I find myself tiring of the complexities which are the relationships we have between us and those we are closely or loosely related to.

Take my own case for example. I have a grandchild whose biological dad has, in my truthful opinion, being horrible to me in particular and a total waste of space to his son. Then I have his family who have believed stories they’ve been told about me, totally unfounded and they too have treated me quite appallingly. Now, the biological father is history, thankfully I never have to have anything to do with him again. But, the rest of the family are still related to my grandson of course.

They’ve never gone out of their way to hurt him other than not not bother to visit on several occasions they could have done but, we can put that down to what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. But, how’s it going to work long term? Whilst he’s young he’s no reason to know and he’s not asked but, if he asks he’ll be told the truth about all the history. Does the way they treated me become pertinent or not? Hopefully, I never have to deal with the issue. To my amazement, knowing how they totally disrespect me they still ask to use my house as a place to meet my grandson. I suspect, and this is unfounded so don’t quote me, that some of them stay away because of me, just because I exist.

For many years I tried really hard to hold it all together, create one larger family for the benefit of my grandson but it’s obvious sometimes that what we want and what we can achieve are not the same thing. Indeed, I hold myself largely responsible for this mess because I worked so hard to keep everyone onside. Had I not made such an effort then bio dad would have disappeared nearly 6 years ago and his family would never been any the wiser and certainly had nothing to do with him. I persisted for too long and created a whole heap of mess from it. I wasn’t wrong just ‘wrong’.

I don’t frankly care what any of those people do now as long as they leave me well alone. I feel harassed just because they exist.They prove to me that wrong doing doesn’t seem to have consequences. Also, doing the right thing clearly has had some damaging consequences!

So, that’s just the current situation. Quite manageable but, in reality I wish personally that Sean could legally adopt and that they’d have a fully recognised functioning family rather than the complication of someone else who keeps popping up and quickly out again doing no more than rock the boat.

As for older situations, well, after 25 years +  I’ve been invited to a family get together. I don’t know why now and not any time previously but, I’ll go along with it.

As a kid I had this rosy concept of Mum & Dad, two kids, loving aunts and uncles, fun cousins and so on. Reality is, that isn’t the concept which became reality and … who the hell am I to make such comments about a standard family?

Gay man, married twice, once to a woman then a man .. I am barely what could be called a role model for family sanity yet, somehow it seems to work.