Today I send my guest off to the airport. She’s a dear friend and I’ve enjoyed having her down to visit but ten days was a bit much. I knew I should have stuck to my guns and insisted on the 3 day rule.
The rule is that a person can stay as long as they like so long as they only spend 3 days with me. So basically use my house as a base of operations and go travelling. Here are some examples:
Friend stays for six days. Days 1, 3, and 5 he goes off to the beach, thus 2, 4, and 6 (the day he departs) are with me. This is fine - he’s gone at sunrise and back in the evening, no problemo.
Friend stays for seven days, he’s gone from noon to the evening every day. Which means he’s spent 3.5 days with me. That was alright but I was ready to send him off.
Friend stays five days and stays around me the entire time. I wanted to strangle him.
Now granted working from home puts me in an unusual position since I don’t have to go anywhere to work. So she lazied around the house, read, watched tv, etc while I worked. And overall we managed, but I’m just ready for the quiet house again.
How about you dopers, do you agree with this rule? Is your rule shorter? longer?
Fish and house guest, both begin to stink in three days. I don’t know who first said it, but it’s a good rule to follow. I much prefer to get a room somewhere, I don’t even like spending a night at my brother’s home and we get along well.
Hallgirl 2 is back under the roof for two weeks, on a visit from Minot. TWO FREAKIN’ WEEKS. I’m ready to pull my hair out. How we managed to live together for 18 years is beyond me.
My rule depends a lot on who it is, how dependant they are and whether they can understand “alone time” (like, if I just came home don’t ask me how my day went before I’ve had time to go to the bathroom and change clothes if I want to). It kind of amounts to your 3-day rule, really - just with the ability to stand on one’s own two feet factored in, rather than physical presence in the same room.
Mom can tire me out after ten minutes. But I don’t know anybody else who will come to the bathroom’s door and knock on it to ask where do I keep the salt, which by the way I have left on the countertop since she was doing some of the cooking.
SIL can take about fifteen minutes. She wouldn’t come and ask for the salt, but I might get out of the bathroom and find that she hasn’t started chopping the lettuce because she didn’t know where I kept the salt. Which, again, knowing that someone else would be using my kitchen, would be on top of the counter in its usual receptacle, a plastic box that says SALT in big orange letters and which looks a lot like the receptacles used by the two ladies in question.
Other people can be around for a month before we get on each other’s hair.
My experience is different. I’ve had several friends come visit me over the past year. One I’m not very close to, and yeah, it was difficult filling the time after a while, and we were kinda sick of each other after that long. Another was welcome to stay longer than her 5 days, we still had so much we hadn’t done.
Another…we could spend all month together and I’d still look forward to seeing her. We just have that connection…we’ll spend hours talking to each other and then on my way out the door, I’ll think of twenty more things to talk about.
With notable exceptions for very close friends, I’m totally with you on three days. In fact, I can’t even stand to be a guest in anybody else’s house for more than that.
It depends on the person and it depends on how independent they are. I would be aggravated by a guest who expected me to be a source of constant entertainment every waking minute.
I usually wil take a day off or so to do things with “guest” but they have to understand I may have to go to work and I may not want to go bar hopping when I have to get up early the next day. Fortunately most people that are guests in my home only stay a night or two. Any longer and I hope to Og they can make plans do things alone or with others and not just with me.
Well, in the immortal words of world famous mystery writer, J.B. Fletcher; “a good guest is like halley’s comet-- seen and enjoyed, seldom and briefly.”
Two of my boys visit every summer, and they usually stay for about two weeks. I worry about entertaining them, because these visits are their vacations. But they tell me they’re here to do nothing and they don’t want to be entertained.
The 3-day rule doesn’t apply to them, because they’re my kids. I’m not sure how they feel about being with mom that long, but if they don’t want to stay for two weeks, they don’t have to.
Shorter visits are unsatisfying, because it takes most of two days to get them back and forth to the airport. They just get here and it seems like they have to go.
I agree with this, but I’m a very patient and tolerant person and have been known to put up with people for 3 months. My friend had no place to go last year and was here for 3 months. I was literally ready to lock him out because he just would not leave.
Interesting thread, I am travelling to Burbank, Ca. this Saturday for a 10 day visit. I do this about once a year. These are my best friends. I stay at thier place (extra bedroom). We laugh, go out to eat, build pirate ships and BBQ. I rent a car while I’m there and visit other friends and sometimes spend the night elsewhere. They swear I am not cramping their style.
