Ashley Pro lived with her sister Dennice for 28 years. They moved in together after leaving their childhood home, and if Pro hadn’t been transferred to a different city for work, the sisters would likely still be roommates. Pro, a 29-year-old director for an after-school program in Rancho Cucamonga, California, initially worried that any distance would drive a wedge in their relationship. She’d never known a life without the daily presence of Dennice, who is only a year older.
Since their mom worked long hours to make ends meet, Dennice took on a maternal role with her little sister, even picking up extra jobs in college to pay for Ashley’s high school extracurriculars. Although Ashley and Dennice are close to their three older siblings, this period of reliance bonded them.
Even now that they’re living separately, about a 30-minute car ride apart, Ashley says the sisters are as close as ever. They talk on the phone regularly and spend weekends at each other’s places. “It’s something we envisioned,” Pro says. “That was our goal growing up, so we made sure to keep that relationship strong.”
In what may be obvious to those who have them, siblings stand to be one of the most enduring relationships of a person’s life. They’re your first roommates, your first playmates, maybe your first babysitter or charge, and probably your first fight. They’re your social guinea pigs, the first draft of nearly every interpersonal interaction. Siblings, including half-, step-, and adoptive brothers and sisters, are thrust upon you. But as you age, maintaining those relationships is voluntary.
They’re your first roommates, your first playmates, maybe your first babysitter or charge, and probably your first fight.
As siblings progress through life, these once-obligatory relationships can transition from roommate to friend or even best friend. In interviews for their 2015 book Adult Sibling Relationships, authors Geoffrey L. Greif and Michael E. Woolley found 64 percent of respondents said they were good friends with a sibling; 45 percent considered a sibling one of their best friends. But the sibling relationship can also be more fraught. Greif and Woolley found that 62 percent had mixed feelings about their siblings, feeling neither wholly lovey-dovey nor completely cold (interestingly enough, even those who are close to their siblings can have such mixed feelings).
However you feel about your siblings, it’s clear these relationships have a profound impact on well-being. Into adulthood, those who perceive parental favoritism or sibling conflict are more likely to have symptoms of depression, anxiety, hostility, and loneliness. Adult sibling relationships hold just as much weight as a person’s relationship with their mother or spouse.
But what if, for one reason or another, your relationship with a sibling is cordial at best? What if it feels like a relationship you never would have maintained if not for being connected by blood or family ties? “It’s not a bad thing that you don’t have a super close relationship with a sibling,” says Katherine Jewsbury Conger, a professor emerita of human development and family studies at the University of California Davis. “I think we sometimes put super expectations that siblings are going to be really close throughout adulthood, and I don’t think we give enough credit to how many things people experience that make them so different as they move through all the different stages of life.”
An adult sibling relationship is a choice
Like any long-lasting relationship, the one you have with a sibling drastically changes as life goes on. Kids spend the most time with their siblings during childhood and adolescence, whether they like it or not. Depending on family size, there can be multiple children jockeying for attention, space, and resources with little to no reprieve: This is the house you live in, these are the siblings you’re stuck with. Peaceful coexistence can erupt into chaos over teasing or a shirt borrowed without permission. “In childhood, sibling relationships can be very intense, because people are learning how to navigate the world and navigate their family and figure out their own personality,” Conger says. If you get into an argument with a classmate, the school day inevitably ends. “But with your sibling,” Conger says, “you’re still in the same household.”
As kids mature, familial relationships are supplanted by friends and romance. After years of walking parallel paths, siblings’ varying interests, educations, and relationships naturally cause their paths to diverge. If siblings don’t spend a ton of time together in adolescence, maintaining closeness throughout the rest of their lives is less likely, says Megan Gilligan, an associate professor of human development and family science at the University of Missouri.
When young adults no longer live under the same roof, and interacting with siblings is no longer a matter of proximity, these relationships require more intention to maintain. You have to decide whether to prioritize weekly calls with your sister or if you care to hang out with your brother beyond holidays.
A sibling nevertheless can be a source of inspiration or mentor. Jalin Siu always intended to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a teacher, but when her two older brothers went to college to study film, she changed course, enrolling at the same school and rooming with one of her brothers. These days, Siu, 24, and her three siblings — the brothers and a younger sister — all live in the same apartment complex in Los Angeles and create content about their relationship. She knows the time will come when one of her siblings will want to move in with a partner or explore another city, but “we’re just living in the moment right now,” Siu says, “and just appreciating that we can have this time together.”
Nevertheless, an adult sibling friendship requires more than just shared history. For some people, newfound freedom from their siblings might actually come as a relief, Conger says.
During a person’s 20s and 30s, their time may be dominated by their own burgeoning families, says Greif, the co-author of Adult Sibling Relationships and distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. In midlife, siblings are often called together to care for their aging parents. And once parents are no longer in the picture, there may be nothing else keeping siblings together.
The forces that shape sibling sentiment
Three factors characterize most sibling relationships, Greif says: affection, ambivalence, and ambiguity. Even the strongest bonds between siblings have warmth, ups and downs, and confusion.
In some relationships, the ambivalence and ambiguity overpower the affection, and in others, affection reigns supreme. Every grouping of adult siblings will differ in how they relate to one another; if you and your siblings are slightly distant but cordial, and that works for you, then there’s no real need to change anything. “I don’t have to have a wholly loving relationship,” Greif says, “but I can have one that is functional and works for me and I can get together with my sibling at Thanksgiving and get along well enough if we agree to not talk about politics or whatever it is that may prime us to relive our past battles.”
It’s these past battles — and history more broadly — that influence the affection, ambivalence, and ambiguity in sibling relationships. Even for siblings who grow up in the same household with the same parents, experiences can vary wildly. A single family can be viewed differently based on your vantage point. “I’ve never had the experience of having myself as a brother,” Greif says. “So I don’t know what it’s like to live with me.”
Birth order can play a part in these perceptions. The oldest child has been raised under completely different circumstances from the younger kids. Firstborns, especially daughters, are often called upon to help care for younger siblings, while subsequent children may not have received as much attention from their parents. “Maybe your parents have more money or less money as children age. Maybe they divorce,” Greif says. “Adult relationships shift, and so that has a different impact on kids who are growing up in that family, and affects them differently at their developmental stages that are not ever the same.”
Because each child’s relationship with their parents and with each other differs, this can fuel rivalries or parental favoritism, real or imagined. Two or more siblings might have closer relationships, leaving one on the outs. “If these earlier events happen that create rivalry or perceptions of differential treatment,” Gilligan says, “it might make it harder for them to really maintain that relationship throughout the life course.” Bullying and physical and mental abuse during childhood and adolescence can also impact the sibling relationship, according to Gilligan.
“In childhood, sibling relationships can be very intense, because people are learning how to navigate the world and navigate their family and figure out their own personality.”
Cultural expectations and family norms influence sibling closeness. If your parents weren’t close to their own brothers and sisters, why should you be? On the contrary, when family members feel a sense of obligation toward one another, they may be inclined to maintain a more intimate relationship. “In Black and Latino families, there’s a stronger sense of obligation, a more communal sense of wanting to share resources, be together,” Gilligan says, “where we don’t always notice that same expectation of white families.” In one study looking at adult sibling relationships in African American, Mexican American, and non-Hispanic white families, 69 percent of Mexican Americans considered one of their siblings a best friend, compared to 38 percent of African Americans and 31 percent of whites.
When respect feels compulsory instead of earned, resentments grow. Because Steve Owens is so much younger than his brothers — 17 and 11 years, respectively — he was expected to treat them with reverence. Yet that same respect was never afforded to him, he says. His brothers regularly missed his birthdays and school plays. In adulthood, Owens, a 33-year-old podcast host in Los Angeles, senses his brothers are taken aback when he speaks to them as equals. “We don’t communicate the same way,” he says. “They’re from a different generation than I am.”
Building stronger sibling relationships
When one sibling yearns for a more intimate relationship — or is pressured by parents to maintain a closer relationship — then the work begins of attempting to strengthen it. If your relationship is held back by long-held resentments, don’t expect them to disappear overnight. You first need to acknowledge those uncomfortable feelings to your sibling, Gilligan says. You might try broaching the conversation by saying, “We had that blowup on Christmas when I was 15. I was really hurt by that. I was wondering what your perspective was?”
You can’t force your sibling to spend more time with you, to call more frequently, to forgive.
Your shared history might have been a source of pain, but your perception of the past might differ from your sibling’s, Conger says. She suggests each party recount their version of events as calmly as possible to try to understand what led to hurt feelings all those years ago. “You have to allow for differences in perceptions and not take it as a personal attack on somebody,” Conger says.
However, you can’t force your sibling to spend more time with you, to call more frequently, to forgive. Sometimes all you can do is continue to show your affection, however that looks. Maybe you send your brother a birthday card every year, even though he never responds. “What’s the narrative you want to write for yourself?” Greif says.
But sometimes all you need is time. Growing up Jacquelaine Manlapaz constantly bickered with her three older sisters — she’d steal their clothes, they’d get upset and yell. “I was always the problem,” the 24-year-old student says.
It took her sisters moving away from their northern New Jersey childhood home for their relationship to mature. The three would convene at her oldest sister’s house in Florida and realize all the time they took for granted, mired in adolescent arguments.
“We apologized to each other,” Manlapaz says. “We were really dumb. We wasted so many years that we can’t get back, but we have now.”
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