Sibling Relationships: the Good, the Bad, and the Who Knows!
Sibling relationships can be pleasant, warm, and close or they can be cold, distant, unfriendly, and full of conflict. Whether of comradery or rivalry, sibling relationships make for insteresting dynamics in the family.
The pleasant sibling relationship is one of sisterhood or pals among brothers. These kinds of relationships are distinguished by closeness, sharing, and laughter. These siblings are like best friends to the bone. Thoughts from one are completed by the other. Identical twins aren’t always pleasant, but there is a basis of similarity that serves as a bonding agent. The Three Stooges™ fit in this category. Although they weren’t twins (but most were brothers), and their exchanges were mostly physically violent (slapstick), they were close and were always there for one another. That what is meant by the pleasant, or positive, sibling relationship: always there for one another, recognizing and sympathizing one another, willing to die for one another . . .
Then there are the siblings who want to kill one another. These are in opposition, usually due to ego, selfishness, lack of chemistry, very unlike in personality, OR very CLOSE in personality. Yes, they had a sense of comradery between them, but Niles and Frasier, from Frasier ™, were known to to have a very competitive relationship, even to the point of cutting one another down. There’s was a sibling relationship in which both brothers were very much alike, and their egos were in constant conflict, probably because of that. This sibling relationship would actually fall between the pleasant and the unpleasant, but their constant ego clashing usually put them at odds with one another.
Many relationships land in the spectrum of gray between the two extremes, consisting of both agreeable and disagreeable elements, but each one is unque because of the diversity involved in the particular sibling relationship and the individuals involved. Those who have siblings can attest to the complexities that make up their own sibling relationships.