the hope of reconciling — I know it would delight my dad, who would love nothing more than for us to be friends for the rest of our lives.
Through my work as a lifestyle journalist, from time to time I've taken Jake to shows and restaurants I was reviewing in a bid to build a relationship, but it never ends well, as difficult issues always get stirred up.
Having done nearly all the emotional work of trying to re-establish a relationship, I've lost hope that things will heal — not to mention the will to reach out yet again.
"While it is a romantic notion for all families to be united and work through their challenges, in reality this can be really difficult to achieve," Murray told Insider. "Each person within the family is an individual and therefore perceives the world differently based on their experiences."
Emma*, a 45-year-old freelance photographer, can relate. She grew up as the second-youngest of six children and enjoys a healthy relationship with all her siblings other than Summer*, the sister directly above her.
Emma can recall childhood moments when Summer would rage at her — be it for a strong school report, landing the lead role in a school play or, later in life, receiving an avalanche of birthday wishes from friends on her Facebook wall.
She suspects Summer resented her for usurping her as the baby of the family, especially as Summer is at least in "text contact" with her other siblings.
Laura Jean Collins, a counsellor at Beaconhills College in Australia, told Insider: "Conflicting accounts of childhood experiences are fairly common.
"Each sibling has a different take and the truth often gets lost somewhere in the middle."
Despite spending much of her youth walking on eggshells so as not to provoke her sister, Emma yearned to reconcile and, a few years back, flew out to western Australia, where Summer now lives, to visit her.
Alas, it wasn't a successful sojourn. As Emma entered Summer's house, following a 24-hour flight to get there, her sister's first words were: "It's my house, my rules."
"She ended up screaming at me in the garden at the top of her lungs over something as trivial as my making a cup of tea. After two days of enduring her anger and tantrums, I checked out and into a hostel," she told Insider.
While Emma continues to have satisfying relationships with her brother and three other sisters, she has not spoken to Summer since that trip.
Cutting ties isn't ideal, but it's about protecting yourself
Collins told Insider that when there's conflict between siblings, it's best "to have that hard conversation early on when there's still a chance that the relationship can be fixed."
"It's absolutely possible to mend ties without having a perfect relationship, if both siblings are willing," she added.
Murray added that cutting off a relationship doesn't have to be the answer if you can "establish boundaries as to what your relationship will and won't be, rather than have no contact at all."
However, sometimes it's too late, or this simply isn't an option.
As was the case with Jake and I, there can come a time when you have to sever ties with a difficult sibling to protect yourself from further pain and anguish.
Make no mistake: cutting off a sibling isn't what anyone would want or hope for, but as the people I spoke to agreed, sometimes it's the wise and necessary choice: it's not healthy to hold on to someone who persistently hurts you.
"Occasionally sibling relationships just don't work out," Collins told Insider. "Cutting the chord is extreme and should always be the last resort because even if it brings relief, it's always sad. However sometimes terminating a relationship is necessary for self-preservation."
Adeneuer-Chima added: "Rivalry isn't always fixable, but what is fixable is what you can work through in yourself."
Having pulled the plug, Howard and Emma both told Insider they finally feel at peace. Sometimes maintaining a connection simply isn't possible, and once you've accepted that, you can begin to heal and move forward with your life.
Psychotherapist Amy Launder told Insider: "There might be times when, actually, estrangements shouldn't be fixed, or you aren't ready to fix them. It is important to think about your own emotional and physical safety, and the emotional and physical safety of your sibling."
I wish my brother and I had a different relationship, but having dealt with his hostility for decades, I know that cutting off contact is the best thing I could have done for myself.
I haven't closed the door completely
For all that, I haven't closed the door on Jake completely, but at this point he'll probably have to be the one to pass through it.
Should an estranged sibling walk back in, Collins recommended "open and honest communication that acknowledges one another's feelings and takes responsibility for their part."
"Talking from 'I' instead of passing blame is an invaluable tool as when we point the finger, the other closes down, becomes defensive and puts up a wall that is difficult to penetrate," she said.
For now, I count my blessings: I enjoy a fantastic relationship with both my mum and dad, and am surrounded by a wonderful circle of friends.
As the late Maya Angelou once said: "Family isn't always blood. It's the people in your life who want you in theirs. The ones you accept you for who you are. The ones who would do anything to see you smile, and who love you no matter what."
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