A woman feels hurt and frustrated that her brother and sister-in-law, who live 7 hours away, rarely visit her and her family despite having vacation time and “golden weekends.” The sister-in-law, a resident physician with a demanding schedule, cites her mental health as a reason for not traveling and the woman struggles to reconcile her desire for more time with her brother with her brother’s responsibilities.
Source: Reddit
My SIL (married to my brother) is a resident physician who works 60-80hr weeks and frequently works 1 or both days of the weekend. Her residency is a 7hr drive from where me, my husband and my baby girl (1.5yr old).
My brother and I were always very close growing up and even lived in the same apartment and later the same city. We were never more than 20-30m away from each other. I got married and had my baby and he moved 7hrs away to be with his fiance, now wife, pretty soon after I had my baby. It was devastating for me as I had always pictured us being close and him really involved as an uncle. SIL works 6am-5:30pm 6-7 days a week but does have some “golden weekends” where she has Saturday and Sunday off. She usually has one per month and then she has 3 weeks of vacation (never over Christmas or New Years holidays).
During those 1 weekend a month that she has completely off, her and my brother either stay at home because she needs to relax or will drive 2hrs to see her family. During the 3 weeks of vacation, which she is only able to take 1 week at a time, they went on a 1 week long trip to Hawaii, a 1 week long trip to Cancun with her family and then 1 week where they just visited her family 2 hrs away. They haven’t made the trip to visit us more than 1-2x a year as they say the drive is too hard with the limited time off she has and she’s usually too tired to come anyways. But not too tired for Hawaii or Cancun?
They always ask my parents and us to visit them during holidays she works so at least we can be together and she will join everyday after 5. But, it’s hard for us to travel with a 1.5 year old. My parents have to split time visiting there and visiting us and we need them for childcare. I’ve been asking my brother and SIL to visit us more even though I know her schedule is busy and my brother got frustrated with me. When I asked him to visit alone, he said she needs him because the heavy workload has been really mentally straining on her and quoted how resident physicians have a really high depression rate and basically called me TA.
I feel its unfair we have to visit all the time considering we have a 1 year old and also both work FULL TIME and feel they should balance better to visit us rather than just vacation. Am I Wrong for insisting?
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