Friends and family dont visit

Might be a lame rant, but my friends and family dont visit my wife and I at all.

Three months ago I got married and my wife and I moved into a rental house. The house is owned by my MiL, and as thanks for her giving us a great deal on the place, we helped fix it up. 3 months later, and the house has been fully remodeled for some time. For the first time ever, i’ve had a place of my own big enough to host parties. Before this, I was practically living in a shoebox- in fact this place is the first place i’ve had to have a full kitchen! As such i’ve been enthusiastic to have guests. My wife supports this- she loves having people around, hosting, and cooking. I’ve repeatedly invited my friends and family over, but in three months only my mom visited once.

In the past this didnt bother me because I never lived somewhere practical to host guests. But now that I live in a nice big place, I feel kind of lonely. This is exacerbated by seeing my wife’s friends and family over all the time. I get along great with all of them and enjoy their company, but miss my friends and family, who are more than willing to have me come visit * them * but won’t visit me.

my wife has the comfort of being surrounded by people who share her culture and native language. I however rarely get the same experience, because my own peers dont seem all that interested in visiting. Its strange, we’re all married guys, similar income, interests, etc and live within 20 minutes of each other. But so far, nada.

Have you been inviting them to specific events, or just a general “hey come over whenever” ?

Have you thrown a housewarming party?

You know, with my circle of friends a lot of this got set early and became a routine that was very difficult to break. Some guys or couples had the party house and that’s just the way it was. A couple more might be added but pretty soon you had all you needed, everybody had a proven good time there and no one was interested in learning the way to a new house.

Now that’s not to excuse those close to you for not being more considerate in wanting to share your excitement about your place. But I imagine what you’re experiencing is not unique. Sorry and congratulations nevertheless on the new digs.

Yes, it needs to be a specific event, with a specific form and date, with good notice (two months so people’s diaries aren’t full). “Just drop in” doesn’t work these days.

That makes sense, it could be. they are also really spontaneous, where I kind of like to plan ahead (though I’m trying to be more flexible). But speaking of flexible, another thing might be my relationship with my wife vs theirs. If I just dropped it on my wife at the last second I was having people over, she’d be annoyed because maybe she didnt feel presentable to guests, was tired/felt obligated to cook/etc. So i’ll bring it up with her the day before if I think it may be an issue having 4+ people there through the evening. With my friends, they wont give their wives a heads up, and their wives will chew them out but go along with it. But my wife would be more angry about it.

They are so spontaneous I wonder if its hard for them to commit to doing something that starts later than 5 minutes from now. With my family, I have no idea but I think it might be that the older generation (parents/aunts/uncles) are so used to hosting the idea of them going to their kids’ house for a dinner/party might be really new to them.

We’ve been in our house for over 7 years. My inlaws, who live 800 miles away, have been here more often than my side of the family, who live about 2 hours away. Apparently it’s OK for me to have to drive those 2+ hours, but not vice versa…

Sometimes that’s just the way it is. You can try to make things happen the way you’d prefer, or you can just give up and go with the flow. Wish I could offer you a brighter possibility.

Given this, maybe you and your wife should plan to have people over, plan your menu, clean and whatnot, but don’t actually invite anyone until 5 minutes 'till dinner! :smiley:

(I’m only half joking. I have some refuse-to-plan spontaneous friends, too.)

And I bet you’re right about the family, especially considering that until recently you’ve lived in a space too small for gatherings. You’ve been mentally filed in the “invite over, but we don’t go there” category, and it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to change that.

You are having company, and you are having fun, you just wish it was more of your friends and family. That’s not so bad, really.

I think it’s just a pattern thing, you coming to them always, previously. But it will probably change with time.

Just keep inviting them. Next time you leave their place, point out that you’ve always appreciated the invites, even when you had a tiny abode and were unable to reciprocate. But now you’d really adore the opportunity to entertain them in your new home, can we set a date?

We’ve been in our house two and a half years now, and only one of my three sisters has been over to see it (one lives 25 minutes away, the other lives six hours away but is frequently in town). I agree that you might need to keep asking to get people to realize that you want to host - I’d like my family to at least see my new house, but I don’t want to host much.

Your friends are also probably thinking “They just got married, they’re too busy snuggling to want company.”

I agree with dangermom. With just getting married and fixing up the house, they may just think they’d get in the way. A formal housewarming party may be the way to go.

Heh - I told my parents, who live 1.5 hours away, that I’d like to have them over for dinner sometime around Christmas or New Years and they replied something like “sure, we’ll have to work out a time!”

They proceeded to travel 5 hours away to stay with my sister for the entire week instead. When my sister lived out East, they’d drive the 12 hours about 4 times a year to visit her. In 6 years, my father has been in my apartment 3 times - and only visited us in the previous place (about 7 hours from their home) once in those 6 years too. My mom visits more often, but usually during the week when she’s in the city for work and needs a place to sleep.

It’s frustrating, but I’m getting used to it, because I don’t really see what I can do about it. I’ve flat out set a time, a menu, started preparing, and have them cancel on me. Somehow they are so used to me being “independent” (which my sister most definitely isn’t!) that they take that to mean that I never want to see them in my own home (although they always want me to drive down and visit them).

sigh

I wish I had advice, but other than “keep trying” and “try not to let it get you down”, I can’t really offer any. Good luck!

Get a [basketball hoop / Super Nintendo / air hockey table / whatever the grown-up equivalent is], and everyone will be coming over to play with it!

I find that in our circle the wives have to contact the wives to make firm plans that actually happen, even if the historical friendship or familial relationship is guy-to-guy. Wives tend to run the family calender (especially after kids start showing up) and if you don’t get on the calender the event just doesn’t happen. Old fashioned and hidebound, but that’s how things are around here. Maybe if your wife gets in touch with your friends wives, and also in advance by a few weeks, it’ll all work out better.

Good luck.

I can count on the fingers of both hands the time any relatives have visited our house. I’ve asked. I’ve made plans. Maybe once a year someone comes over for an event. I don’t know why this is, don’t know how to change it, and at this point, I’ve made peace with my non-visitors. So be it.

Oh, forgot - after we first got married, we decided to invite my parents over for a barbeque. I went out and bought all the stuff. Called them the next day and invited them to come over on the weekend. My mom, on the phone, relayed this information to my somewhat deaf father. I clearly heard my father reply: “go over there? WHY?” My heart sunk right into my shoes. I thought, well, really, why? Why, indeed? So I never had to worry about inviting them over ever again. Birthdays, graduation parties, Christmas, Thanksgiving - maybe a handful of times, when our daughter was young. Otherwise, nada.