It's on you to find healthy boundaries.
Dear Prudence,
I’m in my early thirties and moved away from my small hometown to a big city for my dream job 10 years ago. It’s about a four-hour car ride away. My other two sisters have also moved away (two and six hours away respectively). My mom is devastated (my dad is too, but less vocally); she wanted to be the matriarch to a big family with loads of grandkids, but we’ve all moved away. I get why she’s upset, especially as her sister has the life my mom wants with an army of kids around. I feel bad that my happiness appears to be incompatible with hers.
But it’s been 10 years, and she still cries when I leave after a visit. Yet she’s never visited my home as she doesn’t like the big city. We talk all the time, and she talks to my sisters every day as well, but we’re constantly walking on eggshells. If there’s anything less than perfect in my life, her only suggestion is to move back to my hometown. If my nephew is having struggles, Mom suggests it’s because he’s not close enough to his family. She’s constantly making snide and bitter remarks that she is actively unhappy that we’re not around. She’s suggested 10 years is enough time to have a career and get it out of my system, but now I should come home. I’m exhausted. I’ve called her out on it, that it’s not fair that her dreams and happiness depend on us living the life she wants for us, not the lives that we’ve chosen for ourselves. I’ve suggested she get therapy, but she’s basically told me she’s choosing to be unhappy. I think she resents us as we’ve chosen to leave but she’s chosen to stay to be near her mom.
I love her so much and it kills me that she’s this sad. I really don’t think she gets that she’s pushing us away or how hurt and sad her comments make us. I know I can’t fix it—I just can’t see a way of making this situation more tolerable.
— Not What Mom Wanted
Re: It's on you to find healthy boundaries.
"Mom, I AM home. This city is my home."
Be clear: "Mom, if every conversation is going to involve you telling me that I made a bad choice and that choice makes you unhappy we will stop having conversations."
I'm in the spot of LW while talking to my mom at times. I am all of an hour away but now with my dad having incontinence issues plus his early dementia it's rough on her. I get it. But the other day I flat out said, "You not coming here to visit my kids is not a viable solution. You're going to have to figure out how to get out of the house."
But maybe stop talking to her every day. That's... a lot.
The LW should parrot that back to her when her snide and bitter comments happen. Remind her that all of her children love her, but are all also very happy with the places they have chosen to live. NOONE is coming back and she needs to learn to accept that or spend the rest of her life unhappy.
LW and their sisters should also start cutting conversations short, when they turn into mom's vent sessions about them living too far away.
I also hugely side-eye people that bitch and whine this much about missing their kids/grandkids, yet can't be bothered to take a long weekend and drive 2-6 hours to visit their grandkids more. That it ALWAYS has to be their children coming back home to visit them. While unfortunately a long plane ride and not a car ride, I have some resentment with my own family for this last sentence.
Edit: words
My parents are here a fair amount.
My ILs are... not. (It's not that they never come, but it's far less often.) Their solution to seeing us more is that we move "home" to their city, as DH's brothers have already done. We are the ones ruining everything by not just living here too.
It can also work the other way too. I've seen the reverse and it's also rather frustrating.
For my BIL/SIL, the thing that would frustrate MIL is that they'd take vacations either separately or with their kids but wouldn't come out here to visit. So the impression received was that MIL and FIL would be 'fit in' as BIL desired but he also had the expectation that FIL would go over and help him with projects. I think now that their kids are older they may try to make more trips out here especially as the ILs age and FIL has been clear that there will be a time that making the drive to them will be harder just because of their ages.