Yes, I have always liked all of my relatives as people. I find that we share many traits and beliefs and approach to life. When my grandparents were alive, we would “hang out” like friends do.
I am about to retire back to the United States after having lived most of my life overseas. It is a time for reflection. I think I live this life just to be away from my brothers & sisters who are fine people and who have never tried to treat me badly.
“It is all very psychological.”
My kids are the best. My DIL is an angel. She chooses to associate with me and is a huge help. She certainly doesn’t have to.
I have a large sibling group. We are all in various states of being in touch. Sometimes I’m little out of the loop because I don’t do Facebook. My oldest sister became the mom-figure to us younger ones when my Mother died. She always pulls me back in if I straggle behind.
But yeah, I like them all.
Yes. We’ve always got along. But mostly because we keep to ourselves a lot. We were never a lovey dovey close family, but we keep in touch regularly and enjoy each other’s company when we do so. We’re an easy-going nice considerate bunch of ordinary independently minded thinkers.
My mother struggled to get along with her own sister and brother. My Dad was very close to his biological brother and sister, even though he was adopted out. Both those approaches, of being loving, and wishing for a loving family, helped shape us to be the way we are.
My brother was the most distant of us all, he found a new life that was very different to what the rest of us chose, in a supportive cultural community that gave him his purpose in life, and that was a bit of a distance we never figured out how to cross successfully, but it was never a negative relationship, we just kind of shrugged and went along with it.
Also I am the most physically distant from everyone, living in a different country to them, but that didn’t change much aside from my not being home for Christmas as frequently.
I guess we are just an easy-going family who don’t hold grudges.
Heck no.
At least, not the living ones.
But I love em, and I do what I can for em.
Parents, yes, sis, yes, brother, yeah buuut, there is a first cousin once removed, don’t see her very often (years go by) that we just click together every time we get together. Everyone else…eh.
Yes, I like them. They’re good people.
Is there anyone you’ve liked and stayed close to over the years?
I liked my mother, but she died 25 years ago.
I admired my father, but he was difficult to relate to. I suspect he was somewhere in the Asperger spectrum. He did what he could to help me, but we never really spoke. Then he married another woman, which would technically make her my stepmother although at my age that sounds like my late grandmother saying she is an orphan: meh. I hope there is a Hell just so she can burn there forever, specially because how she treated him before he died. Alternatively I hope she lives to be 120 because I believe being a miserable person is the worst punishment: she is always with herself, serves her right.
I guess I still have a brother, haven’t heard from him since father died. I hope he is OK and stays away. The poor blocke is dim and we have nothing whatsoever in common. He has a son I have never met. Not interested.
I love & like my wife. We have no children, her parents died as well and she has no siblings. I consider us to be a family of two and I like it that way.
I loved my grandparents when I was a child. That is ages ago. Today, with hindsight and rather hazy memories of them I think they were not really good people. So I don’t think of them often.
The longest friendship I had lasted about ten years. He married and moved to the Philippines and we lost contact. My friendships usually last only a few years at most with one of us, usually me, getting tired and moving on. I’m not really anti-social, I just don’t like most people in general. 
My father’s side, generally yes. My mother’s side, generally no. 1.SiL and me are from different universes, 2.SiL is from an intermediate one so she can translate between the two of us. 1.Bro I like in moderate doses and wouldn’t want to work with because that would require more tiptoeing than the average coworker or client; 2.Bro I’m comfortable with for much longer periods and would be perfectly happy to work with. If 2.Bro and I worked together we’d have telegraphic meetings that would then need to be translated for everybody else’s convenience.
Sample recent text conversation with 2.Bro:
him: got second account, send there
me: IBAN?
him: [provides IBAN]
me, five minutes later: set. Will start from 13th next
Translates to:
I opened that second account of Mom’s we’ve been talking about. Please send there your loan repayments. (Mom lent me the money she got from the sale of her mother’s flat; that way it went from being a large amount she didn’t know what to do with to being an extra income she’s much more comfortable about; I did need that kind of amount at the time and the conditions are similar to what I would have gotten from my bank)
Sure, I’ll need the account number
The account number is [IBAN]
OK, I’ve changed the settings on the automated payment. As the payment takes place the 13th of each month and this month’s has already been paid, expect the first payment to that account on the 13th of the next month.
Like my sisters. I am estranged from my brother, and haven’t spoken to him in about eight years. (Believe me, he earned it. My sisters are in light contact with him, but keep their distance as well.) Parents are deceased - I liked them, too.
Thinking realistically, it’s unlikely I would’ve befriended any of them besides my dad if we’d met as unrelated strangers. Mainly due to a large gap in education and professional life.
I like everyone on my mom’s side of the extended family. Dad’s side is spottier.
My in-laws live in the Far East and speak almost no English. We have visited them three times in the few years I’ve been married. I can speak greetings, thank you’s, etc., in their language, but that’s about it. When we visit, I just smile and wave. They seem to like me, and they seem mostly nice as far as I can tell. BIL seems like a sweetheart.
I so strongly dislike my mother and sister that we’ve been estranged over three decades, and don’t know if they’re even alive anymore (mother would be ninety). The other blood relatives that I knew with any regularity are all gone, and I only liked one grandmother and a couple of great uncles.
My spouse and her kids and other relatives are generally pretty likable. There’s nobody on that side left in any generations preceding us.
I love mom. Dad can be a pain, mostly as a result of alcoholism. I suspect that the drinking is the result of some other nuttery. My siblings are ok, 1 is a alcoholic, lots of collateral damage from her, but she isn’t mean. Just really screwed up. One brother is ok, but keeps to himself. The other is a bit nuts, he still harbors grudges from here s teen years. He is 62. I love him, but he won’t speak to me. I’ve given up trying.
My father-in-law was a very mean, very lazy drunk. He quit drinking, but he didn’t get a new personality. I’ve never heard a decent word from him. He torments my wife until she cries. Then he laughs. He won’t quit until he is forced to by someone else. In close to 40 years, I’ve never seen him do anything, so much as taking out the garbage. He only worked when he had too, spent much of his life on welfare, drinking himself into unconsciousness. Of course he has become a big Trump fan, and constantly goes into rants about minoritys, you know, all those dark skinned bums laying around collecting welfare. He also hates Jews, mexicans, pretty much everybody. I’d say he was worthless, but that would be a step up. I used to get along very well with my brother-in-law, and both sisters-in-law. However, the evil bum has poisoned that. I’ve known guys that did time in prison that I have more respect for.
Sorry for the rant.
I wouldn’t pee on my stepfather if he were on fire, and my older sister and I don’t get along for more than 15 minutes, but my younger sister is my best friend and I get along very well with the rest of my family. I enjoy our time together, but I make it a point to limit my exchanges to vague pleasantries with my stepfather and sister unless they’re putting on a show for someone else by being on their best behavior instead of being the jerks that they are.
The OP made me think.
Thought: I would enjoy all my relatives a lot more if I hadn’t lived with them as a child. They are as a group interesting, sane, conversational, and considerate adults. But I can’t forget my life with them when I was powerless.
I like my family… about 2000 miles away.
My mother passed away suddenly a few months after my 18th birthday. My father was never in the picture, so my mother’s sisters and brother took to raising me. My sister went to live with her father, but I was basically on my own.
Growing up, they were never supportive at all. They were quick to tell me that what I was doing wrong, of course, but never supported my decisions or life choices at all.
“Art is a great hobby, but you’ll never make any money at it,” was something I was told several times as a kid and young adult. (Now I’m a professional artist, and I make more money than most, if not all, of them.)
One time, years ago, my car broke down. Repairing it cost about $500, which back then was a ridiculously huge amount of money for me. My uncle loaned the money to me- at 17% interest.
When my mother-in-law met them, she told me that it was all she could do to not tell them off. She couldn’t stand the way they constantly belittled me and made “good-natured” fun of me. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware of it, it was just the way I’d been treated all my life.
They’re all down in Texas, and I’m now up here in Canada, and I really like having the distance between us. I see them about once ever year or two, and that’s about enough.
I have an older sister by 9 years who I love and like. Same for her husband and grown children. Both my brothers died of their addictions and I don’t miss them. One brother would get in my face and yell Fuck you, I hate you. I had no use for him. Other brother had some type of personality disorder. He was fun to be around. I liked him but didn’t love him. My father was the greatest man in the world. He was my rock. I only knew my mother as my mother, not as a person.
I was really close to my brother and still think about him sometimes (he died of brain cancer nearly 21 years ago). His wife resented and often commented that when we were together, we entered our own private universe from which she felt excluded. My wife was aware of that but didn’t mind. I am less close to my sister, but I do love her. Growing up I had a lot of cousins none of whom (with one exception) I much cared about. I loved my parents and they were good to me. Sometimes I loved, but didn’t like, my mother, but my father was an ace.
I still love my wife of 55 years and I really love my kids, their spouses and the grandkids. All of them are just wonderful people.
Just realized something. My sisters, who fought constantly through their teens, will tell each other “I love you sister”, but rarely use the other’s proper name. Enforcing my perception that the “I love you because you’re my brother” is forced.