Depends on your definition of “family”, I guess, so I wouldn’t throw this around as a universal wisdom. For a lot of people, their family is something that, in

Depends on your definition of “family”, I guess, so I wouldn’t throw this around as a universal wisdom. For a lot of people, their family is something that, indeed, is the closest relationship they will ever have. For others, their family is simply the environment and people they grew up with, and that doesn’t always mean it was pleasant or relevant as an adult. Those people just make “adoptive families” with closest friends, but that isn’t typically referred to as “families” of any kind. And i am not talking only about scenarios where the actual families were abusive or anything like that. Here goes a personal example of the latter that, I believe, is pretty common. I grew up fine. My parents cared for me, provided for me as a kid. They weren’t “abusive” or anything like that. I really appreciated all the care, despite a lot of their failings as parents. I have zero hatred, anger, or any other ill feelings towards my family. We have always been on really good terms. Just mentioning that, so it is clear i am not making my point from an edge case position of someone who was abused by their actual family and now despises them. But as i grew up, i realized that people in my family were just not pleasant or reasonable adults to be around (and no, i am not talking in terms of political opinions or some other typical stuff teenagers on reddit tend to whine about). I still visit them, i still spend time with them. But it is more of a sign of appreciation, gratitude, and respect, at this point. I do not enjoy spending prolonged periods of time with them, i cannot share my deepest secrets with them, i cannot hope for them to be understanding of a lot of things and decisions in my life, and i cannot get any good advice from them either. And mind you, i am not even in a situation where i need to “come out” to my parents (or anything like that), we are talking about much more insignificant things. However, I do have a few extremely close friends who have persisted in my life for a really long time, and with them, I can absolutely share all those things and receive a useful advice. And they count on me to provide the same for them. Our relationship with each other is way more than the “respectful sign of appreciation” kind of a relationship i have with my actual family. But to me, those few extremely close friends are what i would count as the kind of people who are my family. And in that sense, they are there for me in all the ways that my actual family is not. TL;DR: while your actual family can be what the family is supposed to be about, this is far from being always the case, and your few very close friends can fulfill that role for each other in ways that your actual family failed to.