This weekend my girlfriend will be taking care of her 11-year-old niece, and we were talking yesterday about my coming down for the weekend (we live ~100 miles apart, and see each other on the weekends) Here’s a snippet of the conversation we had (from memory).
Her: “So, I’ll set up the mattress in the living room.”
Me: “Sounds good.”
“Or, you know, the couch, if you want. Whatever’s more comfortable.”
(confused) “Wait. For me?”
“I don’t really think it’s appropriate for us to share the bed…”
“Why not?”
“…with my niece.”
“Oh! No. I agree. It is absolutely inappropriate for me to share a bed with your 11-year-old niece. But why can’t she sleep in the living room?”
“Well, she could. But I’m still not sure it’s appropriate for us to share a bed when she’s here. I mean, I guess she must know what’s going on. And I think [her sister] has had gentlemen stay the night before. But I don’t know.”
Dopers, weigh in. Aside from the fact that I’m somewhat embarrassed about how poor our communication was at first, am I crazy to expect not to get kicked out of bed when she’s playing Auntie Babysitter for the weekend? We shared a room when her mom was staying with her one night, and at my parents’ house, when we went for Thanksgiving.
Wouldn’t an 11-year-old rather have her own bed than share one with her Aunt, anyway?
I’m not really an adult who’s got experience with kids.
But I think if I were a kid, I’d rather have the mattress or couch in the living room than sleep with my aunt. Plus, I don’t see the big deal about you sleeping in the same room and bed as your girlfriend. You are a couple–it’s not like she went down to the bar to grab some random “gentleman caller.” If you were married, she wouldn’t be throwing you out of bed, right?
I think her parents should be consulted, but generally speaking, I wouldn’t alter anything. This isn’t 1958, unmarried people co-habit without the nuns fainting in the streets. If her parents feel strongly otherwise, then I might - *might *- feel generous enough to couchsurf for the duration, but they’d have to feel awfully damn strongly about it.
If you were going to their house, that’d be another matter - when a guest, you follow the house rules.
ETA: If my sister (who doesn’t exist) had a live-in boyfriend, I wouldn’t expect him to leave the apartment or her bed for my daughter’s visit. If I felt that strongly about them “living in sin”, I wouldn’t want my daughter spending that much time with them unsupervised anyway.
I’d check with her parents, but thinking about my 11-year-old niece, she’d have already figured something like this out long ago. If you’re at the point where you’re sharing a bed at her parents’, this is nothing. Her niece is going to know what’s going on whatever the sleeping arrangements are.
-Lil
Well, I’m probably not the majority opinion but I think that if your girlfriend is uncomfortable with sharing a bed while her niece is there, then it would be good to respect that, it is her house. If her niece visits very often I would say she needs to find another arrangement, but it’s just 2 or 3 nights.
If she does insist on separate beds she should give you an up-front warning and tell you that she understands if you don’t want to visit that weekend, or would rather drive down for the day on Saturday. Her delivery wasn’t very good here, she should have brought it up earlier and not by just casually mentioning the spare mattress.
Ask the girl’s mom for her opinion, then go with that. It’s only fair, especially since this visit is about the girl (as far as I can see, you are an addition to the party, right?).
To clarify: This was actually the first time it came up. Originally she was planning on coming here this weekend, but a combination of events led to several of her family members going out of town, and to her taking care of her niece. I have a feeling that in the past her niece just shared a bed with her, and that she was assuming that would happen again, which is why the confusion.
And I will of course respect her wishes if she’s not comfortable sharing a bed with me this weekend. It seems silly to me, but it’s not worth fighting over.
I’m fairly certain her sister would be fine with it.
Makes sense to me. Instead of the being the guy that lives with her aunt and sleeps in the same bed, you can be the weirdo friend who doesn’t understand when it’s time to go home and sleeps on the living room couch. Maybe you can pretend you are too wasted to drive as a cover story.
If the neice doesn’t stay over at the GF’s very often, the last time that happened the neice was maybe 6 or 7. How to handle sleepovers with kids changes a lot between ages 5, 10, 15, and 20.
So the GF’s current assumption that the neice would sleep in the same bed as GF would be sensible for a small child, but is getting less and less appropriate as the child ages. Have we crossed the age-appropriate barrier without GF realizing that’s happened? Or without GF even realizing that it will ever happen?
If the GF or the neice’s Mom is freaked out about unmarried men in the house, perhaps the guy needs to find another activity that weekend. And if the GF pulls similar stuff very often, being uncomfortable with how the unmarried man connects to her relatives, perhaps a new, or t least re-educated, GF is in order.
Rest asured the 11 year old doesn’t much care, although a serious screaming orgo-for-2 marathon later that night is probably right out.
Check with the parents. But it might just be that your gf feels weird about it, and that should be respected. Also, I know a lot of 11-yos that would feel weird about it too; 11-yo girls are right at the age when everything is embarrassing, and since this visit is about her, I think it would be nice to be considerate of that possibility. Maybe she isn’t embarrassed at all, but I can well imagine it.
This really sounds like the time for you let this be a girls’ weekend and score some “sensitive guy” points at the same time. If you were already living with her my opinion would be different. By staying in the bedroom you’re putting your girlfriend in the position of having the decide if her sexuality is her nieces business, something I’m pretty sure she’s not ready to do. By couch surfing you’ll still be doing that, you’ll just make the niece an uncomfortable part of the equation.
My suggestion bring a pizza and DVD over and get a room.
Spoke to girlfriend last night, and all is cool with her and sister. I suspect this was really just a misunderstanding based on an unexamined assumption like LSLGuy suggested: the last time niece stayed with her, she was much younger. Thanks for the many diverse opinions.