I have lived about 3.5-5hrs away from my immediate family members for the last 13 years since I moved up north for uni. I can count on both hands the number of occasions anyone has come to visit me, now me and my partner in that time. That’s across my parents and two siblings. Admittedly we’ve only been in our three bed house for the last 5 years and before that we had a one bed flat so no space for anyone but still.
In the last couple of years my siblings have had children. We do not have any children of our own. COVID aside it’s consistently been us trekking across the country to visit every couple of months. Since my siblings have had their children they are now completely adamant people come to them, also noting that money is now stretched and the added cost of the journeys is money they can’t spare (although they seem to manage other trips). Whilst I do understand that, I can remember spending my last pounds to get train tickets home when I was a skint student and unemployed after uni to make sure I didn’t miss any of their important events. They don’t seem to consider now that we also incur a cost in coming to stay, which for us also involves hotels. Their view is that we should be the ones to put in the effort and the money and that’s that, no middle ground. I understand the hassle of travelling with kids but I can’t imagine us carrying this on as they get older and easier to travel with.
My parents are a whole other issue. We have given them grandchildren and so are simply not worth visiting. They visit (when allowed) my siblings every other weekend. They do not call or message. I sometimes experiment to see how long it goes on for. It can be months. I was always the one ringing up every week but something clicked one day and I just stopped. It was 8 weeks before I heard a peep out of them.
I’m not sure what to do but it makes me feel sad. I love my nieces and nephew but I feel like as the ones without we are almost less somehow. I’m tempted to stop visiting now even though we are now allowed. As soon as we could leave our area and stay over night I spent several weekends in a row driving all over the country getting to see everyone while we could. I was exhausted and also having to work 60hr weeks, logging on to my laptop before people woke up on the weekend mornings to cram work in from their sofa beds.
On the one hand it feels petty but on the other it makes me feel like shit that we don’t matter because of how our lives are different.
Has anyone else experienced this? Do we just stop?