Opinions

Does Blood Always Have to Be Thicker Than Water?

BYYassine Hariss

November 26, 2025

In our part of the world, family is the foundation of everything. Through culture and religion, the rule is simple and almost absolute: nothing beats kin. Sitting at the top of the social hierarchy, completely unquestioned, your parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, and cousins all come preassigned as life’s primary loyalties, taking precedence over other of its aspects as they shape your choices, morals, and, most importantly, day-to-day obligations. Some friends may, with time, manage to slip into that inner circle, but they rarely get the same weight, the same authority, or the same unconditional acceptance.

But what happens when the people you’re born to aren’t the ones who protect you, understand you, or even see you— and the family you find ends up doing what blood doesn’t? When is it that enough is enough and can it be socially accepted to turn your back on the very people who share the same name as you? And at what point does protecting your own wellbeing outweigh inherited duty, and who decides when loyalty becomes obligation, or when obligation becomes harm?

In a culture that treats kinship as something sacred, the moment you choose to distance yourself is automatically treated as betrayal, even when it’s the only way to stay sane or sometimes even safe. To make it harder, a person’s reputation and value are measured by how they show up for their family. So what’s left when the duty you’re expected to uphold turns out to be the very thing that starts breaking you?

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu — who spent years living in Algeria — noted that “the family is the alpha and omega of the whole system: the primary group and structural model for any possible grouping, it is the indissoluble atom of society which assigns and assures to each of its members his place, his function, his very reason for existence and, to a certain degree, his existence itself (…).”

But that only holds when things are good; when they see you, respect you, and treat you fairly. When they don’t, pulling away can cost you dearly. And that’s the part we never talk about. In a society where family is treated as the default you’re born into and bound to forever, there are almost no frameworks for what to do when they hurt you. There’s no language for stepping back without being labelled ungrateful, dramatic, or immoral. No script for saying “this doesn’t work for me” without being cast as the problem. Culture, in these scenarios, will tend to protect the unit, not the individual. And while that unit is allowed to fail you, you’re still expected to perform loyalty without pause in the name of religion, social order, and reputation.

Yet the cracks are starting to show. More and more people are choosing distance, drawing boundaries, and building support systems outside the traditional kinship nest. Family is something you do, not something you’re automatically given. And sometimes the people who share your DNA do less family-work than the people you meet later on in life.

But in our part of the world, admitting that is still taboo. Chosen family is tolerated as a supplement, never as replacement; as a bonus, not as a core. Suggest that your friends might offer you more safety or understanding than your blood-relatives, and you risk being seen as morally corrupted or even Westernized. For women, that feeling gets magnified: autonomy is policed, and any distance from family is seen as disgrace. If the daughter, the cousin, the aunt isn’t home, or with its kin, where could she be? The first assumption is that she’s up to no good; read: doing things she is not supposed to.

For those that can (emotionally and financially) the answer is compromise. Others will leave, carrying a sense of guilt they believe is worth it. Some stay and shrink. Some stay and fight. None of it is simple, and none of it fits the neat cultural myth that “family knows best.”

Because family doesn’t always know best. Sometimes they misread you, minimize you, or mold you into a version of yourself you don’t want to be at all. Sometimes they’re the source of the shame, not the shield from it. And if we’re honest, the social insistence that blood always comes first has kept many people trapped in situations that undermine them. Harm doesn’t become holy just because you’re related to it.

But refusing harm doesn’t mean rejecting culture, or tradition, or even religion as a matter of fact. God says love your parents and care for them, not sacrifice your sanity so everyone else can pretend everything’s fine. Yes, God does say that paradise is under your mother’s feet; but what if they’re crushing you? In order for respect to mean anything, it has to go both ways; otherwise it isn’t respect, it’s hierarchy masquerading as care.

And this is the conversation our region is slowly — very slowly — starting to have. We read about it in private group chats, hear it during late-night venting sessions, therapy rooms, and in the myriad of coded ways people talk about “boundaries” without ever daring to name it nor the family members involved. You also see it in the rise of chosen communities, in friendships that function like lifelines, in people refusing to tolerate behaviors they would have tolerated in the past.

The new generation isn’t buying the idea that loyalty has to be limitless, that love automatically comes with sacrifice, or that fear and respect have to come hand in hand — things our elders were never really allowed to address, let alone question.

But to those from older generations right now who could be reading these lines: no one’s throwing kinship in the bin. It’s more that its definition, and reach, is being changed shway. There’s growing awareness that closeness built on guilt isn’t closeness, and that “keeping peace” by staying quiet brings everything but peace of mind. And increasingly, people are realizing that the ones who choose you — who show up without entitlement — can matter just as much as the ones who share your blood.

Which brings us back to the real question. It was never about whether blood is thicker than water; that cliché has been running on fumes for years. It’s about whether the relationships that claim you actually hold you up — whether they give you space to be the person you are, not the character you’re expected to play.

Does Blood Always Have to Be Thicker Than Water?

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Does Blood Always Have to Be Thicker Than Water?

Related Stories

More From Opinions

Suggestions

Articles

Topics

Newsletter

The only newsletter you won't unsubscribe from

Follow Us