Not wanting people to stay with us mid-week

[NearlyMonday]

I have name changed for this.

AIBU to say ‘no’ to the increasing stream of relatives who want to stay with us mid-week? DP and I both work full time, and mid week guests are a pain. Its just that someone else is HERE, you can’t relax in the evening, you have to be in entertaining mode all the time, I can’t walk around in a t-shirt and knickers, and trying to be pleasant and chatty over cornflakes is hellish. Weekends are different and there’s no issue with having guests then. DP is very reluctant to say no to any of his relatives, who seem oblivious to the fact that we work. My relatives can be equally oblivious, but I just tell them to stick to weekends. But DP seems to think we always have to say yes to family.

My inlaws keep trying to demand this

They want to come for a week - but "don't worry you won't have to entertain us we will go out during the day"

My MiL is deaf, listens to the TV on full blast until midnight then stomps up stairs, needs to go back and forwards to the bathroom several times and gets up to wee multiple times in the night which always seem to require slamming doors.

My FiL also deaf gets up at 5am, slams doors, turns the TV on loud.

They have to be entertained at breakfast and I am not a morning person and have enough to do before work, and then inevitably sit there for at least an hour after I start work watching TV on full blast. I have an office at the opposite end of the house and can still hear them.

They come back around 3pm, assume I have finished work and want to hover in my doorway and talk because they are useless at entertaining themselves. Inevitably the TV then goes on again.

Then we have to cook a full meal, my FiL doesn't like anything that isn't meat, 1-2 veg and potatoes and will not eat vegetarian food (we are both veggie) without passive aggressive moaning

And then the evening is spent very uncomfortably as they will have Inevitably fallen out during the day and will be sniping each other. My FiL is massively mysoginistic and if I say something he doesn't like (and he doesn't like a lot) he will storm off in a temper

Ooof, that was cathartic

Our spare bedroom has been undergoing total renovation for at least 2 years now and will continue for quite some time so that unfortunately we cannot accommodate week long visits...

Agree totally his family can stay any time he is off work to host them the entirety of their visit.

I did consider getting the decorators in, hopefully this would have put our spare room out of action for a while, but the chap I contacted said he could complete the work in 2 days. DAMN!!!

The OP is not responding to questions, how often are the visits mid week and do you live in a touristy area??

So the steps are:

1. Empty the room of furniture
2. Forget to call the decorators for 6 months
3. Pull off the plaster
4. Forget to call the plasterer for 6 months
5. Get the room plastered
6. Leave the plaster 6 months to dry off
7. Paint the room
8. Forget to buy a carpet for 6 months
9. Buy carpet

10. Forget to move furniture for 6 months 11. Put room back together 12. Move into room and do the same to the main bedroom

In my defence our house needs serious renovation and we have a small holding so the 6 month gaps are when we are incredibly busy outside

We currently have a visitor approx every six weeks. We live quite near a coastal area

Start charging AirBNB rates. They’ll bugger off.

The problem here is your DH: he needs to man up and speak to his in laws about it. I assume you're the one picking up most of the slack when people stay over in terms of looking after them. If he's too spineless to say no to them he can't expect your life to be disrupted on a regular basis like this.

If he can't or won't deal with it you need to say it's his problem and he can take care of all the prep/cooking/laundry/entertaining when they stay.

Every six weeks is not as frequent as it first appeared, however mid week if I was working that would be a no from me. Even if he agreed to do the hosting you still can't relax properly in your own home.

That's exactly my point - even if DP does all the domestics associated with the visits, there's still an extra person in my home and I can't relax. Not sure if this makes me odd, but I can't help it.

I'd hate this, tbh I find people who invite themselves are only doing it for their benefit as it suits them but not you. When PILs do this to us and dress it up as wanting to see the kids (but it's arriving late Tuesday when kids are in bed and leaving early on Thursday as they are meeting friends nearby for coffee).
I always shut it down with 'ah you'll miss the kids because they do tennis on a Wednesday after school, the third weekend in October would be best for seeing them as they've nothing on, how does that suit you?'
Just say it's busy with work and they'll have quality time with you over x weekend if they are available.

You are not weird OP, it changes the whole household dynamic having someone in the house.
I would send a message to the frequent askers or chat to them in person, saying you love having them over and would really appreciate it if they could stick to weekends in future. Be clear, no hinting and dancing around the topic. Have the conversation before their next request. You are not saying no to them, you are stating a preference. If they are decent people they will respect your boundary and not ask again, so you never need to actually say no.
Exceptions can obviously be made if there is a good reason, but with a firm reminder that it is an exception.

I'm probably not the best person to ask because I'm the hated-by-mumsnet type of person who won't answer the door if I'm not expecting someone, but I would hate this. I totally know what you mean about not being able to relax with someone else in the house. I purposely have too-few chairs and no guest bed to discourage visitors 😂

My best friend recently told me that she'd always admired the way I enforce boundaries and I guess she is right; I simply refuse to do things I don't want to. I won't make myself uncomfortable for other people's wants and that feeling has only gotten stronger since my autism diagnosis a couple of years ago, and subsequently learning to unmask.

The "but they're faaaaamily!" argument has never done much for me either. I have never felt beholden to someone just because we happen to be related; I'm probably even less accommodating with family because I'm more comfortable being honest with them

P.S. It's really rude to invite yourself to someone's home. Your DH should be put off by that alone!

I can see both perspectives and both are valid. As it's a joint home it has to be a joint decision which is going to involve compromise. So maybe not a flat never but an expectation that it happens no more than 4x a year as opposed to the 8 or 9x it's happening now. No one reasonable could think that is unreasonable.

P.S. It's really rude to invite yourself to someone's home. Your DH should be put off by that alone!

@amusedbush totally - you should always wait to be asked!

I think you need to give the spare room a going over, make it uninhabitable for a while.

We occasionally have my DPs coming over on a Thursday night so that they can go to an exhibition on Friday but that's very rare. They don't want to get woken up by us early morning either!!

“We can’t do Wednesday 12th, but we’d love to have you the weekend after.’
That’s not ‘no’ — could your husband say that?

Hmmmm - in theory he could, but I suspect he'd say "but they want to come on Wednesday 12th, not the weekend" I see that DP is a good part of the problem here!

I don’t necessarily think it’s rude for people asking to stay. I live in London so sometimes have family members asking if they can stay. They know they can as I say I would rather they stayed with me than paying for a hotel (particularly my younger family members who are either still students or just starting to work)

If this is mid week and they are staying in my spare room/office then I will either work in the living room or choose to go into the office that day. I would say this happens a handful of times a year so not regular enough to get upset over

In your situation I would just go straight to the nuclear option and move out. I cannot stand people making decisions that directly and negatively affect me without any consultation. Your partner has no respect for your feelings or opinion. Plus he's so wet he's not capable of saying no to family which is singularly unattractive. So no, yanbu in any way.

YANBU at all, I can’t even fully relax in my own home when my children have their (teenage) friends round, I certainly wouldn’t want family or in laws staying overnight while I’m trying to get on with normal life. It’s your home, your private family space and you have the right not to regularly share it with others if you don’t want to. Your h needs to understand this is a boundary for you and is making you stressed out. I’d give an ultimatum that he either needs to communicate ‘weekends only’ to his family, or you will be writing a polite email to them yourself “I’m sure you understand that with busy lives we can’t accommodate visitors during the week but look forward to having you stay at weekends”.

He doesn’t have to understand -he just has to respect it.

Throw away the spare room mattress and claim it had mould. Then take a while replacing it.

Saying yes to weekend stays instead of midweek is not really saying no, in my opinion. Your DH needs to see sense.