It is one of the most rewarding things ever that our sons hang out together without us. However, I do admit the first time it happened I was gobsmacked. LOL. Forever and ever we were a close knit family and we did a lot together. Suddenly dh and I were left out! Did any of you experience these feelings? Happy but at the same time wth?
BEST thing about being a parent is that my DD21 and DS24(married) liked each other as children and still like each other. They live in same city a couple of hours away and more often than not, get together for Sibling Sunday.
And, yes, we feel left out. But not enough to drive there and certainly don’t want to jinx anything. It’s a good problem.
How old were they when this happened that you were gobsmacked??? Are we talking teens or 20’s or …?
I don’t get it. You say you have been close knit - so staying in touch and hanging out is something you and your H taught. So…why would you be surprised that they enjoy each other’s company - with or without you???
I’m happy that S often calls and takes his sister out to a meal (often dinner) when he is visiting her city. He also makes a point of visiting his cousins when they are in the his city or he is in theirs. It makes me happy. Our family does hang out with one another and dine with one another when we can swing it. Lately, my D has been going to SF more often and getting together with my niece there. She’s also had them come to LA to visit her and they’ve all met in Vegas as well. I don’t feel left out and am pleased they are getting together.
We only have the one kid, but we used to have a “Thursday night outing” where we’d go out to dinner together once a week ever since D was a toddler. Around her early teens she said it was boring going out with us so we stopped. Just recently I happened to be in her college town and took her out to dinner (at her request) and she mentioned those outings and asked why we stopped. I told her it was because she declared we were boring! She laughed - I think she’s over that stage now, thankfully.
My D and S are very close friends, and always have been. We still do a lot of things with both of them, but since they were teens, they’ve done many things together and/or with friends, without us. Which is great. It would be weird if two adults always thought they needed to include their parents in everything they do, as much as it would be weird for them to expect us to include them in everything we do.
D1 has parties where she invites D2, but not me. 
(not age appropriate).
I have 5 kids so their relationships are in various permutations. I was so pleasantly surprised to find out recently that the 2 oldest, who are 14 months apart in age and have been through sibling rivalry, etc., speak to each other often on the phone. I am even happier that the youngest 2 boys (now 18 and 20), who used to fight so much that the school would not let them sit near each other on the bus in elementary school, actually spend some time together and have some interests in common (primarily, Dungeons and Dragons, but still). The two middle boys (20 and 22) have always been close. D (25) and the 22 year old became close in the one year they overlapped in HS and then cemented it during the one year they spent together at college. People think that I should have made the oldest (now 26) move out but, if I had, he and my youngest son would never have developed the incredibly close relationship they have built in the last year or two since they are almost 9 years apart in age. It is worth having my adult son at home because I know now that he and the youngest are bonded as they never were years ago.
I think the most recent example was when D had her wisdom teeth pulled a few weeks ago. She and her bf took the train out and I met them with the 20 and 22 year olds so we could drive them home afterwards. She was so surprised and happy to see her brothers. Oldest son was working but he called to check on her, as did the youngest son, who was also working.
For a long time, I worried that my kids would drift apart like my own sister and I did. Now I think that won’t happen.
They do sometimes ask us to join them, usually so we can pay, lol. D now throws parties and invites her two oldest brothers, who are old enough to drink. The other 2 will be invited when they are 21.
My two are seven years apart but enjoy each other’s company. They go to yoga together and hang out. We see a lot of them too. We all live in the same city.
Like others have mentioned my children have started to do things together and not include us. I’m happy they enjoy being together though sometimes I miss being included.
She was probably gobsmacked when they went out of their way to be together. It’s one thing if it was easy and they lived 5 minutes from each other. However, they are still in their early 20’s, busy ages and one is married. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were older and more mature, but to make time for each other like, with their ages and distance, is wonderful. If my boys did that, I would also be delighted and a bit surprised.
We have been a close family, but the boys have their own sets of friends and lives. I will be tickled pink if they are 2 hours away from each other and purposely plan get togethers. I get where OP is coming from.
I can see where it would be a bummer to watch from the sidelines. I guess we have to close our eyes and be those ages again…did we want to hang with our parents? I remember about 10 years ago, we vacationed with BIL and his family. I knew MIL would want to join (lives in FL), but none of us wanted to vacation with her do never mentioned it. I get it…just hard to be on that side.
Retaliate by taking pictures of you and your H out having fun without the kids - and send it to them. 
Chances are, they will be thrilled that you and your H have fun with - and without them!
My Ss are the best of friends and hang out together a lot, especially now that S1 has moved out. It think it’s because there weren’t really any other kids around when they were growing up and they pretty much had to entertain each other.
One of my greatest joys is when my kids get together with each other without me. It means so much to me that they appreciate and enjoy each other, and make the effort to spend time together.
Mine are different sexes and almost six years apart – I often refer to them as my “two only children.” But fortunately they get along, and their spouses as well. The young couples from the start enjoyed hiking together, have done camping trips together, etc. Now each of our three nuclear families lives five - six hours by car from each other, points in a triangle on a map. In addition to some holidays when we are all together, the younger generation makes efforts to visit each other.
On Memorial Day weekend D and her husband and their toddler are flying to son and his wife’s location to spend three days together. Last fall S and his wife visited D’s family in their city.
It does not at all matter to me that H and I won’t be there when they visit each other, although I do hope to see pics and hear stories. I see both of my kids fairly often. (Married son lives at our home with us during the week, as he and his wife (newlyweds) have a “split location” marriage for now due to their careers/current jobs. He visits his wife each weekend – but she is coming here for Easter.) H and I see married D and her family regularly – we recently spent a week in their city, combination of tourist and family time.
But for them to get together with each other independently of us is one of my greatest delights. I love this stage of parenting – lots of pleasure and relatively little work!
I would love to be a fly on the wall when/if they ever talk about H and me though! 
“D1 has parties where she invites D2, but not me. (not age appropriate).”
don’t worry they are probably just all laying around the record player listening to beach boys wearing poodle skirts and talking about how wally cleaver on leave it to beaver is so heavenly.
(I know my references are probably spread between the 1950’s and 1960’s but you get the idea)
Our Ds are 29 and soon to be 26. We get together as a family at least once a month for dinner at our house in the winter and just about every weekend in the summer at our lake place. They ask us to go out with them for dinner and movies.(Ha! Probably because we pay!) Ds get together on their own once in awhile and I am thrilled when they do.
I am close to one of my sisters, who is close to me in age, and have a history of touchiness with the other. I was in law school at the same university where the first sister was an undergraduate, so we saw each other then, and we periodically got together outside the context of official family gatherings over the years. (It helped that she lived someplace beautiful that I love, and that she frequently traveled near where I live on business.) The other sister, I almost never saw unless the whole family was together. (The two sisters, however, periodically got together without me and without our parents, although they had a history of occasional blow-ups when they did that.) All of us spent time with our parents separately as well as together – my youngest sister lived with or close to them from age 33 on, except for four years of residency in another city.
Since our parents died, we have all worked pretty consciously on making certain that we spend time with one another. We live in different places, hundreds and thousands of miles apart, so it’s not always easy. But it is rewarding. It’s the same thing with my wife’s sisters. For years, we mainly saw them in the context of spending time with one or the other of her parents, although she always had a separate relationship with her oldest sister. With their parents gone, it takes work and thought (and money) to maintain the connections.
I wish my kids spent more time together independent of us, but that hasn’t happened much yet. They live in cities distant from one another, they don’t naturally travel to each other’s city, and neither feels rich enough or with enough time to visit one another specially. Plus, they do get a decent amount of time together with us. But I worry that when we are gone they will have trouble maintaining their relationship.
I wish my two would hang out independent of me, but that’s only happened once, when one of them was visiting the metropolitan area where the other lives. They’re very different people, and they live a thousand miles apart, so perhaps it’s asking too much to expect them to develop a relationship.
But they were such good friends as little kids that it seems a shame that they’re not good friends as adults.
My sister and I didn’t have much contact outside of whole-family gatherings until our parents died. At that point, we had to wrestle together with the challenges of settling their affairs. Since our parents were divorced and neither was married at the times when they died, we went through this twice. (Actually, two-and-a-half times because our dad was acting as executor for his sister’s estate at the time of his death, and we took over that, too.) Working together on these complex projects helped us develop a respect for each other’s abilities that we didn’t have before, and we got in the habit of talking about non-estate-related topics as well – a habit that has continued now for 18 years.
Perhaps my husband and I should make our kids joint executors of our estates so that at some point, they’ll be forced to interact with each other.
@JHS, perhaps my experience suggests a solution to your concern. It might also help to have your will drawn up by an incompetent attorney and suggest to your kids that they use that attorney to handle the estate. My father’s attorney was a complete idiot (we found out later that he was the son of a friend, and my father had deliberately thrown some work his way as a personal favor to the father). This greatly prolonged and complicated the process of settling his estate and probably forced my sister and me into much more interaction than would otherwise have been necessary.
When S1 learned that D (she is a year behind him) was going to attend the same college, he told her, “Don’t talk to me if you see me - don’t look at me, don’t say hi.” He had retooled his personality to be cooler than HS, or at least as cool as you can be and still be in the marching band. She knew the truth about him and is way nerdier with no interest in changing. We knew they always have had a good relationship and it wouldn’t stick.
Now, his senior year, they get together for dinners and he has been to a few of her rugby games. He has a car there and will give her rides. She drops in at his apartment and knows all the roommates. As parents, it makes us happy they are there for each other.
I think it kills the in-laws that my W no longer speaks with her sister. W was going through chemo, we were barely hanging on, and SIL sends W a letter letting her know how irked she was that our kids’ thank you notes were arriving late and not to bother with their family anymore. Really, f her. We don’t expect that type of drama out of our kids.
Our youngest is almost 12 years younger than the oldest 2 (twins) so they were both off at college starting when he was only 6 or 7. We also have a middle child, almost exactly right in the middle. Now that the youngest is a senior in college and all 4 kids are spread out all over the country, it makes me very happy to see them all go out of their way to stay in touch and get together. One of the twins and the youngest recently spent 5 days together on a snowboard trip. When the middle DD2 spent a year at an over-seas job, the other 3 got together and went to visit her for a week. They regularly call each other and plan time together. I really didn’t think they would be especially close as adults because of the age difference (except the twins, of course) and it is so rewarding to DH and me to watch them interact as adults. I’m OK if we are sometimes left out.