Nobody tells me what I’m going to do or where I will be going and when that happens

I am open to invitations or requests or suggestions. But I will never respond to this as a statement of fact in the course of normal discourse

  • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    9 months ago

    Family is the relationship, relatives are who you’re related to.

    You can pick your family but you can’t pick your relatives.

    You don’t have to associate with your relatives if you don’t want to. Family is a group of people who you’ll want to associate with.

    I grew up being told constantly, “I’m family, you have to love me,” which definitely wasn’t good for my mental health until I realized the above statements. My relatives are typically terrible people, and the last time I saw most of them they openly wished for my death at Thanksgiving (because a different relative outed me as bi to the whole gathering) and I haven’t gone back to their gatherings since.

    They’ll often (years after the event above) send me invitations weeks in advance to the gatherings and then either the day before or morning of send me a message saying, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to invite you. You aren’t welcome here.”

    So I guess in a way the statement, “You have to love family,” is somewhat true but in the, “a prerequisite for someone being family is love,” not a being forced to love someone you’re related to.

    And the barrier that you mentioned OP, is definitely a good one and one I didn’t even realize I whole heartedly was using for a long time.