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[quote=Anonymous]OP, we have distanced ourselves from my husband's side of the family, which is highly dysfunctional--his father is estranged from the family, as is his sister, and his mother is a controlling, passive aggressive, horrible person, and he has little relationship with his brother.  His mother hasn't spoken to his sister in 15 years for siding with her ex-husband in the divorce, and the divorce really divided the family, so his brother is estranged from his father, and his sister is estranged from his mother.  It's incredibly dysfunctional.  We see his mother and brother once a year and his father once a decade.

My family is small--just my parents, who live on the West Coast so we only see them once a year.  I have lots of extended family who have zero interest in a relationship with me.  We have no local family--closest kin is in the midwest.

Anyhow, I really struggle with accepting that we don't have a large, loving family and that my son won't grow up with loving grandparents/aunts/uncles and cousins around (my son won't have any cousins as my husband's siblings don't have kids).  My FIL has no interest in meeting our son, his only grandchild.

I really envy people who grew up here and have these large loving families who they get together with for holidays, events and milestones, and who are supportive.  Whereas we have no one, except my parents who are thousands of miles away (they retired to the West Coast by choice), and we spend every holiday alone and it is so depressing to me.

To the poster who recommended creating a new family of friends, is that really realistic?  I have been trying to do that with and it has been hard and not very successful.  We have been in the area for 5 years and moved here from the midwest, and we did not know anyone when we moved here.  We are in the suburbs, and most people we meet are from this area and have very strong family ties and social circles already, and are too "crazy busy" to get together much, if at all.  I have joined mom's groups and invite other moms to do things a lot, and attend events, and still haven't been able to make many friends, and certainly no friends who are like family.  I invite people to do things and they don't respond or say they are too busy, and we are never invited to do things.  The people I meet all spend weekends and holidays with their own extended family.  So it is hard.  I feel very alone here in an extistential sense.

Has anyone been successful at making friends who are like family?  If so, how did you do it?  [/quote]

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