This week’s advice column is about sibling rivalries, and how to cope with being the lesser child.
Welcome to Couldn’t Be Me, a weekly advice column where I solicit your personal dilemmas and help out as best as I can. Have something I can help you with? Find me @_Zeets.
Whether your sibling is better than you at basketball — and gradually eliminating your team from the playoffs— or beats you in a video game, being bested by a sibling is tough for a lot of us. Siblings are the first people we compete against, and our rivalries with them run deeper and hotter than any others. That feeling of being second best can be hard to deal with, but it’s important to remember that beyond that rivalry can be an appreciation, a chance to celebrate someone close to you for being great at something.
This does not include a younger brother having a bigger penis, however. Don’t ask. You’ll see farther down.
Seth:
My brother and I have played basketball together since we were young. We both were pretty great at it back then, but as we got older, he quickly surpassed me in skill. The higher we rose, the greater the distance between the two of us. Now we’re playing against each other at the professional level, and it’s not even a fair competition. He’s more accomplished, more known and beloved, and so much better than me that one SB Nation writer once called me the store-brand version of him. Even though our parents try to support the two of us, I know deep in their hearts that they love him more. How could they not? I come off the bench and he’s probably going to win another championship. I know I should be happy for him, but I can’t help but feel envious and a bit small in comparison to him.
CBM:
It’s unfortunate, but history is full of siblings like you. The ones who are overshadowed. The lesser talented ones. You can find solidarity with the likes of Luke Hemsworth, Brett Harrelson, Neil Connery, Mychel Thompson, John Millsap, Zoran Dragic, and Taylor Griffin. Talent can be genetic, but sometimes it’s not divided evenly. You happened to wade into the talent when it was almost dry.
The problem is that you can’t be too bitter about this. Unless you want to go Cain vs. Abel, which I don’t think is the right route here. I think the best way to think when you’re the less talented sibling is the same way that every human in this culture of ours desperately needs to start thinking: that even though you two grew up playing against each other, and there’s forever a connection between the two of you, you’re not in direct competition with him. Your story is yours, and your duty is to improve yourself as much as you can. Celebrate your brother; his success should bring you as much happiness as your own.
Your goal is to do the most with what you have been given. Envy will always inhibits that.
Luis:
I was playing u14 [American youth soccer] and my little brother was playing for a gold club. One day we went to get new cleats. My brother grabbed the predators, I grabbed the f50s.
My dad made me put them back. He said to me, “when you play like your brother, I’ll buy you cleats like your brother.”
Martin:
This is about the first time my little brother beat me at FIFA.
Long story short, I am seven years older than my little brother. I obviously always beat him from the time he started picking up a controller to about the time I went to college.
I started playing less and he kept on playing a lot more, so by the time I’m 19-20 he’s super good. We play at this party with some other friends of mine, he beats me 1-0, and he was (obviously and understandably) over the moon.
I was mad, livid, he beat me in front of my friends, I swear I considered walking away or I don’t know, beating the crap outta him. But eventually I came around and saw things for what they were, my little brother had grown and it was very natural for him to be good at video games.
To this day he’s a fucking master. He plays Ultimate difficulty like it’s a walk in the park and I struggle with World Class.
CBM:
These two submissions are stories of younger siblings surpassing older siblings, and embarrassing them in the process. I have no consolation for Luis, since I was that younger brother who was better at the sport, and I can see myself in his dad. I can’t be wasting good money on nice cleats for someone who can’t honor them. It’s a cold world. You better bundle up.
For Martin, I sympathize. I believe deeply in embarrassing your younger sibling in video games. I believe that making them cry is a great way to build character. It’s a rite of passage to adulthood for them to know that the world, starting with their older sibling, can be merciless. That there are people out there who can be much better at something you love, and that all you can do is try your best, fail, cry, and get better.
I also know that the dynamic eventually reverses flow. That by showing the younger sibling no mercy, that you only set them on the path to destroy you eventually. I remember when my little brother and I played in a FIFA tournament that he won, beating me badly in the finals. I was livid. Perplexed. Flabbergasted. Something had to be wrong, either with the controls or with the order of the universe. I couldn’t believe it. As I was still grappling with this new truth, my little brother turned to me and quoted a line from one of his favorite animes: “Every warrior must fall. Your time is now.”
It be like that sometimes.
Julian:
When I was 19 and my brother was 17, I returned home unexpectedly from college to find him having sex in my room. It was bad enough to learn he got off on defiling my bed with a random scallywag, but even worse was before he noticed my presence I saw him pounding away, and he was putting in work.
To add psychological injury to insult, when he leaped up from surprise at my intrusion, I discovered he was packing a jumbo Mr. Plumpy below deck. My own fry was not supersized, so this was devastating. We have the same parents for God’s sake!
Up until then I’d held such an upper hand in the sibling dynamic. I was a successful athlete, and much better looking in the traditional sense. I was popular and dated a slew of beautiful girls throughout high school. But going forward it was clear to me that women wanted me on their arms while they wanted my brother in their beds.
I have a beautiful wife and three children now; my brother is still a bachelor at 35, and has dated a diverse array of women over the years, all of whom regard him with a fierce loyalty, like he is some sort of deity. I have always inspired adoration from women via kindness and decency. It kills me not to know what it’s like to inspire dedication and need simply through bestial prowess and lust. I’ve never talked to him about this, but this shit put a huge dent in my confidence. What the fuck am I supposed to do?
CBM:
Hey man, that’s some wild shit. Hold on, give me a minute to get over you calling your brother’s penis, “Mr. Plumpy.”
.
.
.
All right, then.
Penis envy is a terrible disease that has plagued the conscience of many men for no good reason. Men are usually more obsessed with the size of their penises than women are, and you shouldn’t have your confidence affected just because your brother may be an exceptional case. You’re not alone, however. Size has been socialized into a determinant of masculinity for eons.
But the biggest issue here is your idea that women are conquerable through sex. I understand that when you’re a young guy, that’s how sex is marketed towards you, and it’s easy to absorb that way of thinking. But as an adult you have to work to grow out of it. You are unabashedly reducing women to objects who you hope will follow and worship you because of your dick.
Women aren’t easily manipulated machines. You ought to know this; at least, I would hope you don’t view your wife this way. And yet, you hold onto this view regarding your brother’s relationships, then suggest that the size of his penis is all that matters. That is fiction created by a false perception of what sex, masculinity, and being a woman actually mean.
But yes, try not to think about your brother’s penis so much. Use that time productively and read The Second Sex or something.