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The original was posted on /r/amitheasshole by /u/Mountain_Word9583 on 2024-01-21 19:36:43+00:00.
My dad is a reasonably healthy & active man in his early 80s. We had plans for him to visit my family this Spring, but he's cancelling because he is nervous about COVID and long flights to reach us are exhausting. He said he was having trouble sleeping due to anxiousness regarding the tentatively planned visit.
The thing is, I had been trying to get him to visit for years. He demurred because of COVID... but last year as things began to open up, and he got vaccinated, and he had a bout of it (which wasn't too serious), I thought he might be up for the trip. But he still refused. I talked to my sister to see if she could help convince him--instead, she sent an email to our dad and myself asking if he'd be up for visiting her. To my chagrin, he immediately said yes. I guess her idea was that my family could visit her town at the same time and that way we'd get to spend some time with my dad. Well, we didn't do that. Partly it was because she lives a 12 hour drive from us, partly because we had already done a big family trip just the previous summer to visit her, and partly because I was mad at how quickly he agreed to visit her after putting me off for years.
When I called him out on that he said it was because he could visit her with fewer legs (two to visit her vs. three to visit my family). I said if that's really the issue I could pick him up in the closest major airport (about 3 hours from my house) so that he could do it in two legs. So with some pressure, he agreed that he would visit my family in the future.
So fast forward to this year. A month or so ago I followed up. I told him that I had been looking at photos from his previous visit about 5 years ago and that it struck me that he hadn't seen his grandkids for half their life. I suggested that we plan for him to visit this Spring with me paying for the flight. He agreed... but shortly after that began expressing discomfort with the idea (both due to COVID and the strain of travel). To be fair, he is older and I'm sure it is exhausting--and while my family has moved on re: COVID, he's still taking precautions (e.g., masking up to use his apartment building's elevator).
A simple solution would be for my family to visit him--and perhaps we will at some point. But it is much more expensive for us to go there (5 flights, hotel, rental car, dining out, etc.) then it is for him to come here. Plus, between jobs & school, it is hard to set aside the time for that trip. Not impossible, but harder than it is for, say, a retired person.
So I've told him that I am hurt by this. And I unfriended him on Facebook, which is definitely a passive-aggressive move--my reasoning was that I do not want to enable him feeling like he's engaged with us via passive social media interactions. Plus passive aggression. I've probably put in him a bit of a bind--at this point if he visits it will feel like I just guilted him into it. My wife thinks I should just let him off the hook. AITA?