Do you have a close relationship with your family?

[Epic Reine 0]

It seems everyone I know has a good close relationship with their family, always getting along and spending quality time with them and saying that they love them. I don't know how true any of that is but for the past few years, my relationship with my family has gotten worse and worse.

 

My father passed away a few years ago so he's out of the picture. My mother just celebrated her 61st birthday and I have two older sisters and an older brother. My oldest sister, I can no longer tolerate, she's 30 years old and still acts like she's 12. She doesn't have a job and constantly whines about everything and all she does all day is watch gossip shows with my mother (who also doesn't work). My other sister has a kid and lives in Florida with her fiancee, I don't really talk to her all that much anymore except when she visits every few months. My brother is 28 and he literally never leaves the house because of some conditions and problems he has (he has OCD, arrested emotional development and agoriphobia). He has gotten therapy for said problems but like most therapy, none of it has helped and he's just this bad tempered living waste of life. Earlier this year, we got into a fight over me taking his keys after I lost mine so I could get his copied. Ever since the fight where he physically harmed me, we haven't spoken a word to each other since.

 

Now, this all may sound petty or fucked up but everyday I'm just leaning more and more towards blowing up. I constantly try to get away for the house as much as possible, keeping me busy with school, work, and friends. My mother always tries to talk to me but it's always about something I never like talking about and I have a huge problem about turning to my family to talk about problems rather confiding in friends. It's also very difficult of me to say that I love them because I never really liked saying the words in general, maybe it's just me. I desperatley wanna finish school, get a real job, move far away from home and just severing all ties. I barley speak to any family outside my immediate one so It's not like I can turn to them either (except for my aunt who is like a living cartoon character and no, not in a good way). I always hear about how family is supposed to come before anything but latley I'm wondering how much of that is true, where you dread going home every single day and the first thing you want when you arrive home after a long day is to be alone then I think there's a problem. I really wished I was brought up in a better household. I know no family is perfect but this is unbearable.

 

How is your relationship with your family?

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I haven't spoken to anyone in my family, outside of my mother and sister, in nearly a decade. My mother's relatives are largely Baptist hicks for whom I feel little familial love. My grandfather's nice enough, I suppose, but I can't say I'll be moved when he dies. I certainly wasn't when my grandmother died.

 

Then there's my father's side of the family, which effectively removed itself from my life when my father disappeared over fifteen years ago. My father died over two years ago, which served to sever the severely frayed ties I had left.

[Copper Feel 0]

I speak to the Welsh half of my family fairly regularly, what with them either being young or in good health and all. The English side of my family? No, they're all either old and in terrible condition, or young and with little to no interest in seeing me. I would oftentimes clash with them on political viewpoints, so maybe that's why I rarely meet them, I dunno.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I get along with my parents extremely well, am indifferent to my brother, and completely disregard everyone else I'm related to.

[Smartly Pretty 0]

My cousins are my best friends. We're all really spread out in age, but that never really mattered I guess, we used to hang out regularly. Now we're sort of spread out all over the map, so we see less of each other, but at every opportunity we hang out. We used to all live in New Jersey, now it's Jersey, New York, Florida, Colorado, and my brother is moving to California after the holiday's.

 

Then I have a younger brother, who I don't think I would like at all if he wasn't my little brother, but he is, so I do. And then my sister is the most awesome 6 year old girl just about ever. I'm closer to my mom than my dad, but I love them both.

 

So yeah, I've got a pretty close relationship with my family.

[IllustriousOne 0]

I get along with my parents well, but I think my younger brother can walk on water. I'm closer to my mother's side of the family than I am my father's.

 

I'd hate to not have solid familial support. I feel like it'd just leave me pretty empty.

[Timmy8271 0]

I live with my mother because she's sick with Diabetes so I have a great relationship with her. I use to have a good relationship with my Dad but not so much anymore. We talk and stuff but I'm not that fond of him. Same thing with my grandmother.

 

I'm only familiar with one of my uncles. My other uncles just contact us during Birthdays and Christmas time. My other uncle owes us $700 and only paid $10 in 3 years. Fuck him and his Testicular Cancer and his old hag of a wife.

[Ravenbomb 0]

As far as I'm concerned, my family consists of my parents and sister. I have cousins and great aunts and all that jarble, but there's no communication that I know of. All my grandparents are dead, so it's just my mom, dad, and sister. I live with my parents and am close with them, and have a typical sibling-y relationship with my sister, who lives in Columbia.

[Guest]

Great relationship with my family...my dad and brother are, literally, my two best friends. We share a lot of common interests, and can talk to each other about anything. My mom's much of the same, and she helps me when I'm not in so much of a good mood, which isn't all that often in the first place. My cousins are just there, they bug me more often than not, but that's because they're mentally challenged. Sometimes I can deal with them, sometimes I can't. I have no family to talk to outside of those 5 people.

 

Aunt, gone. Moved in with us, but we got into a gigantic argument, at which point I basically ruined my relationship with my entire mother's side of the family, outside of her brother, who had already tried to kill my aunt. We don't talk to that loon anyway. My mom wasn't all that mad about my part in hurting her relationship with her sister, btw.

 

Grandfather on mother's side died 12 years ago. Grandmother died 5 years ago. The man she married, we don't talk to him anymore either, because of what I referenced above.

 

Grandfather on father's side is a bitter old asshole. We try to keep contact with him, but it's not worth the trouble. My biological grandmother died when my dad was 9, we like my grandfather's wife and everything, but we can't keep contact with one and not the other. My dad has many sisters, but it's hard keeping contact with them too. It would be easier to fly across the country to see one than to see the other that lives about a 6 hour drive away. We don't have time for that.

 

I don't mind it this way, either. I prefer things like this.

[Nighthawk 0]

Mine's pretty good.

My dad is basically the polar opposite of me (well, he used to be like me, but then got really religious), but it doesn't hurt our relationship at all. We can have some stellar philosophical arguments and keep it friendly, cause we know in the end we'll still be father and son.

I can say literally anything to my mom, and she'll just take me for who I am and be ok with it. That wasn't so good when I was a psychotic teenager, but as an adult it makes for a good relationship.

My brother sucks in many ways, but he's cool. We could have been friends even if we weren't related, although in that case I probably couldn't mock him as much as I do.

 

The rest of my mom's side of the family thinks I'm crazy, and I think they're insane, but we get along well. I was a total black sheep when I was younger, but by just sticking to my guns and still managing to work out an ok life for myself, the same qualities they used to hate have become strangely endearing.

 

My dad's side is all dead. He's remarried, though, and the family he's married into are all pretty good too. One of my stepsisters was just an absolute bitch when she was younger, but now that she's grown up I like her quite a lot. That's actually a running theme: hate someone when they're young, like them when they're older.

 

Happened with my grandfather too. In his thirties he was run out of town for charging the state for sex parties, answered the door nude and other weird fetish shit. Now he's just a normal old guy who likes football and cigars.

 

And of course I fucked my cousin, so that was a great relationship. She's dead too, though. Maybe that's why my family and I get along... everyone who wasn't cool has died.

[Ripper 0]

We get along. I just hate talking on the phone so I never call anyone. So when I see them, its all good, but I get a bunch of "Hey Stranger!!! Where have you been." Then everyone else starts talking about conversations they have had or thanks for that CD that you sent when I was overseas and I realize that I am kinda the outcast.

 

But whatever. They still love me. How could you not. Am I not awesome.

 

Ripper - Not using question marks today.

[Jingus 0]

My parents (mom and her current husband) tolerate each other well enough, but we're so fundamentally different that it's hard to talk much about anything. She's an aging limosine liberal, obsessed workaholic, dangerously paranoid about germs, phobic of life in general, vaguely Protestant, and she likes Patrick Swayze movies. He's an aged Iowa farm boy, classically trained bass singer, obsessed workaholic, painfully square and whitebread, Christian in a fuzzy nondenominational way, and spends his spare time banging away on the piano while singing stuff that was written three hundred years ago and in German. So neither one of them are exactly perfect matches for a jaded slacker agnostic "child genius gone to seed" who is obsessed with pro rasslin like myself.

 

I get along real well with my little brother, though. He's gone through so many phases that he can match my width of interests in random obscure shit. He's been a stay-at-home nerd who did nothing but play video games, a goth who was obsessed with Nine Inch Nails and partying on the weekend, a popular kid who had a dozen different girlfriends in high school, an Eagle Scout, a bass player and speaker system expert, a trigger-happy cop wannabe with a degree in police science, a married family man with a smoking hot wife who's not afraid to tazer someone in a drunken argument, and finally ended up in his current position, somewhere a few hundred feet underwater as a Navy weapons tech, literally the guy with his finger on the button of apocalypse in a nuclear submarine. Yet he's still just a cool guy who I can talk to about almost anything.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I'm an only child and my parents are awesome. Can't complain.

[The Niggardly King 0]

I get along well with most of my family, can joke or talk about anything. But there are some days where I don't really wanna talk to anyone. I prefer to be alone, so that throws off most people, except for the family and close friends I have.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

Small family, (that I know of, there's likely some in India somewhere) and I can't say a bad word about any of them. Especially not my parents. Maybe they've been too tolerant of my idleness and drinking at times, but I realise I'm lucky.

[Gary Floyd 0]

I usually get along with everybody, though I tend to get along more with my dad's side of the family.

[Vampiro69 0]

I get along with my family quite well. I usually talk to my parents on the phone once a week depending on our schedules. My sister lives in Indiana (I am in ND) so we end up talking maybe once every three weeks. For the most part things go quite well.

[King Kamala 0]

I get along with my immediate family very well. Used to resent my older brother for a couple years but I'm way over that. I must say though I get along with my dad's side of the family more than my mom's. Not that I dislike my mom's side just don't see them more than 2 or 3 times a year (Compared to the whopping 5 or 6 times a year I see my dad's side).

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

Even though me and my mom fight a lot, we still have a very strong relationship and care for each other deeply. I have close relationships with a few of my cousins, and one of my aunts(who was like a 2nd mother to me), and my grandma.

 

Me and my father haven't spoke since the end of Gr. 11, after we got into a huge fight. And I don't talk to anyone from his side of my family.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I get along great with my family. Then again I want nothing to do with them so that's why.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

My brother is kind of a pain in the ass. A thirty-one year old divorced pot-smoking hard-drinking truck driver who falls in love with some crazy bitch about once every three months. About once a year I strongly consider just trying to avoid all contact with him. He recently lost his job because of a failed drug test. Needless to say, that's not a great thing to happen for someone with a career in DRIVING A MASSIVE FUCKING TRUCK AROUND.

 

My mom is awesome, but very religious. I think she just lives in denial and just forces herself to believe that I'm actually a Bible-believing Christian. She brings me lunch at work sometimes, so that's awesome.

 

Mom's side of the family is cool if a little hickish. Avoid politics and religion and it's all good. I mainly talk sports at family gatherings.

 

Dad's side is either dead or cut off contact after grandma's death. My dad's brother has all of the money/possessions left behind by both my dad and my grandparents. I am probably entitled to some things but haven't messed with it because it's just not worth it.

 

My stepdad is a heavy drinking, chain smoking construction foreman who loves to bet on horses. He's a Democrat and a union man, though, so it's all gravy between us. Plus he's a happy drunk.

 

My wife's immediate family is really cool. Lefties like me. Her sister is like the sister I never had. Her dad is like, well, the dad I never had. Her mom can be a little overbearing, but she knows I don't really take crap.

[Matt Young 0]

I get along pretty well with my mother. One of my cousins was my best friend until he became a transsexual, changed his name to Zoe, and tried to get me to fuck him. My sister has been missing since July 2005. I haven't talked to my dad since around that same time due to him being an asshole deadbeat drunk. I get along very well with many cousins on my dad's side of the family, though. My mom's side, I don't even see most of them.

[devo 0]

I love my brother and nearly everyone on my dad's side of the family, save for my racist great uncle, who incidentally lives in one of the blackest areas of Brooklyn. Makes a mean penne alla vodka, though.

 

I'm pretty much indifferent to my mom and her side of the family, who I've never really related to or shared many interests with. I get along with them fine during mandatory family events (Thanksgiving and Christmas), but I don't go out of my way to make contact with them. It doesn't help that my mom was basically single-handedly responsible for her and my dad's divorce.

[Guest step up, ghetto blaster.]

my mom and I are cool if for no other reason than she put up with my shit for eighteen years and didn't crack. my father and I have a functional relationship at best - we've never been close and probably never will be - but at least we get along, I suppose.

 

my younger sister is a fucking embarassment and I pretty much refuse to acknowledge her existence since she fails at life.

 

the rest of the family either thinks I'm a fucking alien or doesn't know me well enough to have an opinion. said family is composed mainly of shitheads, so no great loss there. I have an uncle that's a cop, though, and he's pretty cool. I enjoy that he brings the god-damned SWAT team over for Thanksgiving so I can seat all my drug friends next to them. hilarity generally ensues.

[treble 0]

Pretty much get along fine with everyone. My 2 brothers and I get along great, for the most part. My mom can piss me off from time to time, but I figure that's normal, and my dad can be one of the most annoying people on the planet, but that's ok. Dinner with my family usually involves my dad saying something stupid and my brothers and I making fun of him for it and quoting some TV show or movie while my mom shakes her head. Good times.

 

The furthest away anyone on my dad's side lives is Montreal, which is only 2 hours, so I see everyone fairly often. There are a few people who annoy me, but not enough to dislike them or anything. On my mom's side, both grandparents are dead and my mom really only talks to her one sister. There's about a 10-year difference between her and her other sister, and I don't think they've ever really gotten along and they barely talk anymore other than in short e-mails. She's moving out east soon, so that contact will probably be even less frequent after that.

 

I only have 4 cousins (2 on each side) and I'm 5 years younger than the youngest on my dad's side and 7 years older than the oldest on my mom's side, so I was never great friends with any of them, but I get along fine with all of them. One of them on my mom's side is autistic or something, so it's hard to have any kind of relationship with her, though.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Mine could be a lot better. My mother was diagnosed with breast and lung cancer earlier this year, and had a tumor in her brain about the size of an orange, so I've been trying to get closer with her. But the years prior made it sorta hard, since we were almost always at odds (different life views, incredibly different sense of humor, and we both have short tempers). I've been getting along with her more and more since even before we found out she had cancer, and I've been doing my best to get together with her since moving out with my girlfriend in mid-February. No, that's a lie, I could do a lot better, but it's hard to work 7:30-4, get home and then go pick up my girlfriend, make dinner, do dishes, groceries, etc. etc.

My dad and I get along about as well as his dad and he do, which is cordially but not that friendly. Again, different life views and short tempers, but we do share a similar sense of humor (I still hold a family record for being the only relative to make him laugh out loud in the last 5 years). He doesn't care at all about music, and I do a little too much. We both loved ECW, though, with him going nuts over the Sandman and Rhino while I was always cheering Tommy Dreamer and Jerry Lynn. I get the feeling that he feels as though I sorta forced him into abandoning certain hopes and dreams he had in order to provide for myself and my sister, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering he was married to my mother a year before I was born, they were dating for a few years prior, and he was turning 28 when I came out. Of all of my family members, outside of my nieces/nephew/2nd cousin*, I get along with him the best. I also admire him for working multiple jobs and careers to make sure my sister and I were fed, clothed, and able to indulge in certain things most people don't get. The man bought me my first two electric guitars, my first decent amp (a Marshall combo I recently sold), and he and my mother got me my first car. But, most of all, I admire him for raising my sister, who isn't biologically his. He fell in love with my mother, and then raised my sister as his own. Big kudos to him.

My sister...is a troll. If you go to my MySpace and click on .::MEG::. in my top friends, not only will you see she loves Avril LaVigne (which is odd because she got me into Metallica, and bought me the CD that changed my life musically, that being White Zombie's Astro-Creep 2000) but that she's also a 5'2" (if even) bitch with a grimace on her face most of the time. We fight a lot, mostly verbal, but we've also always looked out for one another. The one physical fight I remember us having, the last one, was when I was 10 and she was 17 (and I was already as tall as her), and it ended with me throwing her down the stairs. Ah, good times. She sorta ruined my teen years, though, because she was your generic "party girl" in high school: sneaking out to go to parties, cutting class to get high, going to school hungover, always ALWAYS fighting with our mother, etc. So when it came time for me to be in high school, I wasn't even allowed to go over my sXe friends' houses (keep in mind that I was sXe for half of high school) most of the time. I couldn't really go to concerts even if I had the money, and my mother always thought that I was on drugs because my sister usually was when she was my age then. But still...she's my fucking sister, and we get along pretty damn well.

Ah, the *. Well...I have two nieces, with another on the way (my sis be preggers again), and a nephew, but only the unborn and the younger niece are actually related to me. My older niece and my nephew, 13 and 12 respectively, are my sister's ex-boyfriend's, who is a major fuck up. My nephew has something wrong with him, Steph thinks it's a form of autism (he doesn't talk right, often makes awkward jerking motions during moments of high-stress, doesn't get out much, and excels at most of what he does) because she works at a daycare and has had a few autistic kids in her care, but the kid knows his shit. He wrestles me all the time and is pretty damn decent when it comes to submission holds, and is a fucking MASTER at any video game he plays. Throw a game in, give him 5 minutes, and he'll figure everything out. Old, new, 8-bit, 3D...doesn't matter. My older niece is a little bitch now who hangs out with little hooligans in my town's equivalent of the projects, and she's extremely disrespectful to my younger niece, my nephew, my parents, and my sister. My younger niece is adorable, but I can tell she's going to be a bitch just like my sister is. Still, she's young, so hopefully she isn't.

As for my second cousin...well, me and him used to be like brothers. He's 16 now, so there's a 5 year difference, but whenever there'd be a family function, we'd seek each other out. Rough housing, shooting the shit, just hanging out. It's like talking to one of my friends half of the time, only with less references to Adult Swim and poker. Kid's, like, 6'3" or 6'4" or something ridiculous, which makes sense since his dad is 6'2" or so, and his mom is my dad's cousin (my dad's side of the family are relatively tall, all around 6' or so for the guys and 5'7" or so for the women). But the fucker has at least 5 inches on me! And he's only 16! SHIT!

 

Sooo...yeah. I sorta have a close one, trying to keep a handle on it and stay involved, but it's hard to either due to disagreements and arguments between myself and my parents, or everybody's just busy. This year is also the first Thanksgiving I have away from my folks, so it's going to be kinda hard on my mother, but there's always Christmas.

[the max 0]

I have a great relationship with my mom since it's been her and I since my parents divorced when I was around three years old. I don't talk to my dad or anyone on my dad's side of the family, I haven't since my grandmother (on my dad's side) died when I was in the sixth grade. My dad and I had it out when I moved to Florida with my mom. I told him that I didn't want him to find me, he was a pretty terrible dad and we were better off not speaking anymore. I've never heard from him since. He had emphysema the last time I talked to him (2001) so I'm guessing he's either dead or close to it.

 

My mom has two brothers and four sisters. I'm friendly with everyone but two sisters. But I don't see or talk to anyone since I don't like talking on the phone to people that don't share interests. Once I get past the "life update" it becomes periods of awkward silence until I find an excuse to end the phone call. I see some of them more than others, but honestly, it's me, my gal and my mom. That's pretty much the only family I keep anymore.

 

All four of my grandparents are dead, the last of whom died in 2004 (my mom's mom). That was tough to take, since she basically raised me at times in my life. I didn't really cry at the funeral though, so I'm sure her death will hit me in a few years and I'll assault someone or something.

[Jingus 0]

Am I the only one who noticed this?

One of my cousins was my best friend until he became a transsexual, changed his name to Zoe, and tried to get me to fuck him.

Whoa.

[Black Lushus 0]

I get along with my brother, even though he's a dumb fuck.

 

My sister is a lost cause and I've pretty much wiped my hands of her.

 

My mom is a joke. She has zero interest in having a relationship with my kids, and that hurts me more than our own relationship sucking. I really can care less at this point, but don't shit on my kids.

 

My stepdad and I haven't like had a falling out or anything, we just don't really talk much anymore by proxy of not talking to my mom.

 

My dad lives in Illinois with a stepmom and half sister I haven't seen or talked to in 15 years. My dad and I talk a couple of times a month and see each other at least once a year. He usually comes out here on his way to Oklahoma to visit my grandmother.

 

My wife's family pretty much is my family at this point.

[King Kamala 0]

Am I the only one who noticed this?

One of my cousins was my best friend until he became a transsexual, changed his name to Zoe, and tried to get me to fuck him.

Whoa.

 

I noticed too but amazingly enough, couldn't come up with a witty barb for the occassion. Whoa is right.