I think it is fairly common, but for someone who is really close to their family (like me), I can't imagine life with the love of your parents. It makes me sad and uncomfortable. Plus, some people who don't like their parents are assholes- an evil woman I worked for shunned her family because they reminded her that she came from humble beginnings; she felt she had moved beyond them since she had become really rich and "made it" (of course, if making it includes being a horribly nasty, bitter, lonely woman, I'd rather NOT). So I would definitely wonder about someone who didn't talk to their family until I heard the whole story. That fact alone wouldn't make me shun them, though.

TPS, would the age of the person make any difference to you. If you met a 50-year-old who rarely talked to his family, would it weird you out? At 40, I rarely talk to my family. I don't hate them or try to avoid them -- I just don't have much in common with them. If something exciting or sad happens to me, they're not who I think to call. I guess the thing is that I'm been living away from them more years than I lived with them, so I've formed stronger bonds with other people than I have with my parents.

I was thinking specifically of the dating scenario the OP had mentioned. The closer I am (or want to be) to someone, the more uncomfortable it would make me. I think maybe for older folks it's less weird, in part due to technological advances- I talk to my father every day on instant messenger; I can't imagine your parents are on instant messenger.

If you met a 50-year-old who rarely talked to his family, would it weird you out?

I'd assume the family was really dysfunctional. Of course, I'd also assume that of somebody who was constantly in touch with their folks. I'm friendly with my family, but I've got my life and they have theirs, and that's just fine.

I imagine, generally, people imagine the way their family runs to be "normal", and anything else to be "weird".

Nope, they aren't. I email them about once a month. They once asked me if I'd be willing to get a webcam but I refused. I'm totally against "video phones" (not just when talking to my parents). I like being able to talk to people without worrying about the fact that I'm sitting around in my underwear.

For me, it really is about having very little to discuss with them. They watch different movies/shows from me; they live hundreds of miles away and hang out with people I don't know; etc. When we do talk, I fill them in on what's been happening in my life and vice versa, then there are awkward silences while we try to figure out what to say to each other, then someone says, "Great talking to you..." and we hang up.

I guess part of the issue for me is that I feel very far away from my childhood. I don't have any friends left from my childhood years, don't think much about my school days, etc. It's not that I'm a "grownup" and have lost touch with that inner child (I have an apartment full of stuffed animals!). I've just lost touch with that particular child. And he was the child that my parents and I had in common.

On preview, Johnmc sums up my view: "I'm friendly with my family, but I've got my life and they have theirs, and that's just fine."

I know lots of people who aren't particularly close to their families and I don't really think twice about it. Hell, I was one of them until about 5 years ago, so it would be a little hypocritical of me to be obnoxious about it. Actually, I kind of swing the other way: I find people who have noone in their lives but their families a little strange and I've run into some. Mostly, though, I think it's an age thing, grumblebee. I'm your age and at this point most of us have started our own families in one way or another - our birth families are smaller by virtue of distance and/or death and it's the families we have created, whether or not they're blood related, that concern us most primarily. I see a lot more of my friends than I do of my brothers, for example, since one of them is in NY and the other is usually in Louisiana. My family is the center - my kids, my friends, and in a way I parent my own mother now. My friends who don't have kids come to my house for Thanksgiving and Christmas and so does my mother and really, they're all my family.

It is important to some people. I severed ties with my mother a few years ago, and the guy I was dating (long-term) at the time couldn't really understand it. Like someone said in a comment in that thread, some people don't understand that there are things you just cannot reconcile. It can be cultural, but I think a lot of it might just be upbringing (which can tie in to culture as well), and different value / priority placement.

I don't know if age is so much an issue. Sure, at a certain point your focus shifts, since you have the children, and you become the parent, but then there is the expectation to mind your own parents as they reach a certain age, and care for them.

Man! This family stuff is complicated!

On preview, Johnmc sums up my view: "I'm friendly with my family, but I've got my life and they have theirs, and that's just fine."

Oddly, my youngest sister lives around the block from my parents and keeps much closer touch, but for a variety of reasons, she was the 'easier,'(though by no means 'easy') child (I went from the 'problem child' to 'troiublemaker' to 'eccentric uncle'), my youngest sister is still in college and better adjusted than both of us. The older we all get, the more we understand eachother or at least cut eachother slack, but there's elements of my life and choices that leave them baffled, I'm sure and some that they'd disapprove of, I'm sure.

It is important to some people.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with this. For instance, religion (or lack thereof) is important to me. If I was on a date, and someone "confessed" to being a fundamentalist Christian, I probably wouldn't want to pursue the relationship. But my point is that I wouldn't be freaked out. I know that there are many religions out there and various people subscribe to them. I guess the question struck me as similar to, "how can I admit to being a democrat without sounding like a complete freak?" I doubt even a die-hard republican would be freaked out by such an admission -- turned off, maybe, but not non-plussed.

But I do see how if someone was 20, and they confessed to being totally estranged from their family, it might be a little weird. I don't think I'd be freaked out by the idea (I had friends in high school that were estranged from their families), but -- if I was looking for a light-hearted dating experience -- I might worry that the person would be too "intense" for me. It might be similar to someone telling me they have terminal cancer. I might think, "I don't know if I can handle this."

Oddly, my youngest sister lives around the block from my parents and keeps much closer touch...

I have a much younger (eleven years) brother, and until recently, I'm not sure we had much in common. I was incredibly important to him when he was a kid (and I was a teenager). But I moved out when he was still really young, and he sort of kept this image of me "back then" in his brain. Even when he got older, he would try to relate to me by talking to me about books and movies and stuff that I didn't care about any more (stuff that -- in (I think) an attempt to connect with me -- he became really interested in). For instance, back when he and I lived under the same roof, I was a pretty typical geek, into sci-fi and comics. When I grew up, I lost interest in that stuff, but if I spent ten minutes in his company, he would immediately start bringing up "Star Trek" or whatever. Naturally, I didn't want him to feel bad, so I'd nod my head and do my best to express interest, but I didn't feel much connection with him.

Also, I moved away from home early while he stayed in the same town as my parents until about two years ago. So while I was bored by news about our parents, he really wanted to talk about them.

In any case, he recently moved to LA and seemed to morph into an adult overnight. Now, for the first time, we're emailing each other fairly often and I'm enjoying it.

(ack. my younger sister is the one who lives around the block (3 yrs younger than me), the youngest is 15 years younger, in college and in a 'semester abroad' program.)

I also imagine being the only boy is a factor in me being more 'on my own' than my sisters.

I left home 2 days after I turned 16, never went back. The last time I saw my father was 4 years later at my mother's funeral. He died a year after that. I'm 100% certain that if they were alive today, I'd not be in contact with them.

I have one sister who is chalk to my cheese. Absolutely nothing in common with her. I see her once or twice a year from a sense of duty, and I find it an ordeal. I don't particularly like her, we wouldn't be friends if we weren't related.

Reading this, I realise it sounds unfeeling and cold. I'm not a cold person at all. But a child should be loved, cared for and nurtured. When the ones to whom a child should be able to turn for protection are, in fact, the abusers, it is hard to find forgiveness. I had to save myself. I understand exactly where the poster is coming from in the AskMe question. I cried earlier this week reading the AskMe question about how to be a good daddy.

I found 'family' in AA, sisters and brothers with whom I share a common bond, and with George's family. His sisters call me 'sister', his mother calls me 'daughter'.

Just thinking aloud here, but do some of you -- when you're dating someone -- get into the idea of becoming part of their family? I don't have the slightest desire to have a second set of parents, but I can kind of relate to the idea because I've enjoyed inheriting some friends from my wife. Still, gaining new friends is WAY down on my list of what I look for in a relationship (other than a friendship with the person I'm dating, of course).

I tried to gauge my gut reaction to your post, essexjan. If we were on a date and you told me this, it would be similar to if you told me a story about how you'd once climbed Mount Everest. I would file it away as an interesting data-point about you -- something that gives you more character. I can't imagine thinking, "Hold on: cold to parents? That might mean she'll be cold to me!" Maybe it all comes down to who you know, but at least five of my friends growing up -- all good, caring people -- have horrible relationships with their parents.

"have horrible relationships" = "had horrible relationships." It's possible that as the years went by these relationships improved.

Just thinking aloud here, but do some of you -- when you're dating someone -- get into the idea of becoming part of their family?

My sister (who was treated very differently from me as we grew up, she was spoiled rotten) has been married six times (which in England is a huge deal). Every husband has had a big extended family and my sister has always 'dropped' her real family to join the new husband's family. It's almost as if she's looking for the 'normal' family life we never had. Her present husband is youngest of nine children.

We have a very elderly aunt and lots of cousins who live not that far from her, with whom I am still in contact, although not all that regularly (I'm not estranged from them or anything, but don't have too much in common with them) and although my sister usually asks me how our aunt is when we talk on the phone, she wouldn't dream of picking up the phone herself to call her.

And, of course, the galling thing is that when I do call my aunt or go to see her (she's 250 miles away from me) all she wants to know is how my sister is, what she's doing, etc. Still the golden child.

When George and I were together, I wasn't looking to find family, but it's a bonus that I did.

I think someone in their 40s and 50s is going to have to worry about explaining why they don't have kids rather than why they don't talk to their own parents. Or, if they have adult children, why they don't have an active relationship with them.

But as a single dude in his 20s, I don't think I'd have an adverse reaction to any type of family relationship. Not until I learned the details.

As a purely theoretical exercise, if I was choosing between two possible girlfriends--one who had severed ties with her family, and one who had a very close, loving relationship with her family, all other things being equal, I'd be more attracted to the later. But since all other things are rarely equal, this is pretty far down on my list of priorities.

Just thinking aloud here, but do some of you -- when you're dating someone -- get into the idea of becoming part of their family?

When I'm on the first few dates, no. If it were getting serious, yes. A few years ago I would've said I didn't care at all about the other person's family, but I'm starting to realize that it's more important to me.

I think about this topic more now that I'm out of a long term relationship. I have okay but stressful relationships with my parents and a really good friend of a sister. My folks have been divorced forever and I never do "family" things with them, though I see them individually from time to time. My ex came from a family where getting together as a family was hugely important to his parents and important, though less-so, to him. As a result, every holiday involved a "Are you going to come and be in the family puppy pile?" discussion with his folks with a lot of "Why not?" afterwards if we were doing something either with my family or alone.

In fact his family, and to a lesser extent him, always felt weird if we spent a holiday (and this includes like Forth of July and Easter) without some sort of family. In my world, he and I were our own family and we would occasionally interact with our other families. This was a cultural difference with him that gradually mattered, I think. I had never before paid attention to the "familial independence" data point, just tried to gauge if guys got along okay with their mothers. Now I think about it. As someone in my late thirties, I would have concerns about dating someone who felt that they had to spend every major holiday with someone's family. As long as their family situation wasn't a source of repressed rage, otherwise I don't think I'd think about it much.

Actually, one more thing, I think I'd try to select more strongly for "interesting, even if crazy" in a potential partner's family. "stable and a little dull" didn't really do much for me.

When my husband and I were first dating in our early 20's, he didn't mind my weird family situation (hadn't seen mom in over a decade, in the process of becoming estranged from dad and stepmom), but his mom really didn't approve of me because of it. Now we've been together for over ten years, and I don't talk to my dad and stepmom at all anymore and my mom is dead. His family is my family now, and I'm grateful for them. They also now understand, at least a little bit, how horrible my family situation was, and they don't hold it against me at all.

i consider myself pretty lucky...i had a cushy white middle class upbringing. there was no divorce. adultry, hardships. i love my parents now...and i even like them. we are very different people...my parents are conservative catholics & i'm a liberal divorced woman in a serious relationship w/another woman. i thought that the big "i have girlfriend" announcement would destroy our relationship, but quite the opposite. i am closer to my parents now then when i was living the life i thought they wanted me to live.
my sister is Ultra-catholic...uses no birth control (and has the big family to prove it), homeschools her children, wears doilies on her head to mass every day. we life our separate lives & talk weekly. we don't make any real effort to get our families together and i'm okay with that.

my girlfriend has a big loud jewish family she pretends to hate...we are often guilted into attending family shindigs where the women end up crying & the men drunk. i could see why she might choose to disown them, but i think i love her even more because she loves her family not in spite of their oddness, but Beause of them.

Oh this whole family thing is fascinating to me. Both my best friend and my husband actually like their families, which is just so so alien to me.

I try to like my mother (I'm an only child of a single parent - parents got divorced before I was one and I've never met my father) but she is so.... non maternal and unlikeable. I can't like her as a mother or a friend. She's cold. She told me not to have children because they ruin your life. She told me that if she could live her life over she would have aborted me.

If any of my friends judged me because I do not keep in regular contact with my mother, I would dump them.

I am, however, starting to become closer to my extended family (Mum's family, very large, Irish Catholic - mum is the outcast because she has been divorced). On the whole they are quite nice people. Racist, but nice enough. And I'm particular friends with one of my cousins who is still struggling to come out to the rest of the family.

Families are weird and sometimes kind of sucky.

Just thinking aloud here, but do some of you -- when you're dating someone -- get into the idea of becoming part of their family?

I would imagine someone becoming part of my close family, and assume in my mind that it's the same on the other side, until told otherwise.

I would wonder about someone who was not close to their family until I got the "whole" story. I say "whole" because you're only going to get one side. My husband's first wife didn't even have her parents at their wedding and she was only 20 at the time. She claimed they had a bad relationship. Later on, she abandoned her children, who live with us now, and has had absolutely no contact with them. We heard several years ago that she had remarried and had another child-wonder if she's still with that family.
Yet, I am not close to my father's side of the family. My father left when I was 10, his mom gave him money to leave his wife and two kids to travel to California with his girlfriend. He never paid a dime in child support. Over the years, (my mother never bad-mouthed him, my brother and I were free to draw our own conclusions), we've tried to create some sort of relationship. It just isn't working. So we talk on rare occasions, but I am happy without that whole side of the family in my life.
I guess it all boils down to the conditions under which one communicates with family. If someone doesn't have much in common, but contact, no matter how infrequent, is at least civil and pleasant, it wouldn't bother me so much as a complete disassociation (unless there was abuse and/or neglect). So, yeah, I would probably file the information away in my mind, but not too far away, then gradually see just what kind of person my friend turns out to be.

i hope my kids don't one day think i'm an asshole & don't want any contact with me....

I'm with you, grumblebee. I wouldn't find the situation odd although, if the depth of the relationship warranted it, I would want to know more. Age, to me, has nothing to do with it.

I'm fairly close to my mum now, although we had a rocky relationship until my late 20s. I moved out and she quit trying to live my life for me.

I have four brothers - I'm semi-close to a couple of them and am on "friendly" terms with another one. He was my enemy as a child and I haven't quite forgiven let alone forgotten the abuse. I stay on friendly terms because I don't want to make waves in the family.

I haven't had much to do with my father since my late teens. I've seen him three or four times in twenty years and that's fine as far as I'm concerned. He pretty much abandoned the family when I was five. The older three boys are closer to him than my younger brother and I ever had a chance to be. That was his choice though, he had plenty of opportunities to see us and get to know us.

As for looking for an alternative family - no, not exactly. The majority of the mister's family is in Ontario and I do wish they were closer so I could get to know them better. I also am envious of the mister for having such good parents. He was really lucky in that regard.

I would imagine someone becoming part of my close family, and assume in my mind that it's the same on the other side, until told otherwise.

TPS, if you don't mind me asking, how would you feel if you met a guy with no living relatives (he loved his parents, but they are now dead). I know you wouldn't reject him because of that, but would you be a bit disappointed. I guess I'm trying to understand whether, when contemplating a relationship, you sort of fantasize about "dating" the guy's family and discovering that he doesn't have one is like -- I don't know -- discovering that he doesn't like the music that you like. Maybe not a deal breaker, but a disappointment, because for you it's part of the fun of dating.

I would imagine someone becoming part of my close family, and assume in my mind that it's the same on the other side, until told otherwise.

TPS, if you don't mind me asking, how would you feel if you met a guy with no living relatives (he loved his parents, but they are now dead). I know you wouldn't reject him because of that, but would you be a bit disappointed. I guess I'm trying to understand whether, when contemplating a relationship, you sort of fantasize about "dating" the guy's family and discovering that he doesn't have one is like -- I don't know -- discovering that he doesn't like the music that you like. Maybe not a deal breaker, but a disappointment, because for you it's part of the fun of dating.

My twin brother is posting again!

I don't know that I consider getting to know the family part of the "fun" of dating- more just a part of it that can be fun, if I'm dating the right person. I'd certainly be disappointed, but mostly for him, that he didn't have his family around anymore.

It's interesting you ask because my extended family is very close- my mother's parents and sisters and what not. My father's parents passed away (his mother while he was in college and his father when I was small), and I think it does make him sad to not have them around. When he and his sister came up for my graduation, they mentioned, gosh, this is right when our Mom died. And it really broke my heart- I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to graduate college and lose my family like that.

Family to me isn't necessarily biological--I'd feel awkward if the guy didn't have some kind of a network, or had one but didn't include me, like the Bosie with whom I was involved at Emerson.