I was just wondering what everyones relationship with their cousin(s) is. What your relationship(s) like as a child?
I’ll talk more about my take on my cousins after a few replies.
I was just wondering what everyones relationship with their cousin(s) is. What your relationship(s) like as a child?
I’ll talk more about my take on my cousins after a few replies.
I’d have to be introduced to mine - the ones I think of when you say “cousins”. Haven’t seen 'em since I was 5 or 6, I think. That side of the family just dropped off the face of the earth when my parents divorced (my dad’s sister and her husband and kids).
My other technically cousins on my mom’s side are younger than my oldest kid, so we have pretty much no relationship except that they’re polite to me when we see them two or three times a year. I don’t even think of them as my cousins. I can tell you that one of them is an excellent student and the other isn’t, but I’m not really sure which is which, to be honest. The younger has all sorts of facial piercings and gauges, which of course freaks out my mother and grandmother, but my response has been pretty much, “Huh. Not my bag, but cool. You know you’re going to need surgery to repair those before you can go into the Navy, right?” I’m pretty sure he’s the one who wants to go into the Navy…and I *think *he’s the excellent student, too…
So, yeah…not close. Maybe that’s why I’m so close with my friends and chosen community. They’re much more “family” than my blood relatives.
I’m very close to most of my cousins. During various times of my childhood I lived in the same metro area as some of them, so we saw each other often. For a few years I lived only a few blocks from two of my cousins, so we saw each other at least once a week.
Even now that we’re all adults and scattered I still try to visit them occasionally, to keep up the ties.
Just yesterday one of my cousins just announced that her son is now engaged. So there will be a big family wedding sometime soon, and most likely I will go. I remember this son when he was an infant.
A cousin is like a sibling that you don’t see often enough to get really aggravated with. My father had nine siblings, so I’ve got a ton of cousins - don’t see them as often as I’d like to now that I’m an adult, but still write to some of them.
I only have six first cousins (four females, and two males) and two brothers. I value my relationship with two of my female cousins because they are like the little sisters I never had. I keep in touch with them a lot even though we didn’t really grow up together. I consider them close family. The other four I rarely talk to but I do consider them true family I would be there if they needed me.
I have 4 first cousins on one side and - counts on fingers - 9 first cousins on the other side and a couple of more at some level of removal.
My fathers first cousin is the one I see the most often, his kids and my kids are the same age. My own first cousins are all somewhat younger than me, but I see them when I go to their city or they come to mine. And on Facebook of course.
I like them all, I remember them as little kids and they have all turned into great people doing interesting things. We have always tried to have a big family reunion every couple of years, and now that they are getting to marrying age we just wait for a wedding as an excuse to all get together. My daughter was flowergirl for my cousin’s wedding last year, which was just about the highlight of her life.
I have three first cousins who weren’t adults by the time I was born - all female, and they are like the little sisters I never had, as well - the older two were bridesmaids at my wedding.
Distant, both now and growing up. My two cousins on my dad’s side are 10+ years older than me and have lived across the country since I was 6 months old. My one cousin on my mother’s side is almost the exact same age as my younger brother so they were very close growing up, while I was several years older and had less in common with them. I get along fine with all of my cousins but am not particularly close to any of them. I have always been jealous of my best friend, whose father comes from a large family and estimates she has close to 50 first cousins.
On my father’s side, most of my cousins live in a foreign country (where that side immigrated from) and I’ve never meet nearly all of them. I’ve meet three cousins on my dad’s side. Two when I was a child. One left back to his home country after the first meeting and the other came from the same country and stayed in America. However, I’ve only seen the one who stayed maybe ten times in my life total. The third one recently became a citizen and my uncle swears we played together (frequently) as children. I didn’t even know his name so… (My uncle’s been known to lie about other things.) I know there’s at least twenty more cousins back in that country. Most of them are older than me. So, my most of my cousins probably have children I’ve never meet. (I think is partially why I have no desire to have facebook.) To clear things up (if anyone cares), none of these three cousins are my uncle’s children. In fact, he was the only sibling not to have children.
On my mother’s side, I have a few cousins. I never lived close to them. So, I have no idea where they live now or what they’re up to. I’ve seen them at family events and have no idea who they are until I see them hanging around my aunts and uncles. My uncle ran off and married a much younger woman. I have no idea how many children he’s had, but I know he has two or three. I am not close to any of them. They’re all young enough to be my children.
I posed this question because around here it seems many people are very close to their cousins. They marvel at the fact that I could probably correctly name five of my almost forty first cousins. I was wondering how close most people truly are.
I have 10 cousins on my mom’s side, and I’m fairly close to some of them. Unfortunately the ones I spent the most time with growing up now live far away. Thank goodness for Facebook. I have no contact with my oldest cousin due to him thinking that all of his problems are our grandmother’s fault, so he cut everyone off.
I have some step-cousins on my dad’s side, but I hardly know any of them. Don’t even know their last name. They’re my aunt by marriage’s kids from her first husband, and she had taken her maiden name back before she married my uncle. Dad and uncle never got along, so I never got to know uncle’s family. Thing is, now that Dad is gone, the behavior from uncle that drove him and Dad apart is now being directed towards me. Now I understand why Dad didn’t have much to do with him.
Just over 25 years ago I was the first of my grandmothers family to leave the small town we all lived in. Even now that she is gone about 80% of the family still lives within 15 miles of each other.
Growing up I was surrounded by cousins. We were clustered into little age groups. In mine (the oldest) was Steve, his sister Trish and me. Stepstair cousins with just over a year between each. Trish and I were together always. We wore matching dresses to a family wedding, we had our first drink together at a family party and were generally joined at the hip.
The next group down was my brother and three more and I was fairly close to them. The next set were 10 years younger than that and I babysat most of them. The next bunch I barely know their names let alone them.
As for Trish, when I was 18 and she was 19 we were dating boys who were best friends. I was posted in Ottawa but I caught the Ottawa - Trenton - Germany flight almost every weekend and one of the three of them (or all) met me in Trenton for the rest of the trip home.
The weekend I didn’t go home Trish and my boyfriend were killed in a motorcycle accident. John (Trisha’s boyfriend) was a few hundred yards ahead of them when an old half blind man turned left directly into them. Her death severed the only real connection I still had to my mothers family. I attended a few family occasions after the funeral but not many. It’s funny my grandmother always thought that Trish was leading me into trouble, I don’t think she realized that she was my link to the family which now that I think about it could easily be defined as trouble.
In my family cousins are described as siblings that you can marry, but I honestly have no idea how many cousins I have there are so many. It’s like it’s the job of the old people when they retire from full time to work to keep track of everybody and how they are related. That said, it is actually possible to show up at one of my family’s doorsteps and receive food, clothes, money, etc., even though no one has ever met you as long as you can correctly describe your relationship to the family.
I had three sets of cousins. I only saw them at family holidays when I was growing up.
One set (two girls) lived in the town next door to us. I rarely saw them. They were a couple of years older than me.
The second set (two girls) lived about 20 miles as the crow files, but it took an hour to drive there*. I didn’t see them except maybe once a year. We did get along pretty well.
The third set (three girls and a boy) we saw most often. They lived about an hour away, but my mother was more interested in family than my father, so we saw them several times a year. The oldest I was about six years older than me. I got along best with his sister when I was growing up. The twins are the ones I see the most often these days; they live the closest to me so I can occasionally visit them.
*You either had to take two ferries, or drive about 50 miles.
I have something in the neighborhood of 40 first cousins. Some I hang out with or talk with once a week, others I wouldn’t recognize if I passed them on the street.
There’s a decided split between how close I am to my mom’s side and my dad’s side. My dad is a Scottish immigrant and only one of his siblings also immigrated to the US, so I’m pretty close to those 5 cousins. Another aunt immigrated to Canada, so I know her 2 daughters pretty well. But the rest of his family is scattered across the UK, South Africa, and Hong Kong and are FaceBook acquaintances at best.
My mom’s side is a whole different story. My grandma has 27 grandchildren, 3 grandchildren in law, and 2 great grandchildren (one on the way). All but a handful of us grew up in the same town, went to the same elementary schools, went to the same beach club etc. My parents always had a 2 family house, so I literally grew up in the same house as 5 of them. My aunt’s house was right across the street from my elementary and junior high school, so I hung out with those 6 cousins every day. We grew apart a bit as teenagers (you know, cause going to family parties and hanging out with your parents wasn’t cool), but now that there’s a large group of us over 21 for the past few years we’ve been reconnecting over alcohol. We try to organize a concert, party, camping trip, bar night, etc at least once a month. We can bitch and moan about how neurotic and sanctimonious our parents are, brag to everyone in earshot about how awesome our grandma is, and embarrass each other with stories about the stupid shit we did as kids.
Unfortunately, I know it’s not going to last like this forever. Most of us are unattached and just out of school. As we get older some of us will get married, have kids, move for work; I’m a bit of a nomad, so I don’t know how much longer I last being back in my hometown, but right now it’s pretty special.
I’m not exactly sure how many cousins I have, let alone their names.
Fortunately, I don’t live in Shelbyville, so I’m not too interested, either.
My parents’ families were widely separated by geography, so I didn’t grow up seeing my cousins. There are some I haven’t seen or heard from in at least 30 years. OTOH my wife’s family all lived together in a big house even after the aunts and uncles got married. She has 17 first cousins (5 of whom went through elementary and high school in the same grade) and they’re one big happy family – the next big get-together will be on the 4th of July.
I have 74 first cousins, who have 47 spouses and about 120 kids (I’m beginning to lose track). I’m always happy to see all of them, but I’m closer with some than others, due to age, geography, and personality. A few are my oldest friends in the world, while I only got close with some who aren’t around my age more recently. I probably had my second real conversation with one of my oldest cousins last week, although I’ve known her all my life (she’s only a few years younger than my mother, who is the twelfth of thirteen children.) I’m having trouble with the next generation - there are so many that it’s hard to get to know all the little kids’ names, even, let alone have meaningful interactions with them often enough that they remember you as they grow.
It’s fun, overall. We had two weddings in the last week, out of four total this summer. A cousin set me up with Mr. GilaB, and another cousin set up my brother and his wife. (My sister and BIL managed to meet on their own.) I’m spending tomorrow and/or Wednesday with cousins who are visiting from abroad. And when we took the giant family portrait at my brother’s wedding two years ago, there were enough of us to do the wave while we were waiting for the happy couple.
I’m jealous of anyone who had a close relationship with a cousin or cousins growing up. All of mine were older than me. The closest was 2.5 yrs older. The oldest was only 6 yrs younger than my mom. We saw them several times a year at family events, but I was never close to any of them growing up.
Now I am close to one cousin in particular who also lives in Northern California. He is 13 yrs older, but at 42 and 55 (and with our kids only 5 yrs apart) it hardly matters any more.
I have only four first cousins, all on my mom’s side (dad was the rare only child among the Boomer generation). We get along well, but we don’t see each other much. And they are 9, 8, 7, and 6.5 years older than me, respectively, so it hasn’t been until recently that age hasn’t been such a barrier. The one who’s 9 years older than me in particular I barely know. The others I’m pretty good friends with. Two are married and one is getting married in August and I’ve had the time of my life at all their weddings. Can’t wait for the next one.
We didn’t see the girl cousins much growing up because they lived halfway across the country, but the boy cousins were closer and we visited them every summer. Despite the age gap (my brother is 26 months younger than me, so it’s even wider for him), they were great with us. They played elaborate games of hide-and-seek with us when they were well into high school and “too old” to be playing kiddie games with little cousins.
All of us have started seeing each other more that there are weddings and (unfortunately) older relatives getting sick and dying and now that we’re independently mobile. This is kind of odd because we’re now more spread out than ever, including one cousin now living in Switzerland.
I really wish I had more cousins. The four I have are great, but everyone else has more.
I have 42 first cousins. Growing up (and even now) we were always closer to the cousins on my mtoher’s side.There, like Moonlitherial, we were roughly divided by age, but there was always someone to play with. Now I’m close only to a few, but there’s still the feeling of family. If I went back to Michigan I’d be expected to stay with them and visit and play cards, just as my parents did with their parents.
StG