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Original poster

Aupair's boyfriend sleepovers

137 replies

Isuxasanannyboss · 10/05/2019 10:59

Hi, I've read all previous posts about this topic and I'm still not sure how to manage the situation. Lovely aupair whom we treat as part of the family (albeit my complain to her is that she's a bit untidy and doesn't clean so our housekeeper cleans her bedroom), she's got a lovely boyfriend. Her (tiny) room is on the other side of the flat and has a relatively independent entrance. I say 'relatively independent' because it is one that we also use when we have wet shoes or need to hang coats.
She's been with us for quite a long time, on and off (because she returned to her country and came back). In the past our rules where no visitors. Period. No friends, no boyfriends. As I got to know her, I allowed her to bring some friends with previous notice. We never really met the previous boyfriend, because he didn't want to come. She started a new relationship last year. The guy is an English guy who lives in London and has his own flat (a bit further away from home but still local). We met him, we like him a lot and I'm happy that she's happy. We have invited him to come to the country over a weekend. I've told her that he can come home but I also asked her not to bring him unannounced.
I found out that her boyfriend has been staying regularly overnight. I heard the door once at 6am and she told me it was him and that he had stayed because she was unwell and was looking after her. I thought it had been a one-off occurrence. Two days ago I ran into him in the morning when I went to get my coat. I wasn't happy to see him.
I feel uncomfortable with the boyfriend (or any friends) staying overnight without asking in advance or at the very least letting me know. I don't feel comfortable with the boyfriend being a regular feature in the house, laying on the sofa watching a movie or having dinner at ours.
I'm not sure what is it. I would feel exactly the same if she was my daughter, I don't know if it's a control thing, the way I was brought up, the country where I come from or what.
She had a difficult upbringing. Her mum was very conservative and controlling and suffered from bipolar. Once mum died, everyone did whatever they wanted. I come from a traditional catholic family, although I'm not religious myself.
I feel invaded. I feel I choose one person to live with but not that person and whoever she wants to bring whenever she wants. I feel we're being taken for granted, I want to be reasonable, I'm open to show a degree of flexibility but I also want to feel comfortable in my own house. I don't want to feel I may run into someone who is staying overnight, no matter how lovely her boyfriend is.
How have you managed this situation yourselves, what are your house rules, please be absolutely honest if I'm being unreasonable. I may print this thread and show it to her so I want to hear as many different points of view as there are.
Thanks

OP posts:
Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 14/05/2019 17:38

sent me an 8 page email calling me all sort of nasty things

She said she already thought all those things about me and took the money anyway because she loves my kids and my husband and thought she could tolerate me.

You cannot come back from this so now it is about the quickest cleanest break you can manage. Is dh able to manage that while you remove the children (trip to Granny’s?) or could he take them while you help her pack?

WorkingItOutAsIGo · 14/05/2019 17:30

Hold your head up. This is what happens to women who say no. Or assert boundaries. Or rules. You no doubt were doing all that work not your DH which is why she says she likes him. Get her out the door now.

moofolk · 14/05/2019 17:10

You pay her £180 per week and complain that someone her age should be living independently?!

Jesus the middle class never cease to amaze me. I get that you don't want people you don't know staying in your home.

But you can't have it both ways. You either pay her enough that she can afford her own place to live or accept that you get her cheap labour by giving her a room and that as a grown up woman she is allowed to have a life.

Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 14/05/2019 17:09
Brew
IncognitaIgnorama · 14/05/2019 17:06

Bloody hell, OP! You've been more than (much, much more than...) reasonable about this - in all honesty, I would be paying her instead of notice and asking her to leave today. There's no way to continue in an au pair/family relationship once this sort of thing has come out.

Unfortunately, some people take kindness and generosity as weakness, and clearly, she's one of those. It's really not unreasonable to ask anyone not to sneak a boyfriend in over night without permission - that's a pretty low bar, to be honest.

Snog · 14/05/2019 17:05

Wow, she is presumably volatile due to her childhood experiences.

OP it is completely reasonable for you to ask that the BF does not stay overnight in your house. As you say she is free to go to his house.

I'm sorry you have had to go through this as it seems very unfair on you. Definitely stay on the same page with your DH.

cstaff · 14/05/2019 17:00

Bloody hell OP - that was a quick turnaround. I am really sorry that what you thought was a perfect set up is not so much.

Don't let your DH go feeling sorry for her. You have been over generous with her both with how you pay her and also the massive loan that you gave her for college and this is how she repays you (and I don't mean financially).

I hope you get sorted but you definitely need your DH on your side.

ThatCurlyGirl · 14/05/2019 16:59

Fucking hell that escalated! Poor you OP - is she still in the house and expecting business as usual? Have you or DH spoken to her face to face since?

MrsElijahMikaelson1 · 14/05/2019 16:53
Shock
Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 14/05/2019 16:50

Wife! Grin

Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 14/05/2019 16:49

What a shit storm! Poor OP, it sounds awful and what on earth did dh say with a weeping 27 year old au pair insulting his wolf on one shoulder? Shock

Give her notice and a payment plan for repaying the loan and start looking for a live out Nanny. You will feel a huge sense of relief when you shut the door and have your home back.

Original poster
Isuxasanannyboss · 14/05/2019 16:34

I thought I’d post an update. I spoke with her, told her that I didn’t want the boyfriend overnight regularly, that the space wasn’t not independent enough, that I was happy for her to go to his and to review our arrangements regarding hours, etc.
It turns out I’ve been deluded and I had the enemy living with me!
Her response was to go for the throat, sent me an 8 page email calling me all sort of nasty things and brought up things she isn’t happy and complains she has bottled up since 2016... I don’t understand how someone who feels can tell me all sort of personal things then claims that she didn’t dare bringing up things that bothered her and grew such a resentment! She said she already thought all those things about me and took the money anyway because she loves my kids and my husband and thought she could tolerate me.
I am so shocked and hurt that I can’t even look at her in the eyes.
I have to grant one of the commenters that said it was silly to give her a loan, that she was absolutely right. Not because I care about the money, I’m happy for her to go and never see her nor the money ever again, but because it’s made her so resentful instead of grateful.
The silliest thing is that she hasn’t spoken to her boyfriend about anything, she says she is embarrassed and doesn’t want him to think that she’s poor, that by bringing him home she wanted to show him that we are her family! So she’s offloaded all this s**t and didn’t have a plan B of where to go, was a bloody mess crying in my DH’s shoulders, I’m beyond myself!

OP posts:
GarnierBBCream · 13/05/2019 13:47

FFS, of course YANBU!

Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 13/05/2019 13:41

I’m sure he seems very nice, but he shouldn’t have unsupervised access to your home or children. She doesn’t sound very savvy and there is a risk. At the bare minimum young love is often very indiscreet.

Original poster
Isuxasanannyboss · 13/05/2019 13:33

@itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis as I said before, we’ve the boyfriend, he’s spent a weekend with us, the expectation when she’s babysitting is that she stays up until we return. They usually have dinner and watch a movie.

OP posts:
Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 13/05/2019 12:52

I do have experience of live in staff though the boundaries are different for au pairs. I absolutely wouldn’t allow boyfriends over while babysitting. Shock

Aridane · 13/05/2019 12:14

You seem a lovely thoughtful person and y(very) generous employer

escapade1234 · 13/05/2019 05:29

No way. At 27 she’s a bit old to be an au-pair anyway, it’s not the same as a live-in nanny.

Absolutely no way would I allow her boyfriend to stay over, possibly not to even visit, other than briefly to pick her up etc

He has a flat, they can go there.

idbenappingbutthedogbarked · 13/05/2019 05:23

You are being way too generous. I wouldn't have a strange man around even during babysitting with her, never mind overnight in my house. You know nothing about him.

BabyDueDecember2019 · 13/05/2019 05:08

OP I think you have handled this well. What has happened since?

YemenRoadYemen · 13/05/2019 02:12

OP - you are getting advice from people who clearly have no experience with au pairs; live-in 'employees' who are part of the family for the duration they're with you.

You are a 'host mother' so shouts of 'you're not her mother, she's not your daughter!!' just highlight that people don't understand the unique dynamic of this.

YANBU. Our oldest au pair (23) had a boyfriend for some of the time she was with us. She told us every time she intended to be away overnight (as I'd expect an adult daughter who lived with us to do) - we didn't have to ask her to do this, just just did it out of common courtesy. The boyfriend never even came to the house, let alone slept over. We would not have been OK with this, so you're more accommodating than us.

Bottom line is, if she wants him to stay over, she needs to do you the basic courtesy of letting you know first. This is not an onerous request, and if she doesn't feel able to comply, then it might be better if he simply doesn't stay over at all.

Of course, this can't be a deal-breaker for you, because asking her to leave is akin to waiving the loan repayment, and I'm sure you don't want to do that.

Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis · 13/05/2019 00:31

You are offering too much, but that’s your choice. If she needs to see her bf to get over the strain of looking after your children she can go and see him. You are not there to make up for her mother’s behaviour you are her employer. She’s 27 not 16. Time to grow up.

Original poster
Isuxasanannyboss · 12/05/2019 23:23

@Blondeshavemorefun Thanks for your comment.
One thing is going away on a specific weekend and expressly inviting someone and a different thing is having someone sneaked in, or having someone regularly in my living room so that I need to think whether I'm presentable or not, eating my food, etc.
I absolutely do not want to allow her to bring him regularly for sleepovers. He lives in London, she can go to his place. I'm not stopping her from sleeping somewhere else. The only situation when I agree -and communicated to her that it's ok- that he stays over is when she's babysitting and working the following morning. If she's not working the following morning I offered to pay for a taxi for her to go to his place afterwards (as I would pay any babysitter a taxi to go home). If she's not babysitting and is working the following morning for us, she can still go and sleep over at his and wake up early to come to work here in the morning -like everyone else does. I have even offered to pay her for an uber to come in the morning and arrive here at 7am.

OP posts:
Original poster
Isuxasanannyboss · 12/05/2019 23:09

Thanks everyone for taking the time to comment here. The exchange of ideas has helped me tremendously to clarify my own mind and as a result I now feel strongly I was not overreacting and she did not respect our home.
What strikes me the most were some of the knee jerk reactions pointing out that our au pair "is an adult", as if adults were not supposed to respect the limits of someone else's property. It's been precisely her teenage attitude what created issues.
Being an au-pair means living in someone else's home and being treated as part of the family (www.gov.uk/au-pairs-employment-law/au-pairs), it does not equal to "living independently" like a "flat share" or "subletting" or "lodging" a room in someone else's home. Regarding my references to my daughter, the reason for that is based on the multiple guidelines given to host families in the websites we used to recruit our au pairs, that say for example, that "Because your au pair is a “family member,” you should consider what rules you would find reasonable for your own adult children"
(culturalcare.com/blog/house-rules-setting-guidelines-for-your-au-pair/)
I spoke with her and her initial response was exactly the same knee jerk of some of the commenters: I'm an adult and I'm not your daughter. I said I didn't question that she was an adult but as such she should know better to respect someone else's home, that I knew that she wasn't my daughter but that I was treating her as part of the family and not as an employee. She then became emotional and brought up her upbringing, her controlling bipolar mum, etc., said that looking after our children was emotionally very demanding, that the boyfriend kept her sane, that if I didn't let her bring her boyfriend then she couldn't continue... To all of which I said it would be a pity, that we didn't want her to leave too soon, that I thought we could work things out in such a way that she was happy and my boundaries were respected. However I needed to think things through and maybe make her some proposal and she needed to think things through and that I was going to respect her if her decision was to move out.

OP posts:
Blondeshavemorefun · 12/05/2019 22:28

I’m torn on this one

You like the bf. You invite him to I assume your country home at weekends

You don’t mind him staying if you know

But she snuck him in

So if she asked you could he stay mon wed or tue thur /weekends would you say yes

Do they stay in her tiny room. Or lounge around the house - hence you feel home being invaded

Sounds likes she /you may need a live out nanny now rather then a love in au pair

Which btw you pay very well for. Thought usual ap rate was 80/100 but I may be behind the times /rates

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