54m here for reference.

Best long term romantic relationship: We will be celebrating 20 years married this year. Two kids and we’re well on our way to spending our dotage together.

Best Friend: We’ve been friends for 5 years. Have literally played hundreds of hours of D&D and other role playing games, along with a group of fellow fathers and mothers that all like family. We got to play D&D in Lake Geneva, WI at the very birthplace of Game Cons this past year. That was pretty great.

Familial (specifically, blood relations): Terrible. My parents are dead and I would be estranged from them now if they were still alive. Estranged from both my older brothers. I have no plans to reconcile with them. They made their choices and it did not involve their younger brother. I have a FB connection to ONE of my many many first cousins.

Top-3 easily all dogs.

Then the rest is a few horses, a few birds and maybe one person.

I wouldn’t presume my relationship with cats.

My brother but to be fair he is someone everyone loves. Hes like the favorite family member of my wifes even including hers.

My best relationship was with my birth maternal grandfather. He was like my equivalent to an Uncle Iroh; cool, accomplished, wise, patient, and caring. If there was anything that would improve any negative day I was experiencing, it could be found from him. I don’t remember a single negative experience from him.

He had one of those rare unisex names, and I always used to feel awkward that my adoptive mother (who was also his adoptive sister via their own mother my “birth” maternal great grandmother, err, his adoptive mother and my adoptive mother’s birth mother, not sure how to label that) took advantage of that and named me after him in the renaming process despite being his granddaughter, but after a childhood spent with him, not a single part of me questions that choice. I currently reside in his old home, where occasionally I make him breakfast forgetting he is gone and proceed to have a literal toast to him and eat it in his name upon correcting myself. That’s how much of an impact he had.

My adoptive mother, second-oldest birth sibling, BF, and two friends I made who were the children of family friends of my mother also serve as honorable mentions.

I have a really cute cat that actually shows affection and meows really cute