You Were Always Mom's Favorite: Sisters

Writer and  Georgetown University Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen wrote a terrific book about the complex relationships between sisters, called You Were Always Mom's Favorite that might really help you understand the relationship better if you have a sister, are a sister, or have daughters of your own (Ballantine Books, 2010). Sisters have a life-long conversation that can reveal much about each of them.

As it turns out, girls often define themselves by the differences between themselves and their sister or sisters. There is often a lifelong tug of war between competition and closeness. Sisters compete for parents' time, attention, and financial support. Each sister tries to carve out her own identity within the family. If an older sister is seen by the family as the "smart" one, a younger sister might seek to differentiate herself by assuming a different identity.

Birth order plays a role in the relationship between sisters. Tannen found this even between twin sisters, where there is still a focus on who arrived on the scene first. Older sisters may be called on to help with the care, supervision, homework and responsibility for a younger sister by parents, and later be resented by a younger sister for treating them as a parent treats a child. Younger sisters may be babied and protected. Adult sisters sometimes have trouble renegotiating childhood roles. For example, ideally it would be best for an older sister to build a mutually respectful relationship, and not try to know more or be the boss all their lives.

As Tannen and her researchers studied conversations between sisters, they found  something she labeled "sister speak" where sisters can develop their own unique conversational flow and share the telling of stories. Because sisters usually share a common history, they can have conversational shorthand that they understand but others might not completely get.

Alignment in the family is important. If one sister is seen as "closer" to mom or dad, it can cause other sisters to feel left out.  As  a structural family therapist, I often want parents to be more aware of having as many good kids as they have children, and not joining in an alliance with one child, or playing favorites.

As adults, resentments can be exacerbated by one sister living closer to aging parents and assuming a larger or solo role in managing parents' increasing needs. Some adult sisters opt out and leave caring for aging parents, by default, to another sister. Some mothers add to sister conflict by over-praising one sister or her children.

Your sister might  represent the path you did not take in life. Acceptance, tolerance, and mutual respect can help soothe differences. So can lowering your expectations about your sister, and adding in other close female friends.

Sisters can be such different things to different women. It's wonderful when they are close emotionally, caring, supportive, and interested. Many women feel the loss of what they would have longed for if their sister is competitive, cold, disinterested or antagonistic. I have found women who feel sadness that their sister order got messed up.

Whether your sister is a strong ally or a stiff competitor, chances are she's one of the few people on the planet who knows your whole life story. The relationship between sisters, or the lack of it, helps to define us as women and as individuals.

Making Repairs

I really liked Ben Affleck's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony this February. In accepting the Oscar for best picture, he acknowledged and thanked his wife, actress Jennifer Garner. He told her that while their relationship has taken a lot of hard work, there is no one he'd rather work with. Truly great, committed relationships do take continued awareness about yourself, the other person, how you treat each other, and how you can repair things if they go off track.

Great relationships are a little like great houses. You can't buy a beautiful house with a terrific yard, move in, and not repair or fix anything for 5, 10, 20 or more years and expect to have anything of value. Both houses and relationships take regular attention, care, and repairs when things aren't working.

All couples are going to disagree at times. What matters most is being able to repair the problem. It helps to stay solution-focused. Avoid blame. Describe what you observed, as neutrally as possible, and explain what would work better for you next time. Apologize for any ways in which your behavior, thoughtlessness, or reaction made the situation worse. Ask what you could do differently when a similar situation arises again. (It probably will; most couples have patterns). This should help your partner be less defensive with you, too.

Both people in a relationship need to share responsibility for making repairs. I don't like to see the responsibility always resting with one partner, while the other one stubbornly refuses to ever take initiative for a repair. That's not fair, and it will eventually burn out your partner and breed resentment.

I also consider it a danger sign when couples don't speak to each other for days when they have had a fight. This 'deep freeze' is often very painful for one or both partners, and is actually a very wounding and passive-aggressive behavior. It's perfectly okay to cool down when angry, decide you will meet up and talk it through a bit later, but a day or more of not speaking is a really bad idea.

Try to avoid black and white or extreme thinking when there is conflict between you and the other person. While it is sometimes necessary to cut-off or end a relationship that is toxic or dangerous to you, most healthy relationships do have conflicts from time to time. It's not generally helpful to threaten to leave or end the relationship every time you hit a speed bump. The conflicts, if worked through in a respectful way, can actually deepen your connection and understanding of each other.

Choosing a wonderful house to live in, or a terrific partner to share your life with, is a great start. The happily ever after part often depends on different skills, which definitely include attention, care, maintenance, and regular repairs as needed. Think of it as protecting your investment.

Your Social Circle: How Big is Too Big?

Here's a fun question in the age of social networking, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: how many meaningful relationships with people can the average person have? The answer: about 150. This number was derived from the research of British psychologist and researcher, Robin Dunbar. This research has been coined “the Dunbar number.” This week's issue of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (Jan.14-21, 2013) has a nice, concise write-up about Dunbar's studies, and how they apply to most of us, written by Drake Bennett.

Dunbar grew up in Tanzania, and has an academic career in England, where he teaches at Oxford. He began his research career studying the behavior of monkeys. He found that primates’ behavior changed based on the size of their social group. The larger the size of their social group, the more they seemed to exhibit behaviors to be seen favorably by other members of the group.

Dunbar went on to study brain size and look at the advantages and complications of animals that evolved into having larger brains. The complications of large social groups include competition for resources, like food, as well as the data that must be processed about the relative hierarchies and relationships with all the others in the social group. Dunbar’s research eventually led him to hypothesize that larger brains (and therefore higher intelligence) led to the development of larger social groups.

However, even the smartest primates have limits!  While there are individual variances for personality, and particularly extroversion/introversion, Dunbar theorizes that for most human beings, the limit of meaningful relationships a person can have is 147.8. In the Bloomberg story, Dunbar deftly describes that number as “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you bumped into them at a bar.”

Dunbar networks with his colleagues in a wide variety of disciplines to focus on the social brain hypothesis, including linguists, computer scientists, physicists, classicists, economists, archeologists, anthropologists, and literary scholars. He's spoken at TED conferences, and written several books for non-academics, including The Science of Love (2012).

Dunbar has been invited to consult with a former Facebook executive, who left to co-found Path, a mobile photo-sharing and messaging service, which began in 2010. After consulting with Dunbar, Path founders decided to limit their site’s users to 150 friends. Basically, Dunbar suggests that we, as humans, have an upper limit in the number of meaningful social relationships we can have, and beyond that is something else— perhaps marketing, or acquaintances, but probably not meaningful relationships. Dunbar recognized this pattern of 150-person limits across the world—many companies, clans, and even military units are often capped at 150.

No matter how technology expands, human beings have a finite number of intimate and meaningful relationships. Digital technology doesn't change the fundamentals of our biology and neocortex. I found it interesting that Dunbar, although well-liked by colleagues across disciplines, considers himself on the shy side. He doesn't use Facebook or Path, and says he got a LinkedIn account only by mistake.

Dunbar's research actually suggests other numbers as well. Most people, he believes, have an innermost circle of 3 to 5 people. The next circle has 12 to 15, and their loss would be difficult for us.

I found it interesting that Dunbar believes most friendships can survive only 6 to 12 months without face-to face contact. His research suggests that women can have 2 best friends, including her romantic partner, while most men have only one.

Dunbar's research has critics, but I found the Bloomberg article by Drake Bennett great food for thought and discussion about social networking, genuine intimacy, and the gaps between the two. It’s fascinating that Facebook allows 5,000 friends. Or maybe that’s just acquaintances.