Photos: Adult sisters, Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/GettyImages; Young sisters, Simon Kirwan/GettyImages.
women are looking at a job and finding a life partner and thinking about these things. That brings them together in a new, common way. Rather than boys and clothes, it can be more about stable things and supporting each other.” Sister relationships are usually different than brother relationships, she says. “I teach psychology of women,” she says. “When you’re talking about gender differences, brothers are physical when they’re younger. Females tend to have closer, more communicative relationships. They talk more, disclose more and have a deeper level of friendship than male friends do. The problem with that is because there’s an expectation of depth in female relationships, females are looking for more than just the superficial ‘We’re sisters.’ If a sister is not similar to you in life choices and personal relationships, it can be hard to have that platonic relationship.” When families divorce, stepsisters and half-sisters can experience similar dynamics in their relationships as biological sisters. When Stamford High School graduate Michele Lurie was a toddler, her father remarried and had two more children. Her half-sister is six years younger. “Despite how much love he had for us, which was a ton, she was a favorite,” Lurie recalls. “They just had an incredible relationship. I had typical issues when she was 2 or 3 and I was 8 or 9. She’d come sit next to me on the couch, because she thought I was everything, and I’d inch away. I can remember my father taking me aside and telling me we’d be best friends when we were older, and he was right. Our father passed away three years ago from pancreatic cancer. We were close before, but we have an extra bond with him gone now. She comes to me with things she would go to him for.” When Lurie was 13, her mother remarried. “My two stepsisters lived with us half the time,” she remembers. “The 15-year-old went to college fairly quickly. The other one was also 13. She and I were very close at first. We were kind of like twins in a way, but we grew apart toward our senior year in high school. Our friends were different and we were both interested in the same boy. It caused such a rift, she stayed at her mom’s for a month and a half. Now we can laugh about it.” HL
Sister pet peeves We asked, you answered: I hate how ... it feels like I’ll never measure up to her, no matter what. they leave me out. little respect she had for my privacy. she’d torment me until I’d resort to violence, then smirk when I was punished.
it’s my thing, but she’s better at it. she won’t help out at family food events; then she makes fun of me for acting stressed. she reinvents our history to make herself look good. she’s always been jealous of me.