Can friends ever replace family?

Hi folks,

I have been thinking about the difference between friends and family.

People say, "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family."

I think it's more complex than this, as our friends choose us as people they would like to know, and enjoy being with. So, in a sense we don't really get to choose our family or our friends. So friends are people who have actively wanted to be around us, which can't be bad.

I live in an odd way. I have no contact whatever with my birth family, on my mother's side or my father's side. I didn't do anything particularly to create this situation myself, it just came about gradually over a period of years. It became established in the families, starting with my father's side and spreading to my mother's side, that I was the 'moody and estranged one' and I was never visited by anyone in either family, I moved house a couple of times over the years and now I'm disconnected completely.

During the same period of years I have had a successful teaching career, and well loved by my students, maybe the most popular teacher in my part of the college. I was always being told that I was a caring and empathetic teacher, "One of the best".

I also have quite a number friends who like and admire me, openly telling me that I have a kind and caring nature, consulting me for advice on all sorts of things, telling me how important I am to them.

So, here are two pictures of me, one brought about by my father's abuse (still undisclosed to the wider family, and now he is dead anyway), and the other brought about by my getting far away from his baleful influence. It is truly like a rebirth in life, but it is hard to know that there are such very different perceptions of me in the world. I must have been VERY defensive during the abusive years, and I can see how that might have looked to extended family, as they saw my reaction but not the action that screwed me up.

Anyway I now have a happy wife and a lovely daughter, as some of you will know, and I put that success down to my 'safe distance' policy as well.

I am wondering what you folks think about the family/friendship thing . How easy or hard do you folks find it to let friends validate you when you have been systematically invalidated within a birth family? How do you start to let the good vibes come into you and displace the bad vibes?

Can good friendships fill the gap, and start making the changes? For me, I think the friendships didn't really convince me, I was so deeply scarred. It was my daughter that started to change my self image. I started to think, 'How can someone with such a happy daughter be so bad inside?' Well, the simple answer for me is that I'm not!

There is the point that my daughter loses out from my disconnection with birth family, and that hurts, but my wife has a good extended family with lost of girls in it, and my daughter also has loads of very close long term friends - in fact they all live together, so it's good vibes all round for her.
(We did manage to do the duty visits when my parents were alive - the old 'ultra polite' visits that many of us here know so well!)

But, my question is - what experiences have others here had on this issue? Can good friendships start the healing process?

Cheers, M

frequently, good and unconditional friends are the healing process.

That's a hard one to answer. I think it depends on your relationship with the friends, but I think it's possible.

Hi Myzen,
I think there will always be a hole in my heart from the way some of my family members drifted away, wanting nothing to do with me or some of the other sibblings.

I've had friends throughout my life but never anyone really close and after a few years we drifted apart, repeating the family history.

Like you, I have a wonderful daughter who frequently tells me how much she values me. If I begin to put myself down she is there to assure me that my thinking is off and I am a good person worth only good things. She has helped to restor my confidence in myself more times than I can count.

My three sons are less verbal but I also get approval from them......I guess I did the same for them when they were growing up.

I've always envied those who do have life long friends.....
I have life long friendships with my husband, children, my brother and one of my sisters. I guess because of them, I've been more blessed with family closeness than with close friends.

btw, your daughter really is talented and beautiful!

In my experience, friends have never really replaced family, but they've been the best thing I've found to try and fill that void. I view them as MY family, but it's not really a reciprocal thing because I am not, and probably never will be considered theirs. It's not that I don't feel loved and valued by them - because I really do feel that. And they do include me in their family functions, but I know if it ever came down to "who I really need to be there for," I wouldn't be top on this list. I'm not saying this is wrong, just that it IS. And I think that's where friends are never really like family - because you know you'll never be their number 1, unless maybe they are estranged from their family as well.

Hi Myzen. I agree with Jammerlich but then I look at this way- You can create a family with a friend, your best friend, your spouse. Right? I mean, if you and your wife weren't friends first then you wouldn't have a "family". So, in that way-friends do become family. ((((Myzen&family))))

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ozzie said:I've had friends throughout my life but never anyone really close and after a few years we drifted apart, repeating the family history.

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Thanks for the replies folks, you're all so helpful as always.

Ozzie, That was such an honest reply from you. The thing about keeping distance and letting friendships drift is so relevant to the situation I described. This happens to so many of us. It was my pattern for quite a few years, but it has changed as I have gradually recovered.

If I might say so, you have some solid friends here at PC and the fact that you have come back to us is a highly positive move, that is a real pattern breaker IMHO. Well done again.

Cheers, M

I think friends can replace family and you can choose your friends. See people do choose me to be their friend but that does not mean I choose them to be my friend. I can choose to accept them as my friend ot reject them as my friends. So those that I am friends with I HAVE chosen. They have not been forced on me.

I too am from an abusive family. Biologically we are stuck with what we get but emotionally just like chosing my friends I now have a non abusive family. Those in that non abusive family are members of my friends who have gone through thick and thin with and for me and my son. They accept us the way we are and are there for me in good times and the bad. My son has been raised calling these people Aunts and Uncles (yes he does know they are not blood related but they are still considered family because they love and care for us and we love and care for them, In fact he has over the years added to our list of family members by asking to include those he grew to love and care for and they him. I will always remember when one night after knowing a bus driver for 6 years he asked me if he can call "Vicki" Aunt Vicki. I told him it was ok with me and he would need to ask "Vicki" if she wanted to be a part of our family. The next day we boarded the city bus and he looked at "Vicki" and said "Can I call you Aunt Vicki?" "Vicki" got tears in her eyes, shut the bus off right there and gave him a hug saying "I would be proud and honored to be your Aunt Vicki" and she was one of the best Aunts he could possibly have and ask for to her death last spring. When I was in college I gained a friend. From day one her foster family aqccepted me into their lives and I accepted them. They became family and have been there and still are for both my son and I have been there and still am for them. I don't know what I would have ever done with out my friends and new family that has since grown to include well over 60 very special people. and yes they most definately help in the healing process.

Myzen,

Great post. Your story is very similar to mine. The distance between myself and my family happened gradually and now that I live very far away, all contact is really gone.

I have one best friend and 2 close friends. My best friend being my husband. I can tell him anything and he is so wonderful and loving no matter what.

My close friends live back in VA but I speak to both of them several times a week. One of them I consider like a sister to me. She has always protected me and been there for me, even through the very tough times. When I was dx'd with depression and couldnt sleep for days at a time because of the panic attacks, she would come over and hold my hand until I fell asleep. She took it upon herself to learn as much as she could about what was happening with me so she could try and help me. To me, that go's above and beyond being a friend. I love her to death.

My other close friend is a gay male. We have so much in common that I sometimes think we were seperated at birth. I was there for him when he decided to come out and tell everyone he was gay. This was very, very hard for him as he put up with so much abuse from his family for it. I never left his side during all of it. I knew that I had to be his rock as he had no one there for him.

So, yes, I think that friends can definitly replace family. Just because your related by blood means nothing. Nothing at all.


I hoped I answered the question. I kinda got lost babbling along. LOL.



Huggles,


Jen

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If I might say so, you have some solid friends here at PC and the fact that you have come back to us is a highly positive move, that is a real pattern breaker IMHO. Well done again.


</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Thank you Myzen.

good friends are few and far between...family is everywhere.

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fayerody said:
good friends are few and far between...family is everywhere.

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Fay, you are right, good friends take the time to look at who you are, and accept what they see. It is truly voluntary.

Jen, I appreciate everything you say, no need to comment.

There is another secondary point that I think is worth noting. I think this may happen more with males, but I don't know.

When youngsters are going through chaos at home, they often go into the world with a great big 'chip' on the shoulder, and trouble follows them around like a bad smell. As a kid, I used to get into a lot of fights, I would always fight with men much bigger than me, at one time I was 16 and the other guy was 21-22. I liked to go back and show the blood to my father; I wanted him to see what was happening to me. He just got more angry. When I had some teeth knocked out he just said "Tomorrow you'll cry like a baby". I took great pride in showing him that I didn't cry, I took it.

At some level I thought that he might realise that the trouble was about him, and not other people, but he never realised it. He never stopped the tormenting, almost to the day he died.

My point is that, when we have this stuff at home, it is very difficult to make friendships outside the home. I would say that I had no close friends between the ages of 14 and 25, just people that I hung out with. I kept the secrets and denied everything, and I must have looked like a bag of nerves pretty much all the time.

The only emotion I felt about my home life was shame, for me and for my mother, that we allowed this misery to happen to us. I mean, you just don't talk about this kind of stuff in school.

I reacted so badly, very arrogant and bragging about all kinds of stuff, all a great big cover up. I was good at it and I just made lots of enemies through it, no one seemed to see through the smokescreen. After the age of 30, and with the geographical distance from my father, life slowly improved.

So what I'm saying is that friendships don't come easy to survivors, especially when the trouble is still going on. It takes a lucky break, maybe a youth leader or a teacher, to see it and break through. Usually, families like ours are isolated, as this suits the abuser, so outside contact is minimal, as it was in our case.

So, for young people in the situation here and now, friendships of the quality needed to start the changes are unlikely, and this is tragic. I think that the good friendships come with the healing process, and that is further down the line.

In the meantime there are many dangers lurking for young people in current abuse situations, as we all know. The deck is stacked against them.

Cheers, M

If you come from an unsafe background, how do you find safety now. If family members were unsafe, it is learned that people are unsafe. If people are deemed unsafe, it makes it too hard to find a friend. For me, anyway. Just my thoughts. Thank you.

Want to Heal,

Your right, we don't trust anybody.

Hope I haven't triggered you, cos that was not intended. I just wanted to say that healing comes a long way down the line for many of us but I do think healing is possible if we get into the right environment, I surely believe that.

Being here at PC is a good start.

Peaceful thoughts, M

blood family can cause damage that can't be fixed, I have had more luck picking my friends, very few have ever hurt me and make for a better family
PC is my family
Angie

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nothemama8 said:
PC is my family
Angie

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