How much are you like or different from your immediate family and relatives?

January 8, 2005 3:59 PM

How much are you like or different from your immediate family and relatives? [MI]

I'm in Kansas City for the holidays, visiting my mom, her husband, and my sister and brother-in-law. Anyway, last night we watched Bourne Identity and Franka Potenta's presence in the film made me think about Tykwer's films, and I mentioned them to my mom and her husband. I'm thinking they might like Lola, but also my mom, especially might like "The Princess and the Warrior". On the other hand, these are foreign films.

And then also, thinking of Tykwer, I thought about Heaven, which made me think of Kieslowski and The Decalogue. My sister and her husband are both evangelical ministers and I thought they might appreciate Decalogue (which I have back at home in Albuquerque).

Then, I sort of despaired, a little, thinking that all these foreign films and famous directors are, to them, "strange".

I bet I don't have a relative that's read, for example, Dosteyevski or Tolstoy.

My family is the usual mix of smart and average people, really. But, aside from my maternal grandmother who passed away three years ago (after having Alzheimer's and so, it seemed to me, she went away long ago), there's never been anyone in my faily that I could share these sorts of interests.

I've gone to school with people who've had family that had a high incidence of advanced degrees; this certainly isn't the case with mine. Seemed like in their cases they shared some of these same interests. And I know siblings who do.

In my dad's family, fitting it requires knowing all the most important stats for the Dallas Cowboys going back thirty years. So, um, I didn't relate well with them.

Anyone else feel like they're the odd person out? If so, how do you bridge that gap? At forty, it's a little late. But I tire of having all these interests and, well, just little things I mentiont that seem like I live in another universe.

On the upside, I had my mom and her husband watch almost 14 episodes from seasons two of Buffy, and my mom, especially, loved it. I also got them hooked on South Park, which they apparently regularly watch these days.

posted by Ethereal Bligh to society & culture (32 comments total)

What are you using for a measure? Because I'm definitely the product of both my parents' influence, but I feel like I'm an almost exact 50/50 split of them and they're not very alike, so I guess I'm different from them. Similarly, I have one sibling and I'm very much like her, but different. For example: we're both fairly shy, but we handle it in different ways.
posted by yerfatma at 4:09 PM on January 8, 2005

Families are so weird- one minute, I can be like, omigosh, I have nothing in common with these freaks of nature, and they next minute, they're the only people in the world who understand me.

on preview- my parents aren't very like each other, either, yerfatma. I'm more like my Dad then my Mom, and that's all my extended family is, as my Dad's family has almost totally passed away (Don't smoke, so your grandchildren will get a chance to know you!). That's probably the times I feel most weird- when I'm with them all, feeling more like him.

p.s. Did your family actually say they think foreign films are strange, Ethereal Bligh, or did you just assume they would think so?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 4:15 PM on January 8, 2005 [1 favorite has favorites]

Anyone else feel like they're the odd person out? If so, how do you bridge that gap?

It helps if you live thousands of miles away from the rest of the family, and only see them for a couple of days every few years.
posted by cmonkey at 4:24 PM on January 8, 2005

I'm in the same situation, EB. I'm agnostic, they're fundamentalist Christians. I watch Run Lola Run, they watch Runaway Bride. I'm calm, independent, and a little standoff-ish, they're emotional, social, and touchy-feely. Etc. I have no idea how I came from the family that I did, really.

Still, I've been able to help my family understand me just a little bit more during the past couple of years. I did it, basically, by slowly introducing them to the ideas that I felt had shaped the things in me that made me different. If you family is evangelical and you're not, send them a quick little email with an excerpt from a book you're reading on the subject. Or just buy them the book for a birthday/Christmas, if that's something they might be open to. Talk to them about the movies you watch, and how cool they are, starting with something accessible that you think they'll pariticularly like. Ask them to watch it with you. Etc. You're already doing this a little; by getting them to watch TV that's out of their comfort zone, you're exposing them to new ideas. Keep this up, and eventually, they may grow to understand your perspective, even if they never agree with it.

That's all I know to suggest. They'll have to be willing to meet you halfway, or it won't work. Good luck, to both of us, I suppose.
posted by gd779 at 4:26 PM on January 8, 2005

It depends a lot on the ways that you're similar and different. For instance, I feel that much of my family is intellectually in the same ball park that I am, but I also feel like I have quite a different sense of humor and sense of aesthetics than my dad / his side of the family, and that there are only a few people on my mom's side with whom I relate on those levels. I also have a lot of trouble relating to my immediate family (parents & sister) on basic issues of self-identity and strength of character. They are all a bit flaky/self absorbed in a way which I consciously try not to be.

So it isn't just about relating intellectually.

on preview: what the pink superhero says about one minute feeling completely alienated and the next feeling right at home, is definitely true for me, too.
posted by mdn at 4:34 PM on January 8, 2005

Ditto on the mixed parents thing. I definitely catch myself at times thinking "wow, what I just did is so my mom/dad", and other times thinking "I had to have been adopted".

I'm definitely a bigger nerd than either of the folks, but we definitely find things that we can use to "bridge the gap". For my mother, it's often a television show (she likey the "Monk")... and for my dad, it's football or basketball.

I was never pressured into anything by my parents, so I like to think I'm just doing my own thing. I think pressure is often how children seem to resemble their parents outwardly (like having advanced degrees).

EB: Any parents that will watch season 2 of Buffy can't be a lost cause. Just wait 'til they check out the THIRD SEASON! </Buffy Nerd> In any case, good luck.
posted by theFlyingSquirrel at 4:36 PM on January 8, 2005

(oh, and it's Franka PotentE, in case you ever wanted to do a Google image search or something...)
posted by theFlyingSquirrel at 4:40 PM on January 8, 2005

My parents come from different types of families, but my mom fits in well with my dad's family, so they aren't too different. I don't see my mom's family much. They're ok, I guess, but they're pretty normal. I prefer my dad's family. We all tend to be (moderately) intelligent, sometimes readers, outdoorsy hunters and hikers and most of all, talkers. I'm a bit of an outlier, I read way more than everyone else, but am more moderate or low on other stuff. I still fit in well with that.

What I end up doing is concentrating most on togatherness than inclusion. I'm nearby, even if I don't participate.
posted by stoneegg21 at 4:43 PM on January 8, 2005

I've got one sister who got divorced and gave up custody of her three kids to my parents. The other sister is married with two kids and is currently in the process of adopting a child from the Ukraine. My brother has two Doctorates and a Masters, while I never made it through college (due more to lack of ambition than lack of intellect.) We are four completely different people, who love each other and get along surprisingly well.
posted by boymilo at 5:23 PM on January 8, 2005

Surely you are broader than just your intellectual interests?

Since my father never made it to 6th grade and only learned to read late in his life (taught by my mother using comic books) I can't say we share much intellectually.

That said, he and I and the rest of the family all seem to have the same twisted sense of humor and that binds us more than anything else.
posted by vacapinta at 5:28 PM on January 8, 2005

My dad was definitely the odd man out in his family. He came from a dirt-poor Yankee farming family that didn't believe much in education and was very religious. He was a rabid atheist and voracious reader who loved Fellini, modern art and the natural sciences. He married into a family who shared his interests, and pretty much cut all ties to his family. When I asked him about them he'd just say he didn't care for them much, I think he must've had a rough time. I'm so much like him it's ridiculous.
posted by cali at 5:43 PM on January 8, 2005

Bridging the gap is all about finding the commonalities and focusing exclusively on them. For instance, when my grandfather and I get together, we avoid the topic of how he thinks all Arabs should be tortured like animals, and instead focus on more pleasant things that I don't find abhorrent or disagreeable such as puppies or WWII. He sure loves to talk about WWII. At the same time, I must be careful not to say anything disparaging about Charlton Heston or the Gipper lest he write me out of the will for heresy.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 6:15 PM on January 8, 2005

My mom and I are thick as theives, but my dad, that's a different story. Fight, fight, fight. It's better now that I'm a grown up who pays her own bills. As for the rest of the family, his five siblings are quite frankly crazy, touchy, and far too much trouble. My mother's sister is similarly nuts. I think my parents are, for all their faults, the only two sane people in their families. How do I deal with it? My mom's sister said we were "dead to" her, and I've just let that be, as she's way easier to NOT deal with. The rest of them? I limit contact. My husband's family are fabulous, though, and so my parents have basically been annexed in. For all that, my husband and I are the computer nerds, the literary geeks, the film dorks. Bassfisherpeople we are not. Difference is, HIS family likes us the way we are, and my parents' families act like we're freaks.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:19 PM on January 8, 2005

I do not relate to my family at all, but my parents do accept me for who I am. I still see them, but it's always rather depressing. There's no rancor, but there's nothing stimulating about my visits to them at all. I don't really have any use for my half siblings, two of which have gone of the deep end as fundamentalists. I have as little to do with them as possible.

So yes, I've always been the odd person out and I've just accepted that.
posted by ursus_comiter at 6:35 PM on January 8, 2005

I will admit to being jealous of friends who have close friendships with their family. I don't really want that with my family though, I just want their family!

And I always roll my eyes when my mom goes off on how no one's ever going to be there for me like family.
posted by ursus_comiter at 6:38 PM on January 8, 2005

As I was reading the original post, it seemed to me that a lot of what Ethereal Bligh was talking about involved shared interests and experiences (vs. temperament, personality, or sense of humor for example). A lot of that is related to the peers and experiences one has already had. In that sense, you'd expect there to be some pretty profound differences between family members who are of different ages and who have done different things in their lives. I don't know that my judgements about similarity between family members focus on these types of characteristics.

The things I like about my relationships with my family are typically less content-related than those in my relationships with my friends. My friends are similar to me in age, education, pop-cultural interest, political views, etc. But my family "fits" me really well in temperment, craziness, and emotional ways for example ('fits' means different things in this case -- sometimes it's similarity, sometimes they complement my characteristics, etc).

Also, I found it interesting that the poster discussed ways to bring "culture" (for lack of a better word) to his/her family. From my own experience, having other people tell me that I should read/watch something is usually a toss-up. I'm just as likely to like the new thing as to hate it. I wonder if it would make sense for the poster to try to pick up some of these relatives' interests.
posted by i love cheese at 7:08 PM on January 8, 2005

You're not looking hard enough. Your interests came from your folks whether you realize it or not.

The differences that you see are the elements of nuture, which bares as much on your total self as nature does. Your folks, I suspect, just didn't have the same opportunities to experience that you did. You've probably seen more than your parents, but part of that stems from the fact that they (subtley) encouraged you to take in more than they had the opportunity to do.

Once you get old, that's pretty much it. You're less receptive to new experiences. But I bet that their mark (genetic or learned) is what encouraged you to have wider looks than they did before you go to the point of being insular.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:15 PM on January 8, 2005

I sympathise with EB's sense of alienation in his own family -- along with others here, my situation's very similar. Religiously, I'm something between a "strong agnostic" and a "weak deist" (or maybe an "agnostic epicurean") (I not only don't believe gods can't have an effect on my life, I don't bother to think about it anymore); all but my brother the biologist are evangelicals. (Though my bro & I have our suspicions about dad...) They're all family-folk; I'm never married and not likely to ever be. They (again, except for brother) are all politically conservative, whereas we're politically liberal. We're a faction, really; we can talk about films or literature or politics and expect to have a conversation about it, even when we disagree; with my other sibs or my parents, we don't even share enough of the same terminology to have those conversations.

But yet, with the exception of our mother, we all think in very (my "good" brother's wife says "frightening") ways. We share a common sense of humor, an analytic worldview, a Baggins-like sense of adventure (slow to rouse, but once you do...), and a high degree of intelligence and respect for education. We even look similar. Friends in college used to say that the first time they saw my father, they thought I'd contracted some terrible aging disease.

It's been a puzzle to me all my adult life, how it is that my one brother (six years older to the day) and I turned out so similar to one another in our worldviews, and so different from the others. We both tend to resort on propinquity and expectation: Having been born on the same day, we were always expected to be alike. So after a while, we simply ended up living up to the expectation.

That said, it's painful spending time, sometimes, with my other nuclear family relatives. It's not that I don't care about them; it's that the things that matter most to them are things that disturb me greatly. My brother has it easy -- he lives thousands of miles away. I'm only a five hour drive from most of the fam....
posted by lodurr at 7:27 PM on January 8, 2005

I am so different from my family that I would swear I was adopted except I know for a fact I am not.

NO ONE in my family of origin is very intellectual unless you count my dad musing on such topics as Erich Von Daniven (sp) occasionally...extended family, are pretty typical redneck/good old boy/girl type folks.

I am the one who is more tolerant of differences. I am the one with all the intellectual curiosity...I am the one who is a practicing Christian, not them(altho mom probably is a Christian she doesn't go to church ever unless I am in some program or play at my church.)

Even as a kid I had a recurrent fantasy I was laid on their doorstep by space aliens. I was so incredibly lonely as a kid because I truly could not relate to them.

Actually, my hubby is similarly different from his family. We were blessed to find each other.
posted by konolia at 7:36 PM on January 8, 2005

I feel like I was switched at birth.
posted by LouReedsSon at 8:41 PM on January 8, 2005

My father is a sports maniac -- his whole life -- every sport known to man. I despise all sports and never watch or play them. Whenever we talk on the phone, he relates to me the last 30 seconds of the most recent basketball/hockey/football game (which takes 10 minutes to explain, ironically)...I've told him many times that I *don't care* about the game/s, and he's slowly gotten the message...he now is able to condense 30 seconds of game-time into about two minutes.

A bit of a compromise, but better than the alternatives.
posted by davidmsc at 8:48 PM on January 8, 2005

I come from a family of seven kids, so there is pretty much no wayt here wouldn't be vast differences among us...
That said, we all have the same sense of humor, and this is what I think is the unifying force of our family.
The city I am from is rife with my family. Plenty of people I did not know or did not grew up with but live in the city recognize my last name, and consequently, if they know any of my siblings or cousins, recognize the sense of humor that seems to run through us all.
I have a sibling who is on disability for bipolar disorder; a biophysicist, an English teacher, a glassblower, a tourguide for the state capital, a television producer... I am a grad student.
We all look the same, we all sound the same (cousins included), and we all seem to represent to the rest of the world as a pack. Yet we are so diverse within the family, while at the same time sharing this sense of humor, that it becomes rather strange and great all at the same time.
Mom and dad are quite different, but again, I think they got on so well way back when because they both share that same twisted worldview that allowed for all of us to find funny what we do find funny.
posted by oflinkey at 8:53 PM on January 8, 2005

In many ways I'm the odd one of the family.

My brothers (four of 'em, I'm next to the youngest) and I are probably about the same intelligence-wise. They are all fairly loud and boisterous. I'm extremely shy and retiring. Intellectually I'm probably most similar to my two oldest brothers (social issues - we're bleeding heart liberals, reading material, movies, travel, etc.). The middle bro is very family-oriented, very religious and extremely conservative (let's just say that if he knew I was Bi, I'd never see my niece or nephews again). Although we get along, there is no meeting of the minds there. My younger bro is rather tied up with his kids and trying to support them on a low income job (messy situation). I tend to think he'd be more intellectually active if he weren't so burdened.

Mum: totally different out look on life. She's very negative and I'm trying to get her to see it and change. She has admitted to giving up on "growing" intellectually. She says she's old and doesn't need to change or expand her horizons; she's comfortable in her "rut". I don't see her side of the family much except for our yearly get-together. They tend to be like me and my two oldest brothers.

The easy part: I have absolutely nothing to do with my father and his side of the family. They are, for the most part, spam-sucking swamp-dwelling bottom-feeders. Even if I didn't have issues with him, I'd still keep my distance.
posted by deborah at 10:02 PM on January 8, 2005

Thanks for all the insights. I should say that, relative to most of my friends and my exes, I'm close to my family and we get along well. Mayor Curley is right, also, in that most of my qualities and the things I have interests in can be found similarly in one or more of my immediate family members. This is true with intellectual-type things, as well. I suppose the difference is that I'm so far in that direction relative to them, relative to most people I suppose, that I still feel a bit alienated.

The phrase someone wrote above about (not) having the "terminology" to discuss many things, that resonates with me. My mom has turned out to have very good innate taste in film, she likes and gets enthusiastic about most everything I've exposed her to. My sister is very bright and relatively worldly, thought by most of her friends to be somewhat intellectual, and she's read/seen/is aware of many things. And my dad is very bright, at the very least well informed about news and current events and reads at least a couple (genre/besteller) novels a week.

Even so, it often seems that even where I overlap with them, I have a vocabulary that they lack. My dad likes and rents and collects quite a few movies, but is rarely aware of who the director is, for example.

I brought up Tykwer's films tonight and my mom and sister seemed quite happy to give them a try (or at least aren't averse to watching a subtitled film). On the other hand, the discussion revealed that they had seen very few subtitled films, ever. My mom's husband doesn't read fast enough, I think, to be able to enjoy a subtitled film.

Anyway, yeah, there's a lot of things that I share with my family and we get along pretty well and communicate well. As I've said elsewhere, I'm an atheist and my sister's an evengelical minister but we are very close.

But, I suppose, this world of ideas: of books, of philosophy, science, history, film, music: this is where I spend most of my time, metaphorically. It forms the core of what's most important to my self-identity. And, I really can't talk about much of it with the people I've loved and known all my life. I wish I could. And, like I said, my maternal grandmother was much more this way and we shared a bond built around it that everyone else in the family was aware of and commented upon. In my very early twenties, I recall, my grandmother and I regularly went to the art moviehouse and watched films and then talked about them afterward. Boy, I sure do miss her.

Anyway, I guess what I really was getting at was the weird frustration that comes from following a line of thought that leads to Kielowski's "Decalogue" and thinking, "Oh, that's such an amazing work, and a powerful way into morality and the ten commandments—that's just perfect for my sister and her husband" and then to have that followed with that weird trepidation that one learns to have, fearing a "Oh, Keith wants us to watch some weird thing we've never heard of" sort of a deal.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:03 PM on January 8, 2005

Personally, so different that I have essentially lost contact with my extended family with whom I grew up. I'm adopted, too, which probalbly has something to do with this.

However, in taste and attitudes, I'm not tremendously dissimilar from my extended family, if considered from a class perspective. The question in my mind is why I have drawn such opposed conclusions to the rest of my family.

Furthermore, my in-laws are now much closer to me than my childhood family, and they are even further from me in opinion than my starter family. I will never make sense of myself.
posted by mwhybark at 11:19 PM on January 8, 2005

From both of my parents I got my love of music and reading. The sense of humor come from from my dad more than mom, but the artistic [other than music] comes from a great-uncle.

I'm so little like my 9 siblings [yes, I said 9] that I've often told people I was found on the doorstep. When I'm being 'odd' my mother will tell people I was found on the doorstep, so maybe 'some' of my sense of humor does come from her after all.

We grew up in the countryside of Vermont and most of my brothers and sisters hated not being 'in town', but I loved it. I'd spend hours and hours every day wandering through the woods, exploring and finding the best spots to hide from the sibs.

Being 3rd of 10 I did a lot of babysitting, so every minute to myself was precious to me and still is, though it does get lonely at times, being me.

For some reason they don't understand that. They're all sociable, I'm not. I love to cook and they [most of them] can't boil water without burning it.

My taste in movies runs from Tank Girl to Akira Kurosawa's Dreams to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. I normally stay away from television these days unless there's something recommended as exceptional by someone else.

As I said, they're all sociable, I'm not. I don't really 'feel' like and introvert, I just prefer my own company most times.
posted by kamylyon at 11:19 PM on January 8, 2005

(Lots of typos and misspellings in my comments above, by the way. Please don't think badly of me for them, which would be easy to do given the high-falutin, lookee-at-me-I'm-such-a-smartie-pants tone of them.)

Nine siblings, kamylyon! Wow. I sometimes think (in my very naive and ignorant of developmental/familial psychology way) that there's a relatively large experiential/cultural gap between people who grew up in large families versus those who grew up in small families. In my case, it was just my sister and myself, and we're ten years apart.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:28 AM on January 9, 2005

I'm so totally different from my family its painful. But then, my sister and I were adopted, and from different birth families. My sister is the super-mom type. Its starting to look funny now that her kids are both grown. Other than that there is very little to her.

My parents are/were both bright, but never did much about it. From my mother I have music, although our talent is very different (suspect Mom has learned skills and I have talent). Many of my basic attitudes are rooted in my father. This amuses me and sometimes frustrates me!

I am impulsive and very adventuresome. No one I know in the family shares that. I move a lot and live in interesting places, no family are inclined to even visit. Mostly they stay within a couple hour's drive of I-75 (Michigan to Florida).

This is all made worse by the fact I'm gay, and, poor me, the rest of my family are all hopelessly straight (except for my mom's young sister, whom I belive is a closet lesbian).

That I am different makes good sense. I left when I was 16. The finishing touches of my 'raising' were done by older gay men of my choice. I chose wisely, aware of what I was doing.

Now I have inlaws, and get along well with them. Even when my partner's father gets started talking 'out his ass', rather than bothered, I am usually amused. He and I agree on lots of things, although often for different reasons. Oh, that difference is helped by his being Belgian. We are only 10 years apart in age.

I probably have more in common with my sister's son than any of the rest of the family. I've seen very little of him over the years, and had little deliberate influence. Hard to know for sure, he's a swim jock and straight. I was no jock and never even pretended to be straight.

Oh, the entire family is far more social than I am. Once I was more so, but I got used to going without and now prefer it.
posted by Goofyy at 2:07 AM on January 9, 2005

My folks and I are scarily alike - intellectual, analytic, introverted, individualistic sorts, happiest curled up with a good book.

Because we were so much alike it made growing up very easy, I think, as we could all easily relate to one another.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:58 AM on January 9, 2005

I'm definitely my father's son. He likes technology, building things, dabbling in music, and he's a moderately cynical atheist. All that carried over to me, which is strange because I really didn't spend much time being raised by him. My mom, my sisters and their families, my stepdad and stepbrothers are all conservative small-town christians with a worldview that's pretty much incompatible with mine. My mom always guilt trips me about not keeping in better touch, but what's the point if I don't enjoy it?
posted by squidlarkin at 9:00 AM on January 10, 2005

One of the big storylines of my life for the past ten years or so has been the disintegration of my relationship with my family... I've moved from a situation similar to what EB describes to a "you're dead to me" freezeout. Growing up, I always thought my parents were just harmless eccentrics; as an adult, it got more and more clear to me that they were pathological, and that a lot of the stuff they were doing wasn't funny or awesome, it was destructive.

The end came when they refused to come to my wedding because I'd also invited my grandfather (who they were tied up in court with), and my father claimed to be honor-bound to kill my grandfather on sight, and since they didn't want to ruin my wedding with a murder, they'd do me the favor of not coming.

The last I actually heard from them was an email from my father offering to pay for me to change my last name because I'd been disowned.
posted by COBRA! at 9:01 AM on January 10, 2005

That's really sad, COBRA!, you have my deepest sympathies. But it sure as hell sounds like you've made the right decision. Wow.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:15 AM on January 10, 2005