I write half hoping to cop a bashing so I am more motivated to do the right thing.
A dear and wonderful friend moved to another town for a work opportunity about 2 years ago. When she moved I gave her a key and told her she was welcome to use our spare bedroom whenever she wanted to come back.
Since then she’s been staying for 1-3 nights at a time about once a month. She’ll usually be back for one specific thing like a medical appointment or an engagement party but have no other plans. She keeps personal belongings in the spare room and stores larger items in our shed so our place serves as her hometown base.
She’s not loud or messy or ungrateful. But- she is underfoot. She is a homebody and mostly stays in, pottering about our living room/kitchen with cups of tea. She tends to come along if we go for brunch, to the park, walking with the children etc. Which is lovely but it eats into family time.
There is all the usual houseguest stuff- more laundry, more pressure to tidy up, an extra clean of the bathroom, the need to make polite chit chat first thing in the morning when I just want to stagger wordlessly towards the kettle. But for a few nights it’s no big problem.
She’s just texted to check that she can stay for 16-20 days straight while she does a professional course next week.
And I reeeeally don’t want to host her for that long.
My reasons (mostly selfish):
- she’s recently stopped taking anxiety medication and the last time she stayed she spent each evening talking repetitively at length about very small problems that were obviously swirling around in her head. I spent a lot of time listening and being reassuring and supportive. But it was draining. It also took a lot of time away from the other things I normally get done in the evenings (life admin, laundry, catching up on work emails etc). I also find that stress in other people rubs off on me and I felt stressed for days after she left.
- I’m 8 months pregnant and I. Am. Tired. I am sore. I don’t want more housework, more emotional labour, one more person to think about. When the children are asleep I want to plough through my To-Do list if I have any energy or switch off completely if I don’t.
- We have easily excited toddlers and having an extra person in the house makes it that much harder to get them to focus and eat dinner, go to bed, stay in bed, all the usual toddler wrangling challenges.
- DH and I are currently in marriage counselling and so valuing our privacy more than usual. Being alone once the children go to sleep gives us space to talk things through if we need to, but otherwise enjoy some downtime together. The next few weeks feel really important for this given we’re about to be back on the newborn/sleep deprivation train soon.
- Our house has just the one living space which is open plan with the kitchen. A toddler sleeps in our bedroom. There’s nowhere to escape to.
My friend is a lovely kind person who would be there for me if I ever needed her. She hasn’t done anything wrong. When she moved I told her she would be welcome so suddenly saying no feels unfair. She knows we have the empty bedroom, so there’s no reason not to have her apart from simply not wanting to.
But I am running on empty and it feels (irrationally) like this one quiet houseguest will break me.
AIBU to say no this time? If not, how can I do it in a way that doesn’t hurt her feelings?
If I am BU, then please give me tips on managing houseguests with minimal effort. 