Petra - I think you are looking for either "What is the FREAKING deal with adult children?" or the one by, I think it was artsielady, 'Husband spends all his time w/ adult children' (or something along those lines - forgot to copy/paste that title before coming to this screen).

norcalgirl, thank you!! I will search for those threads.

When we were young we always went to our parents home to visit. We enjoyed it and so did they. We didn't do that to often because we have almost always lived in the same town with my parents. Until my Dad died we always went to Mom and Dad's for Sunday dinner. Mom still talks about the fun we had.

Now that would be nice! I remember when I was young on Sunday we would get in the car, go for a drive and go visiting grandparents, aunts & uncles..those are very happy memories...seems like that's a custom that has fallen by the wayside over the years..of course that was pre email, cell phones etc..things are so different now.

It was pre TV.

I had someone in another country, say "I wish we had TV here". I told him he would lose something very precious if they had. I told him after your evening meal, you go out and sit on a bench and pick the guitar, pretty soon another musician joins you. Then there's singing and dancing in the street. In other words they would lose contact with their neighbors, which is like an extended family. A special memory from my childhood was sitting outside at night and visiting with neighbors. One night I pretended to be asleep so my Dad would carry me to my bed. LOL

I checked the threads listed above, but the one which applies is a different situation from ours.

Our situation is an adult son (step to me) in his 30's who spends every vacation with us. He is not in a relationship and does not have many friends, as far as we know. He doesn't even ask if it is convenient for us, he pretty much announces that he is going to come visit, and the dates.

Frankly, it's not even him so much, we wouldn't enjoy to have anyone visit for weeks and weeks, year after year. We both work from home, and it is just too disruptive. An occasional overnight is okay, or, since he is quite a distance away, a long weekend for Christmas or Thanksgiving, but 3 weeks or more each year (sometimes twice) is just too much.

Hubby and I really enjoy our empty nest and being able to run around in our underwear when we want, come and go as we please, eat when we want, etc. It is just no fun at all to have another adult basically live here for weeks. It's to the point where we dread and resent these long visits.

The question is, how do you tell someone nicely that long visits are just not something we want to do anymore?? I've thought and pondered, and so has my husband, and we just can't come up with a nice, non-hurtful way to say this. But on the other hand, we HAVE to do something, or we will be stuck with this arrangement until we are in a nursing home or dead.

well... on the one hand, I agree that 3 weeks at a time is a lot. But, as an adult child who lives quite some distance from her family, I will also say some things on his behalf.

First of all "an occasional overnight or long weekend", depending on how far the "quite a distance" travel is, might be impractical. Travel is expensive and time-consuming and spending one day to get there and another to get home again, to spend an overnight or long weekend, can be pretty ridiculous. I wouldn't do it.

Two, he may be doing it not so much because he wants to as because he feels obligated. He might think he's being a good son, sacrificing all his vacation time to spend with his family and maintain family bonds. Not to mean he doesn't want to see you, and miss his family, but there could easily be some sense of obligation as well.

Three, do you ever visit him? Is your "family time" with him totally dependant on however much time he stays with you?

Four, for how long has he lived quite a distance? Did he move there on his own? Does he have other family near him? Moving off on your own can be a lot harder and more isolating than people think, and is a lot harder for some people than others. Some people find it easy to meet new people and make new friends; most don't. And even when you do, it can take a lot of time to build the same kinds of bonds you have with the people you grew up with. That doesn't make it your obligation to be his social lifeline, but is something to have in mind and be considerate of.

Five, have you ever asked him to check with you on scheduling before making plans, or told him if something is inconvenient? I usually will send an email out asking if people have preferences for visiting times, but rarely get answers, so honestly sometimes I've probably just planned trips without bothering to ask if it's convenient, too. And since generally no one seems all that interested in making specific plans while I'm there, I'll just pop from one house to the other as I see fit. If it ever starts to annoy anyone, they're going to have to mention it, because I'm so accustomed to just the "well, just plan whatever you want, you're welcome whenever" attitude that I actually feel like I'm nagging or something by asking about schedules... if you haven't told him you're not just free whenever, sure the polite thing is he *should* ask, but if he's always just been welcome to show up whenever and no one's told him it bothers you, he probably doesn't realize it.

I don't think there's a totally non-hurtful way to say it (I would be hurt if my family told me they wanted me to visit less, although I do visit less than your SS), I think you are just going to have to come out and say want kinds of visits are ok with you. But maybe try to consider some of the things I mentioned... don't suggest an occasional overnight if the travel is significant, maybe offer to swap visits and take on some of the travel burden (if you're not already doing it), etc.

Quirk, thanks much for your input!! To answer your questions, we don't travel much for reasons I won't go into here. So visiting him is not an option at this time. But even if it were, we would not visit anyone (family or otherwise) for weeks at a time, that is just too long.

As for distance, you have a point there, but I think a week should be long enough, even with a day of travel involved.

I don't believe it is a sense of obligation, after thinking about it I believe it's because he feels he has no place else to go. Which is sad for someone in their mid-30's, but he needs to get a life and develop friendships and connections.

You raise your kids, they leave the nest, and should have their own lives, relationships, and people to spend time with outside of their families. Pretty much everyone else we know sees their kids for a few days at Christmas, maybe a few days at Thanksgiving, and that's it. I personally don't know of anyone whose mid-30's adult child spends every single vacation at their house.

I wonder how you would feel if it were your DD coming for a 3 week stay.

>>>I don't have a daughter, so I can't tell you if I would feel differently. However, I CAN tell you that I feel the same about our son, who is in his 20's. He now lives close by, but before he moved closer, we only saw him on holidays, during which he never spent more than a couple days. I would find it very odd if he spent every vacation with us.

I would be ecstatic if my adult daughters came to visit for three weeks.

I can't imagine my daughter spending all that money on a plane ticket just to visit for a couple of days. Anything much less than a week just isn't really practical.

Yes, that's what Quirk mentioned and I agreed with him/her that considering distance, a week would be reasonable. But I guess there is just no way to curtail visits without causing hurt feelings, so I guess we'll just have to leave things as they are.

If it's just during major Holiday's like Christmas and Thanksgiving I wouldn't see a problem with a week or two long visit. Three weeks may be pushing it since you both work from home and it's disruptive. Some people HAVE to work. Three week visits would be impossible for us simply because we are too young to retire. I don't see us being able to retire young either. The kid's visits will be determined by what vacation time we get alloted from work.

If it's truly inconvenient for you guys I would tell him. I am one of those terribly selfish people who believe parents have aright to have a life once the children become adults. I will love when they visit and we equally love to have my routines back to normal when it's time for them to go. I have hobbies and interests outside of being a parent and I don' think I'm going to hell for that. Neither will you and your husband if you tell sonny that three weeks is tad extensive.

Doodleboo, it's usually several weeks in the middle of summer, and then sometimes more around Christmas.

Initially it's nice to see him, but it gets old really fast and we can't wait to get back to normal, so it pretty much becomes a countdown (and a drag) until we can get back to normal. Which makes me feel guilty, but then I am not that much older than stepson and we don't have a mother/son relationship.

See, I totally agree with you that people are entitled to have their own lives once children leave, and shouldn't have to accommodate them unless they want to. I really thought once kids were grown, they would have their own lives and do their own thing, and not visit for weeks on end. I still think this is not normal, I would have never voluntarily spent 3 weeks at my parents' house once I was an adult and had moved away.

Petra, in one of your earlier posts on this thread, you described the situation using the word "we" a lot... suggesting that you and your husband are on the same page about not liking your SS's visits to be as long as they have been.

I noticed that mainly because that would tend to be an unusual situation. (Because usually bio-parents ---no matter how young or old their children are, and of course presuming the relationship is good--- can't get enough of seeing them.) So I was just wanting to clarify if indeed you have talked about this with your husband in a very specific way and he has said very clearly/emphatically that he completely agrees with you.

If so, then it seems clear that he should be the one to find some [very euphemistic] way of breaking the news to his son that there are extenuating reasons why he'd prefer the visits be shorter. (If hubby genuinely feels that way and can come up with a legitimate-enough and nice-enough way of putting it to SS, then SS theoretically should understand.) If *you* were to be the one to have this talk with SS, it would come off to SS like it's *just you* who doesn't want him around (because, otherwise, why wouldn't his father be the one to tell him this?) and, naturally, SS will resent you for this.

If perchance hubby's agreement with you on this subject has been iffy, or less-than-wholehearted, that will come out when you ask hubby to have the talk with SS. At that point hubby will either begrudgingly have the talk with SS (which will unavoidably come off as coerced and ambivalent to SS, which hubby will also be self-conscious of, and both of them will resent you for it); or hubby will dodge the issue indefinitely (not knowing the perfect way to please both his wife and his son and terrified to displease either); or hubby will tell you to deal. The latter two are the most likely outcomes, if in fact hubby is less on your page than you think.

Point being: unless hubby, like you, tires of the SS after the first week, SS will likely continue the full length of his visits as usual. If hubby gives in to you, you will get what you want in the short term, but long-term it won't be good for either hubby's relationship with you or his son (and it certainly won't be good for the relationship between you and SS), for the reasons stated above.

If hubby doesn't give in to you, then it will be up to you to figure out how to remove yourself from and/or cope with the portion of SS's visits which you find objectionable. You being, thus, the only one of the three parties to truly dislike the status quo and you being not SS's biological parent as hubby is.

A few more questions, Petra, now that I'm thinking about this thread:

-you mention that you are not much older than SS (who is in his mid-30's), but then you mention having a son in his 20's (you didn't specify early or late 20's)... so I am guessing you are about 40, and maybe had your son when you were about 20. But you also refer to your bio-son as "our son", suggesting that this son is also the son of your *current* husband. Which would lead me to think that you have been with your current husband for at least 20 years, or at least as many years as your bio-son is old. So this leads to further questions:

-how long has the status quo of SS's several-week-long visits been going on?

-how long have you and hubby been married? (or living together: in other words, how many years have you personally been experiencing the status quo of SS's several-week-long visits?)

-what has the relationship been like between you and SS for the last 20 (or so) years?

-How old was SS when his bio-parents got divorced?

-what are the circumstances under which hubby's marriage to SS's mother ended?

-have you ALWAYS had a problem with the length of SS's visits? if not, approximately when did it start becoming a problem for you?

Serenity, the feeling is definitely mutual. Of course he loves his son, but would prefer visits to be much shorter. Stepson is a bit hard to get along with (and probably finds us to be the same). They talk for the first day or 2, and then run out of subjects because they don't have much in common.

It's really hard to admit, but we've both come to the conclusion that, if we (or at least one of us) had a great relationship with him, long visits wouldn't even be an issue in the first place, because we would enjoy them.

I guess the best thing to do would be to improve the relationship and thus make visits more enjoyable, but that is highly unlikely to happen because sometimes people have such different personalities and world views and characters that they would never spend time together if they weren't related.

"Because usually bio-parents ---no matter how young or old their children are, and of course presuming the relationship is good--- can't get enough of seeing them."

This definitely doesn't apply to my DH or me. We have 3 adult kids each and have a good relationship with all of them but neither of us care anything about any of them visiting for longer than 3 or 4 days, actually 2 is better. There's a saying that 'fish and company start to smell after a few days'. We wouldn't do well with a 3 week visit.

Petra--

I'm not sure I understand why SS wants to stay for several weeks at a time if the relationship is so bad between he and both of you. Do you think HE perceives the relationship(s) as being bad? It doesn't make much sense...

Have you (or probably better, your husband) tried discussing this with SS specifically, like: "How do you feel about the way we all get along? I'm asking b/c at times it seems to me ---and also at times to Petra--- that we don't get along and don't have that much in common. Do you agree with that or not?"

And then if he says he agress that the relationship is bad, hubby can ask: "Well, then, I'm not sure I understand why you want to be here for weeks at a time... Do you feel obligated to come? Because it doesn't always HAVE to be a several-week stay, and there's no pressure on you for more time than you're comfortable with..."

But, really, the most important question to ask/issue to discuss would be: "Do we all agree that we're not really getting along as well as we could? What can we try and come up with, all together, that might help that? We want these visits to be as much QUALITY time as they can be, not just quantity..."

Serenity, didn't see your second set of questions before going out.

I wouldn't say we have a "bad" relationship, but definitely not a close enough one to justify spending weeks and weeks together every year. I really don't know why he wants to come for such long time periods. Maybe because he can do what he pleases, I cook, he has his own room, etc. But again, I really don't feel it's normal for anyone in their 30's to spend weeks and weeks with their parents. If I heard of parents who expect their adult children to spend every vacation with them, I would think they are clingy nutcases.

The relationship between my husband and stepson's mother was over long before we met, she has been out of the picture for decades and hasn't had much contact with stepson.

I am in my mid-forties, so no spring chicken, but not old enough to be step son's mother. You are correct that I had my (our) son when I was 20, he is 25 now. Hubby and I got married when I was very young, just before I turned 18. I helped raise stepson and things were fine, though we never really had a mother-son relationship, more sibling-like.

The problems didn't start until stepson became a teenager. The cr*p hit the fan at that point, and while we got along well before, the relationship deteriorated to the point where we were really happy when he moved out. Things settled down, but since then, we haven't been able to re-establish what I would consider a good relationship. Like I mentioned above, different personality types, and too many different opinions and points of view and other problems I won't go into.

The vacation visits have been on and off for years, sometimes he's skipped a couple of years, and for a while he lived quite close, and we never hardly heard from him.

I agree with gajopa, we also wouldn't enjoy looooooong visits from our son. As a matter of fact, anyone visiting for more than a few days is a pain, but everyone else we know doesn't do that anyway. Other relatives visit for a few days, and then leave.