Living abroad - How often does your family visit you?

[WidowWadman]

Do they ever or do you always have to do the travelling?
Do you get a lot "Oh, I'd like to see you more often", "When are you coming over again?""Such a shame that we see our granddaughter/niece/cousin so rarely", but never real plans of visits.

Do people promise to visit and then never do it, e.g. because flights/ferry tickets are so expensive? But then go onto a package holiday twice within the space of 3 months?

Am I being unreasonable to wonder if I reduced my efforts of going over to see them to the same amount of effort they make to see me, I'd never see them again?

It's not only that I miss them, and that the majority of my annual leave and holiday budget goes on going home to see family and friends, which is often more running around and stress than holidays, but I'm also kind of sad that people don't seem to want to come and see what the place I've chosen to be my home is like.

Just wondering whether it's just me and I've got the wrong expectations. Or whether it's just my family being utterly utterly thoughtless, or whether it's kind of normal when you move away.

We live in france but head back to the UK at least twice a year for a month or so, so we do see a fair bit of family.

my parents and brother and sil are coming for trips later this year (for the first time.)

We live in a very touristic area and are planning to get a larger house so hope it will tempt more family & friends to visit!!

Much more than I do - I see almost everyone in my family at least once a year and 90% of the time it's them coming to me.

But I got totally oversaturated with plane travel through my job whereas they like travelling....[wanders off guiltily to book plane tickets]

I think your expectations are probably too high. I've only visited my brotehr twice in 2 years and we're only 3 - 4 hours drive away. MJaybe some families are different and they like to see eachother loads but we all tend to have our own lives.

When I was little we lived in rural Ireland and my grandparents lived in England. As far as I can remember we only had 1 or 2 visits from each set in the 5 years we lived there.

'I think if you've chosen to move away then it is likely that your relatives won't have had a choice/say in your move. It could be viewed that you've been quite selfish moving away and leaving your relatives behind!'

It's no-one's business but your own where you live surely? Why should your relatives have a choice/say in your decisions? You cannot live your life to suit them. As to moving being selfish...again, why? The relatives presumably had during their lives a chance to move if they wanted. Just because they didn't take it, doesn't mean that someone who does is selfish.

"'You moved away, the onus is more on you to visit them IMO.'"

We knew that ILs would think this-which is why we did it.

We go there every 2 years. Even though there are 8 of us, there are more people over there in total.

We do get visits from elderly relatives travelling alone. We can put them up, whereas it is harder for us to put up a whole family and they are generally too stingy to fork out for a hotel.

They have been commanded to come to us in 2012 for the Olympics. If no other children are produced, they should all be old enough to camp in our back garden leaving plenty of beds for the grown-ups.

My sister lives in Ireland, the rest of us in the UK, and I went to visit her for the second time this year a few weeks ago, and am hoping to see her twice more before the year is out.

This is unusual though and it depends on whats happening. For instance this year has seen her 40th, and I'm expecting a baby in a few months which has bumped up the visits.

However she hasn't spoken to one sister since last November and perhaps another one in even longer.

I think it can become out of sight out of mind unfortunately and also you don't like to impose on them with holidays, because although we'd be visiting whilst on holiday, often, they're still going about their daily lives.

I do wonder how people get along who move even further - maybe we're particularly useless seeing as my sister isn't a million miles away - but I can well imagine how easy it can be to lose contact completely.

I'm moving 20 miles away (half hour car journey) soon and my sisters are already saying how they wont know my new baby and when will they see us!

Never ever ever.

Not once.

Not one of them.

The miserable buggers.

Well, I don't expect them to come over twice a year, or every year even. But at least once would be nice, I guess. I even live in a quite touristy area, with lots of great stuff to see and do.

"'You moved away, the onus is more on you to visit them IMO.'"

Escaping small town attitudes such as this, for greater opportunities in life -why we moved away -similar to diddl

I lived in London for 8 years until Feb when (English) DH and I moved to Sydney; I grew up in Australia but hadn't lived there since late 2000.

While I was in the UK my parents visited on average every two years, staying for 6-8 weeks but using us as a base for some travelling around the UK and Europe. Now that we are in Australia with our brand new daughter, DH's mum is coming out for 3 months in October - she retired in April so has the time to do that. We will prob go back to the UK every 2nd year but only for a couple of weeks and will try to have a bit of holiday ourselves too. This is what we did wrt Australi when we were living in London too.

That said, we are lucky that my parents and MIL like to travel and are healthy. FIL passed away a fee years ago but would never have got on a plane to travel this far. DH's grandmother is too frail to make the trip, and I had to do a few mercy dashes back to Aus as well!!

I don't think you're being unreasonable to expect family to come and visit you at least sometimes, but they also feel that they don't want to impose or invite themselves, so I would try to delve a little deeper into the reasons why they don't visit!

at diddl!

We both worked for the same company and were facing redundancy - we HAD to move somewhere.....I don't see it as selfish to move further away from family. But on the other hand, I wouldn't expect them to drop everything to come visit all the time....

I do go to great efforts to keep in touch and remember birthdays etc. I actually love the devil spawn that is FB for example....

My brother and his family have been in Tokyo for the last 4 years. We all went last summer, and they all arrive here on FRIDAY!! Woooooohoooooo !!

My Dad and step-mum have NEVER made the effort to visit me, even when they were in a position to(and we are talking the UK here - first 3.5 hrs away and now 2 hrs away). It really started to grate when every holiday (I am a teacher) they would start on the 'when are you coming down' thing.

It seems that if you move away a lot of people think the emphasis is on you to do the visiting, as it was your decision...

when we lived in canada before, my folks, the ils, dsis' family, and various friends all came once or twice a year. when we lived in germany, the same. we're back in canada now, and i'm on my third set of visitors since 1 Jul. they each stay for a couple of weeks. i think it's so far away and takes up so much of their annual leave, that i wouldn't expect them to come any more frequently tbh.

although my loveliest gf is moving to oz in a couple of weeks and this christmas might be the first in 14 years that she hasn't spent with us. but she might make it, depends on work.

we don't go back to the uk much. i suspect our visitors come for the skiing and the lakes and mountains as much as for us, lol.

"I actually love the devil spawn that is FB for example.."

Tis useful.

I use it for messaging & putting up photos for all friends to see-so much easier than sending to everyone in an email.

No one has come and visited us yet (been 7 years in the UK). We go once every 2 years - with 2 dcs. Now with third on the way don't know how practical that's going to be.
My MIL would love to come and boss over me but FIL doesn't like leaving his house 'alone'.
My mum is older and dad died a few years back so she doesn't feel up to the hassle (passport updated, visa permits, leaving the country is a big job for her).
My sister is in full-time work and doesn't seem to have time.
My other sister is in part-time work and does have time but no inclination.

They seem to all expect that because we have gone away if we want to see them we need to come. It's more expensive for them which is why we offer tickets and stuff but they still don't seem to want to come.
It's so hot when we go there - we boil every time and dc's get ill. Not going to make the effort so often wih 3 - but every now and then I want to see my mum so I pack us all off.

Yup, 2012. Am working on everyone for that. Lets see how many visit

dhs family visited us once, when dd was a baby. Despite 10 years of numerous invites they've not been back. I'm sure I wasn't that inhospitable?! They live about 80 miles away. Finally accepting that actually they just can't be arsed.

I'm probably going to be the odd one out here.

I haven't been "home" since '99.

On average I've had a visit every 2 years. There's a reason why I live overseas! Can't stand people just "dropping in"!

I don´t get the "you moved it´s up to you to visit" mentality tbh.

I think circumstances should come into play also.

When our children were young it would have been much easier for ILs to come here.

They could stay with us, whereas we need to pay for 4 tickets plus accomodation.

Also, wouldn´t you think that they would be interested to see where/how their only child & only grandchildren are living?

But no!

we are the ones living abroad (we uk, family in austria and germany). we are expected to come to visit at least for eastern and christmas and the summer hols.
we get visited about 2 times a year, once by my parents, once by the inlaws. I know it is a hassle for them because neither fly and taking the train is a long journey.
our siblings either dont have the money or small children and dont travel. (we have small children, too).
tbh I am sick of it, not of the visits per se, but to be expected to spend every holiday with family.
last christmas we could not come, because dd was born a few days before. we had a great time!

We haven´t visited UK much as a family-twice in 12yrs.

My parents visit, I have been to see friends, friends have been over, so tbh it´s been enough for us.

But because ILs haven´t been here, they expect us to spend all our time with them FFS.

The children want to go to UK again-but please not to have to see my ILs!

We're a bit rubbish. DH's Dad us in Spain and we never go. DH did go about 5 times when his Mum was dying but generally neither of want to go as we don't like Spain, much too hot for us. Plus with flights and accomodation it would be a fair bit more than we spend on holidays. My budget is £500 a week including travel and we are restricted to school holidays.

My brother is in Thailand and would really like us to all go out over Christmas and to take Mum. He really kindly said he'd pay. We were going to go for two weeks but then realised there is nowhere for the dog to go at that time of year combined with the fact that since we had DD 11 years ago there has never been a Christmas holidays without at least of us having vomiting bugs. Also not helped by the scenes we saw coming out of Bangkok earlier this year plus one very difficult day when he rang me to say he was going to try tonget to his bar whilst live shots were being fired and a long talk on how they could barricade themselves in. All this together plus the heat has put us off and we're staying in the UK.

Now if he was in Germany I'd be there every couple of months, we got back yesterday and I really didn't want to come home at all.

family dynamics before you move also play a big part.

for e.g my DBs constant refrain is 'when are you coming to visit', 'why havent you come to visit', 'please come and visit' but he himself has not visited anyone in over 5 years. despite it being cheaper (and easier as he gets double the leave of anyone else) by quite some way for him to do the travelling.

but then, we (as a family) have always made the effort to see him, so he doesnt see it as his responsibility to travel to us.

parents are often like this. the feel the responsibility for the relationship lies with thier adult children. so its their 'duty' to do the travelling.

and i think, in our case at least, there is some sort of competition involved. like, if my parents and PILs visit us, then my brother sees it as them loving us more than him. even if that isnt true and its just that DH and i have paid for them to come. or whatever.

i dunno. families can be weird!