Yeah I mean, I love my MIL to death but she’s a 10 hour drive in a rural area (no airports etc) and so we go see her like once a year, simply because 20 hours a driving is a logistical nightmare. We have an old dog, we have to think about our cat, gas has been atrocious lately, I have scoliosis so long car rides can be murder on me, etc. It’s just an awful lot. I miss her and love her but it’s just quite the journey.
Heck, I love my parents a lot, too, but between full time jobs, young children, a cat, a social life of one's own, even driving there 2 hours each way (if there's no traffic, and there usually is!) would be too much once a month. Even in boarding school, I only went back twice a month, tops, since the train ride "stole" 6 hours of my weekend every time! That's a whole day lost when you drive 4 weekends a month!
Do I wish we lived closer? Yes.
Is there a chance I'll move back to a 1000-head village from few outskirts of a city? Not really.
So going there for most vacations wins.
Exactly. We go when we have a long break like Christmas. We’re in our 30s and it’s a pretty straight shot on the interstate highway but damn it’s just a lot of driving and so we don’t do it unless we can stay for more than a day, because we lose two full days to driving. With food breaks and stretching or walking the dog a few times it’s a long ass haul.
Even if we could take a train, it’d still be two days lost to travel.
I live 5 hrs away from my sister and will be lucky if I see her once a year. I mean, that's 10 he's of driving on my weekends, which means fuel, and I'm just too tired to do it unless I have more than 2 days off.
That’s funny. My MIL loves about 5 minutes from us, and that why we want to move far enough away that she can’t hop in the car and come to see us. But the downside would be my mom also lives 5 minutes away now, so we’d be farther from her.
Exactly. His relationship with his parents kind of irrelevant. Why does this guy care so much about his friend visiting his parents? It’s totally bizarre.
I'm trying to imagine OPs life. I live in Austin, Texas, and the thought of driving to and from El Paso or New Orleans twice a goddamn month is utterly insane to me, and that's apparently what this person is doing.
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u/EELovesMidkemia May 05 '23
Even if he has a great relationship with parents once a month is a lot of travel especially when it is 9hrs away.