I don’t have any siblings. Just 17 cousins. But I think our relationships are somewhat indicative of those you have with your closer kin as well in that everything depends on what you make of it. Blood ties mean nothing if you don’t commit to building a connection. No effort, no friendship.

The daughters of Redditor Worldly-Surprise6288 weren’t the closest growing up, but the mom hoped they had grown to at least respect each other’s differences.

However, her hopes were shattered when the older one made a point of not inviting the younger to her wedding.

Wondering if she found the best way to react to the situation, the original poster (OP) turned to the subreddit “Am I The A**hole?“ (AITA), where she asked people to evaluate her response.

These two sisters haven’t been on the best terms, but their mom didn’t pick sides

Image credits: Jeremy Wong (not an actual photo)

Until one of them refused to invite the other to her wedding

Image credits: Priscilla Du Preez (not an actual photo)

Image credits: Fa Barboza (not an actual photo)

We managed to get in touch with the woman behind the post and she was kind enough to tell us more about her family.

“Growing up, my daughters [got along fine most of the time] but as I said in the post, they would have a fight every now and then. Nothing out of the ordinary though—because of the age gap they had different lifestyles and friends so they didn’t really hang out a lot,” the mom explained to Bored Panda.

It’s not exactly clear what Tracy’s partner thinks of Caitlin and if he tried to change the bride’s mind as the future in-laws haven’t had the chance to get to know each other.

“They have only seen each other at family gatherings and a few other times when I invited Tracy and him to dinner at my house,” the mom said. “They would talk and sometimes have a laugh but nothing too special.”

Siblings fight. Especially the young ones. “Children have much less ability than adults do to reflect on what’s upsetting them or keep their impulses at bay,” Dr. Raymond Raad, co-founder of RIVIA Mind, a mental-health center in New York City, told the BBC.

Bickering among siblings often benefits their development as people. It helps the little ones learn to handle conflict and makes them better at interacting with others. It’s common for such rivalries to lessen in adulthood, and become just something to laugh about at family get-togethers.

But as we see from this story, these things can stick around too. A survey of 2,000 UK adults, completed as a promotional effort for the television show Succession (in which brothers and sisters are constantly trying to one-up each other), showed more than half of respondents still feel they’re in competition with their siblings.

51% percent of respondents reported a lasting opposing relationship with their siblings and said they compete in everything from homeownership to who gets to host family parties.

“As human beings, we’re oriented towards comparison,” Shawn D Whitehead, a professor of human development and family studies at Utah State University, told the BBC.

“Siblings provide a natural point of comparison. They’re in your home, growing up with you, generally within a few years of your age on average. They’re in the same environment and the same house, so they provide us a good comparative measure.”

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After the post went viral, the mom made a few clarifications

One of the most common areas in which siblings compare each other are academia and athletics, or simply over the ‘favorite child’ status.

The latter might be the root cause of this particular fight too, as Tracy virtually put her and Caitlin’s mom in a position to choose between them. Either come to the wedding and pick one or refuse the invite and go for the other. But of course, since we don’t know the family, this is only a guess.

A natural inclination to compare ourselves to other people can be a major driver of sibling competition – especially because our brothers and sisters tend to be the people we spend the most time with during childhood, and subsequently know the most about.

“Unlike with friends, where you can say, ‘Oh, we’re so different, we come from such different places’, there’s this idea that siblings come from the same background, so something should be fair about where they end up,” Raad added.

However, just because it’s natural, doesn’t mean it should be acceptable.

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