Should I just walk out of here?

[Rayray118]

Okay, long story short I'm a writer who's been offered the exclusive use of a friends apartment abroad so I could spend two weeks writing. I dived on it of course. I've just begun a major project and will be enormously busy with my day job (I have one of those unfortunately!) for the rest of the spring and summer. Aside from weekends this is the only chunk of time I have to focus on this and if I don't get a decent 20,000 words written in these two weeks there's just no point in my being here.

20,000 words is easy going for two weeks and I left it at that as a plan because I wanted to spend a night or two at the weekends with my friend who owns the apartment. She lives about twenty minutes drive from here and lets out this apartment in short lets most of the year but of course in January it's quiet. I had expected, and made very clear, that I need solitude to write. I arrived here on Friday and so far solitude has been no part of this experience.

My friend stayed here Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. I really wasn't expecting her to stay last night and thought that was pushing it, so I reminded her that as I'd said I need solitude to write. She seemed rather shocked and appalled when I suggested that she come back next weekend and leave me on my own till then. This morning she came up with some bizarre excuse about needing to stay tonight also. To me it's just getting ridiculous at this stage. To clarify, she is not lonely, nor is there any other reason I can see why she'd be so inconsiderate. She knows exactly what I came here to do and why it's so important that I be left alone to do it. She lives twenty minutes away in a very large comfortable home with her husband. She is also in a very happy and loving marriage. It seems to me she's just wilfully oblivious to how important it is to me to be alone to undertake this task, however clear I was about it before I arrived.

I can imagine some people may think I've little to worry about but if I don't get this done in the next ten days I won't get it done before late summer. I am wondering to myself if I should just pack my bags and rent an Air BnB somewhere else while I've still got ten days left? I don't want to do anything to damage my friendship but I cannot say how important or irreplaceable this time is to me. I am also getting increasingly frustrated, another few days and I'll be extremely resentful - honestly this about the most boundary-less behaviour I've experienced in a long time!

Any opinions would be most welcome.

Oh, should have known that would happen! I was agreeing with antisupermum of course.

I also agree that good threads do become more general conversations, not just a direct interactions with the OP. That has nothing to do with the posting style of those who narrowly worry away at a few of the OP's words, out of all context, like terriers with rats. That behaviour is in fact the very opposite of extending the discussion into more general terms.

OP! Is it today that you’re leaving?

I hope you manage to get away without difficulty or hard feelings.

I’m fascinated that you’ve had to book flights and what-not. I’m curious to know where you are, where you live, and where you’re going! Sorry, I’m ever so nosy.

How far will you be travelling today?

yes fair do's @lottiegarbanzo it is annoying when people get stuck on a word & it is irrelevant, I have also read lots like that and quite see why this one might be the same. (like the trans AMA one where everyone misunderstood the tick box on the smear test form and it became a massive thing).

I've honestly been doing it in good faith tho - I feel like the words used are actually crucial to the misunderstanding. Sorry though, is obviously not what you would like to see, and we don't get an update!

I still reckon that if the OP flounced due to feeling people didn't get what she meant, that's kinda indicative too tho...?!

I didn't have any difficulty understanding what OP meant, nor did most posters. Why her friend did not remains a mystery but that is not going to be resolved, nor their continuing friendship enhanced, nor OP's writing achieved, by OP assassinating their relationship, point by point, in explicit detail.

OP has writing to do. She has no reason at all to stay here and argue with people.

all she needed to do was say "I said x" then we could have all agreed that the friend WBU. As it is, I don't know if they both were.

I told her =/= I said "quotes words"

@Golfcart
Op basically said Saphire had mental health problems. If you read my post below at 4.57am Thurs, parts of it are almost a quote, which I basically fed back to her to make a point.

I can’t quite remember what Saphire said in response as it was not as nasty as what op said and I was surprised to see it deleted. Clearly she was pretty upset.

Do you remember the exact words that you said to someone a week ago? I don't. I think most of us summarize the content of conversations like the OP did, rather than say, I said "xxx" and quote exactly what was said. It really wasn't hard to understand what the OP meant. This seems to the way of MN sometimes. Posters pick on one phrase used in a post and will pick pick pick at it to make it that the OP is in the wrong. It is really tedious.

I do remember if I asked for a specific thing or not, yeah.

I have to agree that what OP thinks is very clear, might not have been, so it would have been helpful if she'd told us exactly what she said, rather than just saying "I made it very clear".
I find it difficult to think that, when told by someone that you need to be alone, with no-one around, so could they go, or you won't be able to work, that her friend wouldn't understand that, which makes me wonder what form her "making it clear", actually took.

Before the argument started, I did ask her if she'd actually told her friend that if she was around, OP would have to leave, but she didn't answer me.

I don't believe she made up a story to her friend all through her stay, it read that she only did that to explain her having to leave early, without harming her friendship.

Who cares Golfcart? Neither of them is on trial.

The question was, how can OP best get her writing done; stay and hope things will change, or leave? It was clear things weren't going to change, for whatever reason, so she needed to leave. She has left. Case closed, job done.

Raking over exactly what she'd said to her friend on the first few days isn't going to change that. That's just a petty, irrelevant blame game, played by people who enjoy that sort of thing, at OP's expense.

Do you remember the exact words that you said to someone a week ago?

But she wasn't asked what she said a week ago. OP was live posting after each conversation with her friend, pretty much, with just a few hours between posts.

To be fair to op her question was IABU to just leave. And majority said no. It was less about making the friend do as she wanted.

Which is fair enough since it’s the friend’s place and she didn’t want to fall out in any way.

But I think OP is BU to "just leave"- because I don't think she can have asked for what she wanted!

Hinting, then leaving, to me, is unreasonable!

Things might indeed have changed if she had been clearer. I appreciate the ship has now sailed though. My knowledge of human nature tells me that a friend wouldn't be so cheery if she'd been made fully aware of OPs needs. And if she was, the question then becomes why was OP so bothered about maintaining the friendship and not rocking the boat? Whole thing, from OPs pov, is just weird and doesn't hang together.

I've been asking for information to help me reply to the original question as well as iintroducing a wider debate on communication.

The friend is also unreasonable btw!

I read it exactly as @mokoto did and also wondered at the time why OP didn't confirm what she'd said, despite several posters asking her.

She's not on trial but she has asked us to judge her interpretation of the situation.

AutumnCrow

I think you illustrated it perfectly and I'll quote you again in case anyone missed it:

^with previous housemate:

'I need absolute solitude, as I said previously.'

'Oooh! I know, let's get icecream!'

with my mother:

'I need absolute solitude, as I said previously.'

'Whatever do you mean?' ^

and yet there would be posters who to this above will say, no, you haven't made it clear enough that you needed solitude.

Disappointing to have an entertaining thread derailed by someone making it their day's(days'!) work to show OP they know better than she herself what exactly she said/meant.

(seems to refuse to italicise in preview, anyone knows why?)

@Rayray118

It's a shame you don't want to post any more, though I completely understand why! I never started a thread (I think, certainly not in AIBU - though maybe something in Chat where it's far more chilled) on MN for this reason, that you often get some posters get surprisingly invested and personal. Don't take people calling you a liar on MN to heart, just accept it's part of the deal of posting here, there's still more positives than negatives to being on here, just be picky about where you comment.
Due to the fact that MN was often open on the laptop my DH once innocuously started a thread here about something which actually happened in our garden asking for advice, within hours he was called a liar and his account was reported and banned, and his thread deleted with mumsnet deciding he was a troll...that's just shows the level of paranoia and personal involvement. I was more amused than offended by it but did massively cut down my usage of MN after this which overall worked out for the better for me, but still use it for reviews and opinions etc, but mostly go to Chat or Style or specific help boards (like help to choose a holiday destination etc :) )
There's a great thread in Chat right now about best toppings for crumpets ;)

It would be interesting to know where you ended up and if you managed to progress with your writing :) All the best!

in the options above, the housemate and mother are not listening. So the key is the next response, isn't it? Whatever do you mean, purses lips.... I mean you need to leave now/ i mean I am leaving now.

The housemate and mum are super rude. To the point where I ask why someone would maintain that relationship where they are being overridden and ignored?

I haven't called the OP a liar. I think she may have misinterpreted how clear she thought she was being.

Golfcart I was just responding to her message where she said she was called a liar at 4AM, I don't even know who she meant because as soon as I saw the thread was derailed I stopped reading, only OP's own messages and scanned the last page...

OK!

Widening the discussion, to talk among yourselves about the issues arising, and demanding further specific input from the OP so you can critique her, are opposites.

See also: I have a migraine, I need to left alone, in the dark, in peace

Flatmate: What's a migraine? Shall I bring you some food?

Me: I feel nauseous in head and stomach, I'm in pain everywhere, I feel like I'm about to vomit. Leave me alone in the dark, in quiet.

Flatmate: should you see a doctor?

Me: no, I know what this is, it's a migraine. It will go away if I'm in peace, in the dark, on my own.

Flatmate: about that food...

Some people really are that weirdly dense. Oddly the people closest to demonstrating that on this thread are the ones struggling to understand the OP.

It is honestly fascinating that people are that dense! I've never met anyone who can't understand a direct request. I've met people who don't do what you ask, but there's a lot of techniques to deal with that.

Some of us can also get nuance and subtext.

Agreed Vahni.

I find it rather sad that on a thread about one person trampling over another's expectations and making unreasonable demands upon her for no obvious reason, the OP - who had gained support from and engaged in productive, friendly dialogue with so many posters, which might well have continued happily - has been chased away... by posters trampling over her expectations and making unreasonable demands upon her for no obvious reason.

There's a common theme, certainly. People who think only of their own satisfaction and not about what the OP might want, or what's in it for her.