My parents always complain that I don’t visit them often. They get upset that we always spend the holidays with my husband’s parents.
I have told them many times that if they want me to visit they have to pick a date in advance. I have a busy life and often plan out big trips months in advance. I think this is perfectly normal.
The reason we always spend holidays with my husband’s family is because they invite us to holiday parties well in advance and actually celebrate. My parents on the other hand don’t even celebrate holidays. They have said they would celebrate if we came to visit but I know it won’t be the same. They have no idea how to celebrate and I personally don’t want to go to a half assed Christmas’s when we can go to one with people who actually care and put effort into.
Things hit a head when we didn’t go to my parents Thanksgiving this year. We agreed to go to my husband’s grandmothers house two months in advance. My parents called me the week before and asked if we would come to their Thanksgiving. I told them that I would have said yes but they really didn’t give us much notice for a big trip and we already made a commitment. They got really upset about this.
Now they want me to come and visit them. I told them I would come if they can pick a date that they can commit to that is at least two months away. I also want a general idea of what they want to do when I come visit. I don’t want to make the trip and then end up having to plan an itinerary too. This apparently is an impossible task for them.
For context my dad once chose to not pick me up at the airport because he decided last minute that he wanted to go to a yoga class. This is the kind of reason they can’t pick a date and stick to it.
I told them point blank that I would not be making the trip without a plan. They said I’m being ridiculous. AITA?
Edit: by making plans and an itinerary I mean having dinner together. Many times when I go to visit them they tell me they want to go to a last minute thing and we can hang out the next day. I want them to spend time with me when I take time to visit them. Sometimes I’m invited but I really don’t want to go to a random ukulele concert. I have expressed this many times.
Edit 2: I would like to add that we do go to the city all the time to visit our friends and work spending time with my parents into that. They are specifically mad that we don’t go to exclusively see them.
Last edit: thank you so much to everyone who commented. It’s a big mix of opinions which is great because it shows so many different perspectives. I really appreciate it!
ESH – visiting your parents does not have to be on a holiday and if it is they don’t have to celebrate it in any particular fashion. Since you are the one with a busy schedule- when you call to arrange your next trip – give them 2 dates to pick from and if neither works for them, then you are off the hook for a couple of months.
Good lord. YTA. You need a “plan” to see your damn parents? Life is short. How about YOU make a plan and then make it happen?
NTA. This is my MIL except we don’t even get a week. She’d call a day or two before. That’s only after she moved a few hours away. Previously, she didn’t celebrate Any holidays with her kids from when my spouse was about 15 onwards, except maybe to swing by the SILs for their kids, it she happened to be close by. She lived and traveled in an RV for 8 years and expected everyone to just fall in line when she got a house and come last minute when summoned.
We had established holiday plans and traditions by then, I met my husband in those last few traveling years. Even when those changed and my mom was gone, his dad stepped up and asked months in advance and offered to help pay costs of traveling to his expensive city. So no, NTA.
Holy lack of reading comprehension Batman! NTA, apparently no one bothered actually reading your post
wow, you need an itinerary to go see your parents? how about play cards make meals take a walk together?
this seems weird and to me you are TAH
My mom is one of those who demands an itinerary down to the minute when we come and visit. I’ve had to set her straight that if she needs to work around an appointment or there’s something at a specific time she wants to do, that’s fine, but she isn’t going to get an itemized schedule, especially not when she has demonstrated that she is very bad at time management. OP should either reflect on how stressful she’s making these visits, or just own up that she doesn’t want to go.
Gonna go with YTA.
I’ve never been “invited” to the holidays with my family? It’s always been something my partner and I decide way ahead of time. “Next year we’ll be at my parents for thanksgiving and yours for Christmas”. I’ve literally never just not talked to my parents about holiday plans and pretend they don’t want to see me. They happen every year. You actually need an invite months in advance to something you already know is happening? You really can’t spend one holiday with your parents because you’re so obnoxiously pretentious you need a formal invite *months* in advance to again something that happens every year?
If you don’t like your parents then say so. If you like your parents then grow tf up and reach out and act like it you’re a grown ass adult. You’re perfectly capable of saying “hey can we come visit on this weekend?”. Idk why you desperately need activities by them planned either. Just visit your damn parents or be honest and say you don’t like them.
Unless you have real reasons to dislike your parents then you’re just being extremely obnoxious and petty. There’s really nothing reasonable about needing months in advance invitation to a holiday from your family. Just plain petty and ridiculous. Maybe your parents are assholes, but as of now nothing you said suggests you dislike them because of their behavior.
YTA. I’m confused why you need a gold-plated invitation months in advance for a holiday which people generally spend with family. “Oh well if you’d asked me earlier….” It’s Thanksgiving. People spend it with their parents. You say “spouse’s this year, mine next.”
If your parents are so flaky, then plan to not rely on them. Rent a car instead of hoping they pick you up at the airport. Get a hotel room.
NTA, they can’t expect you to drop everything with a week of notice when other people that do plan stuff asked you to do stuff with them months ago. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know when you’re going to be there and why a bit in advance. Especially if it’s a bit of a trip. If it’s far enough away that you have to take time off work to visit then you NEED that time off because a lot of places won’t let you just be like “sorry, my parents begged me to come over yesterday, you good if I don’t come in on monday” and it’s Friday. Most work places need notice of vacation days so that they can plan who’s doing what. And it especially sucks if you make the time and they drop you like yesterday’s news because a cool random thing happened that they’d like to do instead of dinner with their kid.
YTA Your parents are spontaneous and chill, probably just wanting to spend time with you, while you are a planner and need to be entertained in high fashion. You have high expectations that you are putting on them. They are not your in-laws and you should not expect them to be. You have missed the very point of holidays which is to spend time with loved ones. It doesn’t need to be fancy. You are capable of initiating the plans and setting dates with them. You are also capable of cooking a fancy dinner or hiring a caterer or making a dinner reservation, as well as planning any other activities. Alternatively, invite them to your home for the holidays and host it the way you want.
They’re your parents. You know they aren’t planners and prefer spontaneous activities. If you truly love them and want to make them happy, then stop putting unreasonable (for them) expectations on your visits.
I kind of get where you’re coming from. I, too, am a planner and prefer to know what will happen ahead of time. My parents are like yours. Does it bug me? Yes, sometimes it does. But they are my parents first, and second, different personalities are what make the world go round, and I refuse to place expectations on them that cause them to get stressed and annoyed.
Make the effort to go visit them often enough that they don’t have to beg you to come. Enjoy their presence and let them enjoy you. One day they won’t be here, and you’ll wish you could have just one more visit (with the random ukulele concert thrown in).
YTA not for not wanting to visit your parents but for lying, maybe even to yourself, about the reason why. You do not like your parents, it is blindingly apparent in the comments you have made about why you do not want to visit them. It has nothing to do with the lack of plan in advance for the dates or the activities, that’s just the excuse you use for it. You say in comments that when you visit your parents they want to go to concerts you don’t enjoy, they don’t ask about your life, they refuse to talk about anything deep because it’s too hard for them. These are the reasons you don’t want to visit, if they planned to attend a concert with you 2 months in advance and then go to dinner you would still not go visit because that isn’t your idea of a good time. It is entirely fine to not enjoy the same things that your parents do but acting like it’s the lack of planning that is the issue makes you TAH.
NTA. For what it’s worth I’m not sure the planning on OP’s end would end up working anyway because the parents seem to be flakes but I understand the need to have something “set in stone” so that if it doesn’t happen there’s no room for miscommunication and accountability can hopefully take place afterwards,,, hopefully.
OP – just know I understand you from my own experiences lol. I was to meet up with my parents for my most recent birthday and they flaked on me, even though we had plans in place. It’s frustrating being their kid in that scenario, and I feel like you sort of have to be “the asshole” in those scenarios a little bit to be heard.