Chris Bernholdt thought that having kids would only make his family bigger. That wasn’t the case.
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Having kids is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me, but I didn’t realize that it meant I was going to lose my brother in the process. Oh, he is very much alive, however, there is nothing between us anymore. I lost my brother a long time ago.
I expected that, when my wife and I had kids, we would lose touch with our friends that weren’t into kids—the hardcore partiers, the couples that could barely keep a plant alive let alone a person. I never imagined it would be my own brother who would disappear. But, as soon as my son was born, my older brother slowly vanished from our lives and, try as I might, he just seemed to move further and further away. Family can be your towering strength in the hardest of times when you are close, but they can also be your greatest weakness when you aren’t.
My older brother is ten years older than me. He was always doing things that I couldn’t do. “You’re just not old enough to play this” or “You are just not old enough to go here,” he would say. When he would let me do something with him, like running bases, I thought it was the greatest thing to be hanging out with the older guys.
My family used to live in a suburb of Chicago. My older brother lived a town over from where my wife and I bought our first house together. However, despite our geographical closeness, my brother and I inexplicably drifted further apart. I only noticed this change once we started our own family.
Suddenly, our brotherhood didn’t seem to mean that much to him. His wife would cut our kids’ hair, but even that limited interaction felt forced. The small talk was curt and uncomfortable. They never wanted to come over to our house. They never offered to watch the kids. They didn’t participate in family functions. They showed absolutely no interest in my burgeoning family.
Who wants to be in a relationship where the other person makes no effort? It just won’t work. So I gave up and it hurt like hell.
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I wasn’t raised that way at all. When I was young, in the summers, we would get together and swim at my Aunt and Uncle’s house. We had barbeques and the cousins all played in the backyard. Christmas was a special time for our family and we all celebrated it together. My dad has three brothers and their relationships were important. We had cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all stay at our house every year. It was a Griswold kind of Christmas. My mom even lovingly referred to my dad as Sparky.
Family would come in from Virginia, Wisconsin, and Arkansas to be together for the holidays. We gave up rooms to our grandparents and bunked up together to make everyone fit. Every year, we would line up all the cousins on my mom’s staircase to take a photo. As we grew older, it became harder to stay on those stairs but we always managed it—we made the effort to be close.
But, after my brother had his children and I had my own, it became apparent that those regular family functions wouldn’t include him or his family and he distanced himself from the rest of us. My parents don’t know why he is this way. My other brothers don’t get it either. He’s the sort of guy that likes old school communication. He’s not on Facebook, he doesn’t respond to emails. Call him on the phone and he may not answer especially if he knows who it is. (As you can imagine, I just love leaving a message on an answering machine for a person I don’t really know any more.)
His three daughters are beautiful and talented young women but I don’t know them at all. I used to be friends with my nieces on Facebook but even that became strained when their values clashed with mine. I guess trying to be their friend was the last shred that I was hanging onto—hoping that we could one day develop a normal niece-and-uncle relationship. My brother apparently never stressed to them that knowing their uncle was important. (Don’t even get me started on how much my brother touts himself as a Christian, but, in reality, treats his own family like strangers.)
And, when we finally moved away from Illinois, I had to accept the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my family ceased to exist to his family.
We still maintain to our kids that family is important. When my kids were little, my wife made something we call a family book. It’s a photo album of all the people who are in our family and we’ve been looking at their ageless faces for five years now. Thanks to the book, my kids know my brother’s family by faces and names, but don’t really get who they are. After all, they haven’t made an effort to know us since 2008 and they only hear how we are doing through my parents, who now act like the moderators of a familial war where everyone knows that neither side is ever going to concede.
I tried to make an effort to stay connected when we moved away, but relationships are a two-way street. Who wants to be in a relationship where the other person makes no effort? It just won’t work. So I gave up and it hurt like hell. Now I don’t like to just roll over and give up on anything, but what are my options? Do I swallow my resentment and try again? What if he rejects me all over? How do other families deal with this?
How do I explain to my kids that they should always be there for one another—that the bond between siblings is a thing to be treasured and defended—when my sibling clearly demonstrates to them that, even within their own family, there are those who find that bond to be an incredibly easy thing to dismiss?
As I said, I anticipated that, when we had kids, our relationships with our friends might change, but I never expected it to happen with family. I thought that having your own family—your own spouse, your own kids—would only deepen the bond you had with the family you grew up with. So why does having kids sometimes cause the ones closest to us to walk away?
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Credit: Original uncropped photo—Tom Williams/Flickr
Chris, I can hear the sadness, pain, and anger in your voice. This article must have been a difficult one for you to write. I don’t know if you guys will ever have the relationship you’re looking for, but I hope that writing about was in some way cathartic. It makes me appreciate my relationship with my brothers all the more. So easy to take these things for granted. Thank you.
When relationships fail or end, it is so hard and hurtful. This is especially true with family and even more so when there is no apparent reason.
I’ve had relationships end and been left wondering why.
Like you said, after a while you get tired of putting in the effort. It’s not fun when it’s a one way street.
I am sorry for the loss here. I hope one day your brother reaches out to you and you can rekindle what once was.
Very brave story Chris. Glad you shared it. Maybe he’ll read this and it will start a conversation.
I’m going through this with my sister. its a form of therapy to read these comments from both sides. i’m a super introvert, and for me, the process has been to stop hating myself for needing so much alone time. to stop hating myself for not being able to magically put her back together again. i cant control her at all, her life choices are hers, and some of them might be tragic, but i have to trust her to know whats right for her. it’s been rough on her, because she keeps trying to figure out what she did… Read more »
I’m probably reading too much of my own issues into this, but here’s what I suspect: Your brother is an introvert. He’s probably always been that way and has become more of one as he’s gotten older and had children of his own. Your description of what he was like when he was younger was hardly a description of an outgoing, highly social, close-knit kind of guy. His “old fashioned communication style” is another way to say that he’s introverted, which means he likes spending lots of time alone, values his autonomy, and finds closeness to be a very draining… Read more »
P.S. To test my theory: Is he really social and outgoing with a lot of other people but keeps his distance from his family? If so, he’s not an introvert, and it has something specific to do with his family. If not, then maybe he just has a more independent personality. Was he very social and outgoing growing up, always seeking out other people but then he suddenly stopped talking to his family? If so, he was not an introvert growing up, and something specific happened between him and his family. If not, then maybe he’s always been an introvert… Read more »
I understand that it is hard on you because you were close to your family. I was never close to my family; I haven’t spoken with most of them in six years. They’re probably dead, given their propensity for drugs & violence. Like it or not, kids are a game changer; they alter your personality in significant ways. Sometimes it’s an expectation that people will become involved: Two of the examples you used–and I mean no offense here–were quite selfish. “They never wanted to come to our house. They never wanted to watch the kids”. You said your brother had… Read more »
I was terribly close to my sister. There was nothing we didn’t do together. And then we became adults. And in so doing we became our own people with our own individual lives and perspectives. The person I became and the person she became were not people who get along. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame myself. We are not meant to get along with everyone in this world. And the fact that she is my sister doesn’t negate that fact. Forcing the relationship only made it toxic. It took a long time for me to accept this. But… Read more »
Heart-breaking story, Chris. Well-told, but so sad. I wish that you and I could switch places so your brother could feel what losing a brother is really like. He made his choice, and there is nothing you can do. And that, Chris, just sucks.
I’ve got a similar situation with my own brother, though he’s younger. It’s tough sometimes. I struggle with the mental and emotional energy it takes to continually make friendly, one-sided overtures, and though I’m not proud of giving up, I have to admit that my reserves have mostly run dry. I wish I was able to keep putting energy into the relationship, even if one-sided, because I DO have a belief that these kinds of selfless efforts can reap rewards someday. But I’ve frankly lost my motivation, and I feel guilt about it.