Being an adult only child is awful

[Anonymous]

The idea that people are besties with their siblings is a complete myth. Real life is not like TV.

My sister and I get along ok, but we are very different people. Different interests, travel goal, life goals, personalities, etc.

Our brother has mental health issues. Sister thinks he's bipolar, I think he's functioning borderline personality disorder. He is married (for now) and can hold down a job, but has severe anger, manipulation, and impulse issues. I have no relationship with him (nor do I want one, given the circumstances).

And our parents are deceased. The idea of a perfect family that gets together regularly and has so much fun and laughs and get along is a unicorn, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m only interested in hearing from other adult only children. Particularly moms with small children. How do you manage feelings of loneliness? Jealousy of friends and even your spouse who have built-in support? I’m generally very positive but every time I go through a milestone (having a baby, baptism, 40th birthday, parent illness, etc) I’m reminded of how ALONE I am in the world. Yes, I have friends. I’m very involved in my community. But at the end of the day, everyone else has family to count on. To plan and host events. To travel with. To navigate caring for aging parents with. My parents are elderly. I have no aunts/uncles/first cousins.

OP, I am an only adult child. My husband has a sister and they never talk - they haven't really ever been close. Not everyone else has family to count on or to do things with. Your husband should help you car for your aging parents (and you should do the same for him). Stop thinking everyone else has it better than you because they don't. I'm not saying I don't have any sympathy for you because it sounds like you're struggling, but it may help if you stop having unrealistic expectations about what other people's lives look like. Take what you have and make it work.

[Anonymous]

I’m an adult only and I love it. I am surrounded with family and friends who have dysfunctional sibling relationships and I don’t envy or want any of it. I dread having to deal with BIL/SILs when ILs can’t function independently. It will be all out war.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m only interested in hearing from other adult only children. Particularly moms with small children. How do you manage feelings of loneliness? Jealousy of friends and even your spouse who have built-in support? I’m generally very positive but every time I go through a milestone (having a baby, baptism, 40th birthday, parent illness, etc) I’m reminded of how ALONE I am in the world. Yes, I have friends. I’m very involved in my community. But at the end of the day, everyone else has family to count on. To plan and host events. To travel with. To navigate caring for aging parents with. My parents are elderly. I have no aunts/uncles/first cousins.

OP, I am an only adult child. My husband has a sister and they never talk - they haven't really ever been close. Not everyone else has family to count on or to do things with. Your husband should help you car for your aging parents (and you should do the same for him). Stop thinking everyone else has it better than you because they don't. I'm not saying I don't have any sympathy for you because it sounds like you're struggling, but it may help if you stop having unrealistic expectations about what other people's lives look like. Take what you have and make it work.

This is OP. My husband is incredibly close with all his siblings. While they dont all live in the same city, they talk via text or phone every day. He also has 25+ first cousins that he doesn’t communicate with regularly but would be available to him if he ever needed something. Via marriage this is now my family too. I love them all. We have a lot of fun together. But I don’t have the bond that they share. And it’s hard to not feel envious sometimes. Esp during life’s ups and downs where he gets loads of support and my lack of extended family is on display.

[Anonymous]

Hi OP- I'm also an adult (35) only child of a single mom with a small extended family. Im now married and have 4 kids of my own.

After reading your last post, I think you are much more sensitive to this than most of us since you are faced with your DH's great relationship with his family every day! This would make me sad, too. I've actually had to cool it on some friendships with wonderful women just because I would feel such sadness and jealousy when they shared about their sisters helping with the kids, big family holidays, and beach vacations packed with cousins. I get it, I do.

However, what has really helped me (other than about 3 years of monthly therapy!) is 1. focusing on the blessings of my own nuclear family (Thank God I have my children and my DH!!) and 2. focusing on the fact that we're not given all the blessings in life, there are always some good things and some bad things about our life. For me, I have a wonderful DH who makes good money which has caused me to rise much above my humble lower middle class raising and experience the world much more than I ever dreamed. I have four healthy children, and friends who are like family. I do not have a stable, emotionally healthy mother or a large extended family, but I can't control that. Holidays are often annoying and depressing as I do most of the work for my nuclear family while my flakey mom and depressive inlaws float in and out. It is what it is.

I wish we were friends in real life so we could discuss this more! I don't know anyone in my day to day life who is like me so I just dont talk about, but I do think about it fairly often. In part, I've had so many kids because I dream to create the family life for them that I never had to the best of my ability.

Good luck. Therapy can help.

[Anonymous]

Op I know everyone is going to pile in with stories that prove that siblings don't help or that close siblings are unicorns, etc. Siblings are absolutely NOT a guarantee of support, love,help,etc. But I also think it's fair to acknowledge your feelings about this, validate them, or else how can you move passed them? It's ok to sort of mourn a relationship you didn't get to have. And then process and move on from it.

By just telling the OP how shitty some siblings are doesn't help her do that. She effectively stays stuck with her feelings but now is being told they arent valid basically. They are. There are lots of close siblings, lots. It's ok though to not have that and build your own with those who don't have that to fall back on either. Won't be exactly the same re parent decisions but can be the same for emotional support

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op I know everyone is going to pile in with stories that prove that siblings don't help or that close siblings are unicorns, etc. Siblings are absolutely NOT a guarantee of support, love,help,etc. But I also think it's fair to acknowledge your feelings about this, validate them, or else how can you move passed them? It's ok to sort of mourn a relationship you didn't get to have. And then process and move on from it.

By just telling the OP how shitty some siblings are doesn't help her do that. She effectively stays stuck with her feelings but now is being told they arent valid basically. They are. There are lots of close siblings, lots. It's ok though to not have that and build your own with those who don't have that to fall back on either. Won't be exactly the same re parent decisions but can be the same for emotional support

?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op I know everyone is going to pile in with stories that prove that siblings don't help or that close siblings are unicorns, etc. Siblings are absolutely NOT a guarantee of support, love,help,etc. But I also think it's fair to acknowledge your feelings about this, validate them, or else how can you move passed them? It's ok to sort of mourn a relationship you didn't get to have. And then process and move on from it.

By just telling the OP how shitty some siblings are doesn't help her do that. She effectively stays stuck with her feelings but now is being told they arent valid basically. They are. There are lots of close siblings, lots. It's ok though to not have that and build your own with those who don't have that to fall back on either. Won't be exactly the same re parent decisions but can be the same for emotional support

<3
Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP- I'm also an adult (35) only child of a single mom with a small extended family. Im now married and have 4 kids of my own.

After reading your last post, I think you are much more sensitive to this than most of us since you are faced with your DH's great relationship with his family every day! This would make me sad, too. I've actually had to cool it on some friendships with wonderful women just because I would feel such sadness and jealousy when they shared about their sisters helping with the kids, big family holidays, and beach vacations packed with cousins. I get it, I do.

However, what has really helped me (other than about 3 years of monthly therapy!) is 1. focusing on the blessings of my own nuclear family (Thank God I have my children and my DH!!) and 2. focusing on the fact that we're not given all the blessings in life, there are always some good things and some bad things about our life. For me, I have a wonderful DH who makes good money which has caused me to rise much above my humble lower middle class raising and experience the world much more than I ever dreamed. I have four healthy children, and friends who are like family. I do not have a stable, emotionally healthy mother or a large extended family, but I can't control that. Holidays are often annoying and depressing as I do most of the work for my nuclear family while my flakey mom and depressive inlaws float in and out. It is what it is.

I wish we were friends in real life so we could discuss this more! I don't know anyone in my day to day life who is like me so I just dont talk about, but I do think about it fairly often. In part, I've had so many kids because I dream to create the family life for them that I never had to the best of my ability.

Good luck. Therapy can help.

This made my day. Thank you!!! I feel exactly the same way about holidays. I’ve also had multiple children to create the family life I never had. Currently have 3 (all <5y) and their relationship with each other makes my heart sing. Would love a 4th but not sure I have the energy.

I put in a call to a therapist.

[Anonymous]

Ugh this post makes me so sad. Been trying to give ds a sibling and it’s not going to happen. I think about him being lonely all the time and it breaks my heart. I hope he marries into a big family and has a ton of kids of his own.

[Anonymous]

My husband is an only, and his parents are not close to their siblings or their kids. His grandparents died before he was born. His network is basically his parents and school friends.

I have one little brother, almost 10 years younger, who has real failure to launch issues that are preventing us from having a relationship. I grew up with a cousin close to my age though, and another of my aunts (herself childless), always played a big role in my life along with my grandmother.

When we started to plan a family, one thing that was very important to us both was that we have at least two, and maybe three kids (expecting the 2nd now). DH says holidays were lonely for him when he heard about his friends' big family clans getting together, and the fact that my brother is unlikely to have kids anytime soon means that our kids are unlikely to have cousins.

Pretty soon there will be a generation of mostly only kids, who go on to have kids without aunts or uncles or cousins. Not saying that's wrong or bad, it's just interesting to think about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh this post makes me so sad. Been trying to give ds a sibling and it’s not going to happen. I think about him being lonely all the time and it breaks my heart. I hope he marries into a big family and has a ton of kids of his own.

Same here. Adult only child who has one child and cannot have a second. I feel sad about this every day and worry that my child will be lonely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m only interested in hearing from other adult only children. Particularly moms with small children. How do you manage feelings of loneliness? Jealousy of friends and even your spouse who have built-in support? I’m generally very positive but every time I go through a milestone (having a baby, baptism, 40th birthday, parent illness, etc) I’m reminded of how ALONE I am in the world. Yes, I have friends. I’m very involved in my community. But at the end of the day, everyone else has family to count on. To plan and host events. To travel with. To navigate caring for aging parents with. My parents are elderly. I have no aunts/uncles/first cousins.

((hugs)) to you, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh this post makes me so sad. Been trying to give ds a sibling and it’s not going to happen. I think about him being lonely all the time and it breaks my heart. I hope he marries into a big family and has a ton of kids of his own.

Same here. Adult only child who has one child and cannot have a second. I feel sad about this every day and worry that my child will be lonely.

+2
I'm another adult only child with an only child. We dealt with primary infertility, and we've tried for years for #2 and had losses in the process. It saddens me to think of DD growing up an only, and I've struggled with tremendous, sometimes crippling anxiety at the thought of anything happening to her (and, yes, I've seen a therapist).
No advice, OP, just commiseration. I find that, the older I get, the lonelier I feel.

[Anonymous]

Adult only. I see it both ways. When my dad was dying with cancer, I was unmarried and childless and was able to help my mom (who lives out of state). Had I had kids in this situation it would have been very difficult. A decade later, my husband---who is now also an only since his only sibling passed away-- and I are each the sole caregivers of our moms, both of whom are living. Luckily I have a good relationship with my MIL and she is in much better health than my mom so she provides a lot of support when I have to travel to see my mom who is having health problems---because she knows that I will be supporting her son when it comes time to take care of her.

Am curious OP---is your husband Catholic? I've observed that my Catholic friends are much tighter with their sibs than many non-Catholics---even when there are disputes over money, elder care, they still pull it together whereas many protestant families (including my grandparents' generation) were willing to stay permanently estranged from their siblings. This may be a big overgeneralization---it's just what I have anecdotally observed.

But the good of being an only is that when it comes to these tough elder care decisions---it is all on you but there is also no one to second guess you.