Distant relationship
A dotted line drawn straight between two people means a distant relationship.
Easily confused with
How to read it
On the Multicultural Family Institute’s chart of interactional patterns a dotted line is distant, and a Cutoff, where contact has ended, is a solid line broken by two bars. Washburn University’s guide lists distant with enmeshed and conflictual as relationships a genogram depicts, and a University of Texas at Austin social work guide and the 1980 legend in The Journal of Family Practice both have a distant relationship line.
Also searched as: distant genogram, distant relationship symbol, genogram distant relationship.
This explains what a symbol records on a genogram. Clinicians vary the notation, and a genogram’s own key takes precedence.
Look-alikes
Other dotted lines run in other directions. A dashed line beneath two partners is Cohabitation, a dashed line down to a child is an Adoption, and a dotted line drawn round a group of people marks a household, in the University of North Dakota’s guide.
Read next
- Next in Genogram symbolsCutoffA line between two people broken by two short upright bars means a cutoff: contact between them has ended.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of EthiopiaEthiopia’s flag is green, yellow and red in equal horizontal stripes with a blue disc in the centre holding a yellow star of equal lines with yellow rays. Ethiopia’s Flag Proclamation makes the green labour, fertility and development, the yellow hope, justice and equality, and the red sacrifice and heroism for freedom and equality; the blue disc is peace and the star the unity of Ethiopia’s nations, nationalities and peoples.
More genogram symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles, lines or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Standard Symbols for Genograms, The Multicultural Family Institute (copy on a PBworks course wiki), Page 2
- GenoGrams, Jay Memmott, Department of Social Work, Washburn University, How do you draw a genogram?, slide 10
- Genogram (TXPOP practice model tools guide), Texas Permanency Outcomes Project, Steve Hicks School of Social Work, The University of Texas at Austin, Symbols for drawing the genogram
- The Genogram, Winifred Jolly, Jack Froom and Melville G. Rosen, The Journal of Family Practice 10, no. 2 (1980): 251–255, The Journal of Family Practice (MDedge archive), Figure 2, Genogram symbols
- QA Case Review: Genogram Resource, ND CFS Quality Assurance, revised November 2022, Children and Family Services Training Center, University of North Dakota, Step 2
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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