Kingdom of Knuffel

It should be a sport XD

Mine are easy to avoid, they're in another country in another continent and require a dozen hours of flying + train + car, making it nearly a 24 hours trip.
His are a bit harder since they're in the same city and not that far either but the whole omicron thing should provide another good excuse if they're not satisfied with husband's work requirements.

looooooool a sport? XD like it could be a spectator sport.....oh well don't they have movies and dramas like that? xD

most of my relatives live in other countries. XD we have distant relatives who live closer but they're not close enough (to us because they're only distantly related) that we visit them during holidays. XD

You all make me so incredibly grateful that I lucked out family-wise. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop...

well i'm pretty lucky too, since most of my parent's extended families/siblings live in other countries (the US and Hong Kong). my mother's aunt's family (my great aunt?) lives in our country and province but we rarely visit them. and their family has a lot more drama than my quiet little family of four lol.

Mom doesn't talk to most of her side of the family since before I'm born. She's the kind to hold grudges forever over nothing so I guess there's a lot of that. On my father's side, it's not drama (though I've come to know some very juicy stuff from a friend who didn't know we were cousins) but rather a series of unfortunate circonstances that make it a bit psychologically hard to get together. That and my cousins and I have a very big age gap. And my mom holds grudges forever over nothing.

The husband's family on the other hand is pretty full of drama and I suspect I don't know even a quarter of what's going on. Which he wants to avoid. Which I understand.

As for my immediate family we get more or less along but we have nothing in common. I don't think we'd even talk if we weren't family.

Family sure can be complicated!

I wonder if it's easier or harder to get along with people you don't have much in common with. Less to cause friction but less to bond over... do you think they balance each other out?

I honestly have no idea.

I would say you need to have at least something to bond over otherwise it's just a roommate situation?
Like, my mother and I don't have any hobbies in common, we think different, do different things, have different dreams and pretty much everything is different about us. We just couldn't bond over anything (and she didn't try much either) and while it didn't exactly cause friction it wasn't great either.
At least I can bond with little brother over food.

I wish I could avoid my family during the holidays - and the rest of the year.
On the other hand, I don't want to.
Seriously, families are certainly complicated!

You'd think a bunch of people being forced to spend time together would somehow make up a system for it to work but apparently not XD

I still remember the time I had to yell at my mother because she was talking very loudly on the phone after midnight and I had work early in the morning.
It was like having a teenager at home before I left, seriously.

Sometimes parents are worse than kids!
Specially when they throw tantrums

My parents have this bad habit of telling "white" lies, which are actually not white at all - they tell them so they can have the upper hand and force you to do what they wanted from the beginning.
It's very very annoying.