A little family news.

[agent_dani]

Today Dad relayed some news from my cousin (his niece.) To make this short, her husband will not have any contact with me and will not allow their son to do so, either. Dad characterized her view as "caught in the middle." Read between the lines on that one.

I'm okay with this and the only emotion I feel is minor relief at finally having an answer.

She and I never had much of a relationship. She's 10.5 years older than me and lived nearby. By the time I was old enough to begin having a relationship with her she was away at college and med school, and I was being assigned 10-12 hours per day of field work by Dad on his dairy farm. She developed a relationship with my brother because he was allowed to have free time. The few times we tried to have a relationship it was very clear that the only way it would happen was for me to be just like my brother - like the same movies, etc.

For the past decade, the only contact I've had with her has been when it happened that we both visited my parents for a holiday. There is no relationship there to lose, much less mourn a loss, and she was family only in the strict legal sense, not by a definition of family I would willingly use.

I have a life full of so many relationships I cherish - my wife, my family and in-laws, and my incredible friends. These matter; that does not.

Comments

[bear-foot.livejournal.com]

*bear-huggel*

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And she plainly obeys some damn man to the letter........

What price years of feminist activity?

This is why I'm glad to be able to choose for myself what constitutes my family (although this is not to say that I'm entirely estranged from my natural family- my bro and I get on amazingly as we always have :o)

HUGS

[hazelstitch.livejournal.com]

I have the feeling she is using him as an excuse - doesn't sound like she ever wanted a relationship with Dani anyway.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You may well be right- I've never been quite sure which of my parental units egged the other on to reject me- but that was all a very long time ago..............

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my suspicion is that hazelstitch is correct, and it's more that she doesn't have the guts to take this stand without relying on blaming her man.

(I know damned well it was my mother that made the choice; sometimes it's not about the gender of the person in charge so much as which one is more strong-willed. [but that doesn't mean I'll forgive my father for choosing her over his daughter.])

[agent_dani]

I believe she wanted to have a relationship with me, but in the same way my father did through my first three decades - with a person who followed their script for who I should be.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

In which case, you are REALLY better off without her. :)

Honestly, as horrible as this is to say, I kind of welcomed the excuse to never see most of these people again... so I admit I actively wanted to lose touch with *them.*

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

In the case of mine it's always been 'daughter? What daughter?' for over thirty years now and even though my wonderful bro and SiL have done their damndest to make them see sense.

Like they say, you can choose your friends............:o/

[lietya.livejournal.com]

And in the end, choosing your family is a much more rewarding experience. :) I'm glad that your brother and his wife are the loyal blood family you deserve, but sorry that your parents remained that ridiculously stubborn for 30 years.

I should clarify - it was my wife's transition that caused my family to disown me. My mother's always accepted that she had a daughter. It's just that, like Dani's father until fairly recently, she refused to admit that daughter had a personality or opinions of her own. (I'm not supposed to be bisexual [or genderqueer, but that evolved after she cut me off], so I was told to divorce my wife or she'd never forgive me. No contest!)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Oy! It sounds horrible familiar. I met my husband after everything else so his family aren't aware of my 'interesting' past and therefore I'm generally considered the best thing since sliced bread in my family by marriage :o)

Bisexual or genderqueer? I can't imagine what mine would make of it- they can't cope with my being straight!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Friending btw if you don't mind? It seems daft to only talk to one half of a couple :o)

I notice we have Ellie (scattermoon) as a mutual friend.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Er. I'm delighted to friend you and I was about to ask, but you'll still be talking to one half of a couple. :) I seem to have still been inadvertently misleading, because my wife is shashalnikya , not Dani! (Though I am good friends with Dani, and we do indeed also have Scattermoon in common.)

And meeting your husband afterward definitely does simplify things! No reason why his family *should* know details of your past from 30 years ago, even in the more typical scheme of things. It must be lovely to get them to treat you as the person they actually know, and have them adore you! I've been with Shash since we were both 17, which kind of makes the "family not knowing the past" thing impossible. There are a lot of situations where being able to start fresh is easier, I suspect.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Confuzzled? That's me :o)

Back in the 70's going underground was by far the safest way!

[agent_dani]

My wife is windrdr.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Hmm- I can see I have more friending to do here! :o)

[lietya.livejournal.com]

Not your fault! I was very unclear. :)

So I've heard/read. That had to be a truly terrifying time. (By contrast, Shash has had a remarkably easy time of it; our GP was immediately willing to do whatever she needed, the first endo she tried was knowledgeable and cooperative, her employer was totally supportive... we do live in a very LGB- and trans-friendly area, though.)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I was lucky to meet a young Dr Russell Reid of whom it's possible you may have heard? I was also lucky to inherit a little cash at exactly the right time!

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I have heard of him - both are excellent strokes of luck!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I often wonder what my Great Uncle Les (he was a Lancaster rear gunner in WW2) wuld have made of what I spent the money on! :o)

[lietya.livejournal.com]

He clearly loved you, so hopefully he would have been bemused but glad that you got to fulfill a dream. :)

[lietya.livejournal.com]

At least now you know, I guess. The most annoying part of this might be how long it took her (them) to relay an answer! As you say, this is not a very important person to lose, and you're fortunate that none of the important people had their heads this far up their ass. :)

(Truth be told, I have about 500 relatives like this - big Italian families on both sides - so the category of "technically related but I barely know this person even in passing at major family gatherings" makes perfect sense to me. No reason why you *should* feel obligated to care what she thinks.)

[agent_dani]

Similar here; my family, along with several others, had been in that same area for generations. I didn't bother counting beyond first cousin because they were basically strangers to me (worse than, really, due to the tales Dad told of me.)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I suspect that's true for a lot of us- I'm from a real mix of Italian, Latvian Jewish, Roma, Breton and others and must have relatives I don't even know I have!