Travel and family

GibbyLod

Does your family ever try to make you feel guilty when you plan vacation trips that don't include going to visit them?

After reading all of your pre-baby travel plans, I wondered why I haven't done all of the trips I have wanted to do. And then I remembered, the one time I did this, my mom made me feel super guilty for spending money on a trip that didn't include seeing family, and she didn't speak to me for 2 weeks after that. I understand, I miss my family too, but I feel like I don't get to vacation anymore just because I live abroad... How do you handle it? 

blueeyedlove

In the 7 yrs since I've moved to Canada, dh and I have only taken time to go on ONE vacation to NYC. Surprisingly my family didn't give me crap. But they certainly have over the years if we plan a trip down to see them and take a couple days before or after to spend with my bff and her husband, or if we weren't going to be there for some special holiday or event. 

How do I handle it? A friendly little reminder that the road travels both ways, they are more than welcome to use their vacation time to come see us.

I think it really sunk in when I was reapplying for my pr card this year, and had to list every visit I've made outside the country in the last 5 years. 17 trips down to see my family and friends, and only 1 actual vacation.

We won't be making it back home for christmas this year (we do every other year), and my mom is quite sad about this. She began commenting about how with dad starting a new job, he'll have to save up some vacation time and they'll just have to use all that to plan a trip to see us.

I said to my mom, welcome to our world. 18 trips outside the country in the last 5 years, and only one of them was an actual planned vacation that didn't include seeing family and friends. I'm pretty sure at that moment. It sunk in. She felt bad. 

Let's see if I'm lucky my parents will come once a year, as well as my oldest sister. My other sister hasn't been here to see me in 5 years, and she's a teacher and has her summers off.

I'll no longer tolerate the guilt trips, unless they are making as much of an effort to come here to see us, they have nothing to be complaining about. 

And I realize that this might sound reallybitchy, but I do miss my family, and love seeing them. I just wish they'd spend their vacation time and money to come here some too.

Emily523

Our parents are very supportive of our traveling.  They love seeing pictures from places we go.  I guess they're kind of seeing the places we go through us.  We wanted to see as much as possible while living over here. They understood that we would only be coming to the US the 3 times H's company would pay for.  

frlcb

Unless it is her money you are spending then she has no right to complain. That is crazy. My family encourages us to travel!

stever

It depends. We live near my family and 6000 miles away from DH's. His family loves hearing about us travelling around the US,or Canada when we lived there, but I'm pretty sure we would never, ever, ever be able to plan a trip to Europe that didn't include visiting them.

FayeD

His side is thankfully big on travelling.

My side is split. Dad is mostly fine, occasionally presses the issue. Mom tries to lay the guilt.

How we handle it is with a lot of backbone. Also lots of supporting each other. Usually more of DH supporting me since it's my mom that causes the most problems.

Comes down to it's our family (DH, myself, our kids), our vacation time, our money, our effort. We do make a lot of effort to see extended family, but we also make a whole lot of effort to travel as a family. Make memories, explore, experience that the world is big, all that good stuff.

Some family will never get it. Just have to stand your ground and do what is best for you and DH.

AmericanInOz

a bit - but so so much worse now that we have a child - I feel like we can't plan any other big trips each year cause my parents will feel bad if we don't bring her back to see them. I guess we'll just have to plan around that - it's tough for sure!!

Publius

The great thing about planes is that they fly both ways.  It isn't really fair if you guys are the only ones making the effort and are using all of your vacation time and money to do so.  

That being said, I have the same issue on a smaller scale--I can't go to North America without visiting some facet of my family.  They'd be hurt and I'd feel really guilty and craptastic.  If we never move back to the US there will be a lot of cool places we'll never get to see because we spend all of our time there in the same few places visiting family, but I'm OK with that if it means I get to spend time with my family.  

When we're traveling outside of North America they love to see our pictures and hear about all of the places we go.  They get excited about our trips. 

PittPurple

We usually go home once or twice a year but it's a huge stressful production since my family is spread out across the states (brother in Miami, Dad in Pittsburgh, Mom in Santa Fe) and DH's family is spread around the midwest. So we never get to see everyone and it's always a big deal.

DH's family is super supportive of our travelling but my family makes comments here and there. We typically go on 6 or so trips a year for holidays and 1-2 back to the states so we definitely aren't dutiful children! I imagine that if we kept the proportion the same if we have a baby there would be many problems so we'll have to scale back the holidays probably.

And yes, I do a lot of reminding of planes flying THIS way. We spent more on my tickets home for my brother's wedding last summer than we did on the 4 trips to Europe we'd taken earlier that year. When my mom started talking about it, I just pointed that out and she stopped.

Jetur20

I don't know that I agree with this "planes fly both ways" argument while at the same time most of us rave about how Europeans (hell, pretty much anyone) get more vacation days than the US and that is a big reason for not returning.

That being said, my family just likes that I travel and knows that the sure way to get me to refuse to do something is to try to guilt me into doing it.  I guess that's not helpful for you since my answer is just not to act out of guilt.  Why let them manipulate you?  Stand your ground.

NLfoodie

The one time someone tried to gave me a guilt trip about not visiting them I rebutted with 2 things

First: "When was the last time you visited me in NL, I guess I've got early onset dementia, because I can't even remember 1 single time."

Next: "Oh, and by the way remember that half of your family who live in PA (they were in WA or OR), did they move to Hawaii and Mexico and Florida within two years, because I recall you telling everyone about taking trips to all those places but I don't think you mentioned anything about PA."

Yep, that shut 'em up for good. Never heard anything about that again, and now instead of me making room in my schedule to see them when I do visit the Us, they actually clear out their schedule for me. (This wasn't even a very close family member, but someone who thought they had a right to tell me they were disappointed I didn't come to visit them.)