To tell my DS’s GF she can’t just move into our cottage rent free??

[CraziiHart]

Posting for traffic because I honestly don’t know if I’m losing the plot or not.

Long story short (well not that short)… DS is 21 and has been seeing this girl for about 5 mins. She’s a nice enough kid I suppose, cheeky and thinks she’s funny, but she’s very… present. You know what I mean? Anyway DS was only meant to have her staying over now and then. Couple nights here, couple nights there. Except now it’s turned into every single night, her stuff is in the bathroom, I’m finding her socks in the dryer, and she’s eating me out of house and home.

We’ve got the cottage round the back of the pub (we run the pub, so everything’s already chaotic) and the deal was that DS had it for a bit of independence but still close to home. Except now it’s like she’s moved in. She helps herself to food from the bar kitchen like she’s staff, leaves the lights on, showers twice a day (!!!) and the water bill has shot right up. Before anyone says it, yes she has a home, she’s got parents about 10 mins away. But apparently it’s “just easier” staying here. Easier for who?! Not me.

I don’t want to be the wicked witch MIL type but I feel like a mug. It’s not a hotel. I didn’t sign up to feed and house some random GF rent free. I asked her the other night if she’s actually living here now and she just laughed and said “well I sort of am, aren’t I.” Like it’s a joke. DH thinks I’m overreacting and should leave them be, but it’s my shopping bill she’s piling into and it’s me getting grief from regulars when she’s floating round the bar acting like she’s the landlady.

AIBU to put my foot down and tell her she can’t just move in rent free? Or am I being petty and should just let it go? I don’t want to cause a family row but honestly I feel like she’s taking liberties.

And before anyone has a go, I don’t hate her, she’s alright in small doses. I just don’t think it’s on to sponge off us when she’s barely out of sixth form. Surely that’s reasonable??

I agree with Millytante and Puzzledandpissedoff. It's only recently that many people of that age were working full time, had left home and were paying their own bills; I certainly was. These two may be young but they're not children and they need to get themselves ready for the real world.

How did it go op?

Good luck, I agree completely. Staff only behind the bar and in the pub kitchen, and she pays for any food and drinks from the pub just like all the other non-staff do. Two to three nights a week stay over is the maximum, more than that and she has to contribute to utility bills.

How has it even come about that she went in the pub kitchen/behind the bar, let alone that it continues?

Major piss take helping herself to drinks/crisps behind the bar! She’s eating and drinking your profits and paying nothing towards water/electricity. Blimey.

Hope it went well OP!

This @CraziiHart and how did the chat with DS go?

yes for that reason I wouldn't offer to employ her or say she can work off her bills. Regulars have already complained. Unless you know they are perpetual moaners there must be something about her attitude that annoys them.

I think it would be easier to keep the boundaries clear if she only visits the bar as a customer... and pays for her drinks and crisps and food - just like everyone else. Probalby the only way to keep the staff from complaining too.

Same with moving in without asking.

If she thought it was her boyfriend's place, why would she need to ask?

I think mid 20s is when the human brain reaches full maturity. You are expecting behaviour many young people just haven’t developed yet. The thing is to give people the benefit of the doubt rather than labelling them ‘cfs’ ‘scroungers’ ‘treating you with contempt’ and so on.

Once they've left home and experienced the outside world. Whether that's at 16 or at 28, it's a very sharp learning curve as the realities of independent living hit.

For me it was at 17, when living with an infirm grandmother, having to do the washing, shopping, cleaning, budgeting while she had cancer treatment in her 80s. I was a cosseted brat before that.
With my brother it was 24 when he went abroad to work.

While living at home with everything paid for and the cleaning/cooking/laundry/repair/money fairies solve most of life's problems, they are basically in an extended adolescence.

I would tell her and my DS that they can do what they like in his cottage but he needs to start paying rent given the extra costs. Explain that if your DS is working then he can go behind the bar or into the kitchen but otherwise neither of them can as it is a business and no different to them walking into the local corner shop and helping themselves behind the counter. They can buy their own food, cook it and eat it in their cottage or else they can order it at the bar, pay for it and eat it as punters do.

I suspect both are too thoughtless and immature to have really thought things through.

Two showers a day (other than when we’re in a heatwave maybe) is batshit crazy and tbh I’d be concerned about whether she’s suffering from OCD.
How did your chat go OP?

‘Full maturity’ isn’t necessary, if that bit of biology is correct.
Surely to God it’s not expecting too much of young people of 20-ish to display a degree of cop on and of consideration. (If they can vote, they can damn well be aware of their surroundings)

I’ve no patience with that parenting attitude which extends the low expectations and broad leeway of childhood to offspring over 18.
I think that by then, they definitely need to be clambering out of the nest in some way, even in only in terms of behaviour and responsibility.
If teenagers haven’t exhibited progress (or inclination) towards maturity by their 18/19th birthdays, then what on Earth have they been doing?

Isn’t it our duty as their parents to pat them into shape through their teens, so that they may face and manage independent adult life at college or at work, even if as you say, they aren’t fully through the growing process til their mid-20s?
Unless they are encouraged to move forward to independent responsibility, this mid-20s cutoff time will be irrelevant anyway, as they’ll still be incapable of life in the wild.

What’s the update?

It’s pretty evident from literature/film/tv/everyone I’ve ever met that for the entirety of history young people have done stupid thoughtless idiotic things and later in life looked back on them and cringed. Yes you teach your children manners, decency, how to be a good guest and so on, but they will make social faux pas, sometimes big ones, and you hope that older adults treat that with kindness - which doesn’t mean being a walkover you can state boundaries without making someone feel like shit. It is more likely that this young woman is clueless and a bit selfish in the way of young people than that she is seeing the OP as some kind of walkover she can take advantage of in a malevolent way. Some posters seem to be baying for the young woman’s humiliation and honestly, it’s a bit pathetic. OP can easily handle this kindly and get the desired outcome (gf not waltzing about the business and helping herself, and contributing to the household or staying less often) so there is zero need to make this a power struggle.

This!

I don’t disagree, and it ought not be a power struggle at all.
Just a cessation to abuse of hospitality, possibly DS taking too much for granted, and a recognition in GF of the most basic social conventions, ones I’d hope to see in the average ten-year old tbh.

I strongly agree that all young people have it wired into them to act recklessly, stupidly, obnoxiously, heedlessly and all the rest of it. It’s an awful and a glorious transition. (I certainly cringe at the memory of my ‘fresh from uni’ hippie-Punk attitudes, and always arguing with Ma, though by letter mercifully, and that was at 21!)
But this typically 17-22 (say) behaviour needs to be on pretty firm foundations in order not to become a way of life. Can be touch and go, certainly.
You yourself say that parents will have taught their children good manners, an awareness of others’ needs etc, and all the rest of the bedrock of a developing adult, and all I was saying is that it seems to me that this process was surely is lacking in far too many cases, as evidenced by the comportment of many spouses and partners complained of on MN.

I don’t suggest that OP now treat the girlfriend with harshness or any suggestion of humiliating her (where did that come from?), but neither need she feel like an evil witch if she now makes her limits very clear indeed. She’s hardly going to smack her, is she?

Anyway, let’s hope all three actors in this scene will come to a satisfactory agreement, and OP not need to bang on the table with her gavel too much! (Mixed imagery there, apols)

My son has his own flat on my property. For all intents and purposes it's 'his place', but he's not moving someone in there without my consent. It's still my property and affects my privacy and life. It's up to him to make that distinction to anyone that might think he can just do whatever he wants in regard to the wider property.

Good luck ! Do you have employees in the pub ? If so I would be careful she isn’t throwing her weight around them being your son’s GF. I’ve seen this before and it caused great upset this one lording it over the staff and creating extra work

I hope your chat with your son went well. You have two problems the first being how she treats the business. This should be easy to fix , she does not go behind the bar or into the kitchen nothing should be taken from the pub it’s a business .
second is the living arrangements in the cottage both her and your DS need to start contributing towards the bills . My adult children both pay minimum rent but purchase there own food , should there partners stay for more than two nights they also pay a weeks rent to contribute towards the extra utilities.

So what happened after the talk?

It's a fully blown adult relationship where the young want to live the adult life but their minds still haven't caught up that you pay for your own adult life and not just barge into someone's home, expense and business. Their son isn't trained well

Preparing your adult kids for adult life happens when they are 15 to 18.