What happens when siblings stop speaking and families fall apart quietly

Looking back, Alice Lewin recognises how her relationship with her sister ruptured slowly, one crack at a time.

The pair were close growing up; her sister, who is three years her senior, was a protective presence. Lewin remembers the excitement of visiting her older sibling in New York City when she was in college at Barnard. When Lewin, who is now 58, later moved to the city, her big sister helped her settle in.

But their mother’s untimely death when both sisters were in their 20s revealed some “fracture points” in their relationship, and in hindsight Lewin has realised she may have put too much pressure on her older sibling to be a maternal figure – at a moment when her sister wanted to move forward in her own life.

Things between them grew worse when their grandmother passed away, then later their father, she said. Their deaths brought up thorny issues around caregiving and dividing estates. And for the past 10 years or so, the sisters have been fully estranged, aside from a few brief phone calls and emails.

“Sometimes people wonder, ‘Did a sibling estrange me, or did I estrange them?’” Lewin said. “Sometimes I don’t know if it matters. I think in the case with my sister, it’s been somewhat mutual and it was building for a long time.”

While the details of how she ended up cut off from a sister she still loves very much can sometimes feel fuzzy to her, Lewin’s grief over the breakup is deep and clear. “There are very few people in my life from my childhood, from my formative years,” she said, pausing several times to collect herself. Her sister is the “one person” with whom she has the same “core, shared background,” she said. “I miss that. I just feel a lot of regret.”

Familial estrangement – and particularly, cutting ties from one’s “emotionally immature” parents – has become a hot-button topic in books, opinion pieces and especially on social media outlets like TikTok, where a torrent of videos extol the virtues of familial estrangement as a therapeutic tool. But the challenges of sibling estrangement tend to be somewhat overlooked, despite research showing sibling relationships have a profound effect on well-being.

“Sibling estrangement can be really painful, and it’s also very stigmatised,” said Rin Reczek, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University, adding that people on both sides of an estrangement often feel a sense of failure, as though the split is somehow an indictment of them or their values.

"MOURNING THE LIVING"

There isn’t much research on how widespread sibling alienation is, said Dr Reczek, who studies familial estrangement, but the data that exists suggests it is not uncommon. She pointed to a German study that found nearly 30 per cent of siblings had experienced at least one period of estrangement.

A YouGov survey released earlier this month found that nearly one-quarter of American adults say they are currently estranged from a sibling. Of course, estrangement isn’t black and white – some people choose to go “no contact” with family members while others opt for “low contact” relationships.

Dr Reczek acknowledged that there are many reasons siblings become estranged – too many to detail. A sibling might cut off contact in response to a situation they feel is no longer safe or healthy for them, she said; and research suggests that parental favouritism, whether real or imagined, can also drive a wedge between siblings, as can parental manipulation or estrangement, she added.

Ali-John Chaudhary, a psychotherapist in Ontario, Canada, started a sibling estrangement support group on Facebook, which Lewin has joined. Chaudary said siblings can also become estranged because of mental health or substance abuse issues, broader communication challenges within the family, geographic distance, and tension that springs up around caregiving, health decisions and inheritance and family estates.

Chaudhary, who is estranged from his own sister, intentionally keeps his support group open to both those “estranging for their own good” and those who have been “unexpectedly estranged.”

“The pain of estrangement is what brings us all together,” he explained, adding that pain associated with such ruptures is often “downplayed,” sometimes even by therapists, which makes it difficult to know where to turn for support.

That has been the case for Deborah, who is in her 50s and asked to publicly share her first name only. She became estranged from her brother after their father died in 2017. He cut off all contact with her after the siblings had conflict over their father’s estate, she said, an abrupt break that made her feel as though she had been “discarded.”

Deborah, who lives outside of Boston, has found it more challenging in many ways to cope with the loss of her brother than with the death of her parents, she admitted.

“Advertisements and social media and people tell us what a family should look like and what holidays should look like, like a Norman Rockwell painting,” she said. “All of a sudden it was like the foundation was ripped out from under me.”

She was “mourning the living,” she said.

That kind of ambiguity can be difficult for both sides of a familial rupture.

Anesce Dremen, 30, is estranged from her four sisters – a “byproduct” of running away from home at 18 to escape an abusive situation with her parents, she said. (Dremen, who lives in Las Vegas and is writing a memoir about her estrangement, legally changed her name in 2014 to keep her “ex-family” from finding her.)

“Estrangement has truly been, and will always be, the best decision of my life,” she said, though at first she told herself: “I am the worst sister. I am the worst ex-sister. I honestly felt like I failed myself and my family.”

It took more than a year of reading about estrangement, writing about her experience and attending therapy and support groups to armour herself against the stigma she believes surrounds estrangement in media coverage and on social media. She bristles against what she sees as a “huge push for familial reconciliation,” adding, “for so many of us, leaving – and staying estranged – is the safest option.”

THE RIPPLE EFFECT

While sibling estrangement can be the best path for some, it is a “cataclysmic event in the family system,” said Joshua Coleman, a psychologist and the author of the book “Rules of Estrangement.” Nieces, nephews and cousins may lose touch, and parents may get pulled into taking sides, said Dr Coleman, who has dealt with estrangement in his own family.

“It can be a kind of black hole that kind of sucks everybody into it,” he said, noting that he shares this information with clients not to dissuade them from ending a sibling relationship that does not feel loving or safe, but so that they understand the potential ripple effects.

Those added layers of logistical and emotional challenges within the broader family have plagued David, 39, who also asked to use his first name only and has been estranged from his brother for four years, despite living about 15 minutes apart in Canada.

David – who did not initiate the estrangement, and has tried (and failed) to reopen communication with his brother – feels a jolt when he drives by his parents’ house, spots his brother’s car in the driveway and knows he is not welcome while his sibling is visiting, he said, adding that he spends a lot of time simply trying to navigate the estrangement within his broader family unit, which has struggled to openly acknowledge that the brothers are no longer speaking.

“I end up shouldering a big mental load that is very anxiety inducing,” he said.

Because of the outsize effects that sibling estrangement can have within families, when possible, Dr Coleman encourages clients who are considering it to give their sibling “enough runway to really know the gravity of how much they feel hurt or misunderstood or affected by that relationship, and give them time and the resources to repair.” He tells them to suggest family therapy, give their siblings books or resources to read, or let them know what it would take in order to mend the relationship.

Siblings who have been cut off – and who hope to reconnect – must be willing to show vulnerability, take responsibility and to seek to understand their sibling’s perspective, whether or not they agree, he added, acknowledging that none of that is simple or easy.

Lewin still feels the pain of her estrangement every day, she said, particularly when she thinks of the niece and nephew she once doted upon but now no longer sees. And though she said she tends to be guarded about the situation for fear of being judged or misunderstood, Lewin said she wanted to speak publicly about it because she hoped it might help remove the stigma of sibling estrangement – and because she still hopes to reopen a dialogue with her sister and her sister’s children.

“So many people say, ‘family, faith and friends,’” she said. “I think sibling estrangement goes against a traditional notion of family, that family should always be preserved at all costs.”

By Catherine Pearson © The New York Times Company

The article originally appeared in The New York Times.