"I trust friends over family. Family was not chosen by me; friends were.
Family, in my experience, tends to take advantage of the idea that you're
somehow "joined by blood," and because of it, don't seem to understand
that any sort of relationship, no matter how it started, requires work to
maintain. Friends tend to understand that a bit more, because those
relationships is based a bit more on work, especially if you watched it
grow/nurtured it from scratch. If I consider you "family," we'll have to work
a bit harder to be "friends." And there isn't a person on this planet who I'm
friends with or have been friends with that I'd ever consider
family, because I don't think family is the definition of closeness."
--K'Roc [http://revkris.blogspot.com]