Sibling Estrangement Is an Outcome, Not an Event

By the time it’s visible, the distance has already been there for years

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“If you ended up fucked up, we said to each other that it would be our fault,” so said my sister to me on multiple occasions — something she and my brother had said to each other about our childhood sibling dynamics and interactions. A recollection that now — being fully estranged from both of them, as well as from my parents — would likely be denied as ever having been shared.

Denial of conversations, events, and impact was a consistent theme in my family.

Or perhaps the narrative would shift — that because I exited the family, that action itself becomes evidence of having “ended up fucked up.”

On the contrary, removing myself from the family was an act of clarity — a hard-earned and unlikely attainment of self-respect within a family bent on crushing it.

Sibling estrangement is often a byproduct of parental estrangement — fallout from dysfunctional family dynamics and the self-preservation of those still enmeshed within them.

It can also be a direct result of the dynamics between siblings themselves: long-term, entrenched patterns of behavior that evolved as adaptations to the same environment, resulting in different — and often incompatible — methods of coping. Personalities shaped there — unlikely to choose each other as companions in life.

Regardless of personality compatibility, siblings are expected to be companions in life.

It is assumed to be the most inherently enduring relationship.

While parental estrangement is increasingly receiving attention, sibling estrangement remains comparatively unexamined.

A common argument within parental estrangement discourse is around what constitutes “real abuse” that would justify estrangement. This framing reflects a pervasive failure to recognize the prevalence and impact of emotional abuse and neglect — widespread forms of maltreatment that are both normalized and minimized within parent-child relationships.

What is even less well understood is that “sibling aggression and abuse are the most common forms of family violence,” yet “the nature and impact of these behaviors and public attention to them are minimized or dismissed” as nothing more than expected sibling rivalry. 

However, “sibling abuse is characterized by a single incident or repetition of behaviors that include a high risk of serious physical or emotional harm to a sibling. Sibling victimization, especially when it is chronic or severe, can cause fear and lead an adolescent to feel unsafe at home. Harmful sibling dynamics and their associated effects in adolescence can persist into adulthood.” (Tucker, 2025)

Research on sibling relationships consistently shows that their dynamics are shaped within — and reflective of — the broader family system.

Sibling abuse must be understood within the context of the family system in which it occurs. It is often not mutual conflict but one-sided, shaped by power differentials and dynamics of control.

These patterns are influenced — both directly and indirectly — by the parents who shape the relational conditions in which they take hold.

“For those born into dysfunctional family systems, the energetic ground is not stable. There is no safety, no security, and no sense of consistent nurturing. There is not a high likelihood that children and siblings were getting good parental modeling in healthy communication or conflict resolution.” (Mandeville, 2024)

What this often produces is what family systems theorists describe as pseudo mutuality and pseudo hostility. The former refers to surface-level harmony — an externally conveyed image of being a “close family” — but where conflict is suppressed and emotional honesty is punished.

The latter describes an environment marked by chronic sarcasm, teasing, criticism, and tension. What is, in actuality, thinly veiled contempt.

In both, there is no genuine vulnerability, no emotional safety, and no repair. These do not appear separately but rather as parallel expressions of the same dysfunctional system.

Often, within these dynamics, both the pseudo mutuality and the hostility are organized around a single target. One person becomes the repository for what the system cannot tolerate — that person becomes the black sheep, the scapegoat.

I am very familiar with this dynamic.

And I am far from alone.

According to researcher and trauma-specialized psychotherapist Rebecca Mandeville (quoted above), this phenomenon of the collective, often unconscious, selection of one member to carry what is refused by the family is Family Scapegoat Abuse. It has its roots in Family Systems Theory and the “identified patient” — the member labeled as “the problem,” but who is instead a deflection from the dysfunction within the broader family system.

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The one who gets selected is usually the one who sees and reacts to the dysfunction, even if they have not yet developed the language to call it out directly.

These dynamics are not confined to the parent-child relationship but exist throughout the family system. Sibling dynamics are shaped by the environment and attachment styles the parents establish which in turn informs — often unconsciously — how those siblings relate to each other.

Pseudo hostility and pseudo mutuality become baked into the system — and into the dynamics between siblings.

As the youngest of three, my recollection of childhood was of never feeling part of the family as a whole, and certainly not with my siblings. Between the two of them being closest to each other in age and the dynamic of being labeled “the baby” with a noticeable age gap from them, I was the odd one out.

More often than not, though, that was a relief.

While their volatile love/hate relationship played out in daily screaming matches throughout the house, I was effectively invisible. It was when they were in truce and turned their attention to me that it was dangerous.

I came to prefer them going after each other, even though it meant I was alone.

Alone became synonymous with safety.

Children learn who they are and form their identity in relationship with others. Particularly through their primary caregivers and in sibling relationships. Being seen, heard, and valued is critical in the formation of self.

For me in my family, it was safer to be unseen. That discomfort with attention and preference for solitude has stayed with me.

I would try to connect with them individually, where it felt safer. Subsuming myself by leaning into their interests. They never leaned into mine.

It was almost always one-directional.

Any focus on my interests came with mockery and humiliation, so even when I did raise them, I learned to quickly deflect back to my siblings interests.

I learned to bury myself so deeply I never knew who I was.

I watched Star Trek with my brother and played a version of roughhouse football amidst couch cushions strewn on the floor. With my sister, I played Barbies — on her terms, with her controlling the storyline and deferring to her focus on fashion — always the outfits.

I was usually bored to tears.

I only felt like myself when I was alone — able to play my own way, away from their attention and from my parents’ criticism, particularly my mother’s: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?”

Within these families, the inequities are often small enough to be dismissed and consistent enough to leave a mark.

I remember cards from my grandparents — each of us receiving a few dollars tucked inside. My brother and sister, despite their own age difference, would receive the same amount. I, as the “baby,” would receive less. This was treated as normal. Expected.

I hated it.

Not in a way I could articulate, but in a way that felt it was deeply unjust.

One holiday, anticipating the cards days in advance of arrival, I intercepted them in the mailbox. I opened them and took the money before anyone else saw them, then told my family they had just arrived — no idea why they were already opened and otherwise empty.

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I don’t recall my precise age at the time. Seven? Under ten certainly.

I got in trouble for stealing and lying.

I don’t recall any open discussion of the disparity that led to it. I do recall that the reaction became the problem. The inequity itself went unacknowledged.

The “less than” was consistent, even if subtle enough to be dismissed as such. It was woven into the fabric of the family. It showed up in small, repeated ways that carried more weight over time than any single incident.

Even in something as seemingly benign as nicknames. My sister was “Queen Jacqleen.” My brother was “Joe Cool.” And I was “Jenny Penny.”

We all came to embody our nicknames. My sister, always the attention-seeking diva, my brother too cool to bother with anyone, and me the trodden-on, overlooked penny no one bothers to pick up.

Revisiting autobiography and poetry assignments from my college days, I wrote about feeling very solitary within my family. I didn’t fully understand the depth of that isolation then. Reading them now, I can see it clearly — the attempts to reframe and deny the experience of that isolated child who wanted to belong to a system that never included or saw her, even while poignantly showing signs of understanding the dysfunction long before having the language to name it.

A lonely cry in forlorn existence

Reaches beyond itself to carry

A distance

Over chasms of endless depth

With a strength fueled of desperation

To reach

The ears of ones who could hear

But will not

I don’t even know if I knew who and what I was writing about when I wrote that poem. The act of writing calling forth that which may not be ready to be fully faced, but yet still breaks through its expression.

“As the youngest of three children, [my] solitude seemed reinforced (or perhaps the family dynamic is what created it in the first place). My brother seemed to have no use for his youngest sister and largely ignored me. I would sit mostly undisturbed in front of the TV while he chased my sister around the house threatening her life…She, for her part, seemed to take immense pleasure in tormenting him. I grew very used to the pounding and screaming… and when I was pulled into the middle, I tried to remain impartial — I was terrified of both of them.”

What stands out now in the re-read beyond that excerpt is just how much I had to reinterpret my experience to believe there was anything resembling true affection shown to me. The ever-present snide teasing, humiliations and superficial companionship — but only when conveniently useful — were the embodiment of pseudo hostility and pseudo mutuality.

The patterns were clear, even before I had language and recognition of them.

None of it existed independently.

The sibling dynamics, the parental comparisons, the small yet consistent inequities, the absence of acknowledgement of harm, the lack of repair with expectation to move on and sweep injury under the rug — they were all part of the same system. All reinforcing and sustaining each other — repeating the same injuries.

Wounds so familiar, there grew a numbness to each new infliction. No longer voiced because that only invited more.

Dishonest harmony is the hallmark of dysfunctional families.

What often gets framed later as “differences in perspective” between siblings is more often the result of those siblings adapting differently to the same environment.

Coping in different ways.

Non-targeted siblings allowing the scapegoat to take the brunt of the system’s dysfunction as both self protection and deflection.

Roles emerge and diverge. Coping strategies diverge. The narratives eventually diverge.

And in many cases, so do the relationships.

Ambivalence in adult sibling relationships does not draw the same attention as does parent-adult child distance.

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These relationships are not chosen. Just as children are non-consensually forced into relationships with their parents, so too are siblings forced into relationships with each other.

During childhood, they are near constant companions within the household. Those interactions, particularly during formative years, can and often do contain high-intensity and emotional tension.

In a dysfunctional family, those dynamics are even more acute. When inequity, conflict and lack of repair are built into that system and where parental emotional abuse and neglect serve as the foundational underpinning, the effects compound over time.

“Children indirectly shape their brothers’ and sisters’ characteristics and behaviors by serving as sources of social comparison, and from a very young age they attend to the ways in which their parents treat them relative to their siblings. Differential treatment, such as in privileges, discipline and parent-child conflict and affection are linked to less positive sibling relationships.” (McHale, 2012)

Adult children don’t just estrange from individuals within the family. They estrange from perpetually harmful relational systems that remain unchanged.

They estrange from fixed, dysfunctional role assignments that remain barriers to connection and true identity.

So while sibling estrangement is often characterized as secondary fallout from parental estrangement and a “taking of sides” within that conflict, it can also simultaneously be a direct result of the cumulative impact of the sibling relationships themselves.

By the time I left the relationship with my parents, it was clear there had never really been one with my siblings, even as much as I had tried for so long to convince myself otherwise.

The distance wasn’t new. It was finally visible.

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