Staying with friend in family meltdown on holiday

[Decormad38]

We are currently visiting an old friend of mine on holiday in another country. We have spent 5 days here but it's been fairly awful due to the fact that the family seem to all be in meltdown. She is totally controlling and shouts at her 15 year old dad and 18 year old son constantly. She tries to make her kids speak English to us all the time then shouts at them when they don't and they just avoid being near us now. Her and her kids are constantly rowing. Her DH is clearly treading on egg shells the whole time. It has been as far from relaxing as you can get as she has told us when to get up, although she has asked what we want to do she then just overrides it with her plans. Yesterday I decided I was going to take our DD to the city without her because I knew our DD would be marched around ancient buildings for 6 hours and last night she ( and her DH) just scoffed at us for visiting shops instead of cathedrals. We leave today but not sure if I should just leave and say thanks for inviting us it was lovely or actually be honest and say she needs help.

Just say thank you, leave, and remember not to do this again.

You cannot fix her.

If this is a longstanding close friend, I think I would want to try to give her the chance to talk. You need to be on your own with her though.

It doesn't sound as though there's an awful lot to lose even if you just piss her off.

Just say thanks. I don’t think she would take kindly to you saying she needs help.

Just leave, don't go again and don't return the favour.

It may not be like that all the time, it might be the stress of having you there that's making things tense. From going on holiday with family, I know how difficult it can be.

Smile, make plans to do your own thing for the time you’ve got left, thank her very much and then when you’re back home forget all about her

Is it just you and your dd? Or is your partner with you too?

DH here too but he is able to stand these tense situations more than me.

Smile, say thanks and leave - pronto.

Thank her for her hospitality and just go.

So you’ve been guests at her home for a week and now you want to criticise her parenting as your departing gift?

That’s a cheeky fucker definition if I ever saw one.

Yeah that high horse galloped away the first day of your holiday, when you should have packed up and buggered off to a hotel you were paying for. Not continue to stay for free and moan about how your host is controlling and how she parents her children.

Oh no, we are similar but they are staying with us. Trying to get through the next couple of days, by trying to just do our thing

I visited a friend I’d met on holiday the year before

I should have seen the signs earlier in the year when I suddenly got a message from her that she’d come over to the UK to meet a bloke she’d met online and could I meet up with them etc etc...

Showed me then that it was fairly random internet bloke first, friend second.

Anyway, I’d arranged to go over to stay with her and her 2 kids. I’d said that if for any reason she’d find it hard to host ya, that we’d happily go and stay where we were previously, but she insisted we stay with her, so I felt we had to..

I didn’t necessarily expect her to take the entire time off, but I barely saw her, often she’d leave early in the morning, lock the house so I couldn’t leave to go anywhere, “could you make soemofor the kids at lunch..” “ok... no problem, there was nothing “in” to do anything with so I was inventing stuff to do with chicken... whatevs... whenever we went out I paid our way, and often hers too, as a thanks to having us etc

Then the (new) bloke rocked up on day 3 I think and pretty much never left. I was literally left to my own devices every evening, no time alone with her to catch up etc. I’d come out of the shower, be talking to her quickly and he’d rock up and stand there, arm round her shoulder interjecting while I’m in a towel... it was just so wrong on every level.

The bloke turns out to be seriously weird, but she wouldn’t see it. As far as I could see he was grooming her youngest and she just thought it was great playing happy families because the boy is an absolute nightmare in terms of behaviour- completely indulged, rude, and would hold the whole house hostage by making everyone stay awake. The boyfriend I think was dangerous, but she didn’t want to know.

In the end my ds and me went back to the B and B we’d stayed in the previous year to see the lovely people who ran it and to get away from it all for a night we then went back to hers and bloke was still there...

Didn’t see much of her before I left. I left her a note to say thanks for having us, When I came home I also sent a message to thank her for her hospitality, but no reply. So that was that. Nothing more I could do

People are weird...

It’s so upsetting though to lose a friend of any duration when it’s due to them being thoroughly disappointing somehow

Did she invite you to stay at her place or did you invite yourself? How long have you been a guest at her place?

We once went on holiday with good friends ... big mistake! the husband was a right pain getting us all running around after him, making his coffee etc. We were in a Villa so we hired a car which he wouldn't drive so my husband did all the driving. Every morning we would be up dressed and ready to go out and he would be swanning around having a shower and having one last cup of coffee.... I would never go on holiday with friends ever again.

DH has a friend abroad who we visit at some point most years. I can't bear it - she's permanently on the move, always in and out of the car on some errand or another. She expects us to go with her, or, if we / I don't do that, I'm stuck in the house, miles from anywhere, no food, nothing to do. It's utter chaos, she complains about her life all the time but won't change any aspect of it. Visits are exhausting and stressful. I try not to go really.

LazyDaisy I get why you’re saying but it’s not as simple as that, to up and ftfo to a hotel on day 1 or day 2 etc is spectacularly rude and relationship ending anyway

I’ve done that once - was supposed to spend 3 nights with someone, we spent 1 and went to a hotel

My ds has a cold, he coughed and spluttered all night and disturbed her sleep so I used that as an excuse and found a hotel nearby. It was £££! Still

The reason I actually couldn’t stay was because her house was filthy, cats (8) everywhere, litter trays (3) over flowing, cat hair and cat piss everywhere

Sofa stank of cat piss, chairs, beds everything- you could smell it from the drive the second she opened the front door

So we’d sleep in the hotel and go do stuff first thing then meet up in the afternoon- it worked well! I didn’t want to slap her hospitality in the face. I moved on to next friend after 2 days as planned and spent 2 days with her and 3 with another before coming home. Over 10 yrs on, I’m still friends with the last of the 3 and have been to see her a couple of times since our first visit.

When you’re in the situation yourself, it’s really difficult to know what to do, you do just have to muddle through it all.

First of all a 5 day visit is really long. It is clearly contributing to an already stressful situation for your hosts. You're really lucky to have a friend who is willing to do this for you, and yet your post is all about you, you, you - how YOU are anxious, how YOU are struggling. You don't really seem concerned about your friend at all, who is clearly having a much harder time with this than you are! I would be looking at doing everything possible to alleviate the stress: cooking, taking the family out for meals, making a well-placed joke so the kids don't feel nagged about the language issue etc. You should really have left and got a hotel when you realised there was a problem.

What happening at yours @user87382294757? How long have they been there and how long left?

oh goodness.
Thank her and leave.

Dont mention what you think

I think you leave and thank her for her hospitality. She may be stressed trying to give you a great holiday and it’s coming off wrong. Maybe she feels you will miss out if you don’t see their local cathedrals and monuments. Perhaps she is shouting at her teens because she feels them rude and unsociable when she has guests.

I don’t think you can stay with her then criticise, just don’t stay again.

Living in close proximity on holiday with people outside your own family is hard. Very hard. We used to do it every year with my best friend....and every year I said I wouldn’t do it again. By the end of the week I didn’t want to see any of them again for three months.

Smile, make plans to do your own thing for the time you’ve got left, thank her very much and then when you’re back home forget all about her

Wow - what a lovely thing to do after getting a freebie holiday.

You've no idea how they are when you're not there. Your visit could be the cause of all this stress. She clearly had an image of how the visit would be, which isn't matched by reality and this is upsetting her.

We never stay with people, for this reason. Always find somewhere to stay and just meet up with friends on your terms. It is really not worth trying to save money like this

Op What kind of friend are you??

You are describing someone that sounds under a great deal of pressure, but I would not describe it as a 'family meltdown' at all. Yelling at her children is hardly a meltdown, or organising days out for you. Or suggesting that the place has something to offer beyond shopping.

There is something smug in your post, a pitying indifference to your so called friend's situation.

If she is finding life hard, then your stay for five long days is probably the last thing she needed given how little compassion you have shown so far. You don't sound like a good friend op, and your judgement of her is very harsh.

Be kind on your way out, and don't say a word about what has happened whilst you were there. The time you could have been there for her properly as long since passed.

Aargh it’s a hard one. I think for now, say thank you very very much for the hospitality over the past five days.
Then later - much later - from home, you could ask her how things are. I agree with a pp that if she is a really good friend, then you should be able to talk about things (IF she wants).
Definitely don’t say anything before you leave! That’s my opinion..

If you do view yourself as any kind of friend to her, find a chance for her to talk to you, one to one. Now or later.

There is nothing like having people visit, to draw attention to every peculiar detail, ingrained habit and idiosyncratic way of doing things that your family has developed. Ill-founded assumptions are quickly brought to the surface too.

Having guests constantly questioning things, directly or just by doing things differently, then needing to be worked around or tidied up after, is exhausting.

For example, perhaps she'd just assumed that, because her children have learned English and have been brought up to be polite, that they would speak English to English guests. She hadn't accounted for teenage diffidence. She now sees this assumption was ill-founded and feels embarrassed and defensive about their behaviour. She's taking this out on them while you're there, to demonstrate to you that she does not endorse this behaviour - but also because, with you ever present, she lacks an opportunity to sit down with them and talk through what she'd hoped for, why they're not keen and how they can work towards the desired outcome.

It's just one more disatisfaction to deal with, on top of her already full schedule of doing all her normal stuff, plus cooking for and entertaining you.

It can be hard to relax, listen and enjoy conversation with people, when you're already fully mentally busy, managing and planning all the practical stuff.

Be grateful, be kind.