One cousin lives in Wales. We’re the closest. Another lives in Australia, we’re not very close but enjoy one another’s company when we are together. A third lives in Pennsylvania. We’re getting closer as her mother (my last surviving aunt) is aging. We all keep in touch on WhatsApp regularly and frequently. We are all female. I think it makes a difference.
Cousin story – I spent a summer session at A Fancy New England Boarding school, my relatives all nearby. I was a very dorky 16 yr old with no social currency.
My cousin , 19, started calling and leaving messages when he found out that messages were thumbtacked on a common room bulletin board (in the little envelopes) . Remember, no cell phones then. He created this notion amongst my cohort that he was perhaps my boyfriend.
After suspense had built, he came to sign me out for the day, sweeping me up in a huge hug and brought me flowers. He was a 6’2" blonde, handsome, tan fireman (seriously) and I still smile at the look on the other girls’ faces.
Yes, I eventually admitted he was my cousin. But he’s still my bestie.
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My d is very very close to her first cousin and even some distant cousins in Europe. They FaceTime regularly along with texting.
Most of my contact with cousins is over social media. It has made it easier to stay in touch and I wonder if we would have been closer if we had today’s ease of communication growing up.
My son and DIL have decided to have one child, and both were raised with no siblings their age. II feel badly as I grew up close with a number of cousins. now that I live in Florida., my one cousin here hosts holiday meals.
My cousin had three children and three stepchildren. By coincidence, three of her grandchildren are freshman at UF this year. Two actually live on the same hall. They are all close and getting closer.
My sisters and first cousins all live very close to one another. I live a nine hour drive away. So…my sisters and cousins are close. And I see some of them when I’m there. But not really close.
I was close with my mom’s first cousin who died a few years ago. His daughter and I have a great relationship. She lives a distance away, but we do our best to stay in touch.
My DH has a ton of first cousins. We keep in better touch with some than others.
I am closer to some cousins than to my siblings, including step cousins. I spent weeks at my grandparents’ as a child, with a few of my same-aged first cousins, without our parents there. We ran a bit wild! Life-long bonds.
Not really, and I regret it. I have two cousins on my dad’s side who live far and are a lot younger than me – I went to their weddings and flew to go to their baby showers, but we’re mostly in touch over social media. Their kids are a lot younger than mine, too, so we’re just in different stages of life. But it’s easy and comfortable when we ARE together, so I think I just need to be better at reaching out.
I also have two cousins on my mom’s side, but they live halfway around the world. (Had a third who passed away decades ago.) Again, we follow each other on social media, but we’re not really close. I need to make the effort to change that, I think. But the two of THEM are feuding and don’t really speak at the moment, so I’m not sure how to navigate that exactly. (I hear about all the family drama from my mother.)
Our kids don’t have any first cousins – I’m an only child, and my DH’s only sibling passed away when DH was in high school. It bothers me a little bit, which is why I would love for them to get to know their second cousins.
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Come to think of it, my one cousin who reached out to me has two siblings (she’s female, the siblings are male).
She told me one of her brothers went to my college. His first year was my third year. So I went to school (a larger school - Syracuse) with my cousin and yet never knew and likely never met him.
I am not “close” with any of my cousins. My dad’s family all stayed in the area (Cleveland) where he grew up and my mom’s siblings were all in different states 7+ hours from us. When I was growing up in the DC area, we saw my father’s side (six cousins) more frequently, with us visiting them and them visiting us, including many summers where they would come to my family’s beach house with us for a week. I also spent a summer when I was 12 living with my dad’s brother’s family, helping my aunt with their kids who were younger than me. His sister’s kids, all boys, were closer in age to me, so we hung out all summer. While I wouldn’t say I am close with any of them, I still see them from time to time. My sister went to college in OH and moved to Cleveland area when she married so we visit every few years and I see my cousins then. We also keep in touch via social media.
We saw my mom’s siblings less frequently growing up as none lived nearby. I had seven cousins on that side, though one was killed as a teenager by a drunk driver, and two passed from cancer years ago. My uncle’s kids were much much younger. I haven’t seen them in 20+ years. I have seen my other two cousins a few times when they have visited my parents over the years. I am not close with them at all (nice women, but I just don’t know them well).
One of my cousin’s on my mom’s side has been trying to motivate us to have online reunions. I honestly can’t think of anything I would enjoy less and have yet to participate. Coincidentally there is one tonight. First of all, I am an introvert. Second, I hate talking on the phone, with few exceptions. Third, chatting with a group over Zoom is complicated enough even when you are comfortable with the others in the group (we did it for my dad’s 85th bday during Covid). Neither my brother nor my sister joined the other “reunions” which might have made it easier. I’d rather have an in person family reunion than participate in this online video reunion.I feel badly, but it is just too awkward and uncomfortable to me.
My kids are not close with any of their cousins. Dh’s four siblings and their kids are all on the west coast, and all are younger than my kids. My sister’s kids are six hours away so we only see them once a year, if that. The only cousins my kids saw regularly are my brother’s daughters, but they are 10 years older than my oldest. So not close but they know them better than any other cousins.
I am an only child so my cousins were very important to me growing up. We would spend all the holidays with the cousins on either my mom‘s side or my dad‘s side. One of my cousins and his family are very close and we spend holidays together. The others we keep in touch via text or social media.
It’s one of the things I regret that my children don’t have close relationships with their cousins due to distance and age differences.
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I have 11 first cousins, seven on my mother’s side of the family and four on my father’s side. We range in age from 56 to 80. One died last summer at the age of 77 from Lewy Body disease. We live in Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, and Connecticut. We are all very close, especially on my mother’s side, and grew up visiting each other on vacation and at holidays. All my maternal cousins (sans one who lives part time in Alaska) were at a cousin’s daughter’s wedding last month in Tennessee and will be at another in North Carolina in three weeks. All of our children are close as well, more like siblings than cousins. Our parents set a good example for us by making sure we all saw each other every year or two when we were growing up.
I also have an extended family of second and third cousins who we are just as close to as the first cousins. My family has been in the same county since about 1800 after moving from Virginia and South Carolina. Several related families came at the same time and those connections remain. I’m as close to my third cousins here as I am to my first cousins elsewhere.
It’s pretty special and I don’t take it for granted. It takes a lot of time to keep up the relationships, but it’s been totally worth the effort.
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I don’t have a single biological cousin. My dad’s only brother and wife adopted a baby when I was 15, but she had fetal alcohol syndrome and we were never close. Mom’s sister died when she was 15. I always wanted a cousin! I’m glad my kids have ten! My kid in Poland really wants the family to stay connected, so he calls the ones on both sides of the family pretty often. He gets a little frustrated that his efforts are not reciprocated.
My mom had lots of cousins since both her parents had lots of siblings (4 and 11). When I was growing up, we had frequent reunions and Mom was close to couple of her cousins. But after the older generation passed away, the family grew apart. 
The last time I saw any of them was in the mid-80s.
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My parents were both immigrants from Croatia (when they came to the US, it was Yugoslavia). I only have four first cousins. My paternal cousins never left Croatia. Our family visited the paternal cousins in Croatia several times when my brother and I were growing up, but we didn’t really get to know them. They never came to the US.
My two maternal cousins were in the US and we lived a few blocks from them. We spent lots of time together at family gatherings and holidays. I left the midwest right after college and lost contact with these cousins. We reconnected about 10 years ago and try to get together 3-4 times a year. One cousin spends part of the year in Vero Beach and it’s fun to visit her in the winter.
These two maternal cousins and I traveled to Croatia together. We tried to find the Croatian cousins we had in common on our maternal side and hired a genealogist to help us track them down. She found two cousins who wanted to meet us, but it turned out that we couldn’t find a mutually agreeable time to meet. However, we did meet with each of our respective paternal cousins (I had two in Dalmatia and they had one in Split). We had a great time meeting all of them. I am still in contact with my cousin who speaks fluent English. We text and play Words with Friends together. I’ve invited him and his daughter and her family to come visit me in the US; neither one has any interest in visiting the US.