{"id":18290,"date":"2024-12-13T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T10:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=18290"},"modified":"2024-12-13T10:28:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T10:28:59","slug":"in-laws-can-make-for-good-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=18290","title":{"rendered":"In-Laws Can Make for Good Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

How a brother-in-law became my best friend.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Friends, it is often said, are the family you choose. But sometimes, it goes the other way.<\/p>\n

I met my brother-in-law, Rob, more than 20 years ago, when I was dating my now-wife and he was engaged to her sister. We were soon bumping into each other at family gatherings, and despite some slight differences, we bonded over a shared set of interests (\u201980s alternative music, John le Carr\u00e9 novels, soccer<\/a>) and the fact that we were both outsiders navigating a family that was not our own.<\/p>\n

Once we were official brothers-in-law, those gatherings became more frequent, and Rob\u2019s presence was always an underlying draw, as we\u2019d escape from the house to shoot hoops after Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas lunch. Our bond deepened when he and his wife, Heather, moved from Boston to the Catskills a few years later to open a restaurant, and my wife and I bought a small house nearby. I found myself helping out with their new business most weekends, even pitching in to cook<\/a> when he was in a jam.<\/p>\n

Neither that restaurant, nor that house, proved lasting, but what has endured is our friendship, one that reaches beyond easy familiarity and proximity at holidays. Lately, amid the widespread reports of a loneliness epidemic<\/a> \u2014 particularly among men<\/a> \u2014 I\u2019ve been newly grateful for Rob, and reminded of a somewhat overlooked idea: Among your pool of in-laws you may find a new best friend, hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n

Out of the research that exists about family relationships, in-laws tend to receive scant attention \u2014 and brothers-in-law are practically invisible. (One of the few studies I could find \u2014 from Denmark \u2014 concluded that having a brother-in-law with a criminal record made one slightly more likely to gain a criminal record as well.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

But in-laws are interesting. In a big-picture evolutionary sense, \u201caffines,\u201d as in-laws are called among researchers, don\u2019t seem all that different from blood relations. As one team of anthropologists noted<\/a>, \u201cpeople treat affines as biological kin rather than unrelated friends.\u201d One reason is that despite not being genetically linked, they tend to have, like any family member, \u201ca common genetic interest in future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gretchen Perry, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Northern British Columbia, said the connection might explain the altruistic bent Rob and I seemed to have toward each other, inside or outside of a restaurant kitchen.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a brother-in-law became my best friend.Friends, it is often said, are the family you choose. But sometimes, it goes the other way.I met my brother-in-law, Rob, more than 20 years ago, when I was dating my now-wife and he was engaged to her sister. We were soon bumping into each other at family gatherings, and despite some slight differences, we bonded over a shared set of interests (\u201980s alternative music, John le Carr\u00e9 novels, soccer) and the fact that we were both outsiders navigating a family that was not our own.Once we were official brothers-in-law, those gatherings became more frequent, and Rob\u2019s presence was always an underlying draw, as we\u2019d escape from the house to shoot hoops after Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas lunch. Our bond deepened when he and his wife, Heather, moved from Boston to the Catskills a few years later to open a restaurant, and my wife and I bought a small house nearby. I found myself helping out with their new business most weekends, even pitching in to cook when he was in a jam.Neither that restaurant, nor that house, proved lasting, but what has endured is our friendship, one that reaches beyond easy familiarity and proximity at holidays. Lately, amid the widespread reports of a loneliness epidemic \u2014 particularly among men \u2014 I\u2019ve been newly grateful for Rob, and reminded of a somewhat overlooked idea: Among your pool of in-laws you may find a new best friend, hiding in plain sight.Out of the research that exists about family relationships, in-laws tend to receive scant attention \u2014 and brothers-in-law are practically invisible. (One of the few studies I could find \u2014 from Denmark \u2014 concluded that having a brother-in-law with a criminal record made one slightly more likely to gain a criminal record as well.)But in-laws are interesting. In a big-picture evolutionary sense, \u201caffines,\u201d as in-laws are called among researchers, don\u2019t seem all that different from blood relations. As one team of anthropologists noted, \u201cpeople treat affines as biological kin rather than unrelated friends.\u201d One reason is that despite not being genetically linked, they tend to have, like any family member, \u201ca common genetic interest in future generations.\u201dGretchen Perry, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Northern British Columbia, said the connection might explain the altruistic bent Rob and I seemed to have toward each other, inside or outside of a restaurant kitchen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18292,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18293,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18290\/revisions\/18293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}