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I relate very strongly to what you say Squirrel, it's pretty close to how I feel, too, except that I don't feel any sorrow like you describe through being reminded of my failure to improve my relationships with them, because I don't feel any obligation in the first place or duty to even have a relationship with them.

If we're talking siblings, parents, maybe even grandparents then yeah. But extended family no, like I say I don't see them as any different to anyone else that I'm not related to at all - if I click with someone, then I'll pursue a friendship with them. If not, then I won't. I don't see why it suddenly becomes a duty to flog a dead horse and fake all this chumminess just because a person happens to share some genetic material. I don't see there being anything wrong with not clicking with anyone else, so why would I blame a person, family member or not, for not clicking with me?

Friendship's something that either happens or doesn't, you can't force it and I think it's wrong to make someone feel like they have to try and force it or face being called mean, cold, antisocial, whatever. Y'know like if you don't get on with one of your work colleagues you're not obliged to keep going out with them until you're bosom pals (which will never happen)... I guess it's possibly a question of detachment, which, if that's a person's default position (as it is with the NT) then it's kinda like you're guilt tripping someone for not being attached, like as if they can just attach, just like that, because you tell them they "should".

Hmm - it's funny though... I guess I'm seeing that the things that I see as obligatory and where the sense of it being so comes from, my response to that etc, are quite different from the SFJ, which isn't surprising really!!

I guess there's a difference then between fulfilling obligations through a sense of honour or a sense of duty... if there's a slight shade of difference in meaning between the two, the former being that say I'd never break a promise I made to anyone through a sense of honour, as in, I would think poorly of myself if I broke a promise so I do it for my own self-respect. Whilst I know my sister would, if it became difficult to keep the promise, be content to apologize to the person she made the promise to and feel that, so long as they accept her reason and her apology, her self-respect is still intact...?