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.

I think the friend was being willfully obtuse because she’s lonely for company. Not because of any issues with her husband, she just sounds like she thought that offering the vacation rental to OP would mean lots of “girls” time together visiting, going to lunches and dinners and drinking wine or whatever. In between OP could write and hour here and that because friend has no idea what energy actually goes into writing. I also suspect either she doesn’t work at all or was on extended holiday and that her husband was working or busy with something else. She sounds sweet, rich and thoughtless, bordering on dumb.

I would have done the same thing as OP because I’m never going to be so rude as to tell someone to leave their own property even if they had promised me the exclusive use of it. (And I can see that going down like a lead balloon with the husband. I myself would not tolerate that under any circumstance.)

I also wouldn’t want to blow up the friendship for two reasons, first because I don’t think this is worth ending a friendship over but also because the drama of a big blow out would make me even less productive.

I am foreign and I live in Uk almost 10 years. I wouldn’t understand what “solitude” means. I would understand better this.
“I need to be completely alone days and nights and visiting please”

I meant “no visiting please”

@Wantosleep39

That makes sense. But if I didn’t understand what someone meant when describing what they need I would just ask.

Thanks a lot for driving the OP away from a thread I found genuinely interesting. What is wrong with some of you?

I love it when a poster asks AIBU and proceeds to pop a cork when told that she is.

@HannaYeah yes definitely. I would definitely ask. I am guessing op’s friend skip the word and only focus on that she needs to write and tried to look after her being there.
I was enjoying this thread too. Shame that op has gone

@lottiegarbanzo
Your posts are so intelligent.

I agree that this situation is a product of the OP's issues with boundaries.

Based on this thread, OP is likely to have plenty of future boundary issues and in my opinion would be better off getting counselling for these than posting on AIBU.