You may have met that special type of person who firmly believes that the whole world revolves around them and they don’t care that you may have your own business. My brother-in-law and his whole family come to visit us all weekend. My brother’s family consists of himself, his wife, their two children and his wife’s brother. The whole tabor only comes to us for sleepovers. The relatives never even ask about our plans and whether we can accept them or not.
All this bedlam lasted almost a year and I’m really sick of it all. I really love guests, but if it’s only within reason, and here it turns out that I can’t even do my own business, or at least after a hard work week in silence to rest.
Instead of resting, I have to stand at the stove all weekend and entertain guests with conversations, make their beds, and rewash mountains of linens after they leave. I asked myself the same question every time, whether they realized that by coming uninvited, they were acting at the very least indecently, even though they were family. Maybe I wouldn’t react so violently if such visits were rare, but they come to us at least three times a month.
My husband and I never behave this way towards other relatives, so maybe we should have visited my brother at least a couple of times, so that they could experience the beauty of such behavior firsthand. I asked my husband to talk to the in-laws, but he doesn’t know how to tell them, because he is afraid of offending them. Maybe he’s just fine with it? My husband refused to help me, so I had to act on my own.
First, I stopped laying fancy tables when they come over. And then I stopped cooking at the weekend, and so the guests had to finish eating everything left over from Friday, and if the food suddenly ran out, then please cook for yourself. I can even do without food.
One day my relatives sat down at the table waiting for dinner, and then they all started throwing questioning glances at me one by one. I told them there was nothing to eat that day, so if they were hungry, they could cook for themselves. There was a mute question on their faces, but they didn’t answer me, so they didn’t cook, they just drank empty tea and went to bed.
In addition, I stopped scrubbing the whole apartment before each of their visits. One day my brother-in-law’s wife complained that her daughter’s white socks had turned gray for some reason. I told her that I just did not have time to wash the floors, but if she was worried about my apartment cleanliness, it can always fix this situation on their own, because the bucket and mop standing in the bathroom. She never asked me such questions again.
And, perhaps most importantly, I stopped putting myself on the back burner. I stopped changing my plans because we had guests coming over. At the end of the day, I should have my own personal life, too, and I want to socialize with people I like. When guests came, I sat with them for an hour, and then excuse me, I have my own business. If my spouse wants, then let him entertain his family. And if I do not have that day, I deliberately started a general cleaning, to also spend as little time as possible with them.
Once after another such visit, my brother-in-law said to my spouse, “I think we’re out of time?” How on earth did you think of that. Since that day, dear guests come to us only after a preliminary call and no overnight stay, and much less often. Have you ever had to deal with such a situation and what way out of it did you find?
