Relatives who are still here!

[girlygirl98]

Anyone else with relatives that have seriously outstayed their welcome?! They've been here since 12!!

My dad is fab at letting you know when hes had enough of a visit. Could just be there half an hour and he stands up and says.. well its been lovely seeing you, walks to hall and hands coats out its standing joke in my family how long he will last before politely turning us out 🤣

Ignore the arseholes calling you miserable OP.

Unless I'd been told it was an all day and all evening invite I'd have left after a few hours.

Nothing wrong with wanting guests there all day and all evening til early hours but there's also nothing wrong with having an eight and nine hour limit either.

My MIL is the same! I can sit there yawning and dropping loads of hints but she won't go! This Christmas we're going to theirs so we can go and leave when we want!

We never seem to get it right with DHs extended family. One set expects people to stay until around 9 (or maybe later as we are always forst to leave). With another set its clear that lunch just means lunch and we should go shortly afterwards.

I was ready for mine to leave at 7pm. I love my family but there’s a time when I want to get into my PJs and watch Christmas telly.

I start hoovering when this happens.

I always say 'sorry guys, I'm gonna have to throw you out, I'm knackered and need my beauty sleep'! Has always done the trick for me.

Hoovering works to 😊

Ours just left 😂 To be fair we didn't eat Christmas dinner until 9.30pm so cant really call that outstaying their welcome ... but bloody hell it's late 😄

I like to head straight from putting my child to bed to taking a shower and putting on my pjs. Adult bedtime is immediately after kid bedtime, especially if I’ve been cooking and hosting all day.

They don't have small kids themselves, right?

Just tell them "I hope you dont mind but I'm exhausted and I just want to a quiet night in with my feet up" you've hosted, cooked and cleaned, I'm sure no one will take it personally!

I would go to.the loo then go.to bed and sleep 😂

It's funny how controversial this is. Also I literally did three dishwasher loads, put pans on to soak, took the Christmas table cloth off, hoovered, bathed and bedded the kids and still they sat... these relatives are young adults in their twenties so perhaps not yet as exhausted as the rest of us. Plus they weren't really being sociable just sitting on our kids x box. Husband is mildly annoyed as well because they've sat and built three of one of our kids meccano sets they got for Christmas

I stayed at my daughter's till around 8.30, we had dinner then a snack later which would be the norm for me.

They are only young but sound thoughtless. Did they help at all?

In my family it's 12pm to 9pm ish. We're staying with dps family this year and I'm quietly desperate to go home.

I nearly just asked dsil (whom I get on very well with) what time she wanted us to leave yesterday as I could tell they were shattered by 6pm.

We did leave, by the way, but it struck me that different families have very different expectations and I didn't want to offend her by seeming to rush off. It still took about an hour to extract mil.

My in laws pre booked their taxis. They arrived just after 11.30 and taxi picked them up at 4.30. Just the perfect amount of time to be here.

I once had that, and they wouldn’t get the hint. My dad and I were in pyjamas, the kids wouldn’t go to bed and were crying on my lap in tiredness and they still wouldn’t leave. I tried to put the kids to bed, they followed me in the bedroom. Then they said they were going to go and sat on the sofa for another hour.

I’ve got a bit more forceful now I’m 40! I’ll tell them directly, or if I’m feeling nice “When are you heading off? Best go soon because you’ll probably want time to recover from Christmas”

My dad and his wife are here visiting us (in South Africa) and were due to fly home tonight. Now they're talking about rebooking their flights and staying until the New Year because my stepmum has a cold and sore ears so doesn't want to fly. I was so looking forward to having the house to ourselves, to having our bedroom back and not having to share with toddler DS, to being able to watch what we want on TV (they're very devout born-again-Christians so anything featuring magic or whatever is out), to not having to "host" and make cups of tea, and frankly we are skint and can't really afford to keep feeding them! Not sure what to do!?

Did your relatives eventually go home and leave you in peace?

AdorableMisfit perhaps you've forgotten you've got other people coming to stay the day after they were due to leave, who'll need the bedroom?

@Dementedswan your dad was living the dream, most of us wish we had the bravado to do that

AdorableMisfit noooooo - don't let this happen! Put something on TV that they will hate and write a shopping list making it clear you're running out of food and it's up to them to stock up if they're staying extra time!

@Puzzledandpissedoff - we WERE actually due to have other visitors arriving the day after tomorrow, but they've had to cancel which my dad knows as I mentioned it to him. So that won't work sadly... Looks like we might be stuck with them for a bit, currently sitting in A and E with them as stepmum is asthmatic and struggling to breathe. I do have empathy for her obviously, it's horrible being ill, especially so when you're away from home, but I still want my house back... Will just have to wait and see what the doctor says, if he thinks she's well enough to fly or not.

@onalongsabbatical - I let my daughter put on Disenchantment for a bit, but we've seen all the episodes multiple times already (she has ASD and watches the same thing obsessively over and over) so in the end I made her turn it off because I got annoyed with it myself, haha. May take my dad to the supermarket when we eventually get back from A & E and make him pay though.

Aww surely it’s not too much for your stepmum not to have to fly with sore ears and a cold? Could you politely insist on watching shows you like and just not offer any more tea service?

When I was a child, my father's friend and his family stayed at ours all day until the wee hours. My mother was complaining behind their backs but still being a gracious hostess right up to the end. As they left, I used a phrase I had recently learnt: "Good riddance!". I still cringe at the thought that I said that. I learnt another new word that night, thanks to my older sister: 'obnoxious'.

But seriously though, I said what everyone was thinking.