My sister and I have been, for about fifteen years now, in a particular kind of estrangement that neither of us, at any point, made any visible decision to enter. I have written about her once before, in a different piece, where I tried to describe the slow drift of our relationship across our adult lives. I want to come back to her here, because there is a more specific feature of the drift that I have been thinking about lately, and that I think is worth setting down.
The feature is this. The estrangement we are currently in is not the result of any choice. Neither of us, at any point in the last twenty years, sat down and decided that we were going to be less close than we used to be. Neither of us did anything that would warrant the other’s withdrawal. Neither of us complained, at any visible juncture, about the increasing distance. We did not have the conversation in which one of us said, “I am noticing that we are not as close as we used to be, and I want to do something about it.” That conversation has not, in any version of it I have access to, ever occurred.
What did occur, instead, was a particular kind of slow drift produced by entirely ordinary structural conditions. I got busier, in the way young adults in the early stages of their careers tend to get busier. My sister got quieter, in the way some people respond to the increased demands of adult life by withdrawing into smaller and more manageable circles. The distance between us, which had been small at the start, compounded across years in the way distances quietly compound when nobody is doing the active work required to close them. By the time we both noticed, we had been not-close for so long that the not-closeness had, in some real way, become the structural state of the relationship.
This is, I now believe, much more common than the cultural register acknowledges. The cultural register tends to assume that estrangement between siblings comes from a discrete cause. A fight. A betrayal. A long-standing resentment that finally erupted. The estrangement I am describing has none of these features. It has, instead, the structural feature of having occurred without any visible cause at all. The not-having-a-cause is the most disorienting part. There is nothing, in any honest accounting, to point at. There is only the slow accumulation of years in which neither of us did the small ongoing work required to remain close, and the cumulative effect of the not-doing has been the relationship we now have.
How it actually happens
I want to try to describe how this kind of drift actually works, because the structural mechanics of it are, on close examination, almost invisible in any single year.
In the first year after I left home, my sister and I spoke regularly. Not constantly. We were both young, and we both had the various preoccupations of early adulthood. But the pattern of contact was real. We would call each other on birthdays. We would text each other small jokes and observations. We would see each other at family events and pick up roughly where we had left off. The relationship, in that first year, was operating on the residual closeness of the previous eighteen years of growing up in the same house. The residual was strong. The residual was what was holding the relationship in place.
By year three, the residual had started to thin. Not dramatically. We still called on birthdays. We still texted each other. We still saw each other at family events. But the texture of the contact had begun to shift. The jokes were slightly fewer. The texts were slightly more transactional. The phone calls were slightly shorter, and conducted slightly more on autopilot. I do not remember registering any of this at the time. It is only in retrospect, looking back, that I can see the texture had begun to shift.
By year seven, the texture had shifted considerably. The birthday calls were now ritualistic rather than substantive. The texts had become almost entirely transactional. The family events were the primary venue at which we now interacted, and the family events were, by their nature, calibrated to surface conversation rather than to the kind of substantive contact that would have rebuilt the closeness that had, by then, mostly drained out of the relationship. Again, I did not register this at the time. I registered, more vaguely, that my sister and I were not in particularly close contact. The not-being-in-close-contact felt, at the time, like a feature of adult life. Most of my friends were not in particularly close contact with their siblings either. The configuration felt, in the wider environment, unremarkable.
By year twelve, the structural fact was clear, if anyone had been willing to look at it. My sister and I were no longer close. We had been not-close for so long that the not-closeness had, by then, become the operating mode of the relationship. The operating mode was not announced. The operating mode was, in some real way, simply what we now had. The drift, which had been small in any single year, had compounded into a structural condition that neither of us, on either side, was currently equipped to reverse.
What both of us probably noticed, at about the same time
I do not know exactly when my sister noticed. I have, in fact, never asked her. The not-having-asked is part of the structural condition I am describing. The conversation in which I would ask her when she noticed is not a conversation either of us currently knows how to have.
What I can say is that I noticed, somewhere around year fifteen, that the relationship I now had with my sister was not the relationship I had assumed I would have with my sister at this point in our lives. I had assumed, in the back of my head, that we would be the kind of adult siblings who were in regular substantive contact. The assumption had been operating in the background for years, doing the quiet work of allowing me to feel that the current configuration was temporary and could, at any time, be reverted to the more substantive version. The assumption was, on close examination at year fifteen, no longer supported by the evidence. The evidence suggested, more accurately, that we had become the kind of adult siblings who occasionally saw each other at family events and otherwise had no particular role in each other’s lives.
I suspect she noticed at around the same time. I cannot verify this. But the rhythm of our occasional contact shifted, somewhere around year fifteen, in a way that suggested she had, on her end, also registered something. The texts became slightly more wistful. The family-event interactions had a particular kind of held quality, as if both of us were aware that something had quietly ended and neither of us was quite willing to name it.
What we did not do, at year fifteen or at any year since, was have the conversation. The conversation would have required, on both sides, the willingness to acknowledge that the relationship had drifted, that the drifting had been the product of small accumulating non-effort rather than of any specific event, and that neither of us, at this point, quite knew how to start again. The acknowledgment is, on close examination, the heaviest piece of work the conversation would have required. The acknowledgment requires both parties to take a kind of responsibility that the wider cultural register does not have particularly good vocabulary for. The responsibility is not for any specific harm. The responsibility is for the ordinary failure to do the small ongoing maintenance that adult siblinghood, in the absence of structural support, structurally requires.
Why the conversation does not happen
I want to be honest about why the conversation has not, in fifteen years, occurred between us. I do not, on close examination, think it is because either of us does not want it. I think it is, more accurately, because neither of us currently knows how to have it.
The mechanics are difficult. Starting the conversation requires one of us to say, in some form, that we have noticed the drift and want to address it. The saying requires admitting that the previous fifteen years have, in some real way, been a quiet failure on both sides. The admitting feels, on both sides I suspect, like the kind of move that risks the small remaining connection we currently have. The current connection is thin. The current connection is also not nothing. The starting of the conversation could, in some real way, make the current configuration worse, if the other party were to respond defensively or by withdrawing further.
So neither of us starts. The not-starting is itself a kind of decision, made jointly without ever being explicit. The decision is to leave the current configuration in place rather than to risk the work of trying to address it. The decision is rational. The decision is also, on close examination, the most consequential decision either of us is currently making in this relationship, and we are making it by default, every day, without ever consciously articulating that the decision is being made.
What I am, slowly, beginning to consider
I have started, in the last year or so, to consider whether the default decision is, in fact, the one I want to keep making. The consideration is not, by itself, a plan. I have not yet decided to start the conversation. I have, however, started to consider what the conversation might involve, what it might cost, and what it might, in the most optimistic case, produce.
What it might produce, if it went well, is the start of a different version of our relationship for whatever time we have left. We are both still relatively young by the standards of adult siblinghood. My sister is thirty-five. I am thirty-eight. We have, in principle, somewhere between thirty and forty more years of adult life in which the relationship could, conceivably, become substantive again. The thirty to forty years is a lot of time. The time is, however, only available if one of us starts the conversation.
What it might cost, if it went badly, is the small remaining connection we currently have. The current connection is thin. The current connection is not, however, broken. Starting the conversation and having it go badly would, in some real way, break what is currently still operating. The cost is real. The cost is, on examination, what has kept both of us from starting for fifteen years.
I do not yet know which way I will, in the end, weigh these. I do know that the not-deciding is itself a decision, and that the decision is currently producing, by default, the configuration I have now had with my sister for most of my adult life. The configuration is livable. The configuration is also, on close examination, considerably less than what either of us, I suspect, would have wanted if we had been able to look at it clearly twenty years ago.
I will probably, at some point in the next few years, start the conversation. I do not yet know when. I do not yet know how. I do know that the not-starting is no longer, in my own internal accounting, a neutral state. The not-starting is costing something, every year, that I had previously not been tracking. The tracking has, in the last year, begun. The tracking is, in some real way, the start of being able, eventually, to do the thing I have not, in fifteen years, found a way to do.
My sister is, in some real way, still in there. The version of her I knew when we were children was real. The current version, on the available evidence, is also real, and is also someone I would, if given the chance, like to know. The chance has not, in fifteen years, been taken. The chance is still available. The taking of it is the work. The work, I now think, is overdue.
