I refuse to stay in a hotel when I visit my son

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CHER CAROLYN: I am a 70-year-old mother of a 35-year-old newly-married son, my only child. What do you think he's telling me that if I visit them, I have to to stay in a hotel? I would only visit if invited, of course. I already visited him and stayed in his apartment. Before that, he lived in a different city and said that if I came, I had to stay in a hotel. I did not visit him there.

As an explanation or support, he only writes that all his friends have their family housed in hotels. By the way: I know a lot of friends and that's not true.

My son and his wife welcome their friends from the city to their second bedroom with a comfortable sofa bed. I replied by e-mail that, like the rest of my family and everyone I know, I am not a person staying at a hotel during short visits. I think I also wrote that such a visit would not generate good memories for me (I already have too much to ignore).

I do not know his wife well. We did not chat or spend time together, only the two of us. She has a warm personality, a lot of friends and write friendly thanks for the gifts I send her. (I always send her first by email to ask her if she likes anything.) It's been like this since we met, and I have no judgment or opinion about the nature of our lack Proximity.

I hear 100% that other families stay happily in hotels for excellent reasons. I can change my ideas, for example if my son has children or anything (although the parents I know and the parents of his friends stay with their children and grandchildren during their visits).

"Jeanne"

Dear Jane: If you really are "not people staying in hotels on short family visits", then you will not be people visiting your son.

Completed. Your choice.

For the record, I can think of about a dozen people more helpful not to be. You can not be people who:

Assume to tell your hosts how to welcome you. Because this is incredibly rude – and you do it at a time when you hope to make you love a stepchild, it's also a loss of power to a degree that puzzles me.
Search the other relationships of a son to prove that you are entitled to feel aggrieved by him. "[T]All the parents I know and the parents of his friends stay with their children and grandchildren on visits "? Stopped. You are not a child; take unwanted news with some grace.
Expect adult children to follow your plan for what the "family" does or does not do. They are now old enough to have their own vision of "family" – and you owe them, and their choices, the same respect as any other adult (in these "other families," you "get 100%").
Transfer blame to the most vulnerable target. You yourself say that your son has already applied for the hotel before the wedding. So leave the eye aside to the woman. Your son wants that. Period.
Refuse to be a pleasant or flexible guest, then marvel when invited under certain conditions.

Just for example.

I realize that none of this is welcome for someone who, basically, just feels hurt to stay at arm's length. (Right?) I also understand the underlying fear that you are losing your son to the new family that he and his wife have created.

And you know very well that you have to do your part, since you have been careful to note down the qualities of your daughter-in-law and that you are waiting to be invited.

But anyone who really wants to solve the riddle of a tense relationship must take into account this possibility: "Maybe I have no one to blame except myself." Even if you finally rebut it . Yet none of your fingers are watching you.

I urge you to look inside yourself, because all I have listed is alienating behavior that you have used – each in itself an effective method to keep people away. They all fall into a cycle of defense that this response may well perpetuate, but I also hope you will cancel it long enough to tell your son, "I'm sorry. I went overboard when I emailed you. I struggle with change, but I will adapt. I owe you and [wife] this."

If passing was your maternal mark, a more in-depth calculation is required.

There are objectively terrible people, many of whom naturally become the son or daughter-in-law of somebody, a sad and insoluble problem. But you make it clear that your son's wife is not one of them. This means that you have to work with the people you have, the arrangements they offer and the opportunities you see. Open-minded, open-hearted, open arms – and, yes, a room in a shabby hotel.

Although I suggest treating you as a non-smelly, as your means allow.

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