With your advice on the submission about the couple hosting on New Year’s posted 1/7/2014 made me stop and think about a recent event with a family friend of ours.
For background I will say this, the family friend is my Hubby’s “ex-girlfriend” if you could even call her that and I have met her a total of 5 times including the visit I am about to recount. While, before the visit, I counted her an acquaintance bordering on a friend so was by no means a good friend or best friend.
This past July I gave birth to my second child. The birth was rough. I had a fever that did not respond to medications, an infection and my blood pressure had trouble stay up high enough ( this is relevant). I ended up with a C-section due to concerns over my health. They baby was just fine. My post-op recovery did not go so great and I had an infection that split the incision open.
Our friend, H, had scheduled a visit to coincide with my due date (baby was two weeks early) and we planned on her coming still for a supposedly short visit as we had asked her to cut the visit short since I was having trouble recovering. She cut it from 10 days to 8 days. Hubby was frustrated, as he had told her he wanted her to shorten her trip to give us time to rest, but we could not turn her away. So, she comes and the first day she is there is fine. It is after that that her trip goes downhill.
The next day she notices the natural postpartum problem of baby blues in me (I had them pretty bad). She admonishes me that I have no reason to be sad as I have a lovely house, wonderful Hubby and beautiful children. Yes, I have those but I also have no real control over my feelings as they are partly hormonal. After this talk I limit my interaction with her because the only things she apparently has to say to me are more criticisms about my lack of being happy (well, yelling at me is not really helping that cause, missy!) and the lack of cleanliness of my house (really? I had a baby 10 days ago). My Hubby and mother-in-law, who I will refer to as MIL, notice a big change in my attitude and are concerned. They are also not immune to H’s tirades.
My MIL thinks that she might just need someone to talk to and gets an earful of information you tell a best friend, not a woman you hardly know. H tells about her lack of sex life, depression over wanting a baby with a man currently going through a bad divorce, working too hard and her dying mother (this topic, I agree, needed to be shared and my MIL is a very caring person). H then goes on to tell her LIES. Tells MIL that I told H I wished my Hubby had married someone like H or married H herself. H tells my MIL that I felt like I was unwanted in her family. My MIL, completely confused, comes to me and asks me outright about these claims when H was not around. I told her, no, I love Hubby and my in-laws; and I have never felt like I was not part of their family.
It came to a head with Hubby. Unbeknownst to me she had been complaining about our diet, the cleanliness of our house, the cars we owned, the area we moved to, the lack of specific baby items she thought we needed and the list goes on. She complained to him that I would not go get a massage with her (sorry, but I just had major surgery and it is infected so lying on my tummy is out of the question). She wanted to hike and made my Hubby feel guilty for not wanting to take her. So, even though he really wanted to be with me and his children he took her. On the ENTIRE trip she did nothing but complain to him about our life and how we were not making her a priority. The moment she said this Hubby told her it was because she WAS NOT a priority at the moment.
That was the last straw for Hubby and me. He told her that he did not appreciate her coming in at what is both a difficult and joyous time and completely trying to take over. Nor did he appreciate her demeaning how he cares for his family. Hubby told her to leave. Crying she came to me and told me Hubby had asked her to leave. She told me she was going through a rough time and needed someone with which to talk. I told her that coming in at a time a family is adjusting to a newborn is not the time to come and air her baggage. I also told her that I realize that it is her vacation but I did not want her in my house any longer with what she had said to me, my MIL and Hubby. I asked her to leave as well. Hubby drove her to the airport later that night.
Were we wrong? She had baggage and was hurting, but it was not a time anyone in my house had the energy to deal with her. We have not spoken to her since.
Please, was this the correct way to handle the situation or were we wrong? 0107-14
I would have never invited anyone, including immediate family, to visit from out of state on the due date of an impending birth. And rather than asking her to cut the visit short, I would have told her the visit was either canceled or postponed. Your husband let this visit continue for far too long. She would have been asked to pack up and helped to find a hotel room after the first tirade and particularly after her fallacious rants to MIL. I am sympathetic to her woes in her life but that does not give anyone the right to haul their personal baggage into other people’s homes and dump it on them in the midst of their own troubles.
So if you are feeling awkward and unsure about asking her to leave, don’t. In my opinion, it should have happened sooner than it did.