Sibling relationships are usually the ones that last the longest of any relationships in our lives. In many families, siblings enter each other’s lives before memory fully develops; they often remain throughout older adulthood; and we share a family history that others might not understand (Gilligan et al., 2020). Siblings know our strengths and weaknesses, and that can be a boon or a burden as we mature.

It’s also key to recognize that sibling estrangement is not as rare as many think. Hank and Steinbach (2023) found that around 28 percent of individuals in their large-scale family study, with 10,000 sibling dyads, had experienced estrangement with a sibling. They also found that sibling estrangement was often temporary and more likely in situations where significant family transitions were more frequent.

People often assume that estrangement is impulsive or selfish, but it generally comes as a last resort after years of trying to reshape a relationship. In fact, the stories of individuals in my qualitative study of estrangement underscore the truth that their decision was made after longstanding efforts of trying to maintain or reshape a dysfunctional relationship. After years of failed efforts, they finally decided that distance was the healthiest choice for them to make. While estrangement is a clear endpoint to dealing with relationships that lack safety, trust, and potential for change, there are many pathways that lead individuals to this decision.

The Accumulation of Hurt

When we think about how people develop over time, we know that much of our development is cumulative, meaning it builds over time. We learn about relationships this way, as well, and the accumulation of painful relational experiences builds up over time through repeated interactions. Eventually, though, we comprehend the limits of the relationship to satisfy our needs, and we reach the tipping point of estrangement or continued engagement.

Sibling relationships can have an interesting dynamic due to their involuntary-voluntary nature. As children, there is no escaping family bonds, but with adulthood, continued relationships with siblings become more of a choice. In some families that have been sites of abuse, trauma bonding between siblings can occur, which can complicate adult sibling relationships in unexpected ways that lead to conflict or estrangement. In seemingly “happy families,” rivalry or resentment can fester for years and then manifest as estrangement in adulthood.

Pain Can Arise From So Many Circumstances

In some families, other dynamics are at play that may begin in childhood and have lasting, and often intensifying, influence on the sibling relationship into adulthood. These include parental favoritism, scapegoating of one sibling, “golden child” dynamics in which one child can do no wrong, and parental enabling of poor behavior. As people shared about their decision to estrange a sibling, the relationship with the sibling could not easily be separated from the larger family system in which the relationship developed, in many cases. As one woman observed, “I can identify the patterns that exist in this toxic relationship with this sibling [as] really a reflection of how my overall family dynamic created this toxicity. So, it really reveals a bigger picture.”

While many of the individuals who shared their stories pointed to a “last straw,” they affirmed it marked the culmination of years of hurt caused by their sibling. The pain described had been inflicted through a variety of means, including verbal assault, manipulation, criticism, and betrayal.

An example of verbal attacks and criticism, a woman shared, “My brother was verbally abusing me and falsely calling me an ‘inheritance whore’ for maintaining contact and care for my mom who cut him out of her will after he estranged himself from her. The goal: protect my mental health and peace of mind.” Another person described betrayal by their brother, “My brother was my business partner, and he went behind my back and colluded with others and created a huge financial loss for me and my family.” These were examples of the final straw, when a person had endured the situation as long as they could.

One of the strongest themes shared was the presence of abuse by a sibling. Abuse can take many forms, including emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and sexual abuse. One woman in her 50s shared her reason for estrangement from a sister, “I didn’t want to be a part of her drama or manipulation anymore. She was 12 years older than me and sexually abused me when I was 5 years old. I repressed those memories until I couldn’t anymore.” Bullying and intimidation, in childhood and adulthood, are other behaviors that led to estrangement.

It’s More Than a Single Incident

Regardless of the relationship, estrangement is rarely about a single incident between two people. It typically reflects longstanding emotional wounds that haven’t healed; persistent conflict that cannot be settled; chronic disrespect or denigration; or feelings of being unseen or unvalued.

“Estrangement was not what I wanted, but what I wanted was not going to happen.”
— Initiator of Sibling Estrangement, in her 60s

For some participants, estrangement represented an act of self-preservation rather than rejection. After having spent a lifetime defending against a sibling’s attacks, they reached a point where they would not tolerate being harmed any longer. When interactions consistently feel unsafe or damaging, the expectation of lifelong family loyalty may begin to lose its meaning.

What the initiators were striving to do through their decisions to enact distance with their siblings was to meet very basic needs. A striking number of participants used the language of survival, relief, and peace when describing life after estrangement. They shared goals of reducing anxiety, protecting emotional well-being, ending chronic stress, and creating peace for themselves and their families-of-creation.

Grief and Relief Often Co-Exist

“It has been a sense of relief on one hand… On the other hand, I mourn for the family I wish they were.”
— Initiator of Sibling Estrangement, in his 60s

Perhaps the most poignant revelations from these narratives described the combination of relief and grief that initiators were left carrying. They grieved the relationship that they could have had with their sibling but recognized that letting it go was the only clear path to the relief they needed. Estrangement is often a painful acknowledgment that a relationship that should have been cherished has become too damaging to sustain.