Cinderslut’s recent post on brothers has inspired us all to think more about our sibling relationships. And so I’m taking you on a journey into the depths of my relationships with my brothers.
I am the youngest of three, and the only girl in my family. Growing up, I went through the normal stages of irritation with my brothers, in which they teased me and made me do things because they were bigger and they could–and I retaliated by being as obnoxious as possible. However, I came to the conclusion about halfway through highschool that I was ready to be friends with my brothers. I wanted them to accept me as an equal and have chats in which we imparted wisdom to each other. I’ll admit, I was a bit idealistic. And let’s just say that my brothers were not quite ready to have that kind of relationship when I was.
But now, we are all adults, we are all married, and we all live within a three mile radius of each other. So, that means things are different now–right? Wrong. It’s funny how distant you can feel from someone who lives in the same city as you. I don’t want to say we have a bad relationship, because that’s not true. We have no problems with each other, and there has been no love lost between us. It’s more that we seem to not really have much of a relationship at all. Mainly, our relationship consists of one of them calling me with the pretense of just catching up, and then after two minutes they “subtly” slip in the fact that they are looking for a babysitter on Saturday. Now of course, I love to be with my niece and nephew and am totally willing to babysit, I just find it humorous the way they ask me. I’d rather they just be up front with it, because the second I see one of their names on my caller ID I know that they are calling to ask a favor of me. Just chatting on the phone with my brothers about life is never something that happens.
Sometimes I find myself asking why? Why can’t I just call up my brothers to chat? Why is the only time I see them when I’m babysitting their kid? Should it be different? Do I still want it to be different? When my brothers and I first ended up in the same town as adults, I did try a little bit to involve them more in my life. I had them and their wives over to my house for dinner and talked about how we should have family get togethers once a month. Of course they said, “yeah that could be fun,” but none of them ever made the effort to make it happen, and I decided I didn’t want to be the instigator every time, so I just let our relationship slide into nothingness. I have no problem accepting some of the blame for the way our relationship is. But at the time it just felt like too much work to be the only one constantly pushing to spend time together. And now it’s just the way it is. The scary thing is that part of me is ok with things the way they are. I’ve accepted the fact that they are a 15 minute drive from me and I only see them every few months. But then the other part of me feels guilty that I’ve become ok with things the way they are.
I guess you could say that when it comes to my brothers I’ve just become lazy. It’s kind of sad, because I am so much a people person, and I love working at my other friendships. So why have I stopped working on two of the relationships that should mean the most?
Maybe it’s harder to maintain relationships with brothers in general because we don’t have the bond of femaleness/sisterhood to keep us close. I’d say keep making the effort–it will be worth it. 🙂