'My friend made a weirdly specific excuse for why I can't stay with her. Twice. What do I do?'
My friend has made the same strangely specific excuse as for why my husband and I can't stay with her when we visit and I need advice.
I could really use some advice in this situation. I (22F) have this friend, we will call her Carrie (24F). I met her and my husband (26M) in college four years ago. They were childhood friends and I ended up becoming close with them separately, then, we all started hanging out together and became a close knit friend group.
My husband and I got married and moved quite far away two years ago. Since then, we have bent over backwards to try to go see her or have her come see us. We have always let her stay with us and have even helped pay for her plane tickets.
We have been planning to go see her for months. We have talked to her about it many times and she has told her roommate about it as well. This roommate has not met us yet but we have chatted over the phone a little bit. About a month ago, we finalized our plans and bought the plane tickets.
Weeks go by, then out of the blue today she texts us and tells us that her roommate is no longer comfortable with us staying with them because it will take too much of a toll on his mental health and he feels like we will be invading his personal space.
As far as we have been told, he has known for months that we were planning on coming and staying with them and that he was even excited about it. It seemed weird that he would suddenly have a complete shift in his opinion. Carrie said we could maybe stay for two nights because she feels bad.
The situation really sucks. We want to come see her, and of course staying with her would allow us the most amount of time with her. We also don't have money for a hotel and she knows this. But it gets worse... This exact same thing that happened when we went to go see her last year.
Last year, my husband and I had been planning for a few months to go see Carrie. We finally worked out days that would work for us all and we bought the plane tickets. Then, only a week before we were going to fly out to see her, she suddenly texted us and told us that her roommate was going through some mental health stuff and no longer felt comfortable with us staying with them.
We had to suddenly scramble to find a place to stay and a car to borrow. It was extremely stressful and we ended up not getting to spend much time with Carrie because we had to stay in a different town. For the record, this incident happened with a completely different roommate...
The situation was weird when it happened last year. We did know that roommate, and as far as I knew, we were friends. I was of the opinion that if the roommate had already agreed to letting us stay she should keep her word. That particular roommate has lots of friends and family in the area that she often stayed with just because anyway, so she had somewhere to go and stay if she felt she needed to.
My husband and I, however, did not. It was difficult for us to find a place to stay, and begging people you don't know super well to house you last minute is quite embarrassing and very inconvenient for them.
Carrie is a huge people pleaser and will go with whatever other people tell her to do. I thought that when this happened last year it was a case of Carrie bending to her roommate's will even if it hurt both her and us. But now, it's happening again, this time with a different roommate.
We don't want to beg people we aren't close with to let us stay with them again. We don't want to miss out on time we could be spending with Carrie because of having to stay further away again. I don't know what to do or what to think. Carrie is one of the sweetest people I've ever met and one of my very few friends.
We have spent so much time and money letting her stay with us, paying for flights, and driving her everywhere, yet when we try to stay with her she doesn't help financially at all and can't even follow through with letting us stay with her.
I'm hurt because I would never do this to her. If one of my roommates said she couldn't stay with us after already committing to let her stay, I'd tell them to suck it up. If she actually couldn't stay with us for whatever reason, I'd get her a hotel. I'm just so tired of her leaving us high and dry with no backup plan.
I'm tired of her constantly going back on her word. I don't think I want to keep putting in the effort to go see her if this is how we are going to be treated but I also don't want to potentially lose a friend over this. What do I do?
This is what people had to say to OP:
wishingforarainyday said:
I think Carrie doesn’t really want you to visit and doesn’t want to say it out loud. You and your husband should bake different vacation plans.
holisarcasm said:
Not everyone likes people staying in their home. Even when we do, it is taxing, sometimes guests aren’t well behaved, they expect you to take vacation time while they are there - which isn’t a vacation, want to be entertained 24/7, and do not pay their way.
Then there is the post visit cleanup. It doesn’t matter what you have done for her. She shares a home with someone. She cannot force someone else to put up with visitors staying in the home.
OP responded:
I understand this but it was her idea that we come and stay with her and her roommate agreed and even expressed that he was excited to meet us. They have been telling us this for months so for him to suddenly shift felt very out of the blue.
AmbitiousWear4082 said:
I don't think Carrie is the friend to you and your husband that you think she is. Always, always it's not what they say, it's what they do, and she doesn't care if you visit or not, but she's happy to take from you two.
Both-Mud-4362 said:
The relationship with Carrie has fizzled. She doesn't like you or your husband anymore. Or maybe she finds the visits too intense because you are there in her space 24/7. But either way cancel this trip. And stop making all the effort to see her. Just send her a message like:
"Now that we can't stay, we can't afford to visit. We understand your living arrangements are not ideal for visitors and respect that. Going forward we are always open to you coming to visit us whenever you have the funds to do so. Love and miss you."
It makes it clear the trip is cancelled. And you won't arrange to visit her. And any visits she makes to you both will be on her dime from now on.
ambarellachutney said:
‘Carrie is a huge people pleaser’. Sit with that for a minute and see how you fit in there for her. She doesn’t want people staying with her. She’s tried to tell you this in the people pleasing way she knows how, but you and your partner are being super dense.
You aren’t in college anymore and the friendship has evolved into something else. It could still be close; but phone calls and texts close. Not a week of houseguests close.
Better-Expert5105 said:
Yikes. I’m a big advocate for talking things through, even if it’s uncomfortable. You have a difficult conversation, but you all come out better on the other side. Talk to Carrie. Tell her how hurt you are by these situations. Honestly, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt… but her behavior is very inconsiderate, even if you interpret it in the most generous way.
Talk to your husband, too, obviously. You may need to make some adjustments. Maybe you don’t help her financially when she visits you. Maybe you entirely stop trying to visit her (tbh, I would; she can’t be trusted to keep the plans you’ve made). What does your husband think of all this?
OP responded:
I want to talk to her. I am having trouble gathering my thoughts without feeling angry and I am afraid of coming off very rude as I tend to be very confrontational. I did stop financially helping her to come visit us and that honestly took a huge burden off of me.
My husband is also very frustrated and hurt. They have been friends since they were literal infants, so losing this friendship would not only be a hugely painful to me but to him as well. We are currently trying to figure out the best next steps, but a conversation is definitely needed.