To be annoyed at this?

[isthisoveryet]

We saw relatives we don’t often see a few weeks ago. We told them beforehand that they were welcome in our house but we would like social distancing to be maintained. They arrived by train from an area that has relatively high Covid cases, as does our area. I’m pregnant and we have a toddler.

Upon arriving and greeting one of the relatives gave a big bear hug to my DH, despite his protestation that it wasn’t social distancing. This was scoffed at. Throughout the day they were touching toddler’s face if we were holding them, trying to coax them closer to them etc. At the end of the day the bear hug to DH was repeated.

These are people who have previously not respected boundaries. They have since apologised but made it very clear before the apology that they thought we were unreasonable.

Have we been precious and unreasonable? I can’t stop feeling livid that they took their own judgement of risk and imposed that on our family.

OFGS 🙄

Do not invite them again whilst we are still have risks. Other emotions are waisted time and are not going to achieve anything.

So you don’t like you in laws then.

If you’re inviting people into your house for extended periods it’s unreasonable to expect social distancing.

If you want to social distance don’t have people over socially.

The train is a none issue, but if they aren't open to social distancing I wouldn't have invited them. My family are still being incredibly careful and we all respect each others spaces.

Why didnt your dh step back from them and remind them you are social distancing?

@PegasusReturns sorry, I should have been clearer there. They were in the house for 1 hour and we kept to one room with good ventilation. The rest of the time we went to a park. The social distancing was ‘agreed’ to before they arrived - as in, they were aware it was what we were doing with other people several days before the planned visit and they said that it was fine with them.

I know this is likely a very boring post for some, but I get silly anxious about these relatives and it’s a problem that I’m aware of. I lose perspective and fluctuate between thinking they’ve clearly been disrespectful or we’ve clearly been unreasonable and deserve to have our ears burning now.

If course you can invite people and at the same time maintain social distancing. I’ve done this over the last week with shielded family members not seen since February and it was wonderful to see them. The urge to hug was strong. We resisted.

@Janaih he’s quite intimidated by this person and he didn’t want any tension to unfold in front of our toddler

Whether other people agree with your approach to social distancing isn’t the issue here. The issue is that you asked relatives to respect your approach, they agreed to, and then they broke that agreement and therefore your trust. You are not being unreasonable at all to be upset about that.

You have you be reasonable - it is not reasonable to expect family members you’ve not seen fit a long time to social distance in your home.

You know they ignore boundaries so you knew this would happen.

You invited them knowing the area they’re from and how they would travel.

This was avoidable.

I think it’s hard to social distance with children. If your child went over to them would you want them to tell them
To go away?

YANBU. After the second incident I would have told them to leave because they weren’t respecting your boundaries.

@Freddiefox no I’d have let my child approach them, but it’s more as adults I wouldn’t expect them to do the ‘breaking’ of social distancing. I know children vary a lot in this regard, but DC doesn’t get close to other adults unless she’s very familiar with them.

Your house, your rules. You made the rules clear before the visit, if they didn't like it they shouldn't have accepted your invitation.

You and your DH need to learn to enforce your own boundaries. If he didn't want to be hugged, he should have stopped it, and certainly not allowed it a second time.