Parents are making me feel guilty for living 50 mins away, am I making a mistake?
So my (F 30) parents (F 57 and M 58) live in Kildare, and I moved about an hour away from my parents about 3 years ago with my husband to the coast in meath. I absolutely love it by the sea and myself and my husband have really loved living here. It is a bit of a trek on the m1 and the m50 to visit my parents but I usually saw them once a week.
I would be the one to visit my parents all the time. They very rarely come to us, and when they do its always a fleeting visit (but maybe this is because we live in a small apartment) my mam in particular has always commented and moaned about how far away I live.
Fast forward to last year when I was pregnant (had quite a challenging pregnancy) I began to be able to visit less and the guilt I felt for not being able to go over as much started to mount.
We have gone over most weeks with our baby son to visit my parents, they have visited us a handful of times and its always a fleeting visit.
Anyways, now that our son is born we realised that we need a bigger place, and we are looking at a lovely house by the sea in Dublin. We would have friends living within 15 mins of here but would still be about 50 mins from my parents. But now my parents are really piling on the guilt saying that blood is thicker than water and we really should live close to them for them to help out with our son.
Another piece of the puzzle is my mam suffers a lot from anxiety and she has particular issues around traffic and being by herself so its hard for her to drive over. (This is not something she would easily admit to)
I can tell that my mam has spoken to other family members about this as I've had aunts try to talk to me about how important it is to live close to family when your children are young.
The whole topic is very tense and I am scared to bring it up around my parents now. They dont seem too interested in talking about the issue either. I just feel so guilty about it.
I still plan to visit with my son as much as possible at weekends, and overnights.
I feel terribly guilty but I just really love where we are looking to move by the sea, its a very aspirational place and I never dreamed I'd have the chance to live somewhere so beautiful. But on the other hand im also just scared it is going to be hard to not have my family very close for emergencies etc. Especially when I return to work. And im worried that my son wont see his grandparents that much if I dont move closer. All the travelling will be on me.
Am I making a mistake by wanting to live an hour away?