siblings - do you get along with yours?

We get along pretty well, but when we all get together (which also usually involves my mom being there) there is some sort of emotional breakdown. This past time it was everyone talking to one sister about her control issues/ eating disorder and her crying and my mom getting more upset with her instead of acting softer... but anyway, it isn't ALWAYS like that. It's just that my family - as individuals - is emotional enough as it is. Get us all together and we make a great(?) Lifetime for Women Dramatic Presentation, complete with feminine product commercials.

Explanation of the most recent blow-up: my brother has been writing for a right-wing internet magazine for some time. He managed to write a series of anti-Islam articles so racist and hate-fuelled that the Council on American Islamic Relations actually filed a complaint against them.

He was actually PROUD of this fact, and sent a round-robin email to the entire family congratulating himself on it. When I sent back a snarccy email saying that he'd been brainwashed by Bushes, he sent back a 10k diatribe about how Oil is the lifeblood of modern society and fighting over oil is like fighting over oxygen or water or food and sending on a whole frenzy of hate-speech about the Taliban in specific and Islam in general.

(Totally ignoring the fact that HIS LOT put the bloody Taliban in power, and... if the Republican party had their way, that as a woman and as an artist, I'd have less rights than in your average Islamic State, oh of course, barring the right to display my legs as a sexual object...)

I was tempted to fire back a resulting diatribe about how Ed and I were going to modify his car to run on renewable chip-oil and spell out the Bush-Taliban-Bin-Laden links one by one by one, but I didn't. I just reminded him that Incitement To Hate Speech (or whatever it's called) is a crime in the UK, and blocked his email address from my account.

How can people like this exist? How can I share 50% of my DNA with someone who disgusts me on such a fundamental level?

So, erm, to answer the question, until I was about 9, he refused to accept that I was a separate person, so completely did he dominate me (this was called "love" and "devotion" in my family.) At the age of 9, we started fighting so fiercely we had to be sent to separate prep schools. We've never got along since. We've had brief periods of closeness, due to having no one else, but we fundamentally loathe each other and everything the other person stands for.

By the way, Kate, that's both terrible and fascinating. Hard luck, I guess. It's frustrating enough when my brother is just so obviously slightly wrong on something, but he's never ever THAT wrong. My commiserations.

technically, you share 50% of your dna with either of your parents, but not necessarily your siblings.

Growing up in a military family like mine means awareness of what that can mean, and while I was lucky enough that my dad's work never brought him into open conflict anywhere, I am unduly sensitive to anyone saying in any situation 'yes we MUST fight' without wanting to put him- (or her-) self on the [front]line. That's a lot of fellow citizens we're talking about in the abstract rather than as people, and at one point it would have been my dad he would have been talking about.

And if your brother has a problem with that, please, I'd LOVE to talk to him. Because as far as I'm concerned if he's not there being deployed or actually involved in the planning, he doesn't have the right to talk about smack.

My mother tells me not to pay too much attention to his diatribes, making excuses for him such as "he's mentally ill." 1) being mentally ill is NO EXCUSE, he still knows what he is saying, thinks it out rationally and attempts to defend it as such and 2) even if it were an excuse for him, people are still reading this garbage and taking it as truth.

Ah. Then he can just fuck right off. (I have no problem with those from other countries criticizing America, I have plenty of problems with those from other countries saying we should send in the troops to keep them happy...)

I'll take this opportunity to apologise for (and hopefully negate from existence) the embarrassment I've brought on him with my unchained id, up to and including THIS VERY POST. Meta-thread!

We share a house and that works pretty well. We are both narcissistic so we don't have a lot of conversations because we both just want to talk about ourselves but neither of us want to hear about the other - but that's okay.

I like MTV more than he does but we both love Jackass.

I borrow his clothes but he doesn't borrow mine. We do steal each others hair product.

I've three older step-siblings, but as we became family after we were all grown and out of the house we never had to deal with much in the way of sibling-rivalry, and so have been able to get to know each other as friends. I have one full-sister, and she is darn near the best friend I have, though we live across the country from each other. And, to top it all off, I have two much younger half-siblings, that I consider to be "full" siblings and that I am very close with.

I am fortunate to come from an upbringing that emphasized extended families and understanding and forgiveness. My parents divorced when I was five, but have remained close and my father and step-father spend time together, as do my mother and step-mother. And my mother also is close to my father's children with his second wife. We all spend the holidays together and stuff - hard to explain to someone on the outside, but incredibly wonderful to experience!

Except of course the way in which the genes express themselves would be waaay more complex. Ah, the wonders of genetics!

i have an older half brother that i never see and never knew well. i think he hates my guts, but we get along when we're together.

at the same time it's weird we all have alot in common.

Me and my sisters get along great, we'll play Family Feud online and rock bells

(Also his unchained id makes my Solomon-like wisdom look good)

she is also v.beautiful BUT BOYS AND GIRLS SHE IS SPOKEN FOR!

plus she has a komikal cat called yoko

I've a second brother who's 3 years older than me, I do get on quite well with him aswell, he's very laid back and a good laugh, no common interests really but we coexist ok. He doesn't live at home anymore though so that's understandable. Things we fight about-me not putting petrol in the car/his mates robbing my cds when he has a party and fucking them around.

Sister lives in Scotland so again no real fights there though being the only girl she talks alot to my mum and purposefully or otherwise she always tells my mum something I told her in confidence. So I try not to give her any news anymore, cos it got very annoying. still I get on well with them all, it's my parents I have the raging arguments with, more than ever before now I'm the only one living at home.

yes/no. do get on in the sense were perfectly civil but dont really talk about anything much anymore. occasionally well have a nice chat about a film or something but by and large its sort of like talking with a colleague or friend rather than a sibling. but i think its just a case of post-marriage changes to rships. prefer talking to her when her husbands not there. seems more relaxed and less of a performance.

it's great seeing my two kids interact. today for the first time elisabeth tried to "eat" ophelia with so much joy and love. i nearly cried. this is why we chose for two kids. yes, we're naive and think they'll be bestest friends forevah. fuck, we're both only kids and missed out on that shit.

I like my brother a lot, and would probably voluntarily be friends with him if he wasn't my brother. He's smart and funny and we have pretty similar tastes in music, and I even forgive him for being a Liverpool fan, that's how much I like him.

when we were kids my siblings and i did everything together and thought we'd always be best friends, live right down the street from each other, and never REALLY need anybody else. now we are completely different people and hardly ever talk. when we do, conversation is hard. how does this happen? (yes, i have some idea how it happens.) but still, how does it happen??

(also now i'm older and friendless and i'm just wondering seriously how this happened)

Kind of had the opposite experience. Growing up, my brother and I would play video games and watch TV together, but it was more like he was just there and so we spent time together because we were in the same house and it was convenient. I would never have called him a friend. We also fought a lot. We drifted apart when I entered high school and life got busy, but in the past few years we both figured out we had depression and suddenly found we had a lot to talk about. It was kind of like picking up with an old friend, except that we'd never had that relationship in the past. Love him to death, I'm closer to him now than I've ever been.