How to hotel your parents
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This week’s question comes to us from Ann O’Nymous:
My parents are thinking about visiting me. Which is nice except that they think staying at a hotel is “too fancy,” and they’re expecting to sleep in my spare room. How do I convince them that this would be uncomfortable for all of us?
Hurray! We’re gonna talk about parental boundaries. My favorite thing that everyone is bad at, and no one enjoys.
Before I go into all the red flags in your question, let’s start with a personal story: Many many years ago, my mother came to San Francisco for a visit. She also insisted on staying with me, despite me living in a studio apartment at the time, because “family doesn’t make family stay in a hotel.” I did a lot of rearranging of my small studio apartment to accommodate an extra person staying there for a week. (She also felt like any visit lasting less than a week wasn’t cost-effective, airline tickets costing what they cost.) When I went to pick her up at the airport, she showed up with my niece, who was maybe nine at the time. Now, I love my niece. She’s one of the few family members I still talk to. What I do not love is finding out that I now needed to fit another human being—of any size—into a studio apartment, with no warning whatsoever. My mother thought this would be a fun surprise. It was not. We spent a very tense week together, in a very small space, with me trying to both make my niece feel welcome—after all none of this was her fault—and my mother looking for any reason she could find to make me feel guilty for not being happy that she’d “surprised me,” which was ultimately her goal. To set up a problematic situation, and then punish me for my reaction to it.
And while I don’t know your parents, I certainly know mine. My mother enjoys testing people and pushing boundaries. It’s all a test of fealty. “A real son wouldn’t make his mother stay in a motel” are words that have come out of her mouth. And maybe there is some of that in what your parents are doing as well, but again—I don’t know them. You do though. And to be fair, you’re the one who asked. So rather than analyse them, let’s focus on the thing that we can control, which is how you respond to their request/demand.
First off, you don’t need to convince them that staying with you would be uncomfortable for all of you. This is your house. If you don’t want them staying with you that’s enough. You only need to convince someone if the house is a shared resource, and it’s not. This is your home, in which you get to feel safe and comfortable. That is the number one priority of a home. Now, some people love filling their homes with family, and that’s fine. I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of that. But some people do not enjoy filling their homes with family. That is also fine. I wouldn’t try to talk you out of that either. You get to make the rules in your house. And if you don’t want your parents staying there, you don’t need to convince them of that. What you need to do is set the boundary. You can do this with kindness of course, and possibly some financial assistance might be in order if the situation calls for it. But say it clearly, and in a way that doesn’t invite debate. For example: “I found a great hotel nearby where I’m happy to put you up during your stay.”
Will they debate anyway? Probably. “Oh honey, we don’t want to put you out. We’ll just stay with you.”
“I’m super glad you don’t want to put me out. That’s why the hotel is perfect.”
“But we don’t want to stay in a hotel.”
“Maybe this isn’t the right time for you to visit then. We’d love to see you, but I understand.”
That’s the parental boundary equivalent of a well-played UNO Reverse card. You’ve set boundaries on the visit. They’re very reasonable boundaries. If they’re choosing not to accept them, it’s their right to do that. It’s also their decision. After all, they are adults. But so are you. You get to set boundaries.
Now let’s deal with this “spare room.” Unless you live in a Gilded Age sized house you don’t have a spare room. When our daughter was about to move out she asked us if we were going to keep her bedroom the way it was. I told her that only happened in movies. Sure enough when she came back to visit a week after moving out, her room had been changed into a library. Like, it was immediate. Repainted. Shelves put up. Rug in place. Books lining every wall. I didn’t fuck around. There’s no such thing as a spare room when you live in a small apartment. There’s only repurposing. And with space as a premium, I’m not going to allocate an entire room for the occasional visit. That’s what the couch is for. If you live somewhere where houses are bigger and hotels might be far away your math might be different. But I’ve found that using phrases like “guest room” or “spare room” invites family to think those rooms are there for their use. Again, if you’re into this—great! But if you’re not into having family assume they can stay with you then I’d urge you to turn that spare room into a library, or a sewing room, or a craft room, or stop dreaming about that model railroad room you always wanted and make it a reality!
Look, parents are hard. And setting boundaries with them is even harder. If you want to continue to have a relationship with your parents into your adult life, which it sounds like you do, establishing strong boundaries helps that relationship succeed. At some point, they had to set boundaries with you, because this is what (some) parents do with children. And you did what a child was supposed to do—you tested them. And you probably did an amazing combination of rebelling and adjusting to those boundaries. As a child is supposed to do. Now you’re an adult.
As we become adults our relationship with our parents goes through a bit of a reversal, especially as they age. But we find ourselves needing to set boundaries for the people who used to set boundaries for us. Which can be a bit of a mindfuck for both parties. But it’s just as important for you to set boundaries with them as it was for them to set boundaries with you.
It’s not easy. And there will be growing pains. For example, at one point I was complaining to my therapist about my mother refusing to stay in a hotel when she visited me and she asked me where I stayed when I visited them. It was a lightbulb moment. I was expecting them to do something I wasn’t doing myself. From then on, I stayed at a hotel if I came to visit. They hated it, but eventually got used to it. And it made for happier visits.
If you want your parents to stop thinking of your house as their home, you might need to stop thinking of their house as yours.
And let them know they can change your childhood bedroom into the sex dungeon they’ve always wanted.
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