Single child.
My father and my mother divorced when I was 16.
I have had variable relationships with their significant others, but as an adult, nothing bad with them or any other extended family except one extremely controlling aunt, who I very rarely see…
I think you and my significant other have very similar families, from what little I have heard. Hers are all still in Bangalore, which is why she is here.
She was blown away by my father and step-mother visiting this last weekend, and how well we all got along- she cried when they left…
It’s absolutely not all sunshine and roses. My father is neurotic, controlling and doesn’t like to compromise. My mother suffers from depression, and has some serious mood swings when her meds need adjustment. My brother will drive everyone in the house crazy whenever he’s bored, and often fights with dad. My sister is a bitch on wheels when she’s in a bad mood and an excitable puppy who will never leave you alone when she’s in a good one. My grandfather was a lot like my father when he was younger, and though he’s mellowed considerably since then his kids still bear resentment.
But. Dad will willingly spend hours helping me fix my computer or build a catapult for physics class, and once drove me across town at three in the morning just so I could be at an event at school. Mum is a complete sweetheart, one of the nicest and most accommodating women I know. Brother and I can meet each other’s eyes across the room and dissolve into laughter, and I’m taking him shopping for his first real suit this weekend. Sister and I are so close we can almost read each other’s minds and I’m always the one she turns to for help with her homework (and I always give it). Despite his opinionated cantankerousness, Grandpa’s kids fly in from the other side of the country or the world to be with him at Christmas.
It’s not perfect, but we love each other dearly and for the most part, I’d say we’re happy.
I don’t talk to my mother for years at a time. My older sister hasn’t talked to her for over a year, and my younger sister started the silent treatment about 6 months ago. From my mother’s point of view, we’re all being jerks, but in our opinions, she started it. As you can imagine, between siblings, we’re not very friendly either. I haven’t talked to my older sister in something like 10 years, and my younger sister in a year. Except for my older sister, none of the rest of us have talked to our father for something like 30 years.
A good part of being happy with a family is knowing how much you can change about them, which is usually very little.
That said, I have a fairly good relationship with my family, even if it might look a little more volatile than it really is. One of my brothers and I like to get into discussions that turn into intellectual sparring matches mixed in with honest exchanges of ideas and information and humor, all carried on at full verbal velocity and loud enough you’d think we were one broken bottle away from an all-out brawl. If we did this in a house closer to the neighbors we’d be in danger of having to explain ourselves to the police. However, there’s no malice and certainly no ill-will. (In fact, the last really big one I had with him was a debate over truth and faith: Is truth accessible to us, is it accessible via science as well as math, and whether all humans have faith as part of the human condition.)
So, I suppose the point of that is that you have to know what ‘happiness’ looks like for you and your family.
I’ve done that, too, years ago. How amazing it is that some people support their children and love them. i thought the default was always the other way and still tend towards some cynicism if I don’t watch it.
I was jealous for a while, too. Now I am grateful that I have his family to be with.
COUSIN! People marrying into my family, specially if they are from a different area of the country, get terrified the first time they see one of those. Mom says it took her over 5 years to get used to the notion that two-to-ten people windmilling, pointing fingers, drawing in the air, almost jumping up and down could actually be expressing agreement with each other and refining each other’s arguments, rather than about to draw a weapon.
That was one of the themes of my 12th-grade Philosophy course, we would always get it confused with another one (which I can’t even remember what it was right now)… we got it in that month’s exam, we got it in the final, we even got it in the “university access exam”; it’s been over 20 years and we can still make the three words “reason vs faith” sound like death approaching on heavy jackboots.
My family’s all right. It’s nice to have people there for you when you really need it be it for a short term babysitting or some major catastrophe where they’re lending you a car for two weeks or something.
Sure, my mom still likes to be “in charge” of the holidays and decide we all need to eat at XYZ buffet for Easter morning. My sister and I still get into arguments. At least once a year, we all have a big blow-out fight where people aren’t speaking to other people for weeks. But we’re still there when it counts and you learn how to roll with your own folks.
It’s other people’s families that are weird. My wife’s family just has regular low grade arguments (although, again they do get along). She’s still surprised by our annual typhoon sized battles and I can’t imagine living with her family’s constant squalls.
Getting along with anyone is never ‘sunshine and roses.’ We are all individuals and have our faults.
They key to having a good relationship with family is to recognize the faults and navigate around them.
For example, my father and I share a lot of personality traits. Some of them are very handy (loyalty, honesty) and some are less so (opinionated). Sometimes, we will share different opinions on a topic and things can get…hairy. It’s taken years but now we can hear each other out and either change our minds or agree to disagree.
The great thing about my family is that we are always there for each other. Even last week when I was stressing about life and PMSing, my mom (who hates to talk on the phone) listened to me bitch for an hour just to make me feel a little better (it worked).
My family is more sunshine and roses than a lot of other families. Especially families I read about on the SDMB (that’s probably me being sheltered).
We’re always there for each other. My brother is my best friend and now co-worker. We are VERY in tune. Mom watches my baby niece 3 days a week at bro’s house and often brings his dog home for dog-sitting. My dad is our 2nd tier handyman for both our houses - when we can’t do something ourselves and don’t want to call in a professional. I visit my parents almost every day, as I live a block away. They watch my dog almost every day while I am out and about (and they love it).
Dad’s got his “things” (alcohol and drug addiction…but in a sort of sad, embarrassed way) and mom can be slightly annoying at times (she’s a little gullible and a little over opinionated. Middle child.) but seriously, I have it so good that sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops how wonderful my family is.
I sometimes feel like I gotta keep the love under wraps, because it seems more likely than not that someone will be made to feel bad by my awesome family.
Now, my extended family…they’re a trip. But we’re in our nice little suburban bubble of happiness.
My sister and I get along great and never fight! Though back when she was with Loser Boy #1 and Loser Boy #2 we would get into spats sometimes because she would be very sensitive to what she perceived as slights against them, even if no slight was intended at all. Now that she’s with Winner Boy, she doesn’t do that any more (one of the first clues I had that he was different from the losers).
My husband gets along really well with his whole family. The worst problem he has with them is that he sometimes gets tired of his parents talking and taking forever to get anything done. But that’s a really minor annoyance.
Me and my parents… it’s a lot of making allowances. My mom is a severe control freak… she sounds very very much like the one in the OP. Although sometimes I freak out when she tries to say her way of parenting is the best one for MY child, trumping my parenting (at which point she’s all “Why are you so sensitive??”)
My family gets along fairly well. My mom has always been the General, and she will carp if I don’t call her at least every other day. More often than not, she’s calling me 2 - 10x / day. Dementia is a bitch. I’ve always been her kid, and my sis was dad’s kid. Now that dad is gone, it’s been made pretty clear that sis doesn’t understand mom at all. I end up being the one to run interference between the two.
Sis is almost 10 years older than me. We did not get along until I was 20 and she was 30 - she was divorcing at the same time I was going through an engagement break up. We kind of looked at each other and realized “Wow, you ARE a human!” We hung out all the time. This continued until about 2 years ago. She remarried in 2007 to a guy who has his moments of being nice. He and I don’t get along very well. Then, in 2009 she lost her job. She has become very difficult to be around. TheKid used to worship the ground sis walked on, now can only tolerate her for short amounts of time.
I am fairly close to my nephews and their families, but my youngest nephew has been distancing himself from us. In talking to his wife - it’s because of sis. Sis has made very negative comments about her, including disparaging how they are choosing to raise their little boy. I may have opinions, too, but I try to be supportive, not criticize everything loudly (as sis does). I talk / email with my nephews weekly, if not more often. TheKid has become the de facto babysitter for my grand-nieces.
When I was younger, we used to spend time with extended family - Easter was with dad’s family, other holidays with mom’s side. Mom and dad pretty much took care of his sister for the last few years of her life. I spent at least 2 - 3 days / week with my maternal grandparents (well, grandpa and step-grandma). Death has somewhat scattered everyone, and now we rarely see extended family.
I’ve been wondering about this ever since the last thread about siblings. IIRC, numerous people in that thread claimed that they were/had been “not close” with their siblings, and mostly seemed to chalk it up to an age gap of more than three years. Which is what I wonder about – what is “close” between siblings? I understand that siblings of different ages won’t have much in common, but is there no gray area between “inseparable best friends” and “alienated”?
I got two clear messages from my parents when I was a kid.
Family is very, very important.
Kids are not allowed to talk to grownups, and grownups have no use for kids.
So again and again, I was dragged to “family” gatherings, and slapped down whenever I tried to participate in any way. I guess you do have to be within three years of someone to form a lifelong bond. I didn’t form these lifelong bonds as a kid, so I have no close family members now. Also, when your kid tells you “I feel like I don’t fit in,” I don’t recommend “Well, you don’t” as an answer.
My brothers would call me to make up a landscape for them to play toy soldiers on. I was the landscape builder (and would go back to whatever I’d previously been doing once the landscape was set), Middlebro would be the one trying to change the rules so they’d favor him no matter what, Littlebro the one who had a very clear idea that once you’ve set the rules for a particular game that’s the rules you have, you can’t change them mid-game.
I’m 6 and 8 years older than they are; our family has always considered that the reason I didn’t play “with” them (which I did, but other games) was the age difference.
But you know, The Nephew is 3 years older than The Niece almost to the day… and he’s a landscape builder 
And likes jigsaw puzzles And doesn’t accept “because I say so” as a reason And generally proves that, one, you don’t need to birth a kid to have a kid who takes after you, and two, age difference had nothing to do with it.
Oh, nowadays I make a living setting up management systems for other people to play with, Middlebro still treats rules as something fluid, and Littlebro is a Comptroller.
Family is like a 30 foot by 30 foot ancient A/C unit on a house where the Summers are very hot. When it works, its great. It may not always be efficient, but when it works its great. When it breaks, its really hard to fix, as the parts to fix it are nearly impossible to find.
And when it dies /can’t be fixed, its a pain to get rid of. No one wants to spend the effort to disconnect it & haul it away, even though you know that its what needs to be done. What you replace it with is never the same size or shape & the paint will never match… even if it does the job 1000 times better.