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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My family is very messed up and not a source of love, support, or belonging for me. I'm not estranged, but they are not a source of support or community and never will be.

Sadly my spouse's family is similar. His extended family is better, and we tend to spend holidays with his family because when his cousins and aunts are around, it can feel like proper family. But his parents and siblings are, like mine, very dysfunctional and not loving or emotionally supportive.

What do other people who are in this situation do for community and support system? We have friends but it's not the same. I know church is the answer for many. We are not religious but I've looked hard into this anyway because I so need some kind of support system. But the only church that made sense given our lack of religion was UU, and the UU church where we live was not a good fit.

What else can we do? Hitting middle age and have a child. The loneliness and isolation is crushing. I think it's started to seriously impact my physical health.[/quote]

Wow, OP. I could have written this. I have an 8 year old and DH and I are in this same situation. We purposely enrolled DD in a preschool-8th grade school so she would be surrounded by a big community who would know her for a long time. We live near friends from graduate school, and we do spend part of a few holidays with them. But I'll be honest- and you said it better- we're always a level down in friendship with them from where we wish we could be or what would fill us up. We go to their houses for Thanksgiving or Christmas Day evening and they have their parents and siblings there and then we roll in. As they've accumulated more babies in their families, we've felt more and more like the 3rd wheel family. One year we were uninvited after years of celebrating together because there wasn't going to be enough room- that embarrassed me and I still wonder if I was supposed to read between the lines and uninvite myself years earlier.

We were startled that as everyone started having children, some extended families rallied and overcame their dysfunction and became quite close and supportive of their adult children/our friends. It was hard to lose decades-long traditions of shared Thanksgivings and other holidays and realize we were...less chosen. It hurt. It also hurts to be brave enough to open up about your family and realize that many people's lives are too charmed for them to understand. My MIL delayed visits to us for years because my SIL was hospitalized repeatedly for mental illness, and an acquaintance tried to commiserate by complaining that her mom was cutting back on her babysitting for them to 1x/week.

I have stopped trying to find one solution or one community to fill my need for support and love and take little pieces from many of my worlds. In the summer, we have our swim club friends. In the winter, we have our ski community. During the school year, my DD is known and loved by her school community. I have support in DD's teammates' moms from her very intense sports team. I have support from DCUM, sad but true.

Pretending I felt ok about having a different kind of family made it worse. I now say out loud that it hurts or that I feel left out (within our little family). Being honest to myself and to DD about our situation was the thing that truly helped- if she says "I feel jealous that X's family is so big and they have such a huge Thanksgiving dinner", I say "I do too, sometimes it is hard because we can't just make our family bigger." And then we proactively choose something that we are looking forward to instead of the big Thanksgiving dinner- last year it was baking and building a massive gingerbread neighborhood. We also make a big deal out of holidays that are not popular where we live so we can "own" them- an example is a cultural holiday that we make super special for kids and invite lots of DD's friends over to celebrate with us. We keep it a kid thing and don't invite their adults so it doesn't hurt when it's not reciprocated.[/quote]

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