Is Blood really thicker than water?

[Cat-Fu]

In my life (using the current meaning of the term) blood is thicker than water. But toxic blood? That's more like gasoline.

[siamesecat2965]

My mom was kind of like this, but not to the extent of some of these stories. She and her second cousin were both only children, and close, like sisters.  My "aunt" as we called her, has 3 kids. My oldest cousin is about 4 years older than I am, the next is about my age, maybe a year older, and the last is 10 years younger than the oldest.

My middle cousin is selfish, rude etc. I wasn't that close to older cousin due to the difference in age.  We didnt' see them all that often growing up, but my mom wanted us to be close, I think like she and my aunt had been.And she never really got it when I told her cousin was "mean" to me, as she was.  She just tried to tell me to be nicer to her.

Mom and aunt kept in touch as we all got older, but I really never saw them.  After both my aunt and uncle passed away, my oldest cousin came to visit my parents, and I was there too. She and I are now close, in fact, she tells me she thinks of ME as a sister!  But more importantly, younger cousin is still selfish, etc. adn my mom finally gets it. I htink older cousin telling some stories too helped her realized what a witch with a b my other cousin really is!

[bloo]

I'm not impressed by DNA. My parents, Dad specifically, cut off his toxic family members so I learned from them not to put up with much. My DH has had to excise some toxic relatives and together we had to cut off our best friends who also happened to be related to DH.

Funny thing is DH's family and extended family treated him like dirt his whole life, but when we cut off friendship with his cousin* we were startled to get the litany of 'but they're faaaaaaaaaaamily!' from all these different family members that had no problem with mistreating or cutting off DH.

When DH's Dad did it, I wanted to grab the phone and yell, 'You're the one who taught DH not to stick by family! You abandoned him when he was a little kid!' 

In our minds, his family is not 'family'. Just people who happened to have the same last name. The nicer ones are too close to the toxic, yucky ones. So we just don't have anything to do with any of them. 

ETA: I meant to explain the asterisk (*) on cousin in my post. DH's cousin's husband molested a girl. I wanted to clarify that we weren't the type to cut off family for trivial reasons - it's serious toxicity that we try to avoid.

[oceanus]

The "faaaaaaaaamily" references in this thread are cracking me up.   I know exactly how it sounds when people play the "faaaaaaaaaaamily" card.