You can't choose your relatives....but you can tell them to go to hell ( just say it with love, of course ? )

My family history was strange, my Mother was married 13 times and not always divorced. I knew as a child my Mother was different and not in a good way. Without going through all the details just let me say that when I married I made the decision to have as little contact with her as I could. I never regretted it. She was a toxic person whose morality was completely different from mine. During the last 15 years of her life I never spoke to her. I have never felt sorry about that and I would do it again. Nothing is more important to me than my own family and I would not allow her to bring her drama into my life.

Family is so much how we define & find ourselves & our security within a culture. I'm watching my kids create family with their kids & musing about the hunger to have to create our personal identity. It's stories, & we manufacture them to fit what gives us status & meaning. So we then teach our kids to value the same. The grandparents who adore their grandchildren- is it because they see the gchildren as extensions of themselves & therefore requiring investment? Cannot they "love" a child because that child is worthy & unique? And why is it necessary that "the way we did it" be repeated ad nauseum? Ego. Step outside the chosen story & you threaten the story- & the storyteller.

There's an old saying I may love my family - I don't have to like them. I don't agree because I'm not obligated to love my family. But in theory the cliché applies .

I agree with you. My family is very toxic thats why I don't bother with any of them.

I agree. Friends, on the other hand can be better because we get to choose them and because of this, I think it actually means more than any accident of nature. My parents died years ago, and I seldom think of them because they meant nothing to me...it just happened that I was born into this particular family, but I owed them no obligation just because they had sex and as a result, I am here.

I agree. I have a saying that "blood is only thicker than water as long as its not frozen" . I cut off all contact with my biological father about 5 years ago! He has a history of being physically, sexually and mentally abusive to almost everyone he comes in contact with including me. Goes through friends like dirty underwear! My mother left him when I was 2 after finding the matress in my crib filled with dirty needles, and credit cards he took out in her name while he refused to work. He refused to pay child support yet bragged to me about paying for a boob job for a girlfriend that was the same age as me (17 at the time). We gave him a chance, a few years ago and it ended with us having to get a restraing order. Some people find it hard to understand that my step father is my dad, he raised me as his own, from the age of 3 and the man who spawned me is dangerous and not worth the aggravation of dealing with. My step dad chose to be my dad and did so not because of a DNA connection but because he wanted to. That to me is so much stronger!

Sometimes, when we cut loose, maybe we should consider the impact on the next generation and try not to trap them in the middle. For example, my ex's family despises me, "that white b..", and, as a result have ostracized our daughter, too. She has never been allowed to even send a card to her cousins, It's very sad.

Oh, and my side does the same although not for racial reasons. One of my few regrets is that I stopped sending gifts and cards to my niece and nephew because of things their mother, my sister, did. Even if gifts or letters had not been passed on to the children, it might have made it easier for my daughter to contact those cousins later on.

Totally agree-keep my distance from my 90 year old mother and sister.

Well there are 2 sides to everything, here are a couple of pics to illustrate...one of me by my gorgeous niece which I treasure and one by me after a painful trip to my father's...

Think family is a great concept and can have many positive advantages in one's peace of mind and sense of community though it can also be the very thing that can tear you down the deepest.

So my argument would be that it's not "over rated" just tends to be romanticized too much in our society much like the concept of love.

I don't know if my brother 8 years older than me is dead or alive he would be 78 years old and i havent got his address & to be honest I don't really care, we were never close , both come from the maddest family in London and I think of him very seldomly.