👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 What it means to have grown up with extended family interference and conflict
Growing up with extended family conflict meant you had to navigate adult grudges and politics, learning which relatives couldn't be in the same room or mentioned to each other.
In your extended family, rifts, feuds, and conflicts may have created complicated webs of loyalty and tension. You learned early that family relationships were inherently political and strategic rather than sources of unconditional support and love. You may have become the family's emotional thermostat—constantly adjusting yourself to keep everyone else comfortable and sensing tension before it erupted.
To this day, family gatherings might still feel loaded with undercurrents that others miss—you're tuned to the subtle tensions in family dynamics. Loyalty may feel complicated to you as you worry about betraying one person by being close to another, echoing the divided loyalties of your family experience. You learned that love came with invisible price tags and hidden accounting systems.