my brother and I find that living in different states, not talking, and refusing to acknowledge that the other one exists works wonders.

It probably sucks for the youngest as he has to play communication intermediary but...you know...youngest sibling problems.

By the time WE youngest arrived all the family decisions were DONE. Like we've never existed. Whatever. Thanks.

In the way that only rich CT country-club conservatives can suck.

As soon as he was no longer cute enough to serve as an accessory, he was foisted off.

I moved to Houston from Boston to get a teaching job. getting away from two horrible family members was an added bonus.

Accept what you can't change, take them for who they are, and try to find the reason you have loved them for 60 years.

2 minutes every time she comes over and then I send it to all my friends for a good laugh. My oldest brother I say hi to about once every two years when he comes by to visit my mother. In regards to my youngest brother I completely ignore him to the point where I now don't even think of him as my brother. The only time I even think about him is when I see a thread like this one. This method has worked successfully for the last 20 years. I do hope my children get a long better.

Crack me up. A Lady of few words!

Life is too short to be stressing over people who cause you constant grief. You know each other through the accident of birth. That does not obligate you to put up with unnecessary drama in your life.

The way I deal with it is - he lives in Florida, I live in Alaska.


Actually, they do come up here fairly frequently, and we get along much better than we did when we were younger. He's a solid midwest salt-of-the-earth type and I'm an aging hippie. We're just not alike.

It took me over fifty years to figure out that the humor that made my sister the center of attention in our family was actually a display of passive aggressive behavior. Her humor is unkind, and maybe cruel. Because I was next in line in our family, I think I took the brunt of the jokes.

An incredible personal transformation had to take place before I could finally beat her at her own game. You see, I could never rise to her level of meanness because, it isn't in my personality to be mean. I really didn't want to hurt her feelings, though there were plenty of avenues to work with.

But now that we're old ladies, our conversations are like a scene from the Golden Girls.

is totally negative and unsupportive of anything I say. We are both elderly now and she lives 300 miles away. I hate the drive there and when I was still going through the motions of visiting every couple of months she would be in an uptight, rigid, mood. She is a classic never-married schoolmarm (poor students). She has a small circle of church girlfriends, also never-married, and some extended family. Poor communication skills are her: "You know what I meant to say." She has an idealized, DISNEY version of our family history, and tries to stop me from talking when I run afoul of it, which is every sentence.

Long ago I tried to adjust by telling myself, you can't go to an orange tree and ask for an apple and vice versa. Iow, each person or whatever being has its innate characteristics and capabilities and to expect otherwise is self-defeating.

What gets me at this stage of our "adult"hood is that we have no jurisdiction over each other. I call and try to tell her funny stories about my daily little non-events or characters at the, say, watering hole, and she has NO concept of just conversation for its own sake, certainly NO sense of humor. When she tells her own approved family stories, there is NO irony. There are NO lessons learned, no moral to the story, and her story telling technique is gory detail piled on gory detail, not like mine where details are edited to highlight the coming punchline. She stops me, tries to shut me up. And when it's in front of others, I blurt out, "DON'T try to stop me!1" which leads others to think I'm so mean to her.

But I ramble.

Sometimes, there is no recourse. It sounds like you are the one that wants her in your life and I'm afraid that she will never be there for you, the way you hope she would be.

Two things might help: First, distance makes the heart grow fonder. Second, find the events where she is the most civil to you and make yourself available only during those times.

That's how my older sister is. Our father was an abusive, out-of-control, late-stage alcoholic, who died from alcoholism when we were
all still little kids. To hear her talk about him, you'd never dream it was the same person. Also, she excuses everything he did or didn't do. If he'd shot somebody, she'd say that the other person should have gotten out of the way of the bullet.

We rarely have communication these days. Our mother died some years ago, and when parents are gone it definitely makes a difference.

I think older sister has decided to go low contact with me. I just try to accept it. And I don't intend to get into any discussions with her about our family of origin. She has said some mean and hurtful things to me. That's the way she is--she think she's entitled to say ugly things, but if somebody says something she doesn't like--oh, she's the little victim and sister is SO MEAN....

But I'm rambling too. I feel your pain.

Dr David VISCOTT. In months/years of his show, inevitably some calls/themes/memes tended to repeat. Fairly frequently, a caller would say they had undergone bad stuff as a kid from older relatives. This ranged from the relatively minor to the horrendously abusive. The caller would say that now at a mature age they felt strong enough to confront the bad relative, who was now in advanced age. Dr VISCOTT would wait out the story each time, then would slam back: "LEAVE THE OLD PEOPLE ALONE!1 They probably never had insight into what they were doing at the time and certainly won't have any now! LEAVE THE OLD PEOPLE ALONE!1"

(I tend to answer my own questions. I have to do my mantra, you can't ask an orange tree for an apple and vice versa. )

After the heinous acts she and her oldest daughter committed while my father was dying - including literally turning her back on our mother. The only reason she started talking to Mom again was that she needed money.

She has always been manipulative and cruel but I put up with it for my parents' sake. But to do what she did to Mom while Dad was dying was beyond anything I had ever seen from anyone.

I will not talk to her by choice ever again - same for her psychotic daughter.

Guilt from feeling this way drove me to a counselor after Dad's funeral. The counselor agreed with me. There is no healthy way to deal with someone as insane as she and her oldest child are. And it's not just me - her other daughter refuses to have any contact with the two of them, too.

Sorry I couldn't resist.

It depends on the problem. I have a narcissist for a sibling (one of them), and there is no redeeming our "relationship".
Other cases may be just a matter of time and healing.

After childhood conflicts and years of family drama, some minor, some major, I dropped my brother and cousins. I had no intention of dropping my sister, but due to her attachment to our brother, she was swept up in the purge. Logistically, it was easy; brother and sister live in another country. Cousins live about 35 miles from here so there isn't the possibility I will inadvertently run into them at any time. I guess the bottom line is that there probably wasn't much love to begin with so the break was painless. It has been over 13 years and I'm at peace with it.

If we see each other we are cordial but we don't exchange "how ya doing" because we don't give no fucks. His only son is a confused big-mouth that I keep my young kids away from. His wife has him "cucked" over Facebook & it's just hi-larious watching her Facebook postings when he's out of town.

If it were not the fact that we're bros, we'd have nothing to do with each other. We really have nothing in common.

As for how to deal? Whenever he's around, I act like everything is groovy & things couldn't be better. I brag about loosing weight, my bench press is up & I'll be sure to mention that I'm now doing squats with our nephew at his meathead gym.

If it's chronic betrayal or repeated abuse....Dump them for the rest of your life

If it's less than that....Cut them off, politely when they get annoying and take a little sibling time out.