To think friends can be more important than family?

[brasty]

Obviously when I am talking about family I am not talking about DCs, but about wider family such as parents, Aunts and Uncles.

of coure they can

Yes I think so, but the world is organised to assume family is more important.

Close friends are way moe important to me than extended family. In fact, my own brother ranks way lower. Somewhere below distant acquaintances.

Friends are always more important to me than family. The whole blood is thicker than water thing is a myth. I've never been close to my wider family but my close friends are the best people ever ever

Definitely, my close friends keep me going and are hugely supportive and my bodyguards when i have been bullied. I

Mine are.
I'm not close to my family but adore my friends

Yes they are.

Absolutely. Not really on board with the 'blood is thicker than water' thing either.

Agreed. My close friends ARE my family. Blood means sod all to me.

I come from a very large, very scattered family. I choose not to see lots of them because they are horrible. Friends are more important to me.

Definitely friends can be more important than family. Mine are. My family are pretty awful and I wouldn't choose them as friends.

Society assumes family will always support each other be there for each other etc etc, but that simply isn't true for a lot of people.

It depends

Extended family yes

I think though if you don't have any family and rely on friends but friends have their families - that's when it's difficult

Absolutely, mallardduckponds.

It's very often the case that when the chips are down, or Christmas is up, people will choose family - even distant family - over friends. Same too with inheritances. When it comes to it, people will leave their money to random great nephew and only a small bequest to a lifelong helpful friend.

I choose friends over family, for inheritance as well.

Although yes I have seen elderly childless women leaving inheritance to family that never visited them, and instead friends looked after them. Their choice I know. But makes no sense to me.

I completely agree but that’s because my parents and my sibling are not good people.

My friends definitely care more than my own siblings. My mum and Dad are fine but even my cousins don’t really care x

What I mean is, let's say Sarah is single, childless and her parents are dead.

She is friends with Julie and Mandy. But Julie and Mandy have children, parents, spouses and other friends.

Julie and Mandy will then be more important to sarah than sarah is to them. So I think it's misleading when people just say make friends as an answer for loneliness.

I agree with everyone saying you can be so much closer to friends than some family members. However, do you not find that friendships wax and wane over the years as circumstances change, but your family are always there? (No matter how annoying they can be sometimes!) I’m not particularly close to my parents in that we don’t have much in common, but I love them so much and they will always have that place in my heart.

Depends on the family. Depends on the friends. They certainly can be.

They definitely can.

I'd love to have good, happy relationships with my close family but it will never be that way, so close friends will always mean more.

Depends how much you like or loathe some family members. I'm a fan of the phrase "you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family".