From Siblings To Friends

This will be a short and annoyingly vague post, but I felt compelled to write something.

I think one of the ways I realize I’m an adult is reflecting on how the relationships with my immediate family members changes. Like the way my mom became more of my friend. She’s definitely still my parent, but we also have a friendship vibe now that didn’t exist when I was younger when she was only my parent. Course, I have siblings trying to become caretakers to my parents who do not need or want caretakers, but that is a whole other conversation about adulthood and changing family relationships.

The other relationships were the sibling dynamics. I have multiple siblings and I could write a whole reflection on each of them. But I’ll just focus on one sibling for now.

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When we were little, I used to think Sibling and I were alike. We look fairly similar in photos from when we were little.

Self-portrait of me and my sibling when we were little. Just kidding. This is a stock photo. Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

As we grew up, we looked less and less similar. (Actually, today, I don’t think I look anything like any of my siblings, nor do I think they look anything like each other.) I see it almost as a physical manifestation of the fact that personality-wise, we are also completely different people. We have wildly different interests, passions, talents, values, outlooks, lifestyles – everything! We are nothing alike. To the point where, even though I love my sibling dearly, even though I have a huge amount of respect for my sibling, and I enjoy spending time with my sibling, I found small talk with them, particularly small talk over the phone or Zoom call, almost painful at times because we had so little in common.

Also, because this was my sibling and not my friend, I was constantly in that mode of trying not to look inferior or share too much, which ruled out most conversation topics. Actually, I just realized I do this with all my in-person friends too (at least the ones I still talk to) so maybe that didn’t make a difference.

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Fast-forward to a recent phone conversation with this sibling.

What really struck me was how, during the conversation, each of us were kind of dancing around each other, keeping this wide distance of privacy and between us. After all, we were siblings, but not close friends or confidantes.

And yet, there was this recognition that we could bridge that gap. That we were more similar than previously assumed. That we could really be true friends in addition to being siblings.

This was my facial expression mid conversation-dancing. Like, “You mean to tell me we don’t have to dance around each other, and we can actually be confidantes?! What?!?!?!?!” Photo by Jansel Ferma from Pexels

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The thing about siblings is that so much of your early relationship is so heavily influenced by all these other factors. Your birth order and age gap. The labels from your parents, teachers, school, classmates. You know, the “this one is the smart one, this one is the artist”, everyone-in-a-specific-labeled-category kind of thinking. If your parents encourage any weird dynamics like through favoritism or rivalry whatever.

Maybe that’s really what relationship-building in adulthood is about – shedding off all those other labels, layers, and history. Figuring out how to have relationships without those pre-conceived notions.