Family, loyalty, love

My daughter has a hard plastic ring on her head which she is calling her 'Crown' at the moment, it is SO cute and heart warming watching her play with her cousin, who two years the elder, is guiding her in the principle of 'Dolly bedtime'  I spent some time texting with my oldest daughter about her work and then listening to my mother rant about said daughter's horrible father.  Even though my sister drives me crazy and I can't wait for her to move out, I brought her some magazines today to entertain her whilst she is bedridden.

Family is important to me, I was raised partially living in my Aunts home with her husband and my cousins, my Uncle's family were also my family although not blood relations to me, I spent holidays with my grandparents, I frequently visited my out of town cousins, my mother's brother had a LOT of children and we had HUGE family parties with all my great uncles, Aunts and their children!!!

So...back to my mother's rantage about my ex husband.....her theory goes that there is a cultural reasoning for his (and his wife's) actions that we don't share and therefore we don't understand so well.  We, in our cultural tradition, seem to grow family. 

My sister's paternal half sister sister is closer to me than a stranger, though we were not raised together and share no blood, nor am I particularly friendly with her and see her seldom, but if she needed anything, I will be there for her.  Her mother is friends with my mother despite neither she, or my mother were long with the partner they once had in common neither of them acted as a 'step mother' so to speak, but they both had children with the same man so they built a friendship.  My cousins mothers, who had long ago divorced my Uncle (who, let me be clear, was a bit of a tart) are still 'Aunties' to me.  My extended family of second cousins, third cousins, partners, babies, fathers, mothers......all these people, all different colours, different religions, different countries, but all interconnected somehow in this vast mobile wobbly thing we refer to as 'family'.  I went to my Uncle's father's funeral a few weeks ago, now DO pay attention here, my Uncle, that is my mother's brother in law  (husband to  my late Aunt) late niece's first boyfriend came to the funeral of his late, ex-girlfriends step grandfather.. She died 20 years ago....such was his connection to the family he came to the funeral.  I had not seen him in about 25 years myself.  He looked good though, hadn't aged a day but that is by the by....point is...yeah, family, we find it hard to get rid of people.


Some people, like my ex husband and his ilk, find it near impossible to keep them. They rid old family for new. Permanently cutting ties when emotional and sexual bonds are weakened, that equals a scorched earth policy.  'You mean nothing to me now' is the way they look at it and they MEAN it.
I remember an ex of mine said the first thing he got rid of was the pictures (of his previous girlfriend) like he was trying to erase his past with her and starting a new one with me, then after we broke up, what happened to my pictures? 

Actually we are pretty good friends now, I would actually love to see him again.  My mother loved him, he was a hopeless drunk of course, but he was still a lovely man. 

Funnily enough the Polysphere was all a flutter over this article in the Daily Fail regarding an advice column where a woman who still maintains a friendship with her ex was told that her current boyfriend's jealousy might be justified because she should no longer be close to her ex, she should set any sort of emotional intimacy aside, otherwise it probably means she must still be in love with her ex. This woman has a child with this ex.  Advice columnist tells her not to be friends with him any more....this same newspaper thrives on the drama of custody battles and 'baby daddy/mummy' drama...could we say 'Hypocritical'?  Urgh.

Was my mother right?  Is this a cultural thing?  I am not sure, maybe?  There is a lot of evidence that she could be right though.  I remember when I was married having to argue with my husband to get him to even send a parent a birthday card.  Sure, I could blame it on a kind of lack of empathy that they say is common amongst those with ASD but I have seen it elsewhere too.  We saw them maybe three times in an eight year relationship, once was our wedding and another time was after the birth of our child.  They only lived an hour away by train.  They did not dislike me, they just did not care enough to visit and he did not care to visit them at all (believe me, I asked).  We saw my mother more and she lived in Orlando!

When I was in my ex poly relationship, I recall telling them that I did not get into Polygamy to end up living in a small flat as a single parent, of course that is exactly what happened again (not that I am bitter, I love my life) but my point was, it was to have MORE family, not less.  I always knew, with that sort of confidence that a well loved child has, that no matter what I did, my mother would come around, it might take a while, especially after I came out with the poly relationship (it was 18mths, I had predicted only 1 year...never underestimate the resentment of Scorpio woman!!!!) I even knew, with time, cajoling and emotional blackmail, my mother would have to meet them and with that meeting, she would accept them. How do I know this?  I know my mother.

So, of course, the lack of interest in this happening from either of them, for various reasons was incredibly hurtful to me, because that link, that connection for me makes relationships real to me, by coming into my mother's sphere, this turns you from 'someone I am seeing' to family.  This was not their experience of family and therefore they could not understand.
Maybe in the end, this fact in itself would have made us fail regardless of everything else? Living an isolated life from family is simply not my thing and where 'I' go, my family go, or at least they should go even one time.  This idea of not doing it, just never considering it because #don'twanna  is not me, is not us.  It is some other cultural mindset who thinks it isn't and SHOULDN'T be important enough to me that they need to go out of their comfort zone.  But I can't imagine a world in which I would ever feel truly a part of something without my family by choice and my family by blood would come together.  You see, until it happens, we are not family.

  It is not my mothers approval I am seeking by the way, she would not really approve of anyone, even if she likes them.  It is more her acknowledgement that our family had expanded.

I have heard some women express that their sisterwives family is nothing to them, I was shocked to hear that sentiment, it never occurred to me to think that way.  Loyalty as in, bringing those who care about me into my sphere of family and protecting THEIR interests, is important to me, regardless of whether they are blood related or not, isolating myself in a small nuclear bubble (whether poly or mono) is anathema to me, in fact I find it impossibly dysfunctional.  I am becoming so much more aware of what has meaning to me in my relationships, problem is, I am not sure whether this expands my options or narrows them.