If you have a sister

[Anonymous]

My sister is my best friend. I love my brothers but it’s definitely a different relationship.

[Anonymous]

6 years apart. We are super close.

I attribute some of our closeness to not being super close in age. We didn't fight a lot as kids (so no carrying that baggage into adulthood) and weren't competitive at all, partly I think because of the larger age gap.

[Anonymous]

My sister and I are 7 years apart and our relationship has always been strained. I have girls 3 years apart and I worry for them. Their fighting seems “normal” for now but I don’t know how to give them what I didn’t have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have four sisters. We are all 2 years apart. We are all very close and live in the same neighborhood.

That's awesome! I have one girl already and this is secretly my ideal family

It gets better - we are friends with girls we've known since childhood - they are sister sets (two sisters each). So there are eight of them. Five of us. 13 couples. We each have 3 or 4 kids.

We vacation together twice a year.

For fun, the kids play a game called "Who am I?" and they do an imitation of someone. The only question you're allowed to ask before guessing is "Famous or nah?" We just did a beach vacation in Nantucket and one of the kids did their "Who am I?" of the front desk lady when we ALL walked into the lobby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two sisters. My parents didn't feel comfortable with their children getting along well with each other, so that affects our relationships today. I'd love to be close, but understand that's not going to happen.

Can you elaborate? Why wouldn't your parents want their children to have a close relationship? So sad.

This is such a positive thread that I'd rather not go into detail and take it off track. In brief, my family had the kind of dysfunction that led to parents actively undermining positive connections between their children. Sad, I agree, but unfortunately not unusual.

[Anonymous]

3 years. Not close. She lives near our old hometown 2 hours from here.

A key part of why we are not close I think is because I just cannot get over that she dorsn’t Really like kids and being an aunt to them. I have tried to make my peace with it but it grates on me to no end and they are always with me when I go up to visit home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One sister, 17 months apart. Not close at all. We were way too different growing up and seriously battled jealousy/resentment. As adults, we both moved out of state to opposite sides of the country. We see each other once every couple years at my parents' for Christmas, and text about specific things 2-3 times a year. We have absolutely nothing in common (except, ironically, the exact same profession). I wonder what will happen when my parents pass--that's really the only thing uniting us.

This is similar to my situation. Except our mother passed away 10 years ago and since then we are making an effort to be kind to each other and connect. The first years were a learning curve but now we get along nicely. We also make an effort on avoiding conflict (don’t discuss politics, finances, etc).

[Anonymous]

1 sister three years apart. We are not close bc our father is a manipulative ass

[Anonymous]

I have an older sister, we are 3 years apart. We weren't particularly friends as children but got along fine. As adults I can't stand her and haven't spoken to her in 10 years.

You can't really guarantee or predict either outcome.

[Anonymous]

15 years. (I'm older.) We're very close.

[Anonymous]

5 years apart and we are not close at all. We got along well enough as children but as soon as she moved away she found her real "sisters" in college. After 10+ years she had to move back following a divorce with her child in tow. She no longer talks to anyone out there and we still don't talk, except when she needs backup to watch her child. That's all we talk about-- if I will cover and watch her child for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One sister, 17 months apart. Not close at all. We were way too different growing up and seriously battled jealousy/resentment. As adults, we both moved out of state to opposite sides of the country. We see each other once every couple years at my parents' for Christmas, and text about specific things 2-3 times a year. We have absolutely nothing in common (except, ironically, the exact same profession). I wonder what will happen when my parents pass--that's really the only thing uniting us.

I am the oldest of three sisters: one is 14 months apart, another 4 years apart. Sadly, I am not close to either one. And, there is a reason. I was a source of the bullying in the family, constantly creating a rift among the family members, made the sisters life so miserable growing up that the middle sister, particularly, resent me for it big time even now (we are both in 40s) and I cannot disagree her to a certain degree. So, I try my best to distance myself from them, moved international distance away from my home. Two sisters themselves are really close. In fact, the youngest claims she was raised by the middle sis, not the mom. In my case, two of the younger sisters are close, I am not close to either, I am also not that close to mom (she was like a tiger mom growing up and I hated that so much, but mom was never tiger to my sisters), and I am close to dad.

All of us have kids in a similar age group, but because of my past deed, middle sister already warned(?) about me to the nieces/nephews. The nieces/nephews openly told me "So, aunt XX, you were bullying aunt YY, right? cuz aunt YY already told us". I was not there when she spoke about me and even if I were there, most of the things my sis had told the nieces/nephews were probably true cuz I was the bullying sister (this was just last year). Therefore, I have to wonder if I should limit my child from spending time with the cousins because of my past history with the mothers of my nieces/nephews, or I wonder if my sisters would want my child not spend time with their kids. So, the impact made during the childhood might potentially extend beyond adulthood and "maybe" compromise you/your child relationship with nieces/nephews/cousins.

I have no resentment toward my sisters not wanting spend time with "me" because I know how bad a sister I was. Unfortunate fact is that my child loves to spend time with the cousins, but in time, my child will be told from the cousins that mom was really terrible sister toward the cousins' moms. I wish for a healthy relationship among the cousins, but if my relationship with the sisters will influence them in a negative way, I wonder what is the best way to manage such situation.

[Anonymous]

I don't have any sisters, but am extremely close to my younger brother who is a little over a year younger. We're very close friends, I never really missed having a sister. All the sisters I knew fought a lot.

[Anonymous]

I have a sister who is 8 years younger than me. We have always been close, but there have definitely been times when we’ve frustrated each other or had a hard time relating to each other. I’m 37 and she’s 29 and I feel like we are coming out of a phase where we haven’t had a lot to say. I have two kids and a career and that’s my life and she just finished grad school and spent her mid-20s traveling in South America and that’s her life. Just not a lot in common. She and her partner are getting ready to TTC so she has been in touch more recently asking about fertility stuff and baby stuff.

[Anonymous]

2.5 year gap between me and my older sister. We aren't close.