Living away/visits
What’s an appropriate number of visits per year when you live in another state from your enmeshed family about 6 hours away by car? It seems too close to avoid all the time and too far to visit often. But I carry a huge amount of guilt if I go 2 months without visiting because of the comments I get.
Moving away was met with extremely toxic behaviour from my family who iced me out, told me I abandoned them, didn’t love them (the usual language you’d imagine from an enmeshed dynamic). It’s slowly getting better but everytime I go back there’s some garbage that comes up that sets the progress back 5 steps. For example shit talking my husband to the whole family or crying and having a meltdown because I chose to move away to have a better life. It can never be just a smooth visit. The urge to visit does NOT come from a desire to spend quality time with them at this point, it’s my unfortunate weakness in being a part of this dynamic and struggling with shame and guilt.