Relatives by Marriage and/or NOT Relatives by Marriage

I was snooping around in the Facebook profiles of my ex-husband’s family, as one does if one is like me, and I had a sudden and electrifying thought. I was looking at a picture of my ex-husband’s sister with her husband and children, and I realized that her little girls would have been MY NIECES if I’d stayed married to my ex-husband. I would have known those little girls, and very well! I would have been Auntie Swistle to them! I would have snuggled and smooched them! I would have known their birthdays! I would have bought them MANY A GIFT, starting with all the things I would have bought during their mother’s pregnancy! I would have LOVED them. And yet, as it is, I don’t know them at all, not even their names. They’re utter strangers, and I have no connection to them at all. It is weird to think of that missed relationship, and it highlights the weirdness of the whole category of relatives-by-marriage.

28 thoughts on “Relatives by Marriage and/or NOT Relatives by Marriage

  1. kathleenicanrah

    I dated a single dad for a number of years, and HIS ex wife has since gone on and re-married and had another child. This means that the little one who was so much a part of my days for so many years has a SISTER (who she apparently adores!), and I don’t even know her name! It could all have gone so different. BUT then I think if I had stayed in that relationship my current kids wouldn’t be here and now THAT is a real mind trip.

    Reply
  2. StephLove

    When I was pregnant with my oldest, my sister was in the process of breaking up with a long-time boyfriend, and he said, “But I’ll still be the uncle, right?”and was surprised when the answer from her was no.

    Reply
  3. BKC

    My brother dated around a bit before settling down with a woman who has two young kiddos already, and now they are having a baby as well. For the first few years it was really hard to explain to my daughter (from approx age 4-8) why “Aunties” she had grown to love suddenly just…disappeared. Why they wouldn’t come to her birthday party or Christmas celebrations.

    TBH, I didn’t think my brother’s relationship would last, so I didn’t get to know this girlfriend. Now they are engaged and pregnant, and I’m having to backpedal and try to form relationships with his kids without overwhelming them like, “HI I AM AUNTY AND I SHALL LOVE YOU!!1!”

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      1. K8

        Hear, hear! It’s always so pleasantly unsettling to read a better-organized version of what I’ve been thinking. I’ll also say thanks for sharing that!

        Reply
  4. Joanne

    How funny, my eight year old daughter was just asking about relationships this weekend. We were out to breakfast with my sister and my six year old daughter and my older was asking my sister, you’re my aunt, right? (yes) Because you’re mommy’s sister? (yes) But are you related to my grandpa Mike (my FIL)? (no) Why not? Well, because your mom is related to him and you are related to him and I might see him over the years at parties, etc., and get to know him, but we are not related. But why? Um. Because we’re not!

    My uncle and godfather was engaged to a woman who we all liked and in fact my aunt chose her and my uncle to be my cousin’s godparents but then of course they broke up and never got married and now this woman, who has nothing to do with my uncle, is my cousin’s godmother and ugh, awk.

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  5. Tracy

    Ah yes, this is an interesting topic…

    My sister “lost” nieces/nephews in a divorce. My oldest had an uncle for 29 days prior to that divorce. It’s all just kind of weird/odd when you start to think of the “what ifs.”

    We also had an interesting thing that happened in that our oldest was a first-born grandchild to one set of grandparents… until another marriage brought in an older grandchild.

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  6. liz

    My parents got divorced when I was 4 and they have stayed in the lives of each other’s parents, and siblings, and nieces and nephews. It may be different because of having children together who are, themselves, related to all those people.

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  7. Shawna

    “I would have known those little girls, and very well! I would have been Auntie Swistle to them! I would have snuggled and smooched them! I would have known their birthdays! I would have bought them MANY A GIFT, starting with all the things I would have bought during their mother’s pregnancy! I would have LOVED them.”

    *sniff*

    You sound like such a great aunt! I didn’t even know there were aunts like this until one of my coworkers began talking about all the stuff she does for and with her nieces. Growing up our uncles-by-blood and aunts-by-marriage were supremely uninvolved and uninterested in our lives, and my sister’s carried on the tradition in her interactions with my kids, often forgetting their birthdays entirely.

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  8. Life of a Doctor's Wife

    I think about this with my brother’s ex wife: she has a new husband and a baby and I hve nothing to do with them! I don’t know them at all! Nor is there any reason for me TO know them! Very odd sensation, of connection with a strike-through.

    Reply
      1. Swistle Post author

        No, no, I definitely think it falls into the same category: the whole weirdness of people related by marriage, who then are NOT related anymore, and how strange that is.

        Reply
  9. Alice

    This is making my emotional pregnant self very distressed. I require every person currently in my life stay in my baby’s life forever. The end. Thank you goodbye.

    Reply
  10. Nicole

    My mother has been married to her current husband since I was in college. He calls me his daughter, and he is our kids’ Poppa. I think that if they were to divorce, we’d keep him in our lives. And yet, people are busy. He has two kids from his first marriage and they have children. Realistically, it would be hard and that makes me sad. (They’re not on the brink of divorce, just things I think about.)
    Some of this may be colored by the fact that I’ve spent most of my life with little contact with my dad’s family. I grew up assuming life was just too busy, then found out my grandmother stopped seeing me on purpose because it was too difficult for her to be reminded of her son. Everyone needs more love in their lives, not less.

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  11. Happy

    I lost 5 nephews in a divorce. One of whom was 12. I watched them grow, doted on them, and miss them terribly. I also miss my former MIL who was very much a mother to me as I basically grew up in her house. I check up on them on Facebook and while I’m not a part of their lives, I’m always glad to see they are alive and well. It is strange to just have family not be family one day.

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  12. Kate

    I lost one of my favorite uncles in a divorce when I was about 11 or 12, and I didn’t see him again until my aunt (his ex) died 15 years later. i think of that now that my husband’s sister has gotten divorced and no one in my husband’s family seems to want to acknowledge the ex’s existence, but he held my babies when they were weeks old. He’s in vacation photos from their toddler years. Arg!

    Reply
    1. Karen L

      My mother’s uncle divorced. She and her whole family kept the aunt-by-marriage and didn’t bother much with the uncle after the divorce.

      Reply
  13. Tracy

    This post reminded me of my “uncle” L. My aunt dated him for over three years and lived in the same town as us while she was going to college, so we met him a LOT. I was 8 when they stopped dating, and I was quite shocked that “Uncle” L wasn’t going to be my *real* uncle after all. So much so that it took me years to get used to the real uncle we got when she really got married. I haven’t seen him in years now though, because he and my aunt got divorced. I still consider him my uncle though, probably because they have two daughters.

    We’ve kept our aunt by marriage when she and my uncle divorced when i was in my 20s. She was around my entire life and I’m still somewhat surprised at times that they divorced. My uncle remarried, so I have two aunts through him..

    I just realized that my other aunt could get remarried too. How strange to think I could have another uncle at this point in my life.

    Reply
  14. Anna

    May I submit that blogging can cause a similar situation, in which I know things about you (a blogger) and your life, but I do not ACTUALLY know you. Which is why it is a little weird that, whenever I see this pouch in the grocery store, I think, Swistle would love that pouch! It has a fox, and it is Swistle-colored!

    http://www.blueq.com/shop/item/229-productId.125846197_229-catId.117440696.html

    It would be awkward (/stalkerish?) to buy it and send it to you, so instead I will let the internet show it to you, and you can decide whether to buy it and send it to yourself!

    Reply
  15. Shannon

    Related, but in reverse: My boyfriend’s sister has three little children, all under age 7, and I literally cannot imagine a large number of our relationship experiences without them (not just actual things we did with them, but all the pictures we shared of them, conversations we had involving them, fantasizing about how they might participate in our wedding, his emotions when he introduced me to them for the first time, etc.).

    I met them early in the relationship, and knew–as it was happening–that if the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t have been ready to introduce kids I loved to such a new partner. And while I think we’re in it for the long haul, I still feel disoriented, sometimes, by how tough it is to separate my feelings about these adorable kids from my feelings about the relationship itself, as a standalone entity. I would be so, so sad not to have them in my life! But, of course, that would be the collateral damage of ending the relationship, and should not in itself be a reason NOT to end the relationship (which I’m not planning to).

    Trippy indeed.

    Reply
  16. Alexicographer

    So, my own family is more or less what you describe, Swistle — though its members aren’t generally prone to divorce, when they do, people who were relatives (by marriage) typically are no longer relatives. Also, there are people who care whether parents are/aren’t married when they have kids together, or whether kids join the family as stepkids rather than “real” kids.

    OTOH my DH’s family, which is large and quite prone to divorcing (or, in the younger generations, simply never forming formal committed relationships between co-parenting pairs, even as they co-parent), exes and particularly former children-by-marriage often stick around and are still treated as “family” (at least in the extended family sense, i.e. “part of the family” without necessarily having a specific assigned label). So for example I know several kids who are former step-siblings (via marriage) of my nieces and nephews, where the connecting marriages no longer exist, but who still come to family gatherings.

    I have to say I prefer my DH’s family’s approach to my own’s. It’s always seemed to me that their is along the lines of, “We don’t care how you got here, if you were ever part of this family as a kid, you’re still part of this family if you want to be.” I will note that a number of exes who are adults are also around, though mostly if they are parents of those kids.

    When I considering piling the dog in the truck and heading west, never speaking to DH again, I am always flummoxed by the thought that if I did, I’d lose my stepkids. Not that I’m actually heading out the door, but in those moments when I think I might be better of without him? Well, even in those moments I know I’d be worse off without them.

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  17. Teresa

    This has me thinking about my own stepfamily. I’m much closer to my stepsisters and their kids than to my actual blood-related brother and his kids. So much so that there’s a strong chance that when my parents are gone, I’ll want to legally get them established as my next of kin, rather than my actual brother. They just know me and my values better and would be more of a comfort if I were seriously ill. Yet if my dad’s marriage to my step-mom hadn’t lasted (or, god forbid, were to break apart now), we wouldn’t be actual relatives at all. By now, we’ve all been family for more than half our lives, so I don’t think a divorce or death would change that, but IT COULD HAVE. Very strange to think about.

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  18. kimi

    It is strange to think about. My family has a loose definition of family, but we’re weirdly aware of how we’re all related. (reading other people’s responses it actually isn’t that weird). We’re in the, “if you enter this family as a child, you’re family forever” category, which is why we have cake for the children of my cousin’s ex-boyfriend. (on their birthdays) and my cousin’s siblings still attend those children’s events. Adults drift off and are never heard from again, unless they are the parents of the children.
    I’m pretty sure that if we divorced, I wouldn’t see my MIL until my son’s high school graduation. I’d still see my SIL because of our kids. I love my niece and nephew. I’d lose them, a little, in a divorce, because I’d only see them if I was bringing my son for a playdate/to an event at their house. I wouldn’t be the one they call to babysit and I wouldn’t get a text if the kids wanted to skype with someone.
    Hm. If I’d never married my husband, I’d just never have known these children. (I met his sister in university, so I’d still know her).

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  19. N.

    This is exactly why i still make an effort to stay connected to my ex-husband’s parents (even though he never ever talked to my parents after leaving me). At our wedding they said “First we were the family of W. [ex-husband] and now we are the family of W. and N.” – and i simply can’t undo that in my head/heart. So i visit them from time to time, but when i see them with their grandchild of my ex’s sister, it does feel a bit like ‘what if their first grandchild had been my child’ (which everyone thought would happen).

    Reply
  20. Angela (@Aferg22)

    This kind of reminds me of a conversation I had last night with my sister. Officially, she is my half-sister (we have the same dad). Quick family recap: I have 2 full sisters (share both parents) and 2 half siblings with my mom and 2 with my dad. I also have the only grandchild out of all my siblings, so we host a lot of family events where everyone is invited (luckily everyone gets along), so everyone knows each other pretty well. Anyway, this sister is getting married in the fall, and last night we were talking about the guest list. I asked her if my mom, stepdad, and their kids were invited (basically 4 people she is not related to at all.) She said “Yes because…too many holidays spent together.” So this isn’t really the same as losing family members due to divorce but gaining extraneous family members due to divorce. :-)

    Reply

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