There's a peculiar assumption woven into the fabric of our culture: that blood makes family, and family makes relationship. We speak of our relatives as if the shared strands of DNA automatically create bonds that transcend choice, geography, and even compatibility. But I've been wrestling with a harder question lately—one that feels almost taboo to ask out loud: Does a biological connection automatically mean you have a relationship?
I'm not asking this to be provocative. I'm asking because I've watched families fracture, seen distance grow between people who share the same genetic code, and wondered what word we use for connections that exist on paper but nowhere else. If my uncle and I haven't spoken in fifteen years, do we have a relationship? Or do we simply have DNA?
There was a time when biological relationships weren't just convenient—they were essential. In physically rooted societies, your family was your survival network, your labor force, your safety net. The bonds weren't just emotional; they were practical, necessary, woven into the daily rhythms of life. But that world has shifted beneath our feet. Families scatter across continents now. Divorce divides what seemed permanent. We build lives among strangers who become chosen family, while people who share our blood become memories we rarely revisit.
And yet, we carry this lingering sense that biological connections should mean more. That they deserve more effort, more grace, more attempts at reconciliation. When a friendship fades, we shrug and say people grow apart. But when it's a sibling, a parent, a cousin? The silence feels heavier. The absence feels like failure.
I think about the language we use. When we choose to no longer interact with a family member, what do we call it? A broken relationship? That phrase carries weight—it suggests something shattered that should be repaired, something incomplete that needs mending. But do all broken relationships need to be mended? Is there room for the honest acknowledgment that some connections, even biological ones, might be healthier at a distance?
The truth is, biological connections can be the hardest to navigate precisely because we're often forced to interact. Holidays arrive like clockwork. Family events demand attendance. And suddenly we're sitting across the table from someone we fundamentally disagree with, someone who might even harm us emotionally or spiritually, pretending that shared DNA is enough to bridge the chasm between us. Sometimes agreeing to disagree isn't enough when the very air feels charged with old wounds and unmet expectations.
As someone walking a path of faith, I've had to reckon with what it means to honor both truth and grace in these spaces. Christ calls us to love, yes—but love doesn't always mean maintaining proximity. Sometimes the most loving thing is to release someone to their own journey while protecting your own peace. Sometimes the relationship we need to preserve isn't with them, but with ourselves and with God.
So when is it appropriate to step back from a biological connection? I'm learning that the answer isn't found in rules but in discernment. It's about recognizing when a connection has become toxic rather than life-giving, when every interaction leaves you diminished rather than whole. And here's the harder question: if we create that distance, do we still have a relationship outside of the biological fact? Or have we simply acknowledged what was already true—that DNA alone doesn't make a relationship, any more than proximity makes intimacy.
Maybe what I'm discovering is that relationships, even biological ones, require more than shared blood. They require presence, mutuality, the willingness to see and be seen. Without those things, what we have isn't really a relationship at all—it's just biology wearing relationship's clothes.
And perhaps there's freedom in naming that honestly, in releasing the weight of should and allowing what is to simply be. Not every broken thing needs mending. Some things need space to breathe, distance to heal, and the quiet acknowledgment that love sometimes means letting go.
