To be seriously angry that WE always have to do the visiting?!

[mrsoscarwilde]

I love my family to bits but most of my family live down the country. If I am honest, it is lovely for us to have the best of both worlds, yet it is as if time has frozen still when we go down. I pretend that I don't have another life.

I have had to make the journey down hundreds of times since my kids were babies.

Why do I bother you might ask? It is simply that my children would not have a relationship with their grandparents and cousins if I didn’t make the effort.

I have gotten the ‘we will come up and see you’ promises dished out – even over xmas but never any follow up. I have come to realise that this is a bit like borrowing a book from the library that you never actually read or sharing a Facebook post about homelessness but not actually doing anything remotely socially aware. In your head you feel by promising, you have done something virtuous. But the follow up on a promise is the hard bit.

Ok, we live in a smallish - yet it is a four-bedroom house. Very different to the monstrosities that people tend to build in the country. Yet I have felt that the living arrangements, the facilities are substandard, and this may be the reason why people do not come to visit. I had one family member mention that sleeping arrangements might be an issue when they declared ‘Well? Where shall we sleep?' I had no idea until this point that they had previously grown up in a house the acreage of Downton Abbey! 😊 How ever could one bear the inconvenience?

We live in the capital city. We are lucky to have museums, parks, even the lakes of Wicklow, a short driving distance away. I think it would be lovely for people to make the effort. I understand people have busy lives – we all have! Kids in school all week, and then sports and music lessons, parties and playdates at the weekend. I think it is promising that gets to me. Just be more honest and say you can’t make it.

I guess I feel less than valued in my family. I have been living away and raising kids away from my immediate family and my kids’ cousins. If one of my sisters lived away, I would make it my business to come up and visit. At least once. Even if she lived in a tent.

I have no wish to come across as a victim. I am used to packing bags and heading down. What gets to me is the lack of willingness to share in my life up here.

It is just really pissing me off. I must to be the one to slot in. I have 3 kids and NEWSFLASH! Everyone is busy. I just feel angry about it at this stage.

Anyone relate?

We have this and our families are only an hour away. We “joke” that they must think it’s downhill from our house to theirs as we are always expected to do the travelling. We’ve had invitations to visit us turned down even for dcs birthdays because they “don’t want to get stuck in traffic” ffs. I don’t have any answers but I feel your pain!

So should I sit here and moan about selfish children who chose great universities

I know several people who do precisely that, and demand that their children live within an hour or so’s drive. Particularly youngest/only children, who are made to feel that they are responsible for their parents’ empty nest feelings.

NewYork

Do you have children who live far away? And how close do you live to your parents and in-laws?

For some of us it is impossible to live near both sets of family - one may live overseas and the other UK. Should we just walk way from that relationship and find a 'local'?

Invite them, don't wait passively. They refuse. Be unavailable for them. Invite them again etc. Eventually priorities will win out. Unfortunately in most families that is that they just can't be bothered.

Don't go - the kids will grow up with their friends, nothing terrible will happen if they aren't in close contact with cousins and grandparents all the time. Traveling "hundreds of times" seems way over the top - we live about 250 miles from PILs but go perhaps once or twice a year, never at Easter or Xmas or NY. I go to my parents (about 100 miles) a couple of times a year too. We all prefer staying in our own home and have made friends locally. I don't know where I'd find time to go move anyway (work FT and home to run etc.)

fiveshelties people like new York want to stop their children moving away, even temporarily, to forestall them from meeting someone who isn’t local. They want to stunt their children’s lives to keep them close. They are why vile “grandparents’ rights” claims are popular amongst old biddies: the need to play matriarch.

FFS. I'm over 55 and don't think anything of driving from central Scotland to Cornwall and back; one year I towed the caravan from Northamptonshire to Kent, to South Wales, to the Lake District and home. In their 70s my parents were still driving two and a half hours to visit me monthly and vice versa. They were also driving down from NE Scotland to the Midlands and across to the south of France for holidays. The only reason for driving was that Mum couldn't fly after a stroke so they couldn't visit family in the USA and Canada at 80. Fucking ageism.

I agree that it takes both sides equally to maintain relationships with adult children. I can see that in a few cases, though, health could be an issue. Equally, finances could be a real issue, but in either direction.

Wales?

maybe the relations don't have passports, and they can't leave!
Maybe they think no-one will talk Welsh.

It strikes me if it's Ireland and if your family are terribly old fashioned that they may see your house as actually your husband's house, and they would only accept an invitation/summons if it came from him.

This would be a mindset from at least 50 years ago but you never know how stuck in the mud some people are.