Living far from family

Locke

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#1
In 5-10 years, I would really love to move out west to British Columbia, as long as my partner was able to secure a job there.

The main thing keeping me (us) here is our families. We would be a 5 hr. flight away or 4-5 day drive. We are both quite close with our families.

For those of you who are close to your parents/siblings/etc. and live a great distance away from them, is it hard? Do you feel like you are missing out on important things, or that they are missing out on important things?
 
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#2
Right now I live 14 hours from my family by car, and 3ish hour flight (direct). I've managed to arrange travel for visits for big events/holidays, but its difficult being so far away, for sure. I am very, very close with my family. I do hope that my SO and I can both move back towards my family at some point.
 
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#3
My family is a wandering family, so this topic is right up my alley! My maternal grandparents live in the south of the U.S., all my paternal relatives live on the west coast, I went to school in Maryland, then England, then I moved to New York City. Right now my mom lives in Italy and I'm in Virginia. My dad is looking at places in Scotland to get with my mom and I'm looking at going back to school in England again.

We are very close. My parents and I especially are very close (I'm an only child). Always been able to share everything and we support each other. It just becomes a way of life honestly. We skype a lot. We email a lot. We nudge each other when somebody hasn't emailed in too long. We have on occasion used a pay phone in desperation. And we trust that if someone is doing something where contact can't happen (say, they're somewhere very remote - my family goes on some whacky adventures!), it will start back up again when they're able. We try to plan get-togethers in advance to have something to look forward to (I'm going to Italy in March, for example).

I don't feel that we've missed out on too much in the grand scheme of things; we always manage to get together for The Big Things (weddings, big family reunions), but otherwise we all have very eclectic faraway lives and that's how we like it. Every family is different of course, but plenty of families live very close together and are chronically fed up with each other, we happen to have a lot of distance and make up for it :)
 
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#4
We've lived about 600 miles, 9.5 hours by car, from our family since 2011. It's been hard since we are both very close to our families. After 2015, which included driving home for 2 funerals, we are doing what we can to move back.
 

Fran27

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#5
Well it depends on your relationship with them. I can't say it's been a problem for me, although my mom doesn't like it (she comes to visit 3x a year and I could do with less). I don't miss my brother, I miss my sister sometimes but we argue a lot and she comes to visit occasionally, so it's not too bad. We haven't been able to go back there for 3 years though because it's too expensive for the 4 of us (they're in France).

For my husband, his parents lived 5 hours away (one died, the other is in a home 20 minutes away), one of his brothers lives 1 hour away (used to be closer, then they moved to California but they came back) but the others are in Tennessee or Wisconsin and yeah, that's a problem, because seeing each other basically means spending a lot of money on airfare and hotels and using your vacation time for it. His brothers don't even see their mom anymore (but she has dementia and wouldn't notice anyway, so there's that).

So no, if I was close to my family, I wouldn't do it, personally. And then, there's friends (or lack of). I don't have any friends here (just other moms I've met through my kids, but no real friends), although it would be less of an issue for someone with more hobbies/less introvert than me.
 

JessLough

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#6
I wouldn't say I'm super close with my family, but having moved 5 hours away last year, it's hard even so. We try to make time to go down for big holidays, but we currently don't have anything planned for the foreseeable future. I'm pretty bummed about it, but it is what it is.
 
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#7
I just moved from 20 minutes away from my aunt and grandmother to 8 hours away. I am very close with both of them. It's been six weeks, but it hasn't been too hard. It's nice that it's a day/day and a half drive, I will be able to go home for my grandmothers funeral without much trouble. Which is kind of the only big family event on the horizon, ha. I saw my aunt fairly regularly, but not as often as you'd think for being only twenty minutes away. She can still call me when she can't get Netflix to work so it's pretty much the same.

My family is very small though - me, aunt, grandma. One cousin I guess I'm counting again, although she lives on the west coast and that's a more complicated relationship. I've always been independent and I hate holidays (although I did go home for Christmas this year, Grandma's 96 we keep thinking this is going to be the last one...) so the distance doesn't bother me much.

Miss those "Day before payday I'm starving please feed me" dinners though.
 
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#8
In 5-10 years, I would really love to move out west to British Columbia, as long as my partner was able to secure a job there.

The main thing keeping me (us) here is our families. We would be a 5 hr. flight away or 4-5 day drive. We are both quite close with our families.

For those of you who are close to your parents/siblings/etc. and live a great distance away from them, is it hard? Do you feel like you are missing out on important things, or that they are missing out on important things?
Well, in my case I'm really close to my family especially my Mom. Right now I'm living really far from her and at first it was difficult for me since I missed her so much but I'm in the right age and living with my partner. Decision made me think that I did the right thing. That thing called independence.:cool:
 

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