Our chosen family is something we should always be working on building and deepening. Here are 5 tips for deepening your queer family bonds: 

1. Make plans AND be spontaneous together. 

So many chosen family relationships wither because we aren’t intentional about making plans. But just as important, other relationships wither because they are overly dependent on plans at the expense of spontaneous connection. You want to do both with your chosen family: get things on the calendar, then text in the afternoon asking to hang out that night, or FaceTime out of the blue, or game together when you’re both bored. 

Making plans is vulnerable, and so is being spontaneous. It’s likely that one of you is better at one, and the other is better at the other, so bring what comes naturally to the relationship AND challenge yourself to do what the other person is good at too. A good chosen family relationship has both dependability and spontaneity, safety and dynamic energy. 

2. Go back to an unresolved moment. 

This is probably the single most important part of building a strong and trusting bond, and the one that we refuse to do the most. Ruptures are inevitable in any relationship, the question is whether they actually get dealt with, or if they get repressed and tension builds up in the shadows. It’s rare to get all our feelings out in the moment when a rupture happens. Usually we need time to process, and our relational drives overtake the part of us that’s hurt and we pretend we’re okay.  

In order to keep the relationship healthy, trusting, and full of good will, we have to build up the courage to go back to a moment in the past that feels unresolved. This is not easy, but as you do it again and again in the same relationship (and the other person is able to stay with you in that space), a foundation gets built and the relationship takes on real strength. 

3. Call one of your chosen family members when you are struggling. 

Our queer relational pattern is often to isolate when things get hard, usually because it was never safe to be truly vulnerable with our family or origin or with our original network of friends. This is a pattern that we have to challenge in order to create something new and different in our adult lives. 

When you’re going through it, you can acknowledge that a part of you doesn’t want to tell your chosen family, you can validate why that part wants to isolate, and you can still decide to open up. When you choose to open up to your chosen family, it’s more likely that they will choose to open up to you as well, and you begin to form a mutually supportive net for each other. 

4. Tell your chosen family how you feel about them, more than once. 

When is the last time you told your chosen family that you love them? That you need them? That you value them above pretty much everything else? These are vulnerable things to say, and so often we choose not to. We get caught in heteronormative narratives that say anyone outside our primary partner is secondary and shouldn’t be loved, valued, and depended on in that same way. Again, these are narratives we need to actively resist. 

Tell your chosen family members how much they add to your life. Tell them the qualities that you adore in them. Express gratitude for your shared history and the strong foundation you’ve built. Tell them how healing the relationship has been for you. Express excitement for what the future holds together. Say it all, and say it again. 

5. Know when to move on and invest your energy elsewhere. 

Part of growing your chosen family is accepting that not everyone is a match for you long term. Some people come into your life for a particular period or phase, and then you grow apart. Other people simply can’t handle emotions and won’t be able to grow with you, and this can take some time to figure out. Another reason why all the above tips are so important is that you’re testing the waters to see if the other person can handle emotional conversations, or is willing to grow and change.