Why Don't We See Each Other More Often?

(Author's Note: This entire post, including the very strange but completely honest 4 AM time stamp, is brought to you courtesy of double espresso.  Double espresso, keeping insomniacs awake since virtually the dawn of time.)

Last night, we ventured to New York for an event in the honor of a close relative on my mother's side of the family.  (My parents are divorced, so I naturally delineate my family into two "sides", as if they were Hatfields and McCoy's.)  The event was attended by many distant relatives, second and third cousins, mostly, and I had no frickin' clue who most of these people were.  My mother and aunt, who have the benefits of closer ties as well as memories of a time when our extended Italian-American family was closer knit, did know more of the guests and at one point my aunt uttered the classic line, "We only see these people at funerals any more."

(Observing other families, I've heard the related phrase "...weddings or funerals", but not in our family.  It's only funerals for us; weddings aren't that crazy huge in our family anymore.)

This led me to think, why is this the case?  And taking it one step further, assuming that it is true that extended families are breaking apart, does it even matter?

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I'll keep my discussion of the obvious reason for extended families to diverge over time fairly brief.  This is the simple fact that - for immigrant families in particular - geographic shifts occur over generations.  This is what happened on my mother's side of the family, for example: my mother was born in the early 1950's in the Bronx, New York.  At that time, her entire extended family lived in a small enclave in the Bronx.  (Her mother and father were both born in the United States as well, but their parents were steerage-class immigrants from Italy/Sicily who made it to the States around 1910.)  My grandfather on my mother's side was both handy and intelligent, and wanted an ostensibly better life for his family, so he purchased a home in "the sticks" - Middletown, New Jersey, specifically the same home where I grew up and my mother and sister still reside.

This story is uninteresting except for that it is extremely common.  Some other relatives on that side of my family joined my grandmother and grandfather in New Jersey; many others moved to the northern suburbs of New York City; some others stayed in New York City for their entire lives.  Measured in miles, the distance between these factions of my mother's side of the family was not that great, but philosophically I think it was fairly significant.  The New Jersey side of the family has its problems, but as a whole, I think it's a pretty smart group of people.  And even half a century later, we've always felt obligated to defend our forefather's decision to move out of the city - for some inexplicable reason, even though New Jersey is an underrated and awesome place to live, we've always had an inferiority complex, compared to the New York side.

ANYWAY, that's my theory for my family.  This is getting way too specific, so let's move on.

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My mom's side of the family has clearly diverged over time, but some readers might argue that their extended family has stayed close, perhaps through the benefit of extended family reunions.  These reunions are nice, when they occur, but my opinion is they occur at considerable time and expense - and require people who have a great deal of money, as well as the desires to both organize and fund the events.  Some families attempt it once or twice, but like most traditions, they burn out and fizzle over time.  Many others simply cannot afford the financial and emotional investments of reunions, so they settle for the next best thing: weddings and funerals. 

Personally, being cynical by nature, I love the idea that people actually don't want to see their extended families more often - the "weddings and funerals" line that composes the key thesis of this post is just another white lie that people tell themselves because they want to feel what they think is the correct way to feel.  Here's why I like the idea:

• It's fairly established that many people can only keep a fixed number of acquaintances in their memories (there is disagreement on the maximum number, though popular psychology likes to state that it's in the ballpark of 150 friends and acquaintances).  For me, the number is probably more like thirty, but that is because I am a robot with a heart made of silicon - let's say 150 people at most.
• Relatedly, each additional social connection or friendship that a person undertakes carries with it a significant time and emotional investment.  Family ties carry baggage, and grudges with relatives can last generations.  It's certainly possible to remember the good times in a superficial manner (and over a fixed period of time) with distant relatives - at weddings or funerals, for instance - but maintaining relationships with large numbers of relatives over months or years can be incredibly taxing.
• Social media can maintain a desired level of closeness with distant relatives, without so much of the in-person emotional baggage.  Speaking from personal experience, it's way easier to manage the annoying aspects of someone's personality when you have the ability to limit or completely hide their appearances on your Facebook News Feed.

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To the extent that maintaining deeper social connections with extended family is emotionally healthy, it is probably a wonderful idea to reconnect with extended members of one's family.  But I really don't think, for most people, that the above statement is true. 

In general, I am currently far closer with my father's side of my family than with my mother's side, but I am ten times closer with my close friends than I am with either side of my family.  That is because, for the most part, spending hours with my close friends is mentally stimulating, engaging, and fun, while spending hours with my extended family is exhausting. 

Why is it exhausting?  Trying to remember dozens of names, trying to remember where you met so-and-so fifteen years ago (at a funeral, most likely), and keeping small talk chit-chat while leaving aside matters of differing philosophy - the extended family on my mother's side is mostly conservative and deeply religious, and I am neither - are not things that come naturally to me, to say the very least.  My extended family mostly seem to be good people, and they mostly seem to be genuine when they ask me about how my life has been - but that's really all.  Given this, there should be absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to keep these relationships at arm's length.

I think at its core, this post is about the value of close friends.  (And also explaining why only older people care about genealogy.)  Arguably, the main reason anyone has a relationship with anybody is because it "helps that individual out".  (I'm speaking really colloquially here on purpose, to leave it to your interpretation of what "helping" might mean.)  To that end, it might make some utilitarian sense for families to break up as they establish themselves in some country over generations and diverge from a socioeconomic standpoint.  People (mostly) want to be friends with people who have similar viewpoints and philosophies and intelligence levels, and I think that as families diverge, those close family bonds change to relationships with close friends.  There's no reason why that change shouldn't be a healthy one.

For my life, certainly, that is a good thing to have happen, and it makes me happy that my grandfather moved to New Jersey almost sixty years ago.  For others, it makes them lament times when their family was closer - but lamenting this is, in my opinion, as silly as lamenting evolution.  Both are inevitable, and both should be recognized for their benefits.  Until the next relative dies, extended family!  (I don't want anyone to die any time soon.)