Sibling Bond?

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One of the many little things that has always bothered me (growing up without knowledge of AS) is the apparent lack of any significant emotional bond to my siblings. I have long felt very guilty about this and am acutely aware that society has this expectation that I feel and express this deep bond in various subtle ways but I just don't have it to express. I will do and say things that I think are appropriate but it usually born out of an educated guess based on what I have seen and read about sibling relationships rather than something innate and natural born out of emotion. At an intellectual level, I wish them all the success in the world but when it comes to a 'connection' it just does not seem to be there.

It is pretty much the same for the rest of my extended family too. I do feel a bond to my parents and also to my wife but have no real way to gauge how strong I feel these bonds compared to an NT.

I just wondered how other aspies (assuming that's what I am) feel towards their brothers and sisters.

I have trouble with this too. I "feel" and know in my head that I love them and that they're the people I'm closest to, but I'm terrible at expressing it. I don't really know how to say it verbally and I don't like to pat and hug them the way others do, so I just do little things to help them out, like make breakfast, or buy them little gifts. I know that to the rest of the world it's not enough to really show how I feel, but it's the best I can do and hopefully they know that.

I used to be really close to my brother and my cousins. I'm not so much any more.

I have quite a strong bond with my brothers but not with my parents. They share a lot of similar traits to me High IQ and interests which they are obsessive about which i suppose is the basis of this.

My ex was NT but what i could not understand was that he didnt have that bond with his siblings.

The only family members who didn't remain strangers for me were my grandmother and is my sister, but it's not an emotional bond. I guess I'm kind of a wailing wall for her.

Actually, I think aspies should have TIGHTER bonds with there siblings as they are supposed to prefer a few close relationships to many looser ones. Anyway, my older brother and I are tight, less so with my younger siblings. Age difference may play a large role.

My sister and I got along when we were very little. As we started high school and branching out into the real world, we started rubbing each other the wrong way. She hates the 60s and 70s and she likes to keep with the times, in the present. I hate this present time in history and everything that comes with them, so I live in a Mod 60s time warp. If I wasn't able to have that escapism to my happy place, I would have committed suicide a long time ago.

I played with my brothers and there was never that typical bullying sibling crap between us. We still fought, bugged each other, were mean to each other. It be rare when my brothers be to me but I was mostly mean to them growing up. I teased them, always got back at them when they make me mad like touching my things. I would sometimes get them into trouble by blaming something on them so I wouldn't get into trouble and sometimes mom believed me. But yet my little brother always stood up for me and protected me despite my badness towards him.

Now we are not close anymore. We started to separate when they reached late elementary school because their interests changed.

I spent more time playing with my brothers than any of the kids at school (where I would usually play on my own). For many years, I was the "middle child", and had to act as a "buffer" between the other two because they would fight all the time (sometimes I would get in fights too, but nowhere near as much as the other two)., though sibling rivalry is to be expected with anyone. My older brother seemed to hate my guts at times for reasons beyond me.

Now that we are much older and more mature, we take much better care of each other

I wish I could say it were a tough question, but in truth I've never had any real connection with my immediate family. It's nothing personal or anything, I just don't feel it.

I'm not as close to my two older sisters as I am with my younger sister, but age and personality might have to do with that, as my younger sis is quirkier so she can get on with my AS traits better (she must've gone that way to cope with sharing a room with me for 17 years growing up) But I think the biggest reason is that I'm closer in age to her (she's a year younger, while my two older sisters are 7 1/2 and 5 1/2 years older than me).

I have always felt very disconnected from my family (parents & brother) and seem to lack the bond that most people have. Often I feel guilty about this, but that bond has never been there.