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Dear Prudence,

I’m 37, the eldest of four, and have been estranged from my 28-year-old and 26-year-old paternal half siblings for about 10 years. (I have one full sibling, we’re close.) I’m getting married in May and can’t stop thinking about getting in touch. Not to invite them—they hate our father and I don’t—but because family is on my mind. Their mother claims our father was violent with them and thus poisoned them against him. All he did was spank them. It feels SO distant to me now, but I confess I don’t want to reach out solely for hatchet burying. I have immense anger toward them. Their mother altered the course of my life, leading to a seven-year estrangement from my dad that ended when I reached out. So, I’ve done it once, should I do it again? Should I try to overcome this sibling estrangement and pursue a relationship? Is it worth it?

—Distressed Bride-to-Be

Dear Distressed,

You should sit with your anger a little longer. It’s unclear why you’re angry with your half siblings about something their mother did, for one thing. You clearly have strong feelings about the past, but I think you’d be better served working those out with a therapist rather than charging into your half siblings’ lives so aggressively. You have to consider the possibility that you don’t know the full story, or at least not their side of it. Also, you don’t get to determine whether they have enough standing to hate their father. That’s for them to decide. Siblings often have very different dynamics with their parents. (And spanking isn’t something to downplay.) A reconciliation will only be possible if everyone on all sides is coming into it from a place of calm and genuine curiosity.

Additionally, in general, I tend to advise that people try not to stack additional stressful situations on top of a wedding. You have a lot on your plate already, and stirring up the past via these sibling relationships is not exactly going to make this a happy time for anyone involved.

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There's so much just halfway poking through this non-story. All I can say is, LW needs some therapy.

"All he did was spank them."

Where's my nopetupus? There you are.

Saddles up and rides away

Reconciling with the siblings is going to be very different from reconciling with the dad, and LW needs to be very careful not to come across as pressuring the siblings to also reconcile with the dad.

"...All he did was spank them."

There is such a long story here.

But anyway, like. First of all, Prudence going, "Do not stir up more feelings around your the time of your *own wedding*" is quite reasonable.

Second of all, yeah, like, if you yourself can already identify that you mostly currently just want to think about the anger, then you should deal with some of that in another venue before trying to reach out. Though I don't think reaching out, eventually, is a lost cause.

"She claimed he was violent with them when all he did was hit them repeatedly" right sure definitely.

"I am angry with my siblings because they did not support my narrative that my father hitting them [and possibly me?] was totally fine" good this conversation will go well, sally forth and do the thing, everyone will feel better after.

LW needs to realize that she does not know the full picture, and really should drop any attempt at "reconciliation" until 1) after her wedding and 2) she's had time to reflect on this with a therapist. LW is 9 and 11 years older than her half-siblings. She was not around while they were growing up. There was a reason why LW herself became estranged from her father for years--why did she choose to end it and did it solve anything?

I'm assuming LW and her full sibling are close in age. Did LW's father also "spank" LW and full sib as kids? Is this a "My dad spanked us and we turned out fine" type of attitude? I have to wonder where LW's mother is in this picture, and whether "spanking" played any kind of role there.

Edited 2025-02-04 19:04 (UTC)

Part of my (and my sisters') careful non-estrangement from my brothers is that we don't talk about my father's violence and abuse. My brothers think it was "not that bad" and that we are "overreacting", so in order to maintain a relationship with my brothers, we don't talk about it with them. We are all VERY aware of how that conversation would go, so we don't have it.

I can't imagine trying to effect an END to an estrangement without reckoning with that one.

Not to mention that siblings can have very different experiences with the same parents, even if they are similar in age and grew up in the same household.

(My mother was primarily abusive toward me, and we had a golden child/scapegoat dynamic in the family, so of COURSE my brother is baffled that I’m not close to her — he had a very different upbringing, even though he’s only three years younger.)

You may indeed know that whole story, which is that Good Old Dad spanked them. But what you’ve dismissed as “not a big deal” is, by definition, violence, and it’s violence that has been proven over and over in studies to cause a host of negative physical and psychological effects, including psychopathic behavior in some children. Spanking _is_ a big deal, and if it ended at spanking, that is still more than enough for someone to decide that their parent was violent toward them. Their dad violated their trust and bodily autonomy, whether or not you see it that way, and they are fully within their rights to decide that they don’t want people who harmed them to be in their life.

It sounds as though she's completely on her father's side since she got back in touch with him. Presumably he's the one who's saying it wasn't that bad. I also wonder where her mother is in this picture, and whether her full sibling also agrees that their dad wasn't that bad.

Wanted to say this to the letter. Just... Nope.

Yes, spanking can be very traumatising

I had an experience when I was 9 or 10 where my father was angry that I wasn't performatively/demonstratively grateful enough for a birthday present that had zero relevance to my interests/tastes (a basketball, I was very clumsy/uncoordinated/unsporty)

so he pulled down my tracksuit pants and underwear and spanked me on the lawn right next to a public park, a footpath and a road

where anyone walking/driving by could have seen

in addition to the significant physical pain and significant emotional distress from being repeatedly hit

there was also shame/embarrassment about the complete loss of dignity/privacy/autonomy

from

a) having my naked bottom on full view of anyone who walked/drove by

b) being hit in full view of anyone who walked/drove by

Jesus fuck.

Yeah, it was on my birthday. Dad insisted we go to a local park to try to throw the basketball through hoops, which I couldn't do

or throw/catch the ball to each other, which I also couldn't do

and after a while of failing miserably, I was like "I am not enjoying this, I would have preferred a book as a present."

and then...

I’m so sorry he did that to you. (And also sorry for him; I don’t doubt that was done to him as well, and that’s why his first impulse when angry was to do that to you. Intergenerational trauma is almost always at play during corporal punishment. None of us should have experienced what was done to us, and some of us choose to pass on those abusive patterns rather than ensuring they end with us.) As awful as it is to be abused by someone you trust, public humiliation adds a whole other layer, and the sexual violation of bare-bottom spanking is another layer still.

I feel like a lot of times in discussions about spanking, the concept of trust and bodily autonomy isn’t present. But to me it’s a crucial part of the trauma of being spanked. How are we supposed to trust that our own body is a safe place when it can be so easily violated by someone else? How are we supposed to trust our parents to keep us safe when they’re the ones hurting us? How are we supposed to believe in our own competence to protect ourselves when we’re forced to acquiesce to abuse?