The Art of Manliness - The Affectionate, Ambiguous, and Surprisingly Ambivalent Relationship Between Siblings

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.980 For most people, their siblings will be the longest lasting relationships of their lives,

00:00:15.700 potentially enduring all the way from birth until past the death of their parents.

00:00:19.720 Marked by both jealousy and conflict and love and loyalty, siblings are also some of our

00:00:23.620 most complicated relationships. While little over half of people describe their relationships

00:00:27.840 with their siblings as positive, about one-fifth classify them as negative, and a quarter say

00:00:32.580 their feelings about their siblings are decidedly mixed. Here to take us on a tour of the complex

00:00:37.340 landscape of siblingdom is Jeffrey Greif, a professor of social work and the author of

00:00:41.940 the book Adult Siblings. Today on the show, Jeffrey shares how our brothers and sisters shape us,

00:00:46.840 and how our relationship with our siblings changes as we move from childhood to old age.

00:00:51.180 We discuss how the perception of parental favoritism affects the closeness of siblings,

00:00:54.900 and how a parent's relationship with their own siblings affects the relationship between

00:00:58.760 their children. Jeffrey explains how most sibling relationships are marked by the three A's, 0.94

00:01:03.040 affection, ambiguity, and or ambivalence, and how the relationship can also become very distant

00:01:08.160 or outright severed. We end a conversation with Jeffrey's advice on developing a good relationship

00:01:12.140 between your children and reconnecting with your own siblings. After the show's over,

00:01:15.920 check out our show notes at aom.is slash siblings. All right, Jeffrey Greif, welcome back to the

00:01:36.200 show. Thank you for having me. So we had you on several years ago to talk about the nature of male

00:01:43.180 friendship. You've also done research and writing about the nature of another type of relationship

00:01:49.220 that has a big impact on our life, and that is the sibling relationship. As a professor who studies

00:01:56.520 this stuff, how would you describe a sibling relationship? Like, what makes it unique?

00:02:01.240 Sibling relationships are the longest relationships we have. They're with us when we are born often. If we're

00:02:09.640 the oldest or older sibling, it could be the person with whom we spend most of our lives, we have these

00:02:16.320 relationships longer than we do with our parents, longer than we do with our partners, spouses.

00:02:24.660 Maybe if there's a big age gap between you and your sibling or siblings, you may have a friend

00:02:32.040 that you meet in kindergarten or something. But for the most part, these are the longest,

00:02:37.420 and I would argue probably the most important relationships that we have in our lives because

00:02:44.800 they are so long and they define us in so many ways, both in relation to our parents, in relation

00:02:53.440 to them. They're the first intimate relationship we have, and they are there for us throughout the

00:03:02.400 good times and, if we have them, the bad times. So, you've done research on friendship. How is the

00:03:08.440 sibling relationship similar and different to a friendship? One of the things that happens with

00:03:13.480 friendships, of course, is we can pick them up and drop them. If I have a toxic friendship or a

00:03:21.580 friendship that turns toxic, I can decide to drop that friendship. A sibling is like a shadow

00:03:29.880 throughout your whole life. Whether or not you are close or distant from that shadow slash sibling,

00:03:38.040 they are always with you, and you do not have a choice about having them in your life, and maybe

00:03:45.180 you don't have a choice if they are out of your life.

00:03:48.900 And so, siblings' relationship, it could be like a friendship. Some siblings are just like best friends.

00:03:53.840 Others, not. They're just indifferent, or maybe they have a really bad relationship. But you also talk about

00:03:59.780 how the sibling relationship is interesting because it is horizontal, right? It's like you have this

00:04:03.740 vertical relationship with your parents. But then even sibling relationships can sometimes resemble a

00:04:09.140 vertical, you know, kind of parent-child type of relationship, correct?

00:04:13.560 Sure. If there's a big age gap between siblings that they can, or even a small age gap, a two- or three-year age

00:04:20.420 gap, they can certainly be a vertical or almost an intergenerational. If we think about parents up the

00:04:27.440 line and grandparents up a line, that would be a vertical relationship, whereas a horizontal relationship

00:04:34.420 going across in your general age or in your general family hierarchy would be a sibling, it could be a

00:04:43.940 partner, it could be a friend. Those would all be, of course, horizontal. And if you have children,

00:04:50.020 that could be a vertical relationship with you at the top of that hierarchy. So it's this interesting

00:04:57.480 mix of with siblings is you're dealing with somebody both from a horizontal point of view,

00:05:04.600 but you have to come together when your parents age, perhaps, and become ill and deal with the

00:05:11.840 vertical relationship. So it's this fascinating intersection of the two that we all have to struggle

00:05:18.620 with if we have siblings. And that's what makes it sometimes really complicated.

00:05:24.760 Yes, because if we get along well with siblings, even then things can become complicated. Parents

00:05:33.020 may live closer to one sibling. Parents may pull on one sibling differently than another sibling.

00:05:40.200 So there are grounds for things becoming very complicated depending upon how intergenerational

00:05:48.160 patterns in families have been handed down and how current patterns are being acted out either de

00:05:56.360 novo or as a reflection of previous family patterns.

00:06:01.340 So what I like to do in this conversation is talk about how the sibling relationship sort of changes from

00:06:06.100 childhood to young adulthood to midlife, then also how those relationships with our siblings affect us.

00:06:12.100 So let's talk about sibling relationship and childhood. What factors influence whether siblings

00:06:18.880 in childhood are going to be close or there's going to be acrimony? What are some of the factors you found

00:06:22.480 in your research?

00:06:23.820 I think some of this is, of course, luck. So while we can say people carve out their own relationships,

00:06:30.240 I think there's a certain amount of luck. Sometimes siblings born in the same family just

00:06:36.180 adhere to different values, like doing different things, have different natures. And so those

00:06:43.780 siblings may or may not struggle more to find common ground aside from the common ground that they have

00:06:50.740 from birth. Obviously, there are people that are born with greater disabilities, and that can cause

00:06:57.880 hierarchical swings as to who is taking care of whom. There are gender issues that can be revisited in

00:07:07.600 families. If you're from a culture that values men more than women, you may have a different status,

00:07:14.520 even if you're the oldest girl or the oldest boy. Families may wait for the firstborn boy to come

00:07:21.840 along. Or if you have parents that have always wanted girls, and they have a series of boys,

00:07:27.100 the girl that comes along third or fourth may get special status. So there are a lot of things that

00:07:33.680 even have nothing to do with the behavior that someone chooses that can imprint upon siblings some

00:07:41.800 of the things that can affect you. Of course, people are born with different talents. We're all not the

00:07:49.160 same. Some people are better at writing. Some people are better at math. Some people are better in

00:07:55.200 sports. Some people are better in chess, etc. So the way that we develop our talents may configure

00:08:03.980 more closely with one parent or the next or with neither parent. So there are fundamentally so many

00:08:12.720 different variables that can come in to affect these relationships. Do children share rooms? Are they

00:08:19.580 close in age? If they're one year apart, they're more apt to share friends in school and to be in

00:08:26.180 closer competition than if they're three or four years apart and are not the same sex. So there are

00:08:32.140 many, many factors that can come into play that begin a trajectory that maybe continues with them

00:08:40.180 through life or at least influences them through life. Though I believe you can always change the

00:08:45.820 trajectory you're on. One of the factors I thought was interesting you talk about in your book about

00:08:49.920 adult sibling relationships, about childhood sibling relationship, is that birth order can

00:08:54.940 influence sibling relationships. So the firstborn might have this expectation to be like, well,

00:09:00.560 I'm in charge. I got to take care of everybody. It's sort of like George Bailey looking out for his

00:09:05.720 kid brother. And then even the birth order can affect... Parents are different based on birth order,

00:09:12.280 right? Like the first time parents have a kid, they don't know what they're doing. They're going

00:09:15.780 to pay a lot of attention. Then the next kid comes along and they don't pay much attention to the

00:09:20.820 second kid. And then that can affect the relationship between the first and second kid.

00:09:25.700 Correct. The first child usually has more attention paid and maybe more, a more intense kind of

00:09:32.840 attention for better and for worse. Of course, the other things that happen that affect the time with a

00:09:39.700 child and the way the child is raised is what's happening in the parent's marriage, what's

00:09:43.960 happening in the parent's work life. The thing that a third or fourth child may benefit from is that

00:09:50.880 over the course of time, many people begin to earn more money. So a family's financial situation may

00:09:59.140 improve or of course the reverse may happen. Somebody may lose a job and that will have an impact on

00:10:05.100 the family situation where the family lives, how often the family moves. So all these kinds of

00:10:10.920 things can affect the parent's ability to focus. You also talked about the fact that, and this happened

00:10:18.960 in my wife's family, she's the oldest of three daughters. Her father was a middle child and focused on my

00:10:29.420 wife's next younger sister. So he being a middle child felt much more sympathy and much more support

00:10:38.860 for her because of his struggles as a middle child. He connected and supported her. My wife's mother was

00:10:46.420 an oldest child and focused more and was more supportive of my wife. And that left the third daughter to kind

00:10:54.280 of be on her own and not have the same kind of attention or focus or maybe even affection as the

00:11:01.040 oldest two. So all these things can play out in so many, so many interesting ways.

00:11:06.280 Returning to the idea of gender and its influence on sibling relationship, do sister-sister or brother-brother

00:11:12.800 relationships differ?

00:11:14.180 Yeah. What we found, and we did a lot of interviews and have a lot of data in the book,

00:11:20.380 Adult Sibling Relationships that I wrote with Michael Woolley, we did a lot of focus on the fact

00:11:27.800 that it appears that when we talk to sisters, as opposed to brothers, sisters play a much more

00:11:35.480 fundamental role in communicating with each other and with their brothers, in keeping connections open.

00:11:44.440 I'm very interested, as you said, in men's roles, and I've been studying men's and women's roles,

00:11:50.380 because you can't study one without the other for my whole career. And men still fundamentally leave

00:11:57.920 a lot of the emotional work in the family to the women. It may not be true of any particular

00:12:04.340 person listening to this podcast, but in general and across a wider spectrum, women are more central in 0.98

00:12:13.640 many of these families. And sisters are more emotionally focused and are going to spend more

00:12:19.480 time trying to make the relationships work than our brothers. We did find differences between

00:12:26.240 brothers. The older brothers, those 65 and over, tended to be much more the traditional man than the

00:12:35.500 younger brothers, those in their 40s, who tended to be more open and more emotionally expressive.

00:12:43.280 So I'm optimistic that men are moving in a good direction in terms of being able to play a more

00:12:50.460 central emotional role and not just the functional financial roles that they sometimes play in family

00:12:57.500 caregiving as parents age. Returning to the parents' influence on a childhood sibling relationship and

00:13:03.980 maybe how that affects the relationship in adulthood, you mentioned some factors. Parents,

00:13:08.880 maybe their birth order may influence how they treat different kids. So if the parent's a middle

00:13:13.380 child, maybe they'll focus more on the middle child. The parent's job and kind of what's going

00:13:18.120 on in their life can influence the relationship. Any other things that parents do that can cause

00:13:24.040 either the siblings in a relationship to draw closer together or to have conflict? Any other things

00:13:30.620 you found in your research?

00:13:31.420 Yeah, that's a really important question. And this continues throughout life. So we found pretty

00:13:37.560 clear data that if you are raised in a household where someone is favored much more than someone

00:13:46.840 else, that obviously has an important impact both at the time and later. And we found strong connections

00:13:55.300 between people who believe one or the other siblings themselves or the other sibling or siblings were

00:14:02.320 favored and how close they were into adulthood. Now, of course, we're looking at only siblings in

00:14:09.340 adulthood, but we asked them to reflect back. And we didn't define in any great way what being favored

00:14:15.580 meant. It was sort of a feeling. So if there is a favored sibling, there are two sides of that. Being favored

00:14:23.740 can be, of course, really pleasant, but it can also be very unpleasant, depending upon the way that the

00:14:29.980 being favored plays out. Now, there are some families where it was played off. It wasn't a big deal.

00:14:38.060 If there are a bunch of siblings and dad likes to hunt, and I'll say a son, it could be a daughter

00:14:43.960 likes to hunt. Everybody can sort of joke and say, oh, we know they really love each other. They just go off

00:14:49.760 altogether all the time and hunt. And it's not seen as necessarily being dismissed as a child. It's just a

00:14:58.860 public and comfortable acknowledgement that a parent and child really enjoy usually an activity together. So that

00:15:07.540 can work out very well. Obviously, when favoritism comes to the feeling that someone is being neglected or not

00:15:16.120 loved or not supportive, that's also a very, very dangerous and more painful kind of experience

00:15:23.480 for someone to have. So favoritism is a big thing and it can continue on into adulthood. There are,

00:15:32.960 of course, the other thorny issues around child rearing. If I have two children and one of them is born

00:15:39.160 with a disability, I may have to spend more time and do more with that child. And in those families,

00:15:47.180 there should be a great deal of communication about that. But you often get families where someone

00:15:53.340 may have a hidden disability, a hidden challenge, a hidden disability where it's sort of talked about

00:16:00.480 but not talked about and maybe a child needs more support and more time and the less disabled or less

00:16:07.740 challenged child doesn't get quite as much attention. And that's a really difficult thing

00:16:12.740 for any family to balance. So favoring is one issue. The second one is parental interference

00:16:19.920 in the relationship. And again, parents should, if they can, let their children work out issues to the

00:16:28.800 extent that they can without being interfered with. There are, of course, times when parents,

00:16:34.700 and we have a few chapters in the book on this where parents have to step in and have to protect

00:16:40.340 one child from another. There was a chapter where we interviewed a guy in his 60s who talked about

00:16:47.260 having been physically abused by his older brother. Parents naturally had to step in there to protect

00:16:54.620 them. But parents should be trying to stay out of their kids' lives when they need to work things out 0.70

00:17:03.220 because if children are left to work things out as children, they'll learn how to work things out

00:17:07.760 as adults. So favoritism and interference that begins in childhood does affect how close children

00:17:17.240 are when they become adults and how close they are with their siblings.

00:17:22.220 Something that's also interesting with favoritism is that there's research that there's more tension

00:17:29.040 with adult siblings when there's the perception that the father favors one of the siblings more,

00:17:36.040 but the perception of a mother's favoritism isn't predictive of sibling tension. And something else

00:17:41.620 that's interesting about favoritism is that the child who feels like he or she is the unfavored one,

00:17:48.320 their tendency for depression goes up. And that tendency for depression carries with them into adulthood.

00:17:53.420 Yeah. Yeah. I think if you grow up thinking that you are not favored by your parents, then you are

00:18:01.580 going to maybe be more likely to struggle with connections when you get into adulthood. You're

00:18:09.720 sitting in a classroom and the teacher doesn't call on you, but your hand is up. That's kind of a

00:18:16.380 revisiting of what happens when you're at home. Or you go to a fraternity party, a sorority party,

00:18:23.240 a dance, and people are not sort of willing to dance with you or approach you or talk to you.

00:18:30.040 You may think to yourself, here it goes again. I'm sort of being overlooked. And that's why some

00:18:37.440 of these things that can begin as a kernel can sprout and continue to grow into adulthood.

00:18:44.460 With the favoritism thing, it seems kind of tricky because there is a big subjective element to that,

00:18:48.900 right? One child could feel like, well, mom and dad favored the other kid, but it subjectively feels

00:18:55.320 like everyone else looks like, not really. And that's, I guess, another factor. Like if just

00:18:59.360 one child has a propensity to kind of be like, have a negativity bias about everything that can affect

00:19:05.180 the relationship between siblings. Yeah. It kind of opens up the question and maybe something I should

00:19:10.700 have started with a statement that no two people grow up in the same family. Yes, I've got an older

00:19:17.200 brother and older sister and we grew up together, but I never had the experience of having me as a

00:19:23.660 brother. So, and having the same configuration, we all are going to have different narratives on what our

00:19:32.700 family history is like and what an event is like. No two people can agree a hundred percent on anything

00:19:39.720 that they observe because they're coming at it from a totally different perspective with a different

00:19:44.880 person in the room than themselves. So the notion of a family narrative and I was favored. No, I was not

00:19:54.260 favored. No, I was favored. No, I was not favored from one sibling to the next, or I was favored

00:19:59.560 here. But I remember six months later, you were favored there. Those are all narratives that

00:20:05.680 families are going to have to work through. You also talk about in your research that a

00:20:10.260 parent's relationship with their own siblings can also influence the relationship their own

00:20:16.800 children have with each other. What does the research say there? Yeah, very interesting. What we found,

00:20:21.540 and we had to think about it for a while, we asked both sisters and brothers, in this case,

00:20:27.680 mothers and fathers also, siblings that were parents, if they were close, if they perceived their parents

00:20:35.380 as being close, I should say, with their own siblings when they were growing up. So if I grew

00:20:41.960 up in a household where I saw my father being close with his siblings, I was more apt to be close with my

00:20:49.080 siblings. So to be more succinct, father closeness or the perception of father closeness with

00:20:56.740 his siblings would often tend to make somebody more close with their own siblings. And about a third

00:21:05.880 of the people we interviewed said that they believed their father was close with his siblings. When it

00:21:13.560 came to mothers, 80% of the people we interviewed said their mothers were close with their siblings,

00:21:20.580 siblings. And that did not have the same effect. So mothers were seen as being much more close in general,

00:21:27.360 as we've said, with siblings, where it was in the minority that fathers said they were close with their

00:21:33.920 siblings. So in those cases, having a father and growing up in a home where a father put a lot of value and was

00:21:40.980 close with his siblings would tend to improve one's own relationship with one's own siblings.

00:21:47.400 So just to recap here, kids who have a father who's close with his siblings tend to be close

00:21:53.600 themselves. But a mother being close to her siblings doesn't seem to influence the closeness

00:21:58.940 of her own children. Though what's interesting is that there's some research out there that shows

00:22:04.840 that if a mother had a negative relationship with her siblings, her children are more likely to have

00:22:13.300 positive relationships with each other. And the thinking is it's because those moms try to correct 1.00

00:22:21.420 for things that went wrong in their birth families. And so they're intentionally trying to cultivate

00:22:27.820 with their own kids, you know, a sibling experience and bond that they didn't get to experience

00:22:34.320 themselves. We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:22:43.300 And now back to the show. So as you said earlier, at the beginning, our sibling relationship is the

00:22:49.340 longest relationship we have. And this is a person that's in our lives that we, I don't know, we kind

00:22:54.760 of compare ourselves to them, like how we're doing. In your research, do you find that children and then

00:23:00.820 even maybe adults like shape their own identity in order to differentiate themselves from their siblings?

00:23:07.320 Yeah, not so much my own research because I didn't do a lot on children. But yeah, from what I've read,

00:23:15.160 it seems to be that siblings have to sort of find their own place in a family. And if your brother or

00:23:22.440 sister is a great cellist, you may then decide to pick up the violin instead. So you're not directly

00:23:29.720 competing with the older and at least the beginning, the more competent player. Now, if you

00:23:37.260 pick up the cello as did your older sibling and you're much better immediately, you may continue

00:23:43.140 along with it. And these kinds of hidden or not maybe always overt forms of competition or choosing

00:23:53.840 a different path can, of course, continue throughout life. And those can lead to all kinds of feelings.

00:24:01.360 And one of the themes of the book about siblings and from our research is that these relationships

00:24:08.440 are defined in our book as being a combination of great affection, but also often affected by

00:24:17.840 ambivalence and ambiguity. That when we talk to people about their relationships, and you talked

00:24:26.260 about it initially about how your sibling may be your best friend and the person to whom you're

00:24:33.380 closest in the world or your siblings. And a lot of people said, I trust my siblings. I'm very close to

00:24:41.880 them. They're my best friend. I love being with them. There were also the minority of people that

00:24:48.640 said that I'm mixed about my sibling. I haven't been close to him my whole life. We grew up,

00:24:55.340 we moved apart. Maybe we've come back together now to take care of mom and dad. And that's been

00:25:00.980 a struggle. So there might be a lot of ambivalent feelings. And just as we can all remember maybe the

00:25:08.580 million complimentary things we heard from our father or mother, maybe we can also remember the

00:25:13.720 one or two at least less complimentary things. And those loom large. We have so many communications

00:25:20.380 with our siblings that of course, some of them are likely to be negative and maybe those stick with

00:25:27.020 us longer or perceived as being negative. And those can affect how we feel. Yes, I want my brother to do

00:25:35.380 well in life, but do I want him to do as well as me? Or do I want to sort of say, aha, I won because

00:25:41.780 that's the way we used to compete as brothers when we were young. So I think that's a normal thing that

00:25:49.680 we're trying to help people to understand that it's okay to have ambivalent feelings and still love

00:25:55.580 your sibling. And that affection is a very strong feeling and it tends to grow over time. The other

00:26:03.080 word to get in here is of course, the ambiguity. A lot of siblings we interviewed did not understand

00:26:10.260 why their brother or sister did certain things as an adult. Why did she marry that idiot? Or why did 1.00

00:26:18.500 he marry that jerk? I can't understand it. I can't understand their behavior. I don't know why they 1.00

00:26:25.040 continue to treat me like I'm 12 when I'm a competent adult who is navigating the world. So all these

00:26:33.620 sorts of things. And I can't understand why they're close to dad or mom after all the horrible things he or

00:26:39.600 she has done to them. So there's this, the three A's, the affection, the ambivalence, and the ambiguity

00:26:47.240 that really, if you think about it and step back, I think characterize a lot of adult relationships.

00:26:55.360 And again, we're trying to say in the book, these are normal. Don't think it has to be a Norman

00:26:59.780 Rockwell kind of loving family. They're going to be ups and downs in families across 40, 50 years of

00:27:08.260 family life together, or 60 or 70 years of family life together, or even longer now. So expect ups and

00:27:15.760 downs, but try and focus on things that are working on the love that should be shown in many families.

00:27:24.500 Staying in childhood, and we'll move on to young adulthood. I think a lot of research talks about

00:27:28.680 how the parents influence children and shape children and sort of teaching them and whatever.

00:27:33.880 But there's other research that says, you know, actually, kids probably spend more time with each

00:27:40.000 other, with their sibling, than mom and dad. So what sorts of things are we learning from our siblings

00:27:45.300 in childhood that carry with us into adulthood?

00:27:49.100 Well, we learn, of course, how to share the bathroom, how to share the kitchen, maybe how to share

00:27:55.320 a bedroom, or in some families, even have to share a bed with a sibling. So there's a lot of very,

00:28:01.800 I could almost say, forced physical closeness that comes along, depending upon the size of the house

00:28:09.760 and the number of children. And those can form a blueprint for how one forms intimate relationships

00:28:17.660 as an adult. In some cases, it doesn't mean you can't change the way you were raised, but it will

00:28:24.300 certainly influence what you are thinking about, how you feel about women and men and closeness.

00:28:32.480 So I think all those early experiences do set the stage for, but do not have to be the final act on what

00:28:40.160 happens when one comes into adulthood.

00:28:44.580 Okay, so when you're a kid, you probably spend a lot of time with your siblings, especially if they're close

00:28:47.980 in age to you. That's like, you know, it could be like the first 18 years of your life. You got this person

00:28:52.100 that you're just constantly in contact with. How does the relationship change as siblings shift

00:28:58.280 into adulthood?

00:29:00.460 Yeah, I think one of the greatest tasks in life is to figure out how to grow up, move away from home,

00:29:06.800 perhaps with a partner, perhaps not, yet still stay connected to the family. So that's where the

00:29:13.360 struggle comes in. How do we all grow up, perhaps get married, perhaps have kids, yet still stay loyal

00:29:21.240 or connected to our family. And so many people do grow up, they do leave home, they move out of town,

00:29:30.900 they move away, and they're balancing their lives, they're balancing maybe their partner or their

00:29:37.160 spouse's lives and families, and they're trying to figure out how to stay close to both sides of a

00:29:44.560 family in adulthood. And then as they age and their parents age and become ill, they then as siblings

00:29:53.760 have to come back together as a group to figure out how to do the caretaking of parents and how to

00:30:01.000 negotiate if the parents die, when the parents die, how to negotiate the estate. And there may be

00:30:09.140 well-meaning parents that will call me into the room and say, you know, Jeff, I want you to have that

00:30:16.800 painting on the wall after I die. And I say, that's great, I've always loved that painting, thanks, dad.

00:30:22.460 And then my brother comes in, or my sister comes in, and my dad tells my brother's sister the exact same

00:30:29.200 thing because he forgot that he told me. Well, my father dies, and then we struggle over who's supposed

00:30:34.720 to get that, and how parents divide up their estate. And of course, some siblings need more

00:30:40.880 than others. Siblings may marry people that are schoolteachers and not earning much money, or

00:30:47.740 marrying people in business that are earning a huge amount of money. So there are always those things

00:30:53.280 that maybe start to reverberate down to, well, here's the favoritism again that happened when I was

00:31:00.460 six. Or here I thought I had grown up and separated from the family and established myself as a competent

00:31:07.420 adult, but I'm back again dealing with the same issues I've always had to deal with the family.

00:31:14.280 There they go again, repeating these patterns of favoritism, or my being dismissed, or my being

00:31:21.580 favored, and I don't want the burden of taking care of my other siblings. So there's so many factors

00:31:27.740 that can affect that. Okay, so it sounds like when you shift into young adulthood, that relationship

00:31:32.200 with your sibling could drift apart, especially if you move out of state and you move far away from

00:31:36.260 them. And then also you're just getting busy with life, raising your own family, work, etc. And then

00:31:41.520 as you shift into middle age and your parents get older and you have to be concerned about their health

00:31:47.640 and helping them out, that's when siblings are likely to come back together again.

00:31:52.140 Right. And of course, if they've stayed in touch and stayed close, then that's not a struggle for

00:31:59.560 them. But if they've moved away and have felt the need to establish an identity strongly different

00:32:05.440 from their family identity, that may make other siblings somewhat resentful of them all of a sudden

00:32:12.280 coming back into the fold if that person has drifted too far from the family.

00:32:17.720 So speaking about that sort of young adulthood period, I guess the factors that influence whether

00:32:21.820 siblings stay connected through that sort of young adulthood period, like 20s, 30s, maybe early

00:32:27.900 40s, is if they had a good relationship when they were kids or maybe they saw their parents had a good

00:32:33.660 relationship with their siblings, that pattern is likely to follow through with them, correct?

00:32:38.320 Yes, it is. And of course, who they marry is important too. If they marry someone that values

00:32:44.560 family life and staying connected to everybody on both sides of the family,

00:32:48.820 they're more likely to stay in touch and to be a force for pulling the family together.

00:32:56.820 Some people grow up and are attracted to people that will help them separate from their families.

00:33:03.340 Others are attracted to people that will help them to stay connected to their family.

00:33:07.700 So there are all these different factors that come in play as you grow up and begin to

00:33:12.780 establish a work life, establish a partner life, and then have children that maybe

00:33:19.340 pull the family further apart or help the family to stay together.

00:33:24.920 Yeah, I think it's always interesting to kind of survey your friends about their relationship with

00:33:28.020 their siblings. And like it's some friends are like, yeah, I talk to my sister every day.

00:33:33.160 We FaceTime each other. And then there's some other people that's like, yeah, you know,

00:33:37.400 we call each other on Christmas and say, Merry Christmas. And that's about it. And it's not

00:33:42.200 like they'd hate their siblings. It's just like, well, we just got, we're just busy. And it's just

00:33:45.860 not a priority for either of us.

00:33:48.760 Right. Probably, probably the seeds for that could have been sown in childhood, or maybe they were

00:33:54.000 sown in adulthood. Maybe they met somebody or have married somebody who is pulling them in a

00:34:00.320 certain direction, or maybe doesn't even like, like the family all that, all that much too.

00:34:05.640 There are so many different factors that can come into play when people move away and have to go

00:34:12.880 away to school for a special program or have to take a job on a different coast. So many of these

00:34:19.800 factors can affect what happens with these relationships across the lifespan.

00:34:25.600 And you mentioned another one early on, gender can play a factor. Sisters typically do more work to 1.00

00:34:30.660 stay connected with siblings. Brothers, not so much.

00:34:33.920 Right. And of course, traditionally, when taking care of older parents, the women would be the ones 1.00

00:34:41.260 doing the physical care and sort of checking in while the brothers might be handling the money.

00:34:49.220 And that's at least historically because men were more likely to be in the workforce than women.

00:34:55.060 That, of course, has changed with women taking much greater role in helping with the finances and men 0.83

00:35:02.780 feeling more comfortable and helping with the physical care, the driving, the cleaning up around

00:35:07.620 the house. So all these things are becoming more, I guess, intermixed and less specific to any one

00:35:14.640 gender.

00:35:15.840 So returning to this idea of classifying sibling relationships as affectionate, ambivalent,

00:35:20.960 and ambiguous. So you said the research shows in your surveys that most people,

00:35:25.020 they have like an affectionate relationship with their sibling.

00:35:27.440 But then also even those affectionate things can be, you know, sort of pocketed with ambiguity or

00:35:32.760 ambivalence. And then some of them might just be completely ambivalent. I'm curious, like, how do

00:35:37.720 two people who spend so much time together for perhaps, you know, two decades end up feeling

00:35:43.960 completely ambivalent towards each other? Right? They just like, like, how does that happen? And what,

00:35:49.180 what does an ambivalent sibling relationship look like?

00:35:52.180 Well, well, we grow up and we witness somebody else doing things that aren't, aren't very nice to

00:35:59.700 other people or to themselves. You may be in high school with your older or younger sibling and you

00:36:07.480 don't like their behavior. And that sort of begins a narrative in your head or continues a narrative in

00:36:15.520 your head that my sibling wasn't very nice to me when we were young. And I see he's not very nice to

00:36:21.880 other people too. And yeah, he's my sibling and mom and dad said we should always be close, but I don't

00:36:28.380 feel all that close to him because he's just not the kind of person that I enjoy being around. So there

00:36:35.580 are paths that people can take and there are ways that people can sort of not connect that may help to

00:36:44.040 build a narrative that maybe has existed in the family for a variety of generations ahead. And it's

00:36:51.220 getting, getting played out. You hear your parents talk about not liking their own siblings or you

00:36:57.440 don't trust, you know, don't trust uncle Joe or don't trust aunt, aunt Millie. And so you begin to

00:37:03.880 be cautious around family and that can sort of feed into this narrative of, I don't really like

00:37:10.800 this person, but I'm, but I'm stuck with them.

00:37:14.720 And then also, yeah, you see your siblings, how they treat your parents. Maybe they just cause a lot

00:37:18.380 of stress and problems for your parents. And you kind of resent that and you're like, ah, geez,

00:37:21.740 I just don't want anything to do with you because you're causing mom and dad just so much, just so

00:37:25.900 much grief. Right. I think that's a really good point. I think this notion that, and again, this,

00:37:31.980 this gentleman who was in his sixties, who was abused by his brother said in the interview that

00:37:37.600 the brother was such a difficult person that the family never took vacations. They were just

00:37:43.800 so focused on trying to control his behavior that there was sort of no fun in the family. He,

00:37:52.000 for whatever reason, you know, sucked all the fun out of the, out of the family. So I think that

00:37:57.580 things can get going that make, uh, being together as a family, just not as much fun as it might be if

00:38:05.140 everybody enjoyed playing the same, same games together on, on Saturday night. If there's somebody who

00:38:11.220 was hanging out in his room and not wanting to join the crowd, it's going to draw down the fun

00:38:18.460 from the family. And I think another factor that could play into the, the ambivalence between

00:38:23.440 siblings is there's research out there that shows that personality wise, two siblings are nearly as

00:38:30.940 dissimilar as two people randomly drawn from the population. So siblings, you know, they might look

00:38:37.740 alike. They've got this shared history, but they often just don't have a lot in common and their

00:38:42.900 personalities just don't jive. So I think that could be another factor that could contribute to

00:38:48.720 ambivalence. So we talked about ambivalence and then with ambiguity, this is something where,

00:38:54.740 you know, your sibling does something where you're not sure what that meant. So, you know, for example,

00:39:01.740 they didn't invite you to this thing and you're thinking, well, what does that mean? And that

00:39:07.860 ambiguity can actually lead to greater feelings of ambivalence. Yes. I think the two definitely do

00:39:14.640 feed each other. If you don't understand why someone has acted towards you or towards somebody else,

00:39:21.380 you tend to be a little bit more cautious around them and that's going to engender more mixed feelings

00:39:28.280 towards that person. Let's talk about siblings who just decide to just completely cut off or sever

00:39:35.640 the relationship with their sibling. What does the research say about that? Like what causes those

00:39:39.760 cutoffs? People sometimes, again, don't know why their siblings drift off. And the more siblings

00:39:47.900 there are, if you're one of five or six siblings, there's more likely to be somebody who has decided to

00:39:54.980 grow his own way through the waters of life. So it can be because of something perceived or something

00:40:03.800 that happened at the hands of a parent that people want nothing to do with the family. It can be the

00:40:10.100 feeling that I just don't fit in here. It can be having a relationship with somebody, a partner or

00:40:18.000 spouse that pulls you away from the family. It can be that you're spinning in one direction and the

00:40:25.500 other family members are spinning in another direction. There's nothing really to do with

00:40:30.900 anybody, just that you never really connected on any deep level. And you may stay in touch every so

00:40:38.620 often, but you really enjoy not being with the family. You don't want to be put back into a role

00:40:44.160 that's uncomfortable. You have people that don't go to their high school reunion 50 years later

00:40:51.540 because they never had a good time in high school. They didn't like themselves in high school or they

00:40:55.640 were bullied or not liked in high school. So why go back to your reunion if it was never a happy time

00:41:02.000 of your life? I think that's the same sort of pattern that can happen in families. If you've just

00:41:07.700 struggled the whole life, your whole life with connecting to your family members, it's going to

00:41:14.800 make it less fun to stay in touch. And you may need out of your own protection for your mental health

00:41:22.160 or physical health to stay away from your family. Can those rifts ever be mended? Have you seen people

00:41:28.100 where there was a big cutoff, but then they kind of worked together to bring the relationship to back?

00:41:33.280 Yes, absolutely. And it happened with, again, this guy that I talked about that was physically

00:41:39.620 abused by his older brother. They are now back in touch. And this guy just flew out to spend a few

00:41:46.360 days with his older brother, who is now in his late 70s and pretty frail. So aside from that extreme

00:41:55.600 example, people can always change. I can pick up a book and read something and change how I feel about

00:42:02.400 someone. I can watch a movie and say, oh, those siblings got closer. Why can't I get closer with

00:42:09.180 mine? Maybe I'll reach out. And I would encourage people to write a narrative for themselves that

00:42:16.900 makes them feel good about their sibling relations. Even if you've got a sibling who is out of touch

00:42:23.940 and seemingly doesn't want anything to do with you, you may feel better about yourself if you

00:42:30.260 continue to reach out once a year or once a month with a card or an email. Even if that sibling does

00:42:38.040 not respond, you might like yourself more if you have written a narrative where you're the one that's

00:42:45.360 reaching out. So returning to the sibling relationship in middle age, so they start coming

00:42:51.100 together, usually coming back together because mom and dad has an issue. How does the relationship

00:42:56.300 change? When you were kids, there might have been favoritism and resentment about that.

00:43:01.620 Does that stuff stay there or do you tend to grow out of that as you get into your 40s, 50s, and 60s?

00:43:07.760 We found a very clear change across time. People tend to trust each other more. They tend to be less

00:43:16.080 competitive. They tend to like their siblings more across time. I think they tend to value their

00:43:23.980 siblings more with time. That's the great part about growing old. You become less focused on the

00:43:30.940 small stuff and maybe more focused on the existential stuff. Siblings sometimes, even if they're married,

00:43:41.000 will turn to each other for care. There was one case that is an interview I did with a group of

00:43:48.500 sisters. One of the sisters had died about a year before the interview I did, and the other sisters

00:43:55.560 didn't think that she had been well taken care of by her husband as she was dying. So they sort of got

00:44:02.820 on their horses and were trying to help out a lot and disagreed with the way she was being taken care of

00:44:09.760 by her husband. So those kinds of things can cause people that are close to get closer.

00:44:17.380 And the example of the brother can cause somebody who was very distant and cut off to decide over

00:44:24.320 time, let's try and make something meaningful out of this last stage of our lives.

00:44:29.700 But as you said, there could be some conflict in middle age too, but it's usually around mom and dad.

00:44:33.740 Like what are we going to do with mom and dad or how are we going to do the estate? I thought it was

00:44:37.580 interesting. There was some research in the book where you highlighted that in some sibling

00:44:41.760 relationships, they actually start drawing further apart after mom and dad died. Did I read that right?

00:44:48.620 Yes, absolutely. So, you know, it's not surprising, but at the death of the first or second parent,

00:44:54.980 three things can happen in the sibling relationship. You draw closer because maybe mom was keeping people 0.72

00:45:01.820 apart or you just never enjoyed the interaction with mom. You become more distant because mom's house

00:45:09.840 was where you went for Thanksgiving and she was the magnet that drew everyone together for the holidays

00:45:15.920 or the death has no impact. My mother died at the age of 98 a few years ago after having dementia

00:45:25.300 for a few years. So, we had already adjusted. We had accepted she was going to die,

00:45:31.060 that she was no longer a force, that we were going to work out how to take care of her,

00:45:36.300 which the three of us did. And her death didn't change our relationship at all because we had

00:45:42.060 already absorbed her loss into the ongoing relationship that we had prior to her death.

00:45:50.840 I'm curious, is there any insight from your work and then maybe the research of others on what parents

00:45:55.480 can do who have, you know, kids at home right now to ensure their kids have strong sibling relationships

00:46:00.960 from childhood into adulthood?

00:46:03.220 I think when parents show that they are trying to maintain a healthy relationship with their own sibling,

00:46:11.160 first of all, that can be a role model. Secondly, I think discussions around how difficult emotional

00:46:18.540 relationships are handled with others, which happens all the time when people talk over

00:46:25.000 the dinner table about what happened at work or what happened at school or what happened with friends

00:46:29.520 or family. I think all those are a template for children as to how parents might expect the

00:46:36.740 children to handle their own relationships. So, I'd be very aware of how intimate relationships,

00:46:45.340 friendships are, and work relationships and sibling relationships are all talked about because

00:46:52.320 those are going to be important life lessons that children are going to hear and will affect

00:46:58.620 how they see their own sibling. And of course, parents need to be attuned to when siblings need

00:47:04.380 to be given their own identity, their own time with a parent. All those things are important in terms of

00:47:12.040 not forcing siblings together if you can give them some space from each other. And of course,

00:47:18.400 on the other hand, allowing closeness if that's what they want.

00:47:23.020 Oh, what about people who've got adult siblings and they want to strengthen those relationships?

00:47:27.280 Anything from the research or your work there that can help?

00:47:30.640 Reach out to them. Most of the requests I get for help, I get people who read the book and say,

00:47:36.180 can you help me with the relationship? I wish I was closer is usually what we get. The other side

00:47:43.000 of that is that I don't want to be as close as this sibling wants to be with me. So, it's usually

00:47:48.720 around someone has drifted away and I want to reestablish a relationship. One approach I got from somebody

00:47:56.580 a few years ago was that something happened between my sister and me many years ago and she will

00:48:03.180 never forgive me for that, yet I'm trying to get this relationship to work. And she thinks the sister 0.87

00:48:10.160 sort of made more of it than she wanted to make of it. So, there can be a lot of things around how

00:48:17.780 close to get to a sibling that bring people into treatment. And again, I think to work that out,

00:48:25.420 you're going to have to have both people willing to change or open up a little bit about what they

00:48:32.280 want the relationship to be and drop what the relationship was. That requires maybe some level

00:48:39.280 of forgiveness, depending upon who feels they need to forgive. And it's going to be a willingness

00:48:46.040 to move forward. The important thing to remember is that how those relationships get worked out in

00:48:53.160 adulthood, send a powerful message to your own family. So, if I'm not close to my siblings, am I sending

00:49:00.300 a difficult message to my own children about how important I think their relationship is? And

00:49:07.020 that's where you can attempt to change the narrative and say, I'm going to try and reach out even if she

00:49:13.340 doesn't respond to me, even if he doesn't respond, I'm going to feel better about myself if I want to

00:49:18.960 continue to try and build a positive, healthy relationship. And that's how you should handle

00:49:25.220 other relationships in your life is the message to give your kids.

00:49:29.540 Well, Jeffrey, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people

00:49:31.940 can go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:49:34.780 I guess aside from going to Amazon and looking at the book, and that's where sort of most of

00:49:41.080 the information will be, it will be in the book.

00:49:43.720 Fantastic. Well, Jeffrey Greif, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:49:46.600 Thank you, Brett. This is great.

00:49:48.880 My guest there is Jeffrey Greif. He's the co-author of the book, Adult Siblings. It's available

00:49:52.120 on Amazon.com. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash siblings, where we find links

00:49:55.880 to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:05.200 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

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00:50:40.540 Remind you on this AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

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The Art of Manliness - December 19, 2022

The Affectionate, Ambiguous, and Surprisingly Ambivalent Relationship Between Siblings

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