I asked my guest to leave my home.

[bubblesdrew]

We built a house a couple of fields away from some neighbours.

I met the husband at the local shop a couple of months after we got settled & after some chat asked if him and his wife would like to join us, friends & family for a New Years Eve dinner.

His wife and himself arrived that night and they were initially great. During conversation she asked for a tour of the house and I said no (not in a rude way). 20 minutes later she said again that she would like a tour of the house and again I said no. Then a THIRD time she asked and at that point my husband stepped in and said that there wouldn't be a tour.

She used the bathroom numerous times in the night which is located under the stairs. My niece was in our room at the top of the stairs past the closet which eventually leads into the master bedroom.

This woman had climbed the stairs later in the night when she asked to be excused for the bathroom went through my closet and into the master bedroom. My niece flew down and told my husband who marched upstairs and quietly asked her to leave. She claimed she was lost but, she had used the bottom bathroom all night!!
Should I have given her a tour or was she being completely unreasonable?

Christ, some mumsnetters are very sensitive

Lol, says you! Miss "tosses guests out on NYE for a perfectly normal request". you dare to call others sensitive?

Asking for a tour MAY be a normal request. no harm in asking.

ONCE.

To go upstairs having been told that there 'will be no tour' is unspeakably rude and invasive.

OP didn't laugh AT the guest, she just laughed whilst taking dinner out of the oven and said no.

We don't HAVE to do things if we don't want to and we DON'T need to justify our decisions to anyone, at all, ever.

Perhaps it's an age/gravitas thing. I'm about to be in my 50s. Being in my 50s means I don't have to justify what I do, think, feel or say anymore. I recognise that those in younger age brackets may not feel at that stage as yet, but each decade has its qualities, and as we grow older we change how we interact with others.

Saying no, calmly, politely and unapologetically is not rude, it is just a no and can very well be taken at its face value.

If others are offended at hearing the word no, they are being precious actually because nobody owes anyone anything when it comes down to it.

Wander Woman was a stranger to the OP, she'd only met the H prior to this apparently and didn't want to interrupt her evening with a tour she didn't want to give.

that - whether anyone likes it or not - is absolutely always her prerogative.

God this thread is worse than the Another Think Coming vs Another Thing Coming thread.

overinvested much, Hissy?

That's bollocks HISSY. I am 50 and still care very much about the people I interact with. Age is absolutely no excuse for poor manners. Actually there is no excuse for poor manners. You choose to be rude, that's you're lookout, but you are rude just the same.

your look out.

'No is a complete sentence' comes from when somebody is being a cheeky fucker. In normal social interaction, a straight 'no' with no qualification is unspeakably rude. There's no 'snowflake' about it, if you genuinely think it's ok to give an unqualified 'no' to a reasonable request, then you definitely have deficiencies in your social antennae.

To go upstairs having been told that there 'will be no tour' is unspeakably rude and invasive

Or highly amusing depending how uptight you are.

This is not an age thing Hissy, it’s a social ineptitude thing. I’m of a comparable age.

I'm 54 - age has nothing to do with it.

And laughing at a guest's request IS laughing at the guest.

Most excuses after the word "no" are just elaborations designed not to appear rude because you don't want to do something not the real reason though. "Because I don't want it to happen" whether it is picking up someone else's kid, someone nosing around your bedrooms, someone borrowing something is often the real reason.
Also some people are very good at manipulating excuses to try and get their own way either because they don't understand that the person saying no just doesn't want the thing to happen or becuse they do understand but want their own way and a power struggle.

In much of Scotland and N England New Year's Eve/ Hogmanay is a perfect time for inviting neighbours you don't know round your house, so i disagree with those saying it's a close family time. It's often party time.

And yes, it's rude even in 'older women with gravitas' - though they are I concede more likely than average to be rude. My MIL once took me round to one of her friend's houses - day but not time prearranged - because she had offered to show me her garden, as I was doing up mine. She opened the door, looked us up and down, and said 'no, I'm not showing you round now.' Now I imagine she left the interaction thinking 'go me, I've been wonderfully assertive.' All I thought was that she was outrageously rude and ungracious. I was brought up to be polite to guests. If I ever have cause to not be able to allow someone in to view my garden, which I'd previously agreed to, I'd say 'I'm terribly sorry, something has come up which means it isn't convenient for you to come in now, would you mind coming another time, perhaps tomorrow morning?' If you can't see the difference between those two ways of framing a no, then there is no two ways about it, other people are going to see you as an unpleasant person to interact with.

That was rude because it was breaking a pre-existing arrangement, which to me is completely different to someone asking for a tour of my house unexpectedly and me saying no.
I think for people who view their bedrooms as private giving an excuse as to why you don't someone to see your bedroom is as unnecessary as giving someone an excuse as to why you don't want to show them your knickers.

Frogsoup i've known a few of those women you speak of.
They eventually become known as "that eccentric" or "witchlady".

I don't get this "my bedroom is private" stance.
What on earth have you got in there?

Maybe they are hiding their toy boy or something.
i remember reading in a mag ages ago an article on being assertive, maybe Hissy has read something like that?
The article said that you didn't need to give excuses if you didn't want to do something you could just say 'no'.
It was bollocks advice then and it's still bollocks now.
You don't have to accede to a request but you don't have to be a prat about it either.

2rebecca the principle is the same. If a guest makes a request that you can't accede to, then you hedge your no with apologies. Of course they may not be genuine, that's not the point, the point is that the rules of social interaction require them. Otherwise, there's no getting away from it, it will be seen as rude. Thats not the case in all cultures - Russia and Germany are much more direct for instance, but it certainly is in the UK, and as for Ireland if anything even more so in my experience.

I'm 54 too and absolutely care about how I interact with other people. Age doesn't give you any rights! My old boss said that he expected respect because of his age - I said I believed respect should be earned whatever the age.

I was in this exact scenario on NYE- our friends have built a lovely house from scratch and invited round lots of neighbours and school parents for a party. They told everyone to feel free to go on a self-guided tour and open any doors they wanted to. They put a lot of blood sweat and tears into the build and are proud of it, plus they are grateful to their neighbours for not objecting to the planning application and understand they’d be curious to see the finished article.

This is on the south coast of England by the way.

I am with those who have pointed out that, no matter how the OP may have thought she was coming across, “no” without an explanation or qualifier would have come across as very rude. Or a joke.

Of course the woman was wrong to go wandering (and sounds like a bit of a nutter what with her shop comment about the “dirty” mirrors) but OP should just have given a tour. She could easily have only shown certain rooms, no obligation to open every door.

I’m not rude to people and actually have better manners than most tbf, but if I’m asked for something I’m not happy about doing, I’ll say a calm and respectful no.

It doesn’t matter if my refusal doesn’t suit someone else’s agenda, if I’m asked and have a say on what goes on in my life and I decide that I don’t want x or y to happen, I’m able to say no. I don’t have to provide an explanation, I don’t have to apologise, I’m asked, I reply and that’s that.

To force an issue is where the rudeness comes in.

I’ve had my boundaries trampled by the ex, I’ve had family with agendas, I’ve had my own son treated as collateral damage by my own mother and I’ve had strangers take the mick. If I can’t politely say no to a request in my own home, then where can I?

There is absolutely no evidence in the thread that the op was put and out rude to the woman, she merely said no in a lighthearted manner apparently, then a no then again backed up by her h.

Wander woman may not have liked the answer she got in 3 occasions - 4 if you count the dh - but it was an answer and a valid one at that.

You aren't getting it hissy. A straight no with no hedging is never calm and respectful. You can say it is until you are blue in the face but it doesn't make it so. It's different if a particular person has a history of trampling your boundaries, but then politeness no longer applies anyway. To a friend or stranger, 'no I'm afraid not' is the bare minimum. You do realise that you don't actually have to be sorry, right? Social interaction requires people to say things because that's the form of things. You ignore it and you'll appear totally rude and socially deficient.

'No' is not a rude or nasty word. It really isnt.

It's about communication isn't it?

I don't believe OP was obliged to give a tour of she didn't want to. I think that saying she was feels a bit like womanpleasing (not exactly the opposite of mansplaining but close). But it would have been easy for her to articulate a strong, assertive reason for refusal from "I'm busy in the kitchen" to "we have young guests over".

But I refuse to see how wandering uninvited into someone's bedroom isn't worlds ruder than saying "no" in an unvarnished way. Sometimes I think that middle class women on here are just obsessed with criticising one another (and all the better if this can be done in a snobby way) rather than flocking to the obvious place where the need for support is obvious and can straightforwardly be given.

whiskyowl I don’t think there are any people here who have said OP was rude and the woman was not. It’s pretty unanimous that the woman overstepped the mark, by miles, but that doesn’t mean OP wasn’t rude. I wholeheartedly agree with what frogsoup said above.

I’ve had my boundaries trampled by the ex, I’ve had family with agendas, I’ve had my own son treated as collateral damage by my own mother and I’ve had strangers take the mick

Unsurprisingly, you’ve been around people with no idea how to behave your whole life. It’s quite obvious from your comments tbh.

But I refuse to see how wandering uninvited into someone's bedroom isn't worlds ruder than saying "no" in an unvarnished way.

They’re both rude in different ways. But the prize of the night for extraordinary rudeness goes to the OP for ejecting the woman from her home. Which, as I said before, is so hilariously socially inept to be worthy of Mike Leigh.