[skissane]

> i have a good relationship to one of my brothers, and no relationship at all to the other. likewise i have no relationship at all with my dads family. mostly because they are all much older. the few cousins my age i wasn't able to connect to for unknown reasons, even though i went to school with at least one of them.

I've always wished I was closer to my cousins than I am. Some of it is my fault, much of it is nobody's fault. But, I've never thought this was "normal". Well, in a descriptive sense, it probably is quite normal, in contemporary Western societies – while far less normal when compared to human history as a whole. Normatively, however, I don't think it is how the world should ideally be, and so in that sense it is abnormal, and hence (in that respect) I am abnormal.

I've always been least close to one of my brothers. There's reasons for that. In the last year or so, we've both been actively trying to improve our relationship. But again, I say that in ideal circumstances we would have always been closer, so in that sense I say our relationship has been normatively abnormal, which is another way in which I am normatively abnormal.

[em-bee]

i never felt that it wasn't normal not to be close to anyone. it was my normal, but i did run unto people who did not understand at all that my brothers and me could not work together well. it wasn't that we didn't get along. we did, but everyone was doing their own thing more or less.

it is only now that i understand how not having people close to me when i grew up affected me throughout my life. it affects my relationship with my partner. how and who i look for as friends. how i treat my children, both positive and negative. (the negative being that i repeat mistakes of my parents, the positive that i am more mindful about how that will affect them)