Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 436. The psychology of sibling rivalry About this episode In many ways, sibling rivalry is an integral part of growing up in a multiple-child household – the arguments, the jealousy, the competition. But as we explore in this episode, those sibling dynamics often don’t stop in childhood, but actually following us into our 20s and adulthood, shaping how we see ourselves, relate to our families, and how we carry old roles.
We explore:
• Why a level of rivalry is developmentally expected
• The evolutionary perspective on resource competition
• The role of birth order and family roles
• How sibling rivalry can transpire in adulthood
• How to begin acknowledging and rewriting old roles
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Our favourite sources:
https://prevention.psu.edu/news/the-psychology-behind-sibling-rivalry/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10567-011-0104-5
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192513X211064876
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-016-0429-2
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1:55 Jemma Sbeg? Hello, everybody. I'm Gemma Spike and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
2:15 Jemma Sbeg? Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. And an episode on a topic we have spoken about so rarely on the podcast that I almost feel a little bit guilty. I almost feel like I haven't done my job properly. We're talking about the unique relationship we have with our siblings and how those dynamics play out in our psychological and also in our emotional worlds. The sibling bond is like no other, let's just say that. But just because it is special doesn't mean that it's immune to the problems that I guess all close relationships have. There's also different levels of closeness for everyone, right?
3:00 Jemma Sbeg? You might be listening to this and have an amazing relationship with your siblings that, you know, you might think of them as soulmates. You might be listening to this and have the complete opposite, where there is distance and tension and disagreement. What shapes this is often very complicated and comes from a mix of personality, lifestyle, environment, but probably most importantly upbringing and parental environment. There's a very famous saying that two children can be raised in the same house, same family and have completely different childhoods. And that's what I kind of want to discuss today, primarily through the lens of sibling rivalry and the competition we often have with our siblings from children to adults.
3:42 Jemma Sbeg? As kids, you know, this rivalry seems kind of petty, but as we get older and in our twenties especially, there's definitely a turning point where we start to understand some of the more nefarious things that influence how well we get along with our brothers and sisters, from parental favoritism to birth order, childhood roles, parental conflict and so much more. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about it. We're finally going to shine a light on sibling relationships, specifically sibling rivalry. Let's get into it.
4:18 Jemma Sbeg? Okay, before we get into how sibling relationships can become twisted and complicated and hard, especially as we get older, let's just start with the easy stuff. Let's start with something more light, which is why our relationship with our siblings is unlike probably any other relationship you will ever have. For starters, if we are lucky enough, eighty percent of us have siblings and your siblings will probably be the longest relationship you are going to have in your life. They are there with you before you make real friends, before you meet your partners, and often, again, if we're lucky enough, after you lose parents and other close family members.
5:02 Jemma Sbeg? They also, I think, transcend beyond just a friendship, right? They're their own category. You're always going to be tied to each other, no matter how far you may travel, split, drift. And you know what? DNA or not, even if you're adopted, even if you have step siblings, it's the same. It's that intimate childhood environment and those experiences and the fact that you are family and that means something important to us as humans that never goes away and means that your relationship is always going to be part of who you are. Siblings are also often your first peers, first competitors, first companions, and your first social mirror, because they're usually the people that are closest to us, both relationally and also in age.
5:47 Jemma Sbeg? There's some amazing things about having siblings for some of those reasons we've mentioned, and I also think fighting with your siblings is also something that's kind of fun about having, you know, having a brother or sister. I know it gets a little bit tricky, we're going to talk about that, but let's firstly begin with why fighting with your siblings is normal. For a lot of us, when we think about brothers and sisters, especially as we fight with them, we think about, you know, arguing about who gets the bigger room, whose turn it was to sit in the front seat, who got more attention at dinner, who always gets away with things, who doesn't. Childhood arguments are important because they are part of like the folklore of family
6:27 Jemma Sbeg? life and sibling conflict is this really unique type of conflict where you actually sometimes benefit because you pick up some incredible soft skills that you don't even realise, you may take for granted. Child development researchers point to this incredible socialising function of sibling rivalry as why it is necessary for life. Our siblings are some of the greatest and earliest teachers we will ever have. You learn so much about negotiation, retaliation, sharing, fairness, apologising, boundaries, humour, emotional regulation, the list goes on and on, through fighting with your siblings.
7:07 Jemma Sbeg? They're also one of the first places that children and we as humans experience the very human fact that love and hostility can coexist, that love is often complicated and we often model to each other what is expected in certain scenarios as loved ones in a way that other people can't because it would be wildly inappropriate. You know, think about it, like your siblings are often the people who correct your behaviour more than your parents do by getting upset at you, by retaliating, by maybe hitting you, crying, that important social feedback, and we allow it because we love them and because we have this bond.
7:49 Jemma Sbeg? You know, another kid biting you in the playground because you annoy them, that is like a tetanus shot and an expulsion, but it's more okay and it's more socially acceptable with siblings, meaning sometimes we just learn quicker through them instead of waiting for society to, you know, politely correct us later on. There was a two thousand and twelve study from Feinberg and colleagues actually that looked closer into the three distinct pathways of influence that our siblings have on our behaviour. Here is what they found. Pathway number one, they help provide a behavioural repertoire.
8:27 Jemma Sbeg? Again, I think I've said this a couple of times now, but like the home is the training ground. So through daily interactions, we tend to teach each other like social skills or conversely coercive behaviours as well. If a sibling relationship is defined by aggression and conflict, children can learn that hostility is an effective way to get what you want, which is a habit that they may then carry into their school life and peer groups. But if they learn love and friendship and cooperation, they carry that as well as part of their behavioural repertoire. The second thing that sibling relationships teach us is deviancy training. This is like the partner in crime kind of bond. Beyond just learning general behaviours, siblings
9:10 Jemma Sbeg? often directly model and reinforce specific activities or choices or preferences that influence how we express ourselves, what we wear, what we like, how we act, even risky things like substance use or delinquency as you get older. The paper I'm referring to notes that this is particularly potent because unlike friends, you don't choose your siblings, making their influence unavoidable and a constant presence in your life for good or for bad. Finally, the family system. They teach you what family means. This is where siblings have this kind of ripple effect. Sibling conflict in particular doesn't just stay between the kids, but acts as a major stressor for parents. And fighting between the parents
9:53 Jemma Sbeg? acts as a major stressor for siblings. It's also within this dynamic that you understand what is expected of people that claim to love you, yes, with your parents, but also with your siblings, what it means to repair relationships, what it means to expect things from other people. So sibling conflict can also be very brutal. I think I'm speaking about the benefits, but it can get really intense. Like physically, I have a scar on my arm from when like one of my sisters scratched me over something, I don't even know what. And it gets a lot worse than that. Dr Mark Feinberg, that same man who did that original paper we were talking about, he investigates sibling relationships a lot at Pennsylvania State University.
10:36 Jemma Sbeg? He's one of the leading names in this research area. And he suggests that sibling rivalry is particularly intense around the period of early to middle childhood. This period of childhood is a key years for sibling aggression and conflict because not only do you spend so much time together during this period, but also you are lacking emotional and social regulation skills that you need to effectively resolve conflict with other people, meaning your relationship isn't a pressure cooker. Again, as I said, it might present itself physically, it might present itself as possessiveness,
11:16 Jemma Sbeg? teasing, it might look like, yeah, just like bitter fights, but also copying, stealing, trying to adopt some kind of role in the family. And it's this tension in our early years as children that often gets us a designated role as the troublemaker, as the mediator, as the pushover, as the golden child, as the caretaker. Often, a lot of our roles, yes, form through daily interactions. They also form through how we fight with each other, how we relate to each other, conflict being a big part of it. Even young children have a sense of fairness and sibling life gives them a constant stream
12:00 Jemma Sbeg? of opportunities to compare and figure out who they are based on how they relate to their siblings, but also what parents give each person. So who gets more warmth, more attention, more freedom, more protection, more praise, maybe even more leniency or physical closeness. Part of why that also creates tension is evolutionary. The fact that our parents do not have endless amounts of time and attention to give us, and therefore we are slightly in competition with our siblings at any given time, is what creates conflict. You know, when you're the only child. The time your parents have to give you is as much as they can, you're not really sharing it with anybody else. Other than your other parent or other than their job or things like that.
12:45 Jemma Sbeg? But when there is more of you, time is limited, attention is limited, emotional availability, presence is limited. So from an evolutionary perspective, siblings are in this strange dual position. They are both family and they're competitors. They benefit from each other's survival, but they're also competing. At least in part for parental investment. And that means that they start acting in certain ways that they think their parents may like more. Or that they think may get them ahead in the family unit. And it's not that each sibling is consciously calculating resource allocations at all times in some like mathematical way. But as children, like I said, we're attuned to fairness, we're attuned to who is getting more, who is getting less.
13:29 Jemma Sbeg? If you've been around kids recently, you know this well, it is like a constant thing that's going on in their mind. So that's another major theory as to why sometimes our relationship with our siblings isn't always great. Unconsciously, it comes from this conflict over parental love and resources that starts as kids, but transforms as adults. I also just think that like, it's not always about wanting what the other sibling has. It's also simply like, sometimes we have conflict with our siblings because we just don't want to disappear. And we act out in relation to our siblings because we want to have this distinct identity, right? And as adults, we know that like starting fights with our siblings, acting out like is annoying.
14:14 Jemma Sbeg? And probably wrong, but as children, like you just want to feel noticed, you just want to feel seen. And there's also just the fact that you guys are different people. People fight with their siblings because you're not the same person. You do have different opinions, preferences, personalities. Roles that have been assigned by the family and other times you, some people just annoy you, doesn't matter that you're related. Like you being related doesn't exclude you from this human truth. Other people get on our nerves because they are not us, right? And with our siblings, unlike with some other relationships, but definitely it is an option. Like you can't just step away and be like, I'm done with that. It's a, it's a lot harder. So what I'm saying, to give a mini summary of this section.
15:00 Jemma Sbeg? Sibling rivalry in childhood is normal. It is a socially experimental way of learning certain skills. It is how we, you know, gain parental love or feel like we matter or we are seen in the family. It can also take a turn, especially as we get older. So let's talk about how sibling rivalry transforms in adulthood and maybe becomes complicated after this short break.
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18:32 Jemma Sbeg? In adulthood, especially in our twenties, I think sibling, this is gonna sound obvious, sibling competition is not about who gets what in terms of toys or front seats. It's becomes very psychological. It becomes more about status, achievement, closeness to parents, pride, coping, and also the past and who is carrying things from the past with them, just to name a few. The developmental literature on sibling relationships in the transition from teenage years to adulthood shows that sibling relationships often shift significantly around this time
19:13 Jemma Sbeg? in line with wider life transitions, like leaving home, getting a partner, working, studying, marrying, becoming a parent. Things do start to change that take away or maybe improve the original sibling relationship. I've seen it in many, many cases that friends of mine have actually gotten so much closer with their brothers and sisters as they age because these huge life changes give them a more grounded, more kind of well-rounded perspective on priorities. Maybe it's the first time in their lives that they really like understand each other because they're They need each other more, but I've also found, you know, people get less close with their siblings as they get older, and that's been my case, you know.
19:56 Jemma Sbeg? Me and my younger sisters ha- have a pretty big age gap, I would say. I moved out when I was seventeen and they were like nine and twelve. They had their whole teenage years together and I wasn't at home. I wasn't even in the same state, let alone the same country. And that creates a different dynamic as you get older. You know, you're never gonna be as close as you were when you were living in the same household. And it's not just distance. Sibling relationships can also become distinctively more loaded the older we get. There's almost this compounding effect where childhood problems and conflicts now
20:37 Jemma Sbeg? compound on top of each other, on top of each other, on top of each other, until it becomes years of resentment. By the time you're twenty five or thirty five or forty five, you're not just reacting to one rude comment at Christmas and tha- that's not why you're annoyed at your sibling. You're reacting to twenty years of being cast in a certain role with your siblings. Or you're reacting to twenty years of small things that have gone unsaid. You also become more aware of the harmful narratives within your family and the way your parents treated you differently that are hard to ignore as you gain more self-awareness and you gain perhaps more self-respect. Essentially, adult sibling conflict is a container for much, much older wounds,
21:22 Jemma Sbeg? which is why they become a very big battleground for many people in adulthood. Where does this tension begin? We've talked about some of the explanations for why we fight in general, but why do some people walk away from their sibling relationships feeling like things are very unfair? One place we can naturally go to is birth order. Now, birth order has its skeptics and I'm occasionally one of them, but for this, for sibling conflict, birth order makes a lot of sense. There's a few stereotypes we have in popular culture about which sibling acts in which ways. You know, older children are more responsible, but also more bossy. Middle children are the forgotten ones, youngest children are spoiled. It goes deeper than that, though, starting with the eldest.
22:04 Jemma Sbeg? The first child enters an empty family system and often carries the parents' fantasies of getting it right. Meaning there's a lot of pressure. And a lot more fear and anxiety on their shoulders. You know, raising the eldest to the book whilst also battling the tension of becoming a parent and experiencing something new puts a lot of pressure on a kid, even unconsciously. This can mean as we age, the eldest feels resentment towards their younger siblings because maybe they didn't get their parents in that high stress state, maybe they got it easier. The choices of the parents unconsciously or consciously become reflected in the relationships
22:49 Jemma Sbeg? of the siblings through stress, anxiety and expectations. Now, the second child enters an already established family system. Your parents have likely naturally already learnt some lessons, made some mistakes, got rid of a bit of anxiety. And that can at times maybe make it feel like less effort is put into the childhood of the middle or second child. This is, I think, especially the case for the middle child. So if your parents end up having more siblings after you. You know, the dominant force of the eldest and the dominant force of the youngest can create a kind of cushioning effect for the middle children. Any younger siblings, specifically youngest, are born into a family where your parents are probably already exhausted and busy.
23:35 Jemma Sbeg? Older children have been given more responsibility. Younger children may receive more indulgence or less monitoring. Middle children may end up negotiating their identity in between these two established positions. It gets, it just gets messy and it's why as you get older, you might be like, that's unfair, even though it's not your siblings' fault, they are the way they are. It's birth order. And it's not to say birth order determines who you are inherently, but it does change how you relate to your siblings based on roles that have been forced upon you based on your parents' emotions. Parents and families, like this is a key thing we keep coming back to that creates conflict in, in between siblings, like they kind of decide who we are, like especially when we're young.
24:19 Jemma Sbeg? We get a role, like the ideas our parents have about who we are becomes quite firm because it's based on their own experiences, their own internal worlds, which often remain a mystery to us and are incredibly influential on how we see ourselves and our siblings. There's another big contributor here to sibling rivalry beyond the roles we're assigned, which is parental favoritism. It's an age old question, kind of a joke at this point, like do parents have favorites? It's kind of cheeky to admit you do, or like funny to say like, oh, I don't have a favorite like, but if I did, it would be you, wink, wink. Like, parents like to joke about it. Maybe they don't joke about it at all, meaning that it seems like they probably do have a favorite. And they forget that this stuff is serious.
25:04 Jemma Sbeg? Firstly, it's serious for how kids relate to their parents and it is really tragic for how kids relate to their siblings, especially as adults. A lot of research talks about this. Let's clear this up first and foremost. Research does say parents do have favorites, full stop. Parents have favorites. An article published just this year by the American Psychological Association reviewed thirty peer reviewed journal articles encompassing almost twenty thousand participants and found that overall, the majority of parents showed preferential treatment, specifically for their daughters, for children who are more organized and introverted, and for the older children. This favoritism is shown a few ways.
25:46 Jemma Sbeg? So they may interact with these children more, they spend more money on them, they're more kind and positive to that child. To be honest, this deserves an entire episode because this really fucks people up. Like, it has a long term influence on our sense of self and our self esteem. But for today's episode, let's just examine it in relation to our siblings. Decades of research on parental differential or favoritism or treatment shows that when children perceive one sibling as receiving more warmth, more support, money, freedom, approval.
26:24 Jemma Sbeg? It tends to be associated with worse outcomes for the less favoured sibling and poorer sibling relationship quality overall. And the impacts aren't only felt in childhood, they're felt primarily actually in adulthood. A study of young adult siblings found that siblings who felt less loved than a brother or a sister they had reported more depressive symptoms. And people who said their parents had a greater level of favouritism towards a different child also showed less intimacy with their siblings, because it's hard to be friendly with someone, even somebody who is a blood relative who you love, when you are constantly convinced and told that they are better than you.
27:09 Jemma Sbeg? A further two thousand and fourteen study looking at siblings specifically in later life also found that sibling closeness in adulthood is driven by two specific patterns. The researchers analysed over two thousand sibling pairs and discovered this. First, there is a gravitation towards the favourite. People actually reported being closest to the sibling that they could tell was their mother's favourite, even if they weren't the favourite themselves. So one child gets more attention, not just from the parent but from their other siblings. Like, it's called the golden child effect. This child ends up as the hub for the parents, but also keeps the siblings connected as well.
27:51 Jemma Sbeg? Second, they found a distancing from the disfavoured sibling. And again, people could tell, even though parents say we don't have a favourite, siblings knew. They were significantly less likely to feel close to a brother or sister who was perceived as being less liked by their mother. And what they really saw was that, like, the mother's preferences act as a social signal for the rest of the family. Her favourite becomes the person everyone wants to be around. Her least favourite often is the one that finds themselves socially sidelined by their own siblings as well, and dealing with more of those emotional and mental consequences. There is also some fascinating nuance here around fairness.
28:32 Jemma Sbeg? Some studies suggest that differential treatment is not always equally harmful if children understand that it is fair and justified. So, an important caveat here is that if a sibling seems like the favourite because they need more attention due to a medical issue or a crisis, children often understand that. That changes the dynamic slightly. What does damage is not difference itself, but unexplained differences. So sly preferences, being made to feel like one child is just easier to love, which eventually means we turn the spotlight back on ourselves and start thinking, like, why aren't I easy to love? Why aren't I loved that way? It must be something about me, about who I am intrinsically.
29:16 Jemma Sbeg? It also must be something about them that makes them better than me. Well, I obviously don't want to be around them and feel terrible about myself. Sibling conflict starts here. So maybe you're listening and relating heavily, even if you know it wasn't your parents' intention, or your siblings' fault for that matter. You might just think, it's just how it's meant to be. Some parents just hate certain children, and I'm one of them.
29:38 Jemma Sbeg? I think hate is a bit blunt, maybe too simple of a word for a very complex relational pattern. This is also where parents' own unresolved issues get transferred into sibling relationships. Our parents don't welcome us into their lives only when they are in this perfect, ethereal state of being. Parenthood also doesn't automatically make people better people, we know that, we know that for sure. When a parent becomes a parent, they bring with them their own history, their own wounds and fears, and loyalties and relational templates from their own families. Sometimes, a parent unconsciously identifies with one child and feels threatened by another because they remind them of plot twist, their own parents and their own siblings, who they
30:23 Jemma Sbeg? have their own unique relationship with, that was shaped by the parents before them. You kind of see where this is going. It doesn't excuse it, but it may explain it, and I think sometimes that explanation that involves family history and investigating.
30:37 Jemma Sbeg? You know, where this came from does provide some solace. I should also note, this becomes especially relevant in families who go through a divorce or where there's parental conflict. After separation in particular, children may feel subtly or overtly pushed into alliances with each other, or the opposite, as parents kind of fight over each child's loyalty, affection, even custody. That is a lot. Adult problems are a lot to put on a delicate sibling bond. And so when you have you and your brothers and sisters have gone through that, the pressure spills sideways into your relationship, even if the original conflict wasn't about you two, or you three, or you four. And that is why favoritism and behavior from parents and their own issues leads to rifts
31:20 Jemma Sbeg? and estrangement amongst siblings when it's not even about them. There was a 2022 study examining estrangement between siblings and adulthood, and it found that these ruptures are often embedded in broader family systems that are shaped by favoritism, abuse, manipulation, disputes, and particularly parental child estrangement. Some people described in the study their sibling bond as being toxic, damaging to their mental health, slowly eroded over time by family loyalties. Others described sudden cutoffs, but it was very rare that someone turns around and goes, I don't like this person anymore. What stands out and what was consistent in this study is that it's not an isolated thing.
32:02 Jemma Sbeg? You normally, if you are finding yourself in a place of tension or conflict with your siblings, there is probably a wider and longer emotional history and emotional context that is shaping that, that comes a lot from the family unit. So we're going to take one more short break here, and then we're going to talk about what we can do about it and how we can rewrite our relationship with our siblings as adults and maybe give ourselves the chance to move past old hurts that not all the time, but sometimes just aren't ours to hold. Stay with us.
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35:35 Jemma Sbeg? So after discussing the origins of sibling tension, the question kind of becomes, can we rewrite these roles as adults? And how exactly do we do that? Great news, for the first time in this whole episode, great news. I think we can totally rewrite our roles, totally rewrite the relationship that we have with our adult siblings. But that's not going to happen by ignoring that the roles we've played ever existed. A lot of healing starts with being honest about the part you were given in your family that you didn't necessarily want. Really, you have to ask yourself, what role do I play in this family? What role did I end up stepping into? And how did that role impact not just me, but also my sibling relationship? How did my role as the golden child or the problem child or whatever?
36:21 Jemma Sbeg? Push me into a specific dynamic? And what role did they have to play? Because even if they were treated better than you, even if they were the favorite, that doesn't mean that they were free of any burden. Every person is trapped here in their own way. They may have been trapped in the role of the gifted child, feeling that they could never express themselves, never move away from home, never fail, felt very tethered to their parents' identity. Like they likely, even if it looks like they had a great time, they likely had the same amount of control over the label that they stepped into as you did. Like they had no control. And so simply asking like, why did somebody feel like they had to act this way is an important question.
37:03 Jemma Sbeg? Sometimes recognizing that both of you were shaped by the same things, just in different directions loosens a lot of the resentment that remains. Part of growing up, and again, I'm not an expert, but just my thoughts on this is that part of growing up is also accepting that. Children in the same family don't have the same childhood. You can live in the same house, eat at the same table, have the same parents, wear the same hand-me-downs and still come away completely differently, emotionally, psychologically, socially. And what matters here is, like, if your sibling is coming to you and saying, I've experienced hurt that is making our relationship difficult. Just because it wasn't your experience doesn't mean it's not true. And doesn't mean that it's not impacting them deeply. And doesn't necessarily mean they're blaming you for that.
37:48 Jemma Sbeg? You may remember warmth. Your other sibling remembers discomfort or hostility. One of you may have been protected because they were compliant and easygoing. Or the eldest, whilst another may feel that they were punished or let down from being the youngest, or having needs, or speaking up. So I think moving past old hurts that have been projected onto your relationship often means letting go of the idea that there is one correct version of the family that everybody has to agree on. Sometimes there just isn't. Sometimes the truth is that each child adapted in the best way that they could with more favorable outcomes, but neither person deserved or had a say in the outcome. You also have to be open to talking about the pain in the relationship
38:33 Jemma Sbeg? that may have come directly from either of you, from each other. It really sucks, it hurts. It's embarrassing, but something an amazing family therapist I interviewed for the podcast said to me once was, your relationship can't process poison internally, only externally. Basically, your issues need to be out in the open to be healed. They need some fresh air. And I don't think it's a question of like, how can we fix the past? But what do we actually need to have the future that we want? When you look at people who are close to their siblings, have that magical relationship so many of us desire, what do they have? And what is the bridge to that that you can see? Typically, there's four things that is required to heal a sibling bond.
39:17 Jemma Sbeg? Accountability, grace, curiosity and communication. Maybe a better question than like, what do I want my future relationship to look like? Would be, how do we get those things? And what would a healthier version of this relationship be like, just even an inch? For some people, if we go through that list, it means I need you to say sorry. For other people, it means I need you to be curious about what I went through. Or I need you to have some grace about how I'm trying to change. And maybe for you, it's like, I just actually can't be around this person. Again, like, just because your family doesn't mean the relationship is immune to the things that a lot of relationships contain, which is toxicity, hurt, pain,
40:01 Jemma Sbeg? and an inability to forgive and an inability to move on. It might also just mean that, like, we can, just being honest about your relationship, we can be friends, we can have this sibling bond, but we can only have it every now and again. Like, we can't have it all the time. I don't feel happy, safe around them all the time. At Christmas, maybe. In a controlled environment, maybe, but maybe this will never be repaired. The damage is done, the characters were assigned. Like, the past cannot be rewritten. But that doesn't mean you're not siblings, and it doesn't mean that, like, you can't reminisce occasionally, see each other occasionally, have some part of them and their lives intersect with you.
40:46 Jemma Sbeg? And I think this is where moving past old hurts really begins, in realising that you do not have to keep living the same story of your relationship. So to summarise what has been a big episode about sibling rivalry and tension in adult sibling relationships. First, sibling relationship, as we know, stands alone as one of the most unique we can have. In many ways, conflict and rivalry is part of the fabric of that relationship. It occasionally has some benefits. You know, you learn a lot. You model what is good and bad behaviour. It's also evolutionary, it's kind of hardwired into us. But it can become really emotionally damaging and threatening
41:27 Jemma Sbeg? when it becomes about things that are larger than petty disputes and becomes centred on a very real parental favouritism, assigned roles, being placed in the middle of parental disputes you didn't ask to be a part of. In these situations, the sibling dynamic becomes a casualty of those things. And that can mean when you look around at other people's relationships with their brothers and sisters. It just doesn't look the same because you guys have had a different past that's gotten you to this point. I do think there is hope. Sibling relationships have time and time again shown that they can be repaired by honestly separating ourselves from childhood roles or conflicts as much as we possibly can, not always,
42:11 Jemma Sbeg? but as much as the situation requires us to, and just being curious about how our siblings' childhood was different to ours, even if it occurred in the same environment and family, and being curious about what you actually want from each other and what actually needs to be said and what actually needs to be changed. I think we are very good at knowing we might need to change for partners, friends, for a workplace. But in our family, it feels harder because it's kind of like, just accept me as I am. Isn't that your job? Like, families are meant to love each other no matter what. You can have that perspective,
42:50 Jemma Sbeg? but does it align with the larger objective you have, which is to have the closeness that you so want with your siblings? Because if you want to get that, you do have to kind of dig through some of the same issues and problems that every other relationship, platonic, romantic, familial or otherwise, is gonna have. So that concludes our first standalone episode on siblings in like almost 500 episodes of the podcast. I sincerely hope it was helpful. Sorry it took me so long to get here. I also want to say, obviously, within this, there are so many other unique dynamics and things I have time to discuss. So if this didn't apply to you, uh, please seek out other resources and know that this is not the holy grail of
43:33 Jemma Sbeg? accounts on sibling rivalry. People may have better things to say, things that may be aligned with your perspective more. If there is something that we didn't discuss that you would like a follow-up episode on. Feel free to leave a comment. Feel free to DM me on Instagram. Um, it's at that psychology podcast. You can also follow us there just to learn more, not just about sibling dynamics, but everything in, in general about the psychology of your twenties. Also a reminder that we have a sub stack. We have episodes on Netflix if you wanna peruse or browse those in the meantime. I wanna say a big thank you to our researcher Libby Cobett for her research help and assistance with this episode. She did some amazing digging into developmental
44:15 Jemma Sbeg? psychology papers and articles and we are very grateful for her. But that concludes the episode. Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, especially if you're going through a sibling rivalry or conflict right now. We will talk very, very soon.
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