To ask guest to leave for smoking in the bedroom?

[FgsMary]

A friend has been staying. She lives abroad but is over here on holiday for 3 weeks. Day 1, she smoked in the kitchen. I told her no smoking at all in the house. She pulled a face but from then on, smoked in the garden. I then became aware that she was sneakily smoking in the bedroom at night (blowing it out of window). She is a very tricky person anyway. Very aggressive, confrontational, awkward, selfish, bullying at the best of times but I'd bit my lip for a week and it had mainly been OK. I asked her if she'd been smoking in the bedroom. She said no but then later text me to say that she had and she was sorry. I told her she should find somewhere else to stay and she left that day. I feel dreadful though and I should probably have just said again not to smoke inside but not asked her to leave. She's now playing the victim and acting like I'm the bad guy. Was I out of order? I have said she's welcome to come back and I've seen her since but she's said no to coming back and she's sleeping on a relatives floor instead.

Gosh, has my sister been staying with you?!

You are not in the wrong!

YANBU. You already told her your boundary, and she pissed all over it when she is capable of not overstepping that same boundary in her parents' house. So, it's not that she can't help herself or control her impulses, she just doesn't respect you or care about hurting you.

Everyone walks on eggshells around her? F*ck that too. That is her placing greatest importance on her own feelings and intimidating others in to doing the same. All whilst giving zero consideration to anyone else's feelings.

You feel sorry for her and that you have some sense of responsibility for making her life easier. You don't, this is just how she makes you feel because it serves her sense of being the most important person in the world.

I'd have zero guilt about stepping away from this "friendship".

I don't think you were harsh. It's about the disrespect she showed you anxious your home and her attitude.

She said, I understand that you feel disrespected. She didn't say I'm sorry that I disrespected you. She's smart with words and makes sure she takes no accountability for her actions. If you try to talk to her about her behaviour, she just says things like, I'm not making anyone feel uncomfortable/upset etc, their feelings are their own and they're choosing to feel like that. She's very hard work.

I do feel incredibly guilty. I've known her my whole life. It's caused all kinds of issues and I feel awful that she's now sleeping on the floor on cushions, even though her actions caused all this

why on earth would you feel guilty? It's really not hard not to smoke in a house. Go into the garden to smoke. Easy.

She has to be really really stupid to smoke at all. Quite apart from the health risks, it turns your skin yellow and lined and makes your breath stink.

There is zero need for you to feel guilty.

Well done for asking her to leave after she disrespected your requirements of no smoking in your home. She had already done it once and you asked her not to; she did. I have very few house 'rules' but smoking is a definite NO in my home. You have been more than reasonable; don't let her victim style response get to you

I would not invite them at all. No way in hell. They can stay at their own home rolling their eyes at you, so you don’t have to put up with it. Rude idiots.

I think she behaved terribly and dont think you were harsh at all. Your home, your rules. She disrespected your boundary, and was told to leave as a consequence.

That's all there is to it.

The guilt tripping is irrelevant beyond a sign that she doesn't respect you or your home. Who cares if someone so selfish and manipulative doesn't want to be friends? You're ALREADY NOT FRIENDS.

Really this whole thread should be about you working on your mindset rather than this situation with your friend your guilt is misplaced

all you should be feeling is I set perfectly reasonable boundaries and enforced them. It doesn’t feel nice I had to and I do feel for the person I had to do it to (because I’m a human who cares) but it was perfectly ok to do that.

You feel awful because she won’t take any responsibility for her side of things she is making out like you are being unfair and emotionally trying to guilt you.

you did nothing wrong.
You tried to put a boundary in place that she then tried to break to get her own way (as she seems to do with everything that isn’t her own way) then lie about because she knows she was wrong.
in response you didn’t allow her to break or lie about it so you enforced a consequence.
instead of putting her hands up and going ok I got caught I’m sorry can we start again she kicked off and turned it around on you.

i see you don’t want to cut her out @FgsMary and that’s ok it’s your choice but then you have to put things in place to make it as ok as you can to be in your little and this is a great example of that.

you have certain hard limitations
if she crosses them then you enforce some type of protection to show she has crossed a line that you won’t put up with.
she won’t be happy but every time will learn how far she can push and won’t do it again (or will but will know there will be repercussions)
you won’t be happy enforcing it but you will feel ok about not allowing yourself to be squashed under her behaviour.

eventually she will still be difficult to be around but probably won’t try as hard to get her own way (like she knows she can’t get away with smoking at parents house) and you will feel better about yourself and friendship

you will feel safer knowing you can and will be strong enough to be around her and put your needs into the situation and hopefully seeing her won’t be as full of drama.

Your friend is "Very aggressive, confrontational, awkward, selfish, bullying ".

Get better friends. She sounds awful at the best of times.

I don't think you were harsh. I would not allow anyone to smoke in my house, and would also ask someone to leave if they couldn't respect my wishes. Don't go crawling to her. She doesn't sound like she's much of a loss in terms of friendships.

How can an abuse of someone's hospitality, especially when they've expressly asked you not to do something, in any way be unreasonable?

Do not grovel to her.

But you already told her no and then gave her a second chance. How many second chances does a grown adult need with a simple request in respecting someone else's home?

Not being unreasonable.

You sound like a complete doormat. Why are you like this?

YANBU. Don’t feet guilty OP. Trying changing “smoking” to “doing a poo on the floor”. Then you won’t feel bad about asking her to leave.

I don't understand why you respect yourself so little that even after she's upset you, ignored your simple request not to smoke in the house, and then refused to apologise, you're telling her she can come back. The reason people behave like this is because no one has stood up to them like they should have, they just keep enabling and enabling the bad behaviour. Instead don't speak to her any more and don't listen to anyone that tries to tell you to support her. Adults make their own choices about how to behave. She's chosen her way - to be rude and selfish. It's on you that you keep letting her behave like this. Well done for throwing her out, never let anyone across your doorstep again who doesn't respect you abd your home.

I'm a people pleaser. I just want peace and no drama. I was in a long term abusive relationship that did a lot of damage to me. I'm not a doormat though or at least I certainly don't think of myself as one. I understandably just wanted the 3 weeks to be lovely for everyone.

She could have chosen to smoke outside but she'd rather sulk.
She's most likely sleeping on the floor in a house where she can't smoke inside and wouldn't dare to, in her mind, punish you.
I know people like this and they have a weird way of thinking.

Basically an even less self aware version of - She won't let me do what I want, she's horrible, I'm going to put myself in a worse situation and she will feel really guilty because it's all her fault. She will beg my forgiveness in the end and not be mean again and then I can always do what I want.

Sounds like you've gone above and beyond OP.

Whatever people's life problems there's no excuse to be rude, agressive and unpleasant to people who are helping you.

Yanbu
She's really out of order and disrespectful.

Be thankful she has gone and do not allow her back.

Let her relatives find out how bad mannered and disrespectful she is.

Jaysus even apart fiom the smoking she sounds like a nightmare, she doesn't sound like a friend to me, don't worry about it, she was told your very basic "house rule" & broke it

Well she ruined it, this is on her not you. She could have gone into the garden at night she chose not to, and faced consequences.

This is all valid but in reality what happens is people don't learn and they adopt a victim mentality. At best they may accept I got that wrong and my friend doesn't want to be friends with me.

They don't actually do the work of change until they look at themselves with a degree of compassion. They need to work on themselves.

You told her no smoking in the house. She was in the house when she was smoking. She knew your rules and she broke them.

She isn't a victim here. She knew what she was doing.

This

You set a boundary, she broke it and felt the consequences ( had to leave)
Why are you allowing her to guilt trip you?

Just ignore her
She sounds awful and not a friend

And now you can have the rest of the 3 weeks back! Instead of being miserable. She broke a major household rule several times, asking her to leave is the minimum response.