Are my expectations for cross-country visits unreasonable?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not unreasonable to want him to visit once a year. But it doesn't actually matter if what is reasonable. He doesn't want to do it, and he's allowed to visit as much or as little as he wants. So how do you handle your quite reasonable feelings about a situation you can't change? Counseling for you, finding other ways to connect with him, traveling to him (cross country train could be an adventure if you wanted to try it!), etc.

Another good answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 26 year old DS graduated college 4 years ago and found a job in the DC area (thus why I am positing here). We live (and he grew up) on the west coast. This wasn’t a surprise, he had wanted to move east once he graduated, and in his field there always was more opportunities for him on the east coast then the West Coast.

I’m frustrated because in the three and a half years he has been in the DC area, he has flown back to the west coast twice, one of those times for a family wedding (so it was less of a relaxed visit). My sister and law (and family) live around two hours away from DC, so he has been joining in on their festivities for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc, which I definitely appreciate, but I can’t feel like he could be making a better effort at visiting more regularly.

I know that it is expensive and can be challenging to fly cross country, and I would be understanding if I felt he could not make it, but it feels like he is specifically choosing to to visit. Last year he flew to a family reunion for my husband’s family, and just recently he flew to the wedding of my husband’s nephew (his cousin). Especially that last one feels hurtful, because it feels like he had to have chosen to go to the wedding rather then visiting us for Christmas, made worse by the fact he admitted he wasn’t super close with his cousin and wasn’t expecting an invitation.

My husband feels like I have unrealistic expectations of him visiting at least once a year when he is across the country, but my husband also attended both the family reunion and the wedding, and took a trip to the DC area around a year ago to visit our son and other family, so he has seen him three more times then me. I have never been a good traveler, and have some medical issues that cause traveling, especially by air, a challenge. We all went to visit him in person the first year he was out there, but it isn’t realistic for us to visit him more regularly.

So, my question is whether I am being unreasonable like my husband thinks? And should I bring it up to my son?

For the record, my son can afford to fly out (and has admitted it), and if he couldn’t, we would absolutely help him financially.

His life, his time, his choice how to spend his time and his money. You can choose to visit him, or offer to pay for the flight home if you think that's what's stopping him. But chances are he has limited time off and wants to spend it with friends or a girlfriend.

[Anonymous]

Can you go to your sister's for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Who do you spend it with usually, other kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was a young g adult I didn’t visit my family often because frankly it was unbelievably boring and I didn’t want to waste vacation that way. Does your son have friends and things to do in your home town?

Maybe think of times and places to get together elsewhere that would be more appealing.

+1

Not the best use of time/money/limited vacation days. Would rather spend it with friends or people who are geographically closer.

And you helped him with rent twice when he was an undergrad? So he paid his way through school?

OP, you sound needy and self-centered.

[Anonymous]

Would you ever consider moving closer to your son? Sounds like he wants to be permanently on the East Coast? You don’t need to move to his neighborhood or even his city but perhaps it would be easier if you were a car ride, rather than a plane ride apart

[Anonymous]

Yes, your expectations are unreasonable, because they're all about you. It's expensive and not cost effective to fly, especially if you're young and have work obligations and don't have money growing on trees. It's admirable that he's joining your SIL family for holidays. As others say, if you want to see him, you'll have to travel as you seem to have time and money. As and adult child, I personally never liked visiting my childhood home as moms especially often remain back in time when the adults were "children" with all the subsequent expectations. Your son, like other adult kids, have moved on from that. And I know you're stuck in time because you expect him to come to you, and you don't treat him as an equal adult that he now is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

To clear up a couple of points. We have offered to pay for his airfare, but he hasn’t accepted. He is very independent and has never been willing to take money from us/others. He has a notebook of the 2-3 times we paid his rent during college (because he was broke). He keeps saying he wants to pay us back, but we haven’t let him because we don’t feel like he owes us anything.

I am able to fly to see him, we did do a big family trip to DC two years ago, and are currently planning another trip. However, thanks to a drunk driver, I have a significant amount of metal in my body that makes it hard to get through security.

That's a BS reason to not travel. My DH has two knee replacements and has no problem getting through security. He tells them up front that he has two fake knees and they use the wand. Get TSA precheck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

To clear up a couple of points. We have offered to pay for his airfare, but he hasn’t accepted. He is very independent and has never been willing to take money from us/others. He has a notebook of the 2-3 times we paid his rent during college (because he was broke). He keeps saying he wants to pay us back, but we haven’t let him because we don’t feel like he owes us anything.

I am able to fly to see him, we did do a big family trip to DC two years ago, and are currently planning another trip. However, thanks to a drunk driver, I have a significant amount of metal in my body that makes it hard to get through security.

That's a BS reason to not travel. My DH has two knee replacements and has no problem getting through security. He tells them up front that he has two fake knees and they use the wand. Get TSA precheck.

This. OP - this selfish/martyr mindset happens quickly ,but can be stopped if you can own up to your behavior and truly answer - what kind of relationship do I want to have with my ds (and future grandkids.....play the long game here, OP)? Why are you separating yourself from your family? Your dh travels, but not you, to these events? That is your choice. If you have residual PTSD from the accident, that's on YOU to fix. It is NOT your ds' responsibility to do that. My dh has metal in his leg from the military. It takes a 2 second conversation with a TSA agent. You're making excuses and letting life pass you by. There is also a nice thing called xanax.

I assume you are 50-65ish. You will not get younger. If you don't maintain a youthful mindset, you will age faster than you can imagine. And if you don't put in the work to stay in his life, he will not put in the work later when you are LITERALLY physically unable to travel. He is doing exactly what he should be doing. When I was early in my career I had TEN days in total to be sick and go on vacation. You are being very selfish to expect him to use his days on you. He deserves a vacation that doesn't revolve around you. He should be focusing on building his life in DC. He owes you nothing. And if you make it a power struggle, you will lose.

Get some therapy, get your butt on a plane, and live your life.

[Anonymous]

This has already been said but:

I visit my family far less often than they prefer because it is a boring/repetitive use of what little vacation (and vacation funds) we have. I don’t want to spend all of my very limited vacation time in their town and my DH and kids do not either.

This doesn’t mean we never visit. We did more often when our children were very small (we didn’t want to take very small kids that age on vacations and instead spent more time with family). But we visit less often than they would like-especially now, and for shorter periods. We are much more likely to attend large family events where we can see everyone at once and have more fun (and often those are not located in the boring town my parents live in). We want to spend time taking our own kids on fun vacations and having new experiences now that they are old enough to enjoy (and before we run out of time!)

My parents and extended family (like you) do not like to travel. They rarely visit us (far far less often than we have visited them). My parents and extended family (like you) turn down all suggestions of “let’s meet up at xyz interesting location and have fun and spend quality time together”. And it is not a financial issue. I have even suggested meeting up at a fun lake resort town location that is a 6hr drive (or easy flight if they prefer) from their hometown- still leaving the bulk of the travel burden on us- and no takers on that either. For the most part, they really only want to see and spend time with us at THEIR home(s).

90% of the travel, vacation time use, and travel funding burden is on us. So we don’t see them as often as they would like.

I don’t mean to be harsh. But just to give your the other side of this. And it will likely be worse when he marries and has a family (because now he will be working around many more people’s schedules)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We always pay for travel home. We are grateful they are willing to take vacation days to spend time with us.

This^^^

We pay for travel to/from us, for family vacations (and once there is a SO/Spouse/partner we will pay for them and grandkids as well). In response, our oldest finds out when younger sibling (4 years behind in college still) is home (also cross country) and plans to come the same 4 day weekends. Also plans to come home when sibling spring break is . It's work for the oldest as they cannot just work remotely---they have limited "work from home days" and have to plan accordingly. But we have seen them 40+ days in the last year, between vacations, family weddings, and them coming to visit and us visiting them (only 3 days was us traveling to them).

Figure as long as we pay, they will likely continue to come as much as they can (it would be costly to fly 4-5 times per year otherwise as a 25 yo just starting out). No strings attached---they just know we always pay for them so it's not a financial burden

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We always pay for travel home. We are grateful they are willing to take vacation days to spend time with us.

This. He might say he can afford the flights but at that age no one has unlimited funds unless they have a trust fund. He may technically be able to swing it but it's a burden and he also wants to do other things -- fly to these weddings and go out with friends.

Tell him it's very important to you that you can see him at least once a year even with the distance, and since you can't travel as easily you'd like to offer to pay for him to fly home once a year. You can put a plug in for Christmas or Thanksgiving if that's important to you but I'd also be open to when he most wants to visit -- sometimes you actually get better family time when it's not a holiday because there are fewer events and less pressure.

But I think the key here is to meet him halfway by taking the cost part of it off the table and just pay for his flights. Especially if you feel you can't go visit him.

Yes it must be a fine balance between family and al their friends. My 26 yo has attended 5-6 weddings per year last year and this year, and was in 6 of the weddings. So add in bachelor parties and all the wedding weekend stuff, and it's costly as well as it's often a 4 day weekend (Thursday to travel there, so you are there for all the friday and Saturday events, and then back home on Sunday). So you must recognize they are young adults and will have lots of friends activities as well

[Anonymous]

Your excuse is BS and he knows it. I have several metal parts and TSA is not a real issue. Never more than 5 extra minutes.

If you want to see your kid, make the effort. Don’t have expectations. If you choose not to go to events where he is, that is on you too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has already been said but:

I visit my family far less often than they prefer because it is a boring/repetitive use of what little vacation (and vacation funds) we have. I don’t want to spend all of my very limited vacation time in their town and my DH and kids do not either.

This doesn’t mean we never visit. We did more often when our children were very small (we didn’t want to take very small kids that age on vacations and instead spent more time with family). But we visit less often than they would like-especially now, and for shorter periods. We are much more likely to attend large family events where we can see everyone at once and have more fun (and often those are not located in the boring town my parents live in). We want to spend time taking our own kids on fun vacations and having new experiences now that they are old enough to enjoy (and before we run out of time!)

My parents and extended family (like you) do not like to travel. They rarely visit us (far far less often than we have visited them). My parents and extended family (like you) turn down all suggestions of “let’s meet up at xyz interesting location and have fun and spend quality time together”. And it is not a financial issue. I have even suggested meeting up at a fun lake resort town location that is a 6hr drive (or easy flight if they prefer) from their hometown- still leaving the bulk of the travel burden on us- and no takers on that either. For the most part, they really only want to see and spend time with us at THEIR home(s).

90% of the travel, vacation time use, and travel funding burden is on us. So we don’t see them as often as they would like.

I don’t mean to be harsh. But just to give your the other side of this. And it will likely be worse when he marries and has a family (because now he will be working around many more people’s schedules)

My extended family guilt me to fly out to Montana to visit extended family. If I was going to drop 5-10k on plane tickets and hotels, it would be to the Caribbean. Sorry, not super interested in meeting So-And-So's new girlfriend who will be out of the picture in 2 years (or less)

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you and him put about the same effort, with you having physical limitations and him the limitation of time/money. So it works both ways. Can you and dh go have Christmas with sil this year? Your dh having seen him 5 times sounds good, better than average even for being this far away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We always pay for travel home. We are grateful they are willing to take vacation days to spend time with us.

This^^^

We pay for travel to/from us, for family vacations (and once there is a SO/Spouse/partner we will pay for them and grandkids as well). In response, our oldest finds out when younger sibling (4 years behind in college still) is home (also cross country) and plans to come the same 4 day weekends. Also plans to come home when sibling spring break is . It's work for the oldest as they cannot just work remotely---they have limited "work from home days" and have to plan accordingly. But we have seen them 40+ days in the last year, between vacations, family weddings, and them coming to visit and us visiting them (only 3 days was us traveling to them).

Figure as long as we pay, they will likely continue to come as much as they can (it would be costly to fly 4-5 times per year otherwise as a 25 yo just starting out). No strings attached---they just know we always pay for them so it's not a financial burden

Why are everyone’s kids such poor losers. That seems to be the common theme in all these responses.

You can get flights from DC to SFO/LAX/Denver/Seattle for the same cost as a train to NYC. My kid often pays like $250 RT…even around holidays.

Others have pointed out the real issue…it’s boring as shit to visit OP, so it’s not the cost in absolute (I bet their kid blows that amount of money in an average weekend without thinking twice).