My son moved abroad for work almost six years ago now, and in the beginning we spoke on video calls almost every single week, long conversations about his new life, his job, even small mundane details about groceries and the weather that honestly did not matter much but that felt genuinely good to hear regularly at the time.
Gradually, without either of us ever actually deciding this consciously, the calls have become noticeably shorter and less frequent, maybe once every two weeks now, ten or fifteen minutes at most, often feeling more like a polite check in than the real, substantial conversations we genuinely used to have together in those earlier years after he first left.
I understand his life has genuinely gotten busier, he is married now with a young child of his own to manage, and I do not want to be the parent who guilts him about not calling enough, since I remember clearly how that specific kind of pressure felt from my own mother decades ago when I was his age myself. But I also genuinely miss him, more than I think he probably realizes given how normal and routine this pattern has become for both of us over these past several years.
My wife handles this distance somewhat better than I do, she has her own close friends here locally and stays genuinely busy with her own life, while I find myself specifically looking forward to those short calls more than I probably should, given how brief they usually actually turn out to be each time now.
Have thought about actually telling him directly how much I miss the longer conversations we genuinely used to have, but worry it will come across as some kind of guilt trip rather than the simple, honest statement of missing him that it actually genuinely is on my end.
Has anyone else watched this specific kind of gradual distance grow with an adult child abroad, and did you find a way to actually address it directly without it feeling like pressure or guilt being placed on them unfairly?