Daughter who lives abroad

[Annie1955]

Hi there, just wanted some advice. My daughter lives abroad and has done for over 6 years now. Sometimes she is very forthcoming when I contact her and sometimes she just ignores me.
I try not to bother her very much just sometimes send her some nonsense just to keep in contact.
We moved house about 6 months ago and she still has a UK bank account and also a bank account in her new country. I need her to change her UK bank account address and for some reason she still has not done this and when I ask her she just ignores me. She says she will do this but no idea why she can't just do it as it will take a few minutes. I am also worried with all the scam situations that money may be taken from it without her even knowing and I know that there was a large payment from her aunty when she died that went in there.
I was never like this with my mum. We have always got on really well and were very close and contacted each other all the time. This seemed to change maybe a couple of years ago and yes she is very happy with a wonderful man who she is married to.
I know I am probably just fussing about but it is making me feel very sad about the situation. She is also the same with her father.

I also lived abroad from my early 20s until now when I am in my mid-40s. There has definitely been busy periods in my life where I have had less contact with my parents even though we are close and there is no childhood trauma or anything to work through. I think in those periods getting nonsence messages and cards sent to me in the post would have been a bit much. When you have little time you should make the time spent communicating meaningful. I would have rather had one phone call every 2 weeks with my mum where we actually spoke about things that mattered than spend 2-3 minutes a day looking at pointless memes or cards and think of a response.

Thank you that's a good idea

Unfortunately - and this might sting - this sounds like what my mum might say about me. I suspect you’re around the same age as my mum, I can’t say what your relationship with your daughter was growing up (my mother probably thinks we had a good relationship) so let’s park that.
What I will say is that she has absolutely no grasp on what my job entails or the hours I work and that’s without a time zone difference (at the moment). My job is intense and long hours. It can be evenings and weekends. I often avoid her calls because she inevitably wants to talk at me rather than to me and it is, largely, “nonsense”. She will bring up a neighbour from 25 years ago or proceed to tell me about what they had for dinner or how so and so has had a baby (I haven’t seen so and so since I was 13). Take the Bank Holiday just gone which I actually had off. I was somewhere without phone signal for part of the weekend - I came back to five missed calls and two voicemails. Worried, I called her to find she wanted to talk about the bbq they’d had. My dad is still with her and my sibling still lives with them.
She went through a spate of calling me on weekdays at e.g. 11 am. I’d answer the calls because I assumed it was an emergency and then she’d ask why I couldn’t just have a chat (because I’m at work!). So now I don’t answer the phone during work hours.
Re your visits, you say she was keen the first couple of times - it’s easy to be keen the first couple of times someone visits you in a place and you get to be a tourist at home but then there’s only so many things you haven’t already done.
Please try not to take it personally. Your daughter is several hours ahead and may also be working very long hours (as is quite normal in SE Asia/the Far East) so she perhaps wants quality rather than quantity when it comes to communication. Maybe step back for a bit and let her initiate contact for a while.

I mention relative age not to be rude btw and hope it wasn’t taken that way.

Not at all 🙂