Ofttimes, Humans are weird.

[Roknrol]

I'm the youngest of three (and in my late 40's, don't get all weird about it) and I've spent...well..most of my life at this point "away" from my family. I have always talked to my mother (mama's boy), usually at least once a week. But my sisters? Not so much. We've always kept our distance...usually only talking once or twice a year. Their lives have always been full with their own families - spouses, children, etc, much like my life has been for the last 20+ years. I expect that I occur to them about as often as they occur to me.

I have spent the last three weeks in France, ostensibly looking for property (although I have yet to see one, this week looks promising).

One of my sisters asked me to call her tonight, which I did....we talked for about five minutes and she had to get off the phone. My mother emailed me to comment that both of my sisters "miss" me.

I'm very confused by this. Is there a difference between missing someone 150 miles away from you and missing someone 6000 miles away from you? (I haven't actually mapped it - don't get hung up on stupid shit)

This isn't the first time this has happened, and it just absolutely baffles me. If I lived in the same city, a dozen miles from them, we STILL would rarely talk or interact, but I doubt I would get a third party reaching out to inform me that my absence somehow mattered. Does anyone else experience stuff like this? Is anyone else confused by this sort of thing?

[Rick]

Sure.

When my mom passed, my two sisters tried to get payment from an insurance policy that named me as sole beneficiary, without me knowing about it. I haven't spoken to them since. Various and sundry family members will occasionally tell me "Your sisters sure miss you," to which I generally reply "Imagine that." Ironic part is the policy was for, like, a little over a thousand bucks... I'd have respected them for trying to steal several thousands from me (I'd have been pissed, but I get that kind of temptation), but just several hundred? Naw, I don't miss them...

[Sean R. R.]

Is there a difference between missing someone 150 miles away from you and missing someone 6000 miles away from you?

Absolutely, there is!

Missing someone is more about the psychological perception of distance than anything else. Even if you don't interact, if you think of someone you miss, and you know that you could just do a relatively easy drive to them and see them, that thought alone soothes the impulse to go see them. If the person is too far away to be reasonably be reached with a certain level of ease (that varies from person to person), then the soothing element disappears, and the though of not being able to reach that person at all might even aggravate the sentiment of missing.

[Roknrol]

Geez Rick, that's pretty lousy, but as I'm sure you've heard me say before, we can't help who we're related to. I generally don't "miss" them either because they just aren't a big part of my life. If they were to die or something...sure, I'd probably "miss" them in the traditional sense...but since we almost never talk, the extra reaching out is just confusing for me.

Sean: I guess I can understand that, even though I don't feel it. My wife has traveled a lot for work...sometimes for weeks at a time. We usually try to keep in touch by phone but can't always. I miss her exactly the same way that I miss her if, say, one of us is in the hospital...or camping...or...like..grocery shopping. For me it seems the "missing" of a person is directly related to the fact of their absence, but the distance? Doesn't seem to play a part. I guess maybe I'm the weird one lol

[Hawkfeathers]

Humans are weird MOST times, IMO.

[Juniper]

I wonder if you being serious about moving to France has made them realize that you won't be as accessible to them as you are/were when you're only 150 miles away. When someone is just a few hundred miles away, making arrangements to visit is much easier than when someone lives on a different continent and people get caught up in the whole idea that they can do it whenever, even though that rarely happens for most.

But yeah. Humans are frickin weird.

[Roknrol]

I suspect that's part of it, but it's still f'ing daffy.

I spent five years in Hawaii - an ocean + 2000k miles away. I spent a decade in Vegas (none of them even *considered* visiting me there). France "seems" like a bigger deal, but honestly? Phones exist. Email exists. And anymore, distance is really just a matter of perspective for the most part (my wife can continue doing her American job while living in France, for example. Her hours will suck, but that's about the only change).

I almost feel like they just aren't thinking critically about the move..like they're just "reacting". And I guess that makes me a little bit sad, because that means that I'm related to stupid people. (which I already knew, but this just kind of drives the point home)

[volcaniclastic]

I'm in my mid-30s now, and last year I was telling my mother about how I'd like to move to Norway to do my masters degree. She forbade me. Forbade me. I haven't lived at home since I was 20. Her reason is that she'll miss me.

We used to live in the same city; she didn't visit.
We used to live in the same province (and currently do); she didn't visit.
We used to live 2000km from each other, and she visited once, at my insistence, and I had to pay for her return trip, make all the arrangements to get her from her door to the airport, walk her through how to change flights in another airport, etc. It's never happened again since.

...honestly, I don't give a sh*t if she misses me.

(Norway is expensive, MSc plans TBD)

[Roknrol]

Oh I definitely feel you there. They could barely be arsed to acknowledge my heart attack and, I'm guessing, won't miss me after about a month.

Fortunately for me, at least, they're mostly supportive. They keep trying to talk me into moving to a different country and I have to keep explaining that almost noplace affordable will let foreigners buy property outright. France and Spain are the only two places remotely acheivable to us. They want to toss country names at me as a "gotcha", when they haven't bothered to check themselvves if it's something we'd be able to pull off.