Sibling estrangement doesn’t stay between the two siblings.
Partners, children, parents, nieces, nephews and other relatives get caught somewhere in the middle. Two siblings stop speaking, but their children still know each other. Cousins who were once close stop seeing each other. Family occasions get complicated because nobody’s sure who can be invited, who will turn up, or whether everyone can be in the same room.
You might find yourself wondering:
“Do I have to choose a side?” “Can my children still have a relationship with their cousins?” “Am I allowed to see both of them?” “If one person has chosen no contact, does that mean everyone has to?”
There aren’t always straightforward answers.
Estrangement doesn’t happen in isolation
When two family members become estranged, the impact ripples outwards. Other people grieve relationships they haven’t personally lost. Grandparents worry about losing contact with grandchildren. Children notice that cousins or relatives are no longer around. Family celebrations become harder to navigate. People feel caught between loyalty to one person and love for another.
And sometimes, without anyone intending it, children become part of an adult conflict they don’t fully understand.
What about the children?
This gets particularly difficult when both siblings have children of their own. The adults have made a decision about their relationship. Their children haven’t made that decision.
A child may still love their aunt, uncle or cousins. They may ask why they don’t see them anymore, or simply notice that something has changed.
There’s no single answer for what contact between children should look like. It depends on their ages, what they know, what’s happened within the wider family, and whether contact can happen safely without putting them in the middle.
What helps is remembering this: children don’t need to carry the responsibility for resolving an adult relationship.
Does one person’s no contact mean no contact for everyone?
This is where things get complicated.
If someone has chosen no contact with their sibling, that’s their boundary within that relationship. It doesn’t mean every other family member has to hold the same boundary.
At the same time, boundaries can have knock-on effects. If someone has asked for no contact, repeatedly using another family member to pass on messages, gather information or arrange meetings doesn’t respect that boundary.
Respecting someone’s decision about their own relationship is different from letting them decide everyone else’s relationships too.
You don’t have to choose a side
When a family divides, there’s often enormous pressure to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. You’ll hear different versions of what happened, and you may never have enough information to make that judgement.
You don’t need to.
You can care about more than one person. You can have a relationship with someone without agreeing with everything they’ve done. You can respect one person’s boundary without adopting their view of the entire family.
Working out what that looks like in your own situation is the hard part, and it’s specific to your family, not something a formula solves.
What can you do when you’re caught in the middle?
It can help to ask yourself:
- What relationships are actually mine to decide?
- What boundaries has each person asked for?
- Am I being asked to carry messages or take sides?
- What is my relationship with each person, independent of the other?
- What is in the best interests of the children involved?
- Can I maintain relationships without putting anyone in the middle?
These questions won’t give you a formula. They can help separate the different relationships in your family from the original conflict between two people.
There may not be a perfect solution
Sometimes there’s no arrangement that keeps everyone happy. Some family relationships change, and you may need new ways of managing birthdays, Christmas or family gatherings. You may need to explain changes to children without handing them information they aren’t ready to carry. You may need to grieve the family relationships you’d hoped they would have.
None of this makes the estrangement yours to fix. Your role is to work out how you want to conduct yourself within the situation you’re in, not to resolve the conflict that created it.
Hello, I’m Sarah Swain, an accredited therapist and coach working online across London, South East, Kent and the whole of the UK. I’ve worked as a therapist across the NHS, charities and Employee Assistance Programmes for over 15 years. I am trained in integrative therapy, coaching and EMDR and I support adults navigating estrangement.
Leave a Reply