Don’t get me wrong, i will help family in need, but that doesn’t mean i have to be friends with them. It doesn’t mean i have to invite them to my birthday. For instance, when my wife and i was getting married, her brother was not in bridal party (I barely knew him at the time, and clearly he didn’t make the cut), so my wife’s family kind of ‘forced’ him into it.
Blood gives you right to pick up a phone and ask me for a favor, but that is pretty much it. If we didn’t hit it off don’t expect me to pretend to be your friend
By and large, my family has been sucky to me, except for my father and his sister and my cousins through her.
My loyalties are principally to my friends and those who have shown themselves to be good companions through the years. Some of those friends just happen to be family members, but it’s not because they are family; it’s because they’ve acted like friends.
I have some family members who are millionaires and spend their time trying to avoid family for fear of being asked for something. I have some members who have been in jail and are quite likely not fully sane. No have family that cheated on every wife who married them and had no qualms about abandoning their children. I have family members who joined the Navy and came out as Republican.
My dad was good to me and I loved him, but he had a penchant for crazy women, including both my mother and my stepmother. My mom was a big one for trying to use “I am your mother” to blackmail me into doing things for her. Eventually, when I got old enough and independent enough, I cut relations with her entirely and stopped speaking to her. For the last 13 years of her life, we didn’t speak at all. She of course cut me out of her will, but I anticipated that, and it turns out she had managed to burn through an enormous quantity anyway and there was essentially 6 months of living expenses in net worth by the end. So to submit to that just on the idea that there might have been a big inheritance at the end (as some people counseled me) would have been most definitely a bad call
–
My dad did say once that “‘Family’ are those people who, when they show up, you have to take them in.” Personally I do think of it that way. And my take I s a bit like CSK: I’ll help them, but I don’t have to like them. And I will enforce boundaries as much as I can. And truly abusive family members will be cut off.
My true loyalties are to friends, but it is true that I will do things for family that I wouldn’t do for random people I dislike or distrust to the same degree.
Put me in the no pile on the blood thicker than water question.
Familial relations are accidents of birth. You may well have good relationships with those people, but there’s nothing that says you have to. I have 1 sibling,we live 200 feet from each other(I found a great house one day while visiting him, it took him several months to convince me he didn’t care about me and my wife/kids living in his back yard) and get along great. I have a good relationship with my parents. I have virtually no relationship with any of my aunts/uncles/cousins. There’s no animosity, I’m cordial when I see them out and about or at the occasional wedding/funeral. It’s just that I only have so much time, energy and social capital. I cultivate relationships with people that make me a better person, or with people that I share common interests, or that I simply enjoy being around. I’m just shy of 33 and I still send 100+ emails back and forth each week with a group of 10 or 11 guys from my high school. I haven’t had 100 things to say to most of my family members in the last 15 years.
My wife is a sucker who is constantly bending over backwards to help her degenerate brother, her deadbeat mother, etc. i’m not saying you need to cut ties with every family member who faces a little adversity, but at a certain point, you do need to make them face the adversity.
I’ll add that I have two older sisters. I like the older one, and enjoy visiting her and enjoy when she visits me. I enjoy her company when we get together at my parents’ house.
The younger sister…let’s just say that, when my parents die, their funeral will probably be the last time I ever speak to her. I only talk to her now just to make Mom and Dad happy.
My family is quite strange. My immediate family is relatively intelligent, successful, interesting, educated, etc. For some reason, my uncles and aunts made much different life choices and really have nothing whatsoever in common with my immediate family. I do have one aunt with whom I am close, and one of my cousins who is in college now (somehow got out of that crazy home environment) seems to be pretty okay.
Bottom line though, I would lend money to a close friend more quicker than I would to most of my extended family. They are bottomless pits of need. I feel bad for my parents.
I am one of 9 kids, and I get along well with all of my siblings. But, if someone says "Aren’t you going to …fill in the blank (call him, have dinner with him, vouch for him)…’ and i say “Why would I do that?” and the answer is,“Becasue he is your brother.” Sorry, but that is not a good enough reason for me. For many people it is.
This is a product of you having a lot of siblings. I think it’s easy for someone with one sibling to understand that answer more than someone with eight.
