Sean Collins

Allie! You recently reported about sibling relationships. What did you find?

Allie Volpe

I spoke with a few experts on siblings — including the co-author of a book called Adult Sibling Relationships, Geoffrey Greif. 

Greif and his co-author, Michael Woolley, surveyed a bunch of people about their siblings, and found that 64 percent of respondents said they were good friends with the sibling, and 45 percent considered a sibling one of their best friends. They also found that 62 percent of people had mixed feelings about their sibling. So you can love them and consider them a best friend, but you also are annoyed by them sometimes. 

Basically, I found that, like all relationships, sibling relationships are not ones that are completely positive.

Sean Collins

One thing that stood out to me in your piece is that there were people who told you they felt pressured to be friends with their siblings. Is that a common thing?

Allie Volpe

All of the non-expert folks that I spoke to said they felt some sort of pressure from their parents to be closer to their siblings. Even when they were fighting in childhood, they always had mom or dad in their ear being like, These are the people who will have your back forever and you need to be close with these people. 

Parental influence is huge. But the inspiration for that came from different places. Some people told me, Oh, my mom and dad are not close with their siblings, so they wanted us to be close. Or on the contrary, My mom and dad are very close with their siblings, and they want that for us too. 

It makes sense that these two dynamics would influence how parents would want their own children to connect. And it also makes sense that no parent wants their kids to hate each other either.

Sean Collins

You just gave me a very visceral flashback. But anyway, what happens when siblings are forced to be friends? How does that affect their relationships as they grow up?

Allie Volpe

Greif told me that adult sibling relationships boil down to three factors: affection, ambivalence, and ambiguity. 

If you're forced to be close, you might have more ambiguity and ambivalence for them, and less affection. If you feel like you're doing this out of obligation, a lot of times these relationships aren't as strong. 

The opposite is also possible. 

One of the women I spoke to for the story has a relationship with her sister — who is older by a year — that was driven by affection. They were always really close growing up, and they always envisioned being close in adulthood.

That younger sister is 29 now, and is living separately from her sister for the first time ever — they chose to live together for 28 years because they love each other so much. They loved coming home from work, and just hanging out on the couch and having their sister there to be the first person they told big news to. 

I should say that for all of these dynamics, everything is normal. You shouldn't feel bad if you're not super close to your siblings. And if they are your best friend, you shouldn't feel weird about that either. It's all normal and fine.

Sean Collins

Did you find that some sibling relationships change over time?

Allie Volpe

Experts told me that in childhood, sibling relationships can be really intense, because you are learning what it is to be a person with this other person, are dealing with a lot of intense feelings, and you can't escape them. That was definitely the case for me — me and my sister got in so many fights, but it was like, I guess we gotta figure it out, I literally cannot escape you. 

As you go through life, and as people mature, move out of the house, and start focusing on peer relationships, friend relationships, romantic relationships, siblings can become less important. One researcher told me that if you aren't already pretty close in adolescence, chances are pretty good that you won’t come back together later in life. 

One variable there can be when siblings start having their own families. In my family, my mom is one of five sisters, and they're all very close, but having kids brought them closer together. Death of parents can also bring siblings together, and in a really intense way. 

So it can go either way, but if there’s nothing keeping siblings together in the first place, they may go their separate ways after periods of temporary closeness.

Sean Collins

Should siblings be friends?

Allie Volpe

That's a good question. Something that came up in the reporting was that, if you want to feel closer to your sibling, you can't force them to be closer to you — there has to be mutual buy-in. You can't force someone to call you more, or answer the phone when you call them. 

Should is a strong word, but if it comes from mutual, internal desire, then yes, you should be friends.