By Rena Zalavadiya
Introduction
Sometimes siblings aren’t as close as people believe that they are to be. Siblings can be your best friend, enemy, or both. Having a good relationship with your siblings is extremely necessary as almost most of your life you spend your days with your siblings in the same house. Siblings fight regularly but they are also the ones who are there for you at your roughest time. Still, there are cases where you can have a toxic relationship with your sibling because of family issues or even other issues affecting it. It's better to solve these issues than to live in fear or hatred of one another.
What causes the toxic relationship between siblings?
There are many reasons for siblings to have toxic relationships. Most of the time, it’s because a third party, like our parents or friends, is involved. Siblings could also have a toxic relationship as they learn from their parent's behavior growing up, causing them to act like them and treat their siblings badly. It could also be caused by peer pressure or even because of abusive relationships with other people. Not only that, it could be caused by drug or alcohol addiction.
Signs of a toxic relationship (Jones 2024, Reveal 2024)
- Manipulation: When there are signs of manipulation where they make you feel guilty or even make you feel sympathy for them so that they can manipulate you into doing something you usually wouldn’t do.
- Criticism: When they criticize you over everything and make you feel bad about how you look and what you wear making you self-conscious about yourself even when you look good.
- Blames you; When they blame you for everything even though they are responsible for the mistakes they have made even if it isn’t related to you and they take their anger out on you.
- Betray your trust: When they share your secrets with their friends or strangers to put you in a bad light or to take advantage of that secret to get something out of it. - Ignore your opinions: When they ignore your opinion on important matters like choosing where to go or what to eat and only consider their own opinions instead of talking about it and deciding with each other.
- Jealous outbursts: When instead of congratulating you or complimenting you, they talk bad about you with either their parents or friends and throw a fit over it by making it seem that you got it by cheating.
- No Boundaries: When they crosse the line every time like taking things that are important to you and using them for themselves or sneaking in your room to borrow something without permission.
Conclusion
Siblings should be there for each other and put each other first as they are one of the most important people in your lives. They can fix their relationship by talking to each other and listening to each other or even taking therapy sessions together so that they can sort it out. Another way would be slowly setting up rules and boundaries for each other to create a healthy relationship and also talking the problems out instead of putting your siblings in a bad light.
References
Jones, E. W. (2024, March 24). 10 Signs of a Toxic (or Unhealthy) Sibling Relationship | 2025. Psychology For.
Reveal, T. (2024, July 13). Our Mental Health. Our Mental Health.
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