Forget Gossip: A Brother’s Love Can Be a Lifeline

The buzz began the moment the cameras caught actress Angelina Jolie in her brother’s arms and built as she gushed over him in her Oscar acceptance speech. And it has continued all week on radio talk shows and in computer chat rooms.

So what’s up with Angelina and her brother? Does that relationship seem a little strange? Maybe the questions simply reflect the image that the young actress has created: an eccentric iconoclast pushing the limits of convention on matters of sex and social mores.

Or maybe it is a sign of how disconnected we are from our own families, that so many of us could be made uncomfortable by the image of such strong familial love.

Jolie said that when her name was called as best supporting actress for “Girl, Interrupted,” “I just hid in my brother’s arms.” Cameras televising the ceremony showed Jolie and her brother, James Haven, in the audience as they embraced and kissed.

On stage, Jolie proclaimed to the world, “I am just so in love with my brother! Jamie . . . I have nothing without you. You are the strongest, most amazing man I have ever known.”

Her words moved her brother to tears . . . but prompted raised eyebrows and smirks among some reporters and TV viewers.

Backstage later, Jolie was asked to “explain the nature of your closeness to your brother.” Fans on Web sites dedicated to her wondered if the pair didn’t seem “unnaturally close.”

And a New York newspaper ran an article, headlined “Smoochy Jolie and Bro Too Close for Comfort: Fans,” that ended this way: Her life “has been an open book of bizarre behavior. Jolie, who sports numerous tattoos, has told interviewers she has experimented with bisexuality and sadomasochism.”

As if tattoos and sexual deviance somehow relate to brotherly love.

*

As a woman with a brother I deeply love, I found myself moved by Jolie’s tribute to Haven . . . and bewildered by the prurient tone of inquisitors who implied there must be something weird about her affection.

“Oh God,” Jolie said, trying to explain their relationship. “Well, I don’t know if it’s divorced families or what it is, but he and I were each other’s everything, always, and we’ve been best friends. He’s been always my strongest support. . . . He’s just given me so much love and taken care of me.”

In fact, that sentiment doesn’t make Jolie odd; it is very typical among children of divorce.

Jolie was 2 and her brother 4 when her parents--actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand--divorced. The children were raised by their mother, and Jolie has alluded to a “stormy” relationship with her dad when she was young.

Therapists say it is not uncommon for siblings to be drawn closer by the trauma of divorce, and for one to step into the breach and fill the role of an absent parent.

“When divorce occurs, it’s a very intense experience. Everyone is suffering, there’s a lot of sadness and grief. Your little nuclear family that has given you security has been blown apart. . . . You feel a sense of abandonment,” said Susan Maxwell, a West Los Angeles therapist who counsels families in crisis.

“A situation like that can make the sibling bond stronger. It’s the two of you against the world. It’s like surviving a war. Or an airline crash. When you share an experience like that, you can come through it feeling very close, very bonded,” she said.

Maxwell knows that feeling intimately. She too has an older brother with whom she weathered a family breakup. “And we’re very close. We talk all the time, we understand each other. It’s like we’re speaking the same language.”

*

It doesn’t always happen that way, of course.

“The experience of divorce can draw siblings very, very close or it can destroy the sibling relationship,” said Florida therapist M. Gary Neuman, the creator of a counseling program for children of divorce that is used by courts across the nation.

Sometimes the war between the parents trickles down to the children, and they cast their lots with one parent against the other, winding up on different sides. Sometimes kids demonstrate the same kind of confrontational behavior with each other that their squabbling parents have displayed. And sometimes they are just in so much pain, they become withdrawn or alienated from one another.

Even close relationships can become unhealthy if siblings rely on each other too much, he said. “They are drawn together by their parents being angry and hostile, and they hold on to each other too much, become too dependent, feel too much responsibility for another.

“They feel so much pressure to be there for each other, they become psychological mates for each other.”

But at its best, the sibling relationship can serve as a lifeline, pulling children safely into adulthood through the turbulence of broken families.

“A sibling is the only one who has really shared your life, who really knows how you came to be who you are,” Maxwell said.

“When you’re in the public eye, people make assumptions, attribute qualities to you that you may not have. But what we all really want is to be known and accepted for what we are. And that’s what a sibling can do . . . know you, love you for who you are, not for some ideal.

“To have a brother who’s by your side, who gives you the type of unconditional love that we all need--especially when you’re very vulnerable--that can promote a very powerful bond,” she said.

“And I don’t consider that odd at all. I think the person who has that is very lucky.”

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.