Relationships with cousins

I had my dna done recently and discovered that I have a first cousin in Vancouver. We are now in touch online and it's fatastic.

I have 4 cousins on my Mum's side of the family, and 5 on my Dad's.

Some of us are Facebook "friends" while others are not. We exchange Christmas cards with some and not with others.

We tend to see one another at events...funerals mainly, and the occasional wedding.

I think that just because you have ties of kinship, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will stay in touch into adulthood.

Cousins are just like friends. Sometimes you connect, sometimes you don't. I grew up with a "cousin" who was just one month older than me. We are still good friends now at age 71 even though she lives in Holland. She was not even a real cousin, her mother and my mother were sisters in law when my mother was married to her first husband but not being blood does not mean we aren't close friends.

Due to family matters, I didn't get to know my cousin (12 yrs younger) until we were both adults - believe I was in my mid-40s. From there, we went from strength to strength. Unfortunately, we both live at opposite ends of the UK! I cannot travel these days, so we only meet occasionally. We keep in touch regularly through phone/social media and she told me recently that she regards me as the big sister she never had. I am also now in touch with my second cousin in Canada (through family research) - we were both young children when we last met. It's lovely as I am now a widow and only have these cousins and two others as my family. ~(no children but thanks for allowing me on here!)I would nurture the relationship as much as you can but don't expect it to blossom fully for some time. Best wishes.

You have to do what's best for you! If you are a sociable and outgoing person, then you may find you get along well with your cousins, even after such a long time apart!
I too have cousins but all apart from one live in England these days, and I live in Scotland! I used to regularly meet up with my cousin who lives in Scotland. However, she has turned into an alcoholic and her 2 daughters are also bad news - one beats her up and trashes her house when she's drunk, and the other one is a heroin addict! My mother drank heavily all throughout my childhood, and my husband's father and brother both had serious issues with alcohol, so I have cut myself off from her! I am not a particularly sociable person, and I don't mind my own company, so it wasn't hard for me!
Best of luck with your cousins! ?

I’m like you OP, lost touch when I moved long distances as a teenager away from the home area and I feel that through a combination of circumstances that I got cut off decades ago.

I am so chuffed that my lovely brother consistently keeps in touch with everyone and I am slowly joining him in meeting up again. I feel strangely nervous, but everyone has been very welcoming.

My brother is very good at putting out regular feelers for who is up for a pub lunch and informal little reunions to keep everyone in touch. I wonder if you have a relative who could perhaps facilitate the same for you?

A small lunch or coffee and cake for say 4 or so people seems to work very well. In fact, I would say so far, my long lost relatives have been very enthusiastic and happy at the approaches made (post covid when next allowed)

Always been my dream to find my cousins in Australia but I never have. Mother's brother was called Leo, he married Janice and they emigrated. He fell out with mum in the 60s as she went back to her husband after saying she would join him in Australia.
I've written to many different addresses over the years but never found them.

I discovered that I had a half sister a few years ago, and we keep in touch but as we have no shared experience we are not close. I suppose if we lived near to one another we could have developed a relationship, and I would have been delighted to do so, but it hasn’t really happened.

I do have cousins to whom I am quite close, and especially to their children and grandchildren, helped by being god parents and to our children being god parents to the next generation. As we are both only children we wanted our children to have more relatives?

Hi Kestrel, I have cousins only on my Father’s side (8). Father’s Sister (Aunt B) encouraged at least annual contact after my parents had died and this has continued with most of the cousins since. One family live in Scotland and I regularly met with eldest on golfing trips until the restrictions imposed over the last year. One of his Sisters lives in Australia so meeting with her is very infrequent but we keep in contact via email and Facebook. Aunt B’s eldest remarried and many of us met up for her wedding, even my Brother who came over from USA, and then again celebrating her 60th in 2019 when we had a group photo of 29 of us, including all offspring. I look back on these occasions very fondly and am so glad we all still communicate. I wish you well in the future and hope you can enjoy some happy reunions as I have.

I think it is most probably best to be open minded and not expect too much and just see how things pan out then you will either be pleasantly surprised or not too disappointed.

I agree with the comments about long lost family. I have half brothers and sisters I have never had contact with and I think I would find contact really unnerving and upsetting. I do wonder if people cope as well is made out on the program.

I have 21 cousins that when I was growing up, saw at least once or twice a year mainly due to the fact that my grandmother was alive and whenever they visited her, as I lived near, used to get a call to say they were either there or would be soon.
After my grandmother died (I was in Australia at the time) that central hub had gone , the cousins were mostly getting married and having children and moving all over the country.
Most of the contact fizzled out after my mum died as she used to be the one that kept us in touch with most of them via my aunts that mum used to see on a regular basis.
I wouldn't say that any of them are my bosom buddies - even one that I used to go and stay with and is the closest in age- when we do meet up , we get on ok but we really have our own lives now and actually only tend to meet up at funerals!
I think that if you keep in touch by whatever means that you can - why not phone them every now and then and just explain that you know that so much time has gone past , but would like to get to know them? It will be easier when we are all out of lockdown as you will be able to arrange to meet up and hopefully begin to form friendships.

wish I had contact with my extended family..

Hi ,
It is never too late. Keep at it. Write letters, send post cards of the town in which you live, send text etc.
My own experience shows being persistence will enable you to get to know some of them.

My DF was one of 11 and and there were 18 grandchildren. We have kept in touch.

The 11 original tribe always kept close, even though they travelled the world and in retirement used to meet up several times a year. This meant we always had news of each other through our parents. As they died we would keep meeting up at funerals, which was a bit dismal, so we started having an annual get together. Not all can come, we are scattered around the world, but we keep in touch, some more than others and exchange emails, letters and cards.

I have three cousins who are my best friends - they’re like extra siblings. But I have countless more that I just don’t have a relationship with and don’t care to - if they started getting in touch then I’d be polite but I certainly wouldn’t go to a lot of effort tbh.

Then again, my dad met one of his cousins after decades when he was in his 40s and now they’re close, so who knows!

I have lots of cousins, mostly in the same city as me. We always played together as children but in teenage years we lost touch. My parents didn’t encourage contact - particularly my mum - so I lost touch except for weddings and funerals. In recent years though Facebook has enabled me to regain contact with many of them. We now have a messenger group where we share family stuff and just chat. I must admit it’s clear to me they are very much closer to each other and I am a bit on the perimeter but still, it’s nice. I’ve discovered they all thought I was ‘posh’ (my parents were the first to buy a house instead of renting. And the first to buy a car) and because I stayed on at school I was ‘too clever’. It’s weird how people judge you. I’d suggest keep it light and see where it goes. Join in chat where it suits. Good luck. We all need connections in life.

Depends where they live! I have one cousin living about 15 miles away, we keep in touch. Another who lives in Hampshire, we've only recently been keeping in touch and one in Canada who last year I thought was dead, but she came back to life and we keep in touch via email!

Thanks all - your comments have been useful - I'll just keep up light contact and see what develops.

I had 7 cousins all lived in my home town but I was quite a bit younger than all of them and I didn’t know any of them my mum and dad didn’t have much if any contact either I moved away and I was around 40 when I came back to my home town and decided to get to know them
I held a small house party for Dads birthday and that started my getting to know my cousins We were never close close but every year I did a small party for mum and same for Dad birthdays and the cousins would come along eat drink and share memories with Dad ( they were his nieces and nephews)
They are all dead now and we never got much closer than that ( I was never invited to their houses) but it was better than nothing and Mum and Dad were happy with it

I had at least 30 first cousins, maybe more, (my parents each had 9 and 6 siblings respectively). Even though we lived no more than about 30 miles from most of them I rarely saw some of them and there are several that I never ever met as we didn't have a car. There were no 'fallings-out', it's just the way it was then! As far as I know they are still alive apart from 3, but I'm only regularly in touch with a few of them. If I sat next to most of them on the bus I wouldn't recognise them!

Of the many cousins that I don't see in real life there are a few I have enjoyed 'meeting' in the past few years thanks to social media and that level of contact suits me. Most of them live a distance away and I don't personally feel the need to travel hundreds of miles to develop the relationships further (although of course it might be different if we all lived nearer to each other as yours may?).

Would it be possible to suggest WhatsApp or Facetime sessions with all or some of them every so often, so that you get together without it being too much of a commitment or too formal? If you gradually built up a relationship that way it might eventually lead to a warmer/deeper relationship with some of them?

Kestrel I'm not sure that this is any help to you at all, I seem to have rambled on, but I will post it anyway in case any of it is relevant!

I had 34 first cousins, 31 still with us. I’m in touch with all of them in various ways but have known them since childhood even though none lived in the same country as I did. I think it would be difficult to form relationships with them now if we hadn’t had some sort of contact previously.

Oddly enough most of DH’s cousins live reasonably close to us but he only ever speaks to any of them at funerals.

I hope you manage to keep up some kind of connection with your cousins.

I had 12 cousins and am still in touch with 2 - both women about my age.
I was fortunate bcause we were a close family, both sides, so have memories in common.
There's a male cousin who I would love to renew contact with, living not far away. But I fear our lives have gone in too different directions.

I have about 100 cousins and second cousins and I’m in touch regularly with 6. I was close to my cousins until we all grew up, married and moved away and
TBH apart from our respective parents we don’t have much in common any more, we try to keep the Christmas cards going but that’s about it.
As someone said, we are related but we have all changed so much that we are now ‘just someone that I used to know’ , as the song goes.

Thanks all - yes I think I need to take it slowly. One cousin is very keen (overkeen really and has invited himself to stay) and this has made me a bit suspicious but he seems to be like that with everyone so I understand what you mean geekesse. My main motivation is that my DH is close to many of his family and encouraged me to track down mine. There are one or two I get on with and it's just nice to know the rest of them are there in background.

Through family research I've found many cousins. My father came from a large family but was never good at keeping in touch with any. Some have been on Ancestry and they've generally been keen to share research but others have been either suspicious of my motives or just not interested. Most have kept in touch to some degree, but the one I got closest to has recently died.