The pros and cons of adopting a split-residence

created by Chras4

(idea) by Skoob (1.5 mon) (print) ? (I like it!) 1 C! Sun Sep 01 2002 at 20:55:39

The pros and cons of splitting up siblings needs to be examined from a situational point of view. I have friends who would sooner die than be separated from their siblings after a divorce. I, on the other hand, would have paid money to get as far away from my sister as possible. My relationship with her has always been delicate at best, and there are many reasons for that. I won't get into them now, because it isn't relevant.

The Pros

In some cases, I guess separation may make the heart grow fonder. I know in my own case, only years of being at least a thousand miles from my only sibling has enabled us to be friends in any way. It gives the separated offspring a reason to sit down and calmly discuss life when in each other's company. Most of the time. :)

Another positive aspect is that siblings living apart aren't constantly being compared to each other. I never felt like I had to live up to my sister's accomplishments because I didn't live with her. My parents never really brought it up, either. It would have been pointless, because how was I supposed to know what to live up to if we didn't live together?

The Cons

Raising children apart from each other can be very hard. The siblings have a harder time relating to each other and keeping an open perspective of both parents. I hated my mother, so I lived with my father. My sister hated my father so she lived with my mother. It's very easy for a parent to poison their child's mind against their counterpart when there's nobody around to defend the absent parent. This happened in my own case, and I see it happen all the time in other divorces.

It's much worse if there's a large age difference between the children. My sister is four years older than I am, and so we didn't normally discuss the affairs of the world with any great enthusiasm to begin with. Whenever we visited, (only a few times a year, even less now, thirteen years later) we more or less made a point of not coming into contact with each other at all. She was my sister, but on various levels she was also a stranger. Although, if one child is severely introverted to begin with, it really won't matter how close, or far apart, they eventually live.

These are the pros and cons as I experienced them during my childhood. There are many facets of my life that could be outlined here that might help to frame the story a little better, but I'm not sure if that belongs in this particular writeup. Suffice to say that my sister and I are not best friends, and we never have been. In my case, living apart was the only solution.

printable version
chaos

10 ways of dealing with divorce	Becoming an idiot, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love my siblings	Splinters from a Scrabble board	attachment parenting
Oedipus complex	Making decisions logically	The myth of the perfect parent	physical abuse
Divorce	Pulling on Josephine	July 31, 2005	November 30, 2002
logic	Missing You	Still I save the moon for you	introvert
It's Lonely Being Only	sibling rivalry	abuse

Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.

Login
Password

remember me
password reminder
register

Everything2 Help

Just another sprinkling of indeterminacy
Saidai
currying functions
Squatting
conveyor belt
The Wind in the Willows
((Cover))
Arizona
Alcibiades
Shetland Sheepdog
Oligarchical Collectivism
US Copyright for Recipes
Diseases
How to listen to the stories that cats tell us

Heitah
Why I love Everything2	(person)
trixingee
Dungeon Mastering for the first time	(idea)
Netrat0
It's Called Subtext, Honey	(person)
eyeofthebeholder
The Dragon	(idea)
Heitah
consist, comprise, constitute, or compose	(idea)
Meezzio
Gotlandssnus	(thing)
argv
Astral Plane	(idea)
Madara
One Winged Angel	(fiction)
Tom Rook
Talk is cheap	(poetry)
shaogo
Adelle Davis	(person)
Aerobe
race car g sfjsgsd	(poetry)
Binah
Dream Log: July 5, 2008	(dream)
StrawberryFrog
Forgotten things in space	(idea)
antigravpussy
velvet revolution fairy tale	(idea)
Heitah
Nerve agent VX	(thing)

Everything 2 is brought to you by the letter C and The Everything Development Company