I will try to make this short..My husband and i have been in the military for 17yrs. most of that away from family. We are now within traveling distance to our families,for a year now. Mine live in Col. and NJ. His in northern Mi. We have gone to visit his family about 2 times with all of us and he has gone once or twice by himself.Havent even asked to go to NJ yet. The kids and i went to colo. this July for the first time in 6yrs. we stayed for a week.We went to Mi. for a family reunion. Saw both sides of his family sept. 21 my sons birthday. they want us to go back up there on dec. 19th for an early xmas. My NJ family is having thanksgiving this year. He didnt go to colo. with kids and i. he said he couldnt get the time off. I told him i wasnt sure if i was going to be able to get the time off in dec. because we will be busy(retail). I had a short conversation with him about how we should go about visiting eachothers families. no conclutions was made. I asked him if he had any idea how we should go about this so that it was far. he sat there for a few minutes and said, just dont go anywhere. i said, ok. and then it was quite for a while.my aunt is having thanksgiving at her house. I told him i would tell my aunt we wouldnt be able to afford going over there for thanksgiving this year if we wanted to make the mi. trip and be able to buy xmas gifts also. he didnt say anything. i told him i didnt want to seem like the smuck to your family but it just seems like if we want to see our family we are the ones having to do the traveling. i dont know if they realize how expensive it is to make trips or even if they know how much it costs in time off of work and school. i said, it just pisses me off that if we want to see our family members we are the ones that have to sacrifice time and money to make the trip. its not like we make a lot of money. we especially dont make as much as most of the others. he said you make it sound like we go up every week. i didnt reply. i got mad. that wasnt the point i was trying to make. im still pissed. he tried to say i didnt even mention the thanksgiving thing. would that have mattered? he says its twice as far to go to eaither of my families houses as it does to go to his. it still makes me mad that we see his family more and it feels like he doesnt even care that i dont see mine. i dont know what to do with this one. im stumped. he says him and the kids are going eaither way. he also said he got leave for those days already.Which made me mad because he didnt even take leave when i wanted him to go to col. with us. and he has his leave request already aproved on such a popular time of year?! whatever. ok so ive vented enough thanks for listening.
I'm sure you were just venting. I understand where you are coming from although we dont have the military thing making things more difficult.. I'm living in Sweden right now and my family is back in Wisconsin. For the past 9 years it has been our duty to lay out the money to travel to see the family. It's frustrating cause it seems like the only that cares that we gather family is us. It's expensive to travel back and forth and would love for my family come to us.
I guess we just have to look at the situation and make decisions about when we can get there and try to balance the two sides of the family. They will just have to understand. We ended up getting a web camera and so has my family so at least we can see eachother that way. It's not the same but it helps anyways.
I realize you wrote this awhile back. Maybe you resolved it. But I wanted to comment…So with you on this one. It is similar for us. We have made very long trips several times to see his family and it costs a lot-SURE does it’s amazing just a couple of people and can put you in the poor house None of them have ever come to see us. No advice just read this and will hope that others advise.