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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t know anyone in our family - and there are a lot of us - whose adult kids don’t want to live as close to their parents as they can.   All of our adult kids (four) live within a 20 minute drive, and two of the four are within walking distance.  Most kids of my brothers’ and sister’s kid live just as close to their parents too (in other cities), and the ones who don’t are sad that they can’t.

So many dysfunctional families on DCUM.  I wonder if it’s just a DMV regional thing. [/quote]

You'll have to accept that "different from me" does not equal "dysfunctional". It's hard, I know.
The reality is that you're in the DC area, capital of the world. There are MANY transplants from all over the planet who work here because their expertise is needed, and paid for. Their parents are far away. Sometimes they feel sad, sometimes they're fine with it.

But the mere fact that families live scattered across the globe is not dysfunctional. We are an international family, with parents who also didn't live close to their parents, and we know many families like ours. At one point, I have close relatives settled or working on every continent except Antarctica. This is the modern world, OP. I would never prevent my kids from following their heart's desire to the opposite side of the world, because of some strange notion that a "functional" family lives 20 minutes away from each other.

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Just STFU.  This thread is full of posts where posters are taking shots against their parents and affirmatively saying that it’s good to be as far away from family as humanely possible.  And that is crazy dysfunctional bullshit.  As I said in my post, we do have some family who don’t live near their parents - but they’re not happy about it.  THAT is normal.  Being happy about being away from your family is the definition of dysfunction. [/quote]

I posted early in the thread about how I choose to live pretty far from my parents in order to preserve our relationship. I'd be the first to tell you my family is dysfunctional. Generations of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. Enmeshment. Poor communication. Lots of emotional projection. Few healthy coping mechanisms for stress or conflict.

Why would I want to live close to that? Some families are dysfunctional and that is precisely why some adult children choose distance. I want to protect my DC from that dysfunction.[/quote]

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