Your thoughts on an invitation that backfired

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m interested to see how this situation appears to an outsider.

The short of it: My mom has always wanted me to invite her up to Austin while my dad hunts. I’m not comfortable with the idea of her staying with me, and I’m usually busy on weekends during deer season. This year, my dad is taking my brother hunting, and since my parents’ birthdays are around this time, I had the idea to book mom a hotel room for a night or two, with me footing the bill. We could go shopping and out to eat and all those things she likes to do, then the whole family could get together on Sunday for dinner. This idea pissed Mom off to no end, because apparently only sleeping on my loveseat in my one-bedroom apartment will do.

The back story:

My mom has been pressuring me to invite her up for a year now. Whenever my dad goes hunting, he suggests that Mom would be happy if I invited her up so we could do “girl things” for a couple of days.

I’m seriously uncomfortable with this idea for two reasons. The first is that I’m not comfortable spending extended stretches of time alone with my mom. I’m always on edge around her. Our relationship improved when I moved two hundred miles away for college and stayed. She’s got a bad temper, and a tendency to get really critical when things don’t go exactly her way. She’s great when she’s in a great mood, but hell on earth when she’s not. My friends who met her on a visit my freshman year of college still remember how rude she was to everyone because she didn’t like the restaurant I picked for my birthday dinner. If she’s going to visit, I want at least my dad along.

I’m a mild introvert. I love spending time with my friends, but I really feel best when I have some time to myself, especially in a setting where I feel most comfortable, like my apartment. It’s not that I hate people or I’m a hermit, as my mom frequently screamed at me as a child, it’s just that I need some time to recharge. No matter how frequently Mom says “I won’t be in your way!” cheerfully, her very presence in my small apartment would get in my way. It’s hard to ignore a person you didn’t invite in the first place when you have to share a bathroom. After two days of this, I would be a pissed-off cranky mess.

I have a friend up here my mom likes a lot, and he adores her. I dislike shopping, but he loves it and makes it bearable. Since Mom complains that neither of her kids ever want her to visit, and everyone else she knows has their parents to visit, I thought it would be a nice birthday surprise if I invited her up for a change. The hotel room idea seemed like a workable solution because it would allow my parents the invitation they seem to feel is their due, and it would allow me to have my time to myself at night.

Was this a completely unreasonable idea?

2

Seems reasonable to me. My relationship with my Mom is similar to yours and I definitely need recharge time too. I can totally relate.

Haj

3

No. You sound like my old girlfriend and her mom, and she did the hotel thing. No hissy fit ensued.

Gotta set boundaries … parents need discipline … they’ll thank you for it later …

4

I think it’s an excellent solution. I personally usually dislike staying with friends or family when I visit. A hotel is much more comfortable for all concerned; I know I’m not interfering too much with their household routines, we each have a quiet place we can retreat to when we’re not actively visiting, and four or five people don’t end up sharing one bathroom. If you’re paying for your mother’s hotel room, she can think of it as an extension of your apartment in a way. You’ve just provided her with more comfort than you could if you limited yourself to the space you normally have.

5

You’re only talking about a couple of days spending time with your mum, and you want to shunt her off to a hotel for the duration? If it was a week or more, I’d understand your concern, but just a couple of days??

Surely you can have your time to yourself after the visit is over?

You sound like a selfish, self-centred brat to me.

6

I’d planned to see her during the day. How much quality time can you have when you’re asleep?

After the visit is over, I’d go back to work in a busy store and start a new practicum as a career counselor at a local community college. Not exactly nerve-soothing activities, those.

7

Your invitation sounds reasonable to me. It would not, however, seem reasonable to my mother. To her, visiting someone special means staying at their house. Staying in a hotel is considered cold. It’s never made a whole lot of sense to me, but it goes without saying to my mother. It’s something she and most of her friends and family have always believed: an invitation to visit means your home is open to them.

Perhaps it’s a generational or regional thing. I know for my mother, the greatest gestures are ones where people are invited to her home. In the same way, a dinner cooked by her in her house is much more meaningful than an invitation to a dinner at a fancy restaurant. (Actually, I kind of agree with that last one while, for me, staying in someone’s house vs. a hotel is more often a matter of logistics than feelings of warmth.)

Yeah, you tend to trip over each other when you have house guests and there’s the whole lack of privacy and bathroom sharing ordeal. I guess to my mother (and maybe yours) part of the gesture is saying “I want to see you enough to put up with all that.”

I don’t know what to suggest to you since I was never able to convince my own mother that staying in a hotel was better for both of us–even when I had a tiny apartment. But she was mom, so I put up with it for her short visits. One thing I did was take a vacation day from work for the day after she left. I’d spend the day just by myself enjoying the privacy and alone time.

8

Well, she can’t annoy you when you’re asleep. :rolleyes:

Life wasn’t meant to be easy. Sometimes life doesn’t pan out exactly as you expect. Sometimes our relatives (especially our parents) give us a harder time than we want or need. Most of us just suck it up and get on with it. Stop yer’ whingeing and invite your mum to stay at your house for the weekend.

Geez. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

9

Why is this? How bad could it be?

I’ve had my parents to stay many times when my lifestyle was very unlike theirs to say the least. One time, just after they arrived, I handed each of them a can of beer and a cigarette and said “while you’re under my roof, you live by my rules”. They had a good laugh but they got the message.

(BTW this is the first time I realised that you’re female - Fionn is a male name in Ireland!)

10

Clearly, you’re not an introvert. :smack:

I can readily empathize with Fionn, even though I might not do what she’s proposing. She did say:

(emphasis added) This is not a person I’d want to spend time with in the same living space. She has mapped out a method to give her mother (most of) what she’s asking for, and all she’s asking for herself is to be able to go home and unwind after leaving her mother at the hotel each day.

Maybe you didn’t notice (or didn’t care) that Fionn doesn’t want to do it, period? She’s already caving, just having her mother visit at all.

11

It may be hard to understand if you are not this way, but I totally empathize with the OP. I am extremely weird about other people sleeping in my place, especially when there is only one bathroom to use. One bedroom apartments are generally quite small, and the OP is offering to pay for the hotel. I see nothing at all wrong with that, other than the mother seems to feel some need to impose on the living space of her kid and not graciously accept the hotel room for what it is – a gift.

I love the Hell out of my boyfriend, but after a day or so of him being here constantly (like staying overnight) I need a few hours to myself. It has nothing to do with being a spoiled brat and everything to do with personal boundaries and needing some alone time. As someone who has had trouble sleeping myself because there was someone sleeping in the other room and I knew it then yeah, I understand.

IMO the mom is the one being a brat here. Her daughter offered to visit with her for a weekend and get her a hotel room so they could spend time together and would both be comfortable, and she’s insisting on putting her daughter in an uncomfortable situation and just not able to gracefully accept an invitation or the gift of her own private room for the stay.

12

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
:stuck_out_tongue: (it’s a joke… sorta)

13

Your mom sounds a lot like mine. If she doesn’t get her way about absolutely everything, no matter how irrational, she is going to make your life hell. Well, actually, she’s going to make your life hell even if she does get her way. I get so upset when I know I’m going to have to spend time with my mother that I break out in cold sores, pimples and boils.

Those who are criticizing you for trying to set limits don’t know what it’s like to have a mother like this. Stick to your guns, girl.

14

I think that if you have a thankless child, you as the parent are responsible. If you raise a child well and maintain a good relationship, you will probably never have to worry about this.

It’s sad that Fionn’s mother has created this type of environment with her daughter, and I think Fionn has a good compromise. She has four choices: invite her mother to stay with her with no conditions, invite her mother to stay with her with conditions, invite her mother to come up but stay at the hotel, or not invite her mother up at all. Personally, I think the second option is the best (one of the conditions being that she goes to the hotel if you’re upset), but I don’t see anything wrong with the third.

15

Actually when I started reading this paragraph, I thought that Fionn was going to invite her mom and have her stay at the friend’s place (by agreement with the friend, of course). That way Mom gets to stay with someone, rather than at a hotel, and gets to visit with one person she gets along with who can run interference for Fionn.

Or maybe I’m the one talking out of my hat.

16

Between my wife & her mother, I play the role of the boyfriend in the OP’s story: I get along fine with her Mom, but they don’t get along at all. When she visits, I joke that I’m the referee for tonight’s catfight. They’re both very sweet people, but they don’t mix well at all (understatement of Century). So after 20 years I have a LOT of experience being the adult trying to manage the kid-level relationship between these two. My thoughts …

The OPs heart (and logic) was in the right place, but speaking from experience, the hotel idea isn’t going to work out well.

I also strongly second what MaddyStrut said: for folks of a certain age, an offer of a hotel room is a massive snub, an insult to be remembered (and savored, and repeated, and … ) for years.
To Fionn: Why did you invite Mom in the first place? To make her happy. That means, backwards though it sounds, that she gets to decide the terms of the visit.

If you do something which doesn’t make her happy, well you’re better off not doing anything at all; it’d be easier for you, AND Mom’d be happier, if she stayed home. It’s like you going to great trouble and expense to buy her a totally inappropriate gift. In an ideal world, you should get credit for the effort, but it’s overshadowed by the fact the recipient just doesn’t like it.

If you’re doing this for your happiness, well then by all means do what it takes to make you happy, understanding that that’ll upset Mom. Tough on her.

If you’re doing this for her happiness, well then by all means do what it takes to make her happy, understanding that that’ll upset you. Tough on you.

In an ideal world these two goal shouldn’t be contradictory, but at this late stage of your relationship with your Mom, that ain’t gonna happen. So pick one goal and go for it.
Will this visit, on Mom’s terms, be a miserable experience for you? Yes. Pointless and aggravating? Yes. That’s beside the point. Your stated goal is to do something for your Mom that she likes. You don’t get to decide what she likes.

Overall, I think it’d have been better for you if the whole idea had never come up in the first place. But from where you are now, my advice is go forward with Mom at your appartment, plan to be miserable, and don’t plan on doing it again.

I empathize with your position here, and I support you. You’re the reasonable person here, not the jerk. Mom’s the jerk. But …
p.s. Your Dad owes you one.

17

Have you explained to your mother why you’re putting her up in a hotel room? Not just the “My apartment is really tiny” but “I am still having issues with the type of person you are?”

How about your dad? Does your dad know about how you feel?

18

Just posting to say that LSLGuy is a relationships genuis. Really great analysis.

19

Well, yeah, but completely missing the art of compromise.

Mom wants A. OP wants Not A?

No, what OP really wants is to make DAD happy (and get Mom off her back), and spending time with Mom is required to do this.

So Mom wants A, OP wants B.

The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Mom wants to visit and spend ALL the time with her daughter. The daughter would prefer to spend NO time with her mother, but is willing to compromise for her father’s sake and spend SOME time with her mother.

Mom doesn’t sound willing to compromise for her husband’s sake or her daughter’s sake. If she was*, there would be no issue.

Mom’s the :wally here, no doubt.

*But here’s an idea: can you explain to her what your needs are: “Mom, the reason I live along in a tiny apartment is I simply cannot share living space with another human being. It’s not you, it’s me. But I’d love to have you visit (OK, it’s a lie. You’re allowed to lie to your mother) and spend a couple of days together. I just can’t bear the thought of anyone spending the night.” and see if she has any other ideas for a compromise? You’ve offered an idea, see if she has an idea.

BTW, where does your dad stay when he comes to visit? If he stays on your loveseat, I’m afraid you don’t have much of a leg to stand on. It’s too obvious that it IS your mother, and that’s something you’ll have to address directly.

20

I’ve told him, but it doesn’t really register. He’s hunting, so he stays at a deer lease rather than with me.

I told Mom she could stay with me, but she didn’t want to.