I had a difficult relationship with my dad as a teen but an excellent one as an adult. I’ve always gotten on well with my stepmother. My real mom fell into alcoholism and I cut her off emotionally when I was in college.

So far, I have solid relationships with both daughters. One on one, we can and do talk about meaningful things in their lives and mine. I can’t say for certain this will last forever, but they are sixteen and eighteen and so far so good.

My brother and sister and I are generally close. There are occasional issues but generally those are A-/B+.

All of those relationships require care and feeding, compassion and perception.

It varies in waves and their political views have definitely soured things at times. My family is small. It's basically me, my rents, my gma on my dad's side, my sis and her family. My sis lives across the country though so hardly see them. My parents have a bunch of half brothers and sisters that we don't really have relationships with. I trust my mom with just about anything but have trust issues with my father. I can get along by myself just fine and they wonder why I don't call/visit as much. We could be closer but regardless of our differences we'd be there for each other at drop of hat.

FYI, we don’t let our political differences get in our way.

i agree with this entirely and has been not the best subject between my gf and i. shes a bit older, had the opportunity to go to college for free, her parents said she wasnt college material (TERRIBLE childhood, idk how she even forgives her mother) and started having kids at like 20. first one was flushed but didnt take long for more.

otoh my parents were 29 and 35 when i was born (oldest of 3) both with careers, a house, cars owned etc. they didnt stay together long but my mom was a grinder for the ages. work like 7-4, make dinner, take us to whatever sport it was that day, being each a year apart my sisters played together mostly, drop one off, get the other one after, etc. all year round since we all played soccer/bball/baseball softball and very seriously. even when we moved, she would drive my sister 2 hours back for practices/games 2-3 times a week. ive guessed she spent at least a million on our sports alone.

unfortunately her and i have never really gotten along well; we are way too alike. she likes to ignore any good thing and remember all the bad. example, my jr year i took ap calc and chem, sports all year, honors everything else, was regularly up til 3am doing homework. i got a 5 on calc and a 3 on chem (not that i love that either) and her response was, "why didnt you do better? i took them in the same year also and i got a 4 and a 5"

my dad and i always had a swingy relationship. not including me in family dinners on his days with us, not showing up to take me to practice. but then teaching me how to drive on his beamer when i was underage, letting me stay with him, vacations. i guess i get along better with him now because hes more like a friend, in that he realizes he was a ****ty parent so isnt very judgemental and might as well enjoy the time together rather than try to teach me lessons he is 20 years late on. and we have much more common interests than i do with mom or sisters

i wish this were possible. politics were completely off the table while hilary was looking like the clear choice. now its how great things are, how well hes doing, did you see this article, etc. you didnt care then, i dont care now... doesnt work.

My dad has the alcoholic/drug addiction **** on and off for different timeframes as I grew up. It's why I don't trust him. I've mentally cut him off before but he's gotten better. I know he loves his family he's just made a **** ton of selfish bonehead mistakes.

pretty close with my family. See my grandparents weekly, a couple aunt and uncles probably once month. Talk to me mom on the phone probably weekly. See my cousins and their families and the other aunts and uncles every couple months at get togethers or holidays. Only talk to my sister maybe every couple months or see her a couple times a year, we arent distant and we both like each other just fine, thats just sort of how our relationship is.

My family is definitely an outlier I feel tho in that it took me a long time to realize that my family is not like most families. Neither my mom not my dads side is there anyone who is that "drunk uncle" who makes family get togethers required drinking. I have never once witnessed a fight among members of my family at any holiday or event. Theres not even a person where its like "so and so doesn't like to be around so and so" everyone genuinely enjoys everyone elses company.

Neither of my parents have ever once tried to guilt me or manipulate me into doing something. That's the biggest thing I realized is that soo many peoples parents are kind of like children, they either need attention or try and use you to get what they want or need. Which I guess kind of makes sense since they are people and thats how many people act, but yeah, I am super super lucky. and as a result its really easy for me to be close to my family.

I get genuinely excited going home to see my mom. Grandparents are Trumpers and my grandma bought a gun last year because "Mexicans" but I love the **** out of them.

My extended family just gets along very well. I'm much more aloof than they are, but I am that way with both family and friends. I'm as close with my family as I allow myself to be with anyone else. I actually have a family-only policy for who I am friends with on Facebook. And my family is mainly about posting pictures, so I have never been subjected to a political rant on Facebook.

Maybe I have a different view of family because I'd probably have to branch out to a second cousin or something to find someone I am related to who has divorced and remarried. It still strikes me as a bit weird when elderly parents don't live with, or at least very close to, at least one of their children.

Most parents are awful. My mother in law had my wife cooking family dinners at age 6 and to this day insists she’s “lived her whole life for her children.” People suck.

After talking to my parents maybe once a week on average for 10-15 years while living close to them half the time, the emergence of of grandchild prompted them to start calling on Skype every other day even though they are 7 time zones away.

Thread reinforces how lucky I am.
Close to Mom and 2 brothers. Dad, Kinda.

Wasn't always this way. Takes face time and willingness to discuss uncomfortable topics. listen and accept different points of view, and above all face your own ****.

Voted the third option. The problem is, I'm the weirdo in the family (we're from the rural Deep South, and I'm introverted/avoidant, left-leaning, and have no desire to marry/have kids).

I phone my mom every couple of weeks or so, but actively avoid any topics that will result in her getting all judgy. So it's pretty much her giving me updates on everyone in the family, and me nodding along.

I'm fine seeing my sister on holidays, but she has a persecution complex (despite always doing exactly what she's wanted with her life, and being successful by every possible metric) that I find tiresome.

But if there's anything any of us need from each other, none of us has any problem asking for/giving help. So I guess it depends on how you define "close".

Same. Took me a while to look around and realise how lucky I am. I hear of family members fighting all the time and it just makes little sense to me. My dad is an ******* but he's not a bad guy, just doesn't understand emotion.

My mom and I talk a couple times a week at least through text and she lives 2000 miles away. Older brother has a family so I might get him on the phone once every couple of weeks which I've made peace with but even with him being 9 years older we were always really close. Other older brother and I are best friends and have helped each other through some terrible times, lived together a couple times, owned a business together.

We were always close (the first two mentioned are actually half brothers but we grew up together) but we've gotten even closer in some ways when our younger brother at 18 was killed in a car accident. Their fathers son also committed suicide at 18 a few years later so having those hardships we make it a point to communicate.

Cherish your family people, most everybody else In your life will come and go, but you're connected to your family in some way.


This doesn't apply to those who had abusive parents etc, I totally get that and that's why my dad and I are somewhat distant.

This describes my relationship with my family in a nutshell, minus the persecution complex thing.

I'm too different from my sisters and mother to get super-close. Aside from being related by blood, I have literally nothing in common with them. My dad dying brought us together for a while but it was pretty temporary.

I voted close. I feel my relationship is closer to my Dad now as my perception of time has changed. I view that all people that happen to be on the planet at the same time are all basically the same age. So I view all my relatives both old and younger the same.

Growing up we had both sets of grandparents over every Sunday for dinner. I often took vacations, large and small, with aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. with my mom's family and even though my dad's family was split up over the country we saw them frequently. I even have a second set of 'parents' that are my parents best friends and who were not able to have children of their own. They vacationed with us all my life or would just come over and hang out. As adults they will just come to mine or my siblings houses to spend a weekend.

With that said, my relationship with my parents was crap until I was an adult as they were overbearing. At 22 I moved out and got married things changed drastically for the better. I talk to my mom several times a week and my father once every few weeks. They often call/Skype to talk with my son. My siblings and I talk once every few weeks now, but when we lived close I would see them for dinner/drinks/nights out almost as often. My wife's grandparents, aunts and uncles literally lived next door to her so she was also raised with a close family. She is super close with both her parents and speak to them often. Her brothers not as much as they have a lot going on with their wives, kids and jobs. We see them once every year on average.

Overall, even though the nearest family we have is 600 miles away we sometimes only go a few weeks between actually seeing someone. Just this year we met my parents in Hawaii for vacation and my wife's family joined us in Disney. All of our time off is spent spending time with family and frankly it still isn't enough. We feel very fortunate and appreciative of the family we have around us as I know not everyone has that in their lives.

Define "close"?

Is it all family members (immediate family members that is) or the majority of immediate family members?

I'm not overly close with my brother but that's it. We catch up every month or so for a family dinner but we don't hang out or have any contact outside of these dinners (apart from when I go over to my parent's house every couple of weeks) but the rest of the family (parents, sister) we are on talking/texting terms several times a week.

Close is when you share kidneys and such. I always tell my brother to take care of that kidney of mine, just in case.

average talking to my parents once a week, see them once a month or so. have one brother in the same city who I generally see every week, more during sports season since we will go to games together, and another brother living in europe so less close with him at the moment.

so overall Id say 7/10 closeness. pretty lucky since it seems most people immediate family sucks. Ive just got some slightly crazy extended family but not that difficult to deal with