"You left us, so you should pay the phone calls etc to keep in touch!"

[quinne]

Did anyone else find that when you leave the country your friends and family tended to see it as your responsibility to call them to stay in touch rather it being 50/50 as before?

Yes. And it also seems to be up to us to make the effort to see people when we are back visiting the UK, even though we have travelled for hours in the first place.

I think that's rather unfriendly of friends and family.
But phone calls can be expensive. Shame that whoever said that only wants to stay in touch conditionally.
Email? Letters? Skype?

Nope, it's 50/50. But we do find that when we visit we are expected to do the running around so it is never a holiday.

We've even been gently ticked off by my SIL for not calling in more often ( ratio of calls and emails us 100: her 1)

It has taken a while (10 years!!) for them to realise that nowadays it is equally easy and not at all expensive for them to keep in touch with us. We do use Skype a lot, in fact most of the time, otherwise it is 50/50 split of regular telephone calls with my mum and ILs. My dad will only call if it one of the dc birthdyas and often he forgets! My siblings never call, but then we FB and text a lot. To be honest I am used to it by now.

Like Yeahbut says it is the effort we have to put in running around to see everyone when we are back in the UK that really tires me out. So we are not going back this summer

For me its not even about the money - its the effort and general feeling of having to do all the running. i have to think about it and make the call. If they are free to talk then great, if not try again later.
I know this sounds like a moan (probably is a moan actually!) but it does leave me feeling insecure. Do these people who can't be bothered to make an effort to stay in touch really our friends? I don't think so..

My husband says if we move back to the UK, we'd re-establish our old lives in a few months and its just a case of out of sight and out of mind, but I think I'd be looking for new friends who care whether I'm alive or not!

We had that too - I think that there is still the attitude that phoning abroad from the UK is horribly expensive, even though it isn't any more. I think that we got into a routine of us phoning too, and then it was a habit for everyone.

Ditto with the half-killing yourself to go around and visit everyone too - that's not a holiday! In fact, you need a holiday afterwards as it's more tiring than normal life. Mind you, we still have that when we visit our home towns and we're back in the UK now. It's our "duty" to parade DD around all the family and family friends. You know how it is "if you could just pop in and see Aunty So-and-so, it would mean so much to her". They're all lovely people, but it just gets too much.

I get that to some extent but then phoning abroad from where I am (Germany) is a lot cheaper than the other way round so even if people phone me I tend to phone back.

Just to put the other side(and I am not unsympathetic to the views already expressed because I grew up living overseas) my db is overseas,they will never commit to when they are home until a minimum of a month before, making planning difficult,my parents tie temselves in knots trying to accomodate every possible combination of dates that they could be home,they always want picking up from airport at a couple of days noticeby my 70 year old dad who is also still working,they will not commit until the last minute to arrangement when they are home until the last minute in case a better offer comes along and also they insisit on coming in school terms and get narked because it is difficult to take children out of school to see them and also that I won't take all my holiday when they arr home.

All becasue we should be making the effort to see them,they now always rent a house in the same place and we all travel there to save them travelling around but I am perplexed that they spend most of their time moaning about having see everyone and the weather,why do they come home then?They have two or three other holidays a year in hot places without family so I assumed thay came back to UK to see us ,clearly I was mistaken

There school holidays are roughly the same as ours but they go away for most of them so although they say they want us to go out to them we can only do this in school terms and with 2 children in secondary school this is not feasible.

Sorry bit of a rant but it is a sore subject ,every year I balnk out the whole summer nearly ,make no arrangemnts with our own friends just so that I can be sure of being avaliable to see them and then at the last minute they announce that they are not here to parade around reletives and have decided to spend the only weekend that they are home having a quiet time just the four of them....surely thats what they do when they are at home ???? I am baffled

siblings just can be really tiresome floaty IYAM

OK, so those two stories are dreadful. We always phoned grandparents, even though they weren't badly off, because we were both working and they weren't. Twas only fair.
And there was no way that we would expect such close relatives to dance around all our plans. The problem that we had was that we had bugger all holiday allowance, so if we saved it up for a trip to the UK then that was our only chance to relax and take some time out. Which never happened.

It's really tough trying to keep in touch with people after you move abroad. I used to do the running but did draw the line on my birthday, when people would send a text asking me to call so they could wish me happy birthday. I did think then that they could pay for at least a quick call or send a card.

quinne, I think your dh is right about the 'out of sight out of mind' mentality. I found that when we spent a year back in the UK last year all the really good friends made an effort to call and come and visit even though we were quite far out of London where most of them were. I had forgotten that these people lead incredibly busy lives and social lives are planned around hectic working schedules often involving last minute travelling and pre booked weekends booked months in advance. Naturally my sister and nephew came to stay a couple of times, but for my single childfree living-it-up-in-London sister it was a huge effort and she didn't see our new baby until he was 3 months old. I was quite upset about her lack of effort. It was and it wasn't, quite easy to slip back into life with our old friends and to compensate I made quite a lot of new friends locally, who ironically have hardly been in touch since we left the UK in January. Family is family, often you just have to shut up and put up, but with friends I think you would find that the ones that really matter to you and you to them will keep in touch, even if not as frequently as you both would like.

I can totally understand your sentiments floaty. It wouldn't cross my mind to act in such a way on my return and we normally try to give as much notice as possible so as not to put people out. Of course we want to see everyone, its just so tiring to rush around with 3 small dc, living out of a suitcase in other people's houses, during our very limited holiday allowance. Plus there has to be time to fit in all the necessary shopping

our first trip home we visited everyone in a fortnight taking in Scotland, southwest england and London. Now we just do one portion at a time.

LOL at the shopping comment. Its a big element for us too - we go back to the UK with an empty suitcase every six months to load up on new clothes for our sons. Then with any spare space we pack out the suitcase with supermarket shopping. I used to buy into the "rip off britain" idea but its not true, at least compared to Eastern Europe

Aha, a shopping buddy, always good to have where are you quinne by the way?

Croatia... how about you?

you wouldn't believe the things that go on our Uk shopping list... mirror screws, polyfilla, calpol, 10 pairs of shorts age 5-6, 5 pairs age 4-5, 10 t-shirts etc, novels, school books, birthday cards for the next six months.... Its like a military operation when we go back to the UK and packing the night before is an art form! So far we've never been charged for excess luggage but that's more about the goodwill of the check in staff who see us laden and with two children in tow. Even our sons know not to complain about wearing 5 layers of clothing at that moment!

It was more a question of my mum & stepfather paying for my overseas flights to visit my dad. Fair enough!