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I recently started staying in a hotel when I visit my family. They have plenty of spare rooms for me to stay in, but ultimately, there were just dynamics at play when I stayed with them that I felt were tainting our time together. Some people think it’s so silly for me to pay for a hotel when I have a free place to stay. Well, to that I’ll say, in theory, I have a free place to live if I wanted to move back in with my parents but I pay for the distance that is healthy for us. And I do that when I’m just back in town for a visit, too. Some may think it seems cold that I stay in a hotel. And, the truth is that it was very hard for me to bring myself to tell my mom the first time I was going to stay in a hotel while in town. It felt like I was…breaking up with her or…starting a fight. The truth is I was trying to do quite the opposite: I was trying to do what was best for our relationship. Nonetheless, she did cry when I first told her I was going to stay in a hotel, and it felt very, very bad. So I actually caved that time, cancelled my hotel reservation, and then experienced what I often experience while staying with my mom, which is tougher than just having her cry about a hotel room, and was a reminder as to why I’d booked a hotel in the first place. We can’t make our family relationships be what we want them to be. We need to accept them as they are (for the most part) and then do what we can to keep them pleasant and loving. I stay in a hotel when I visit my family and it’s actually saved our relationship.
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She can’t say I treat her house like a hotel
Before, when I stayed with my mom, she’d often criticize me for treating her home like a hotel because she never felt I gave her enough of my time. I have friends and other family members I want to see in town, but if I so much as left my mom to see someone else for an hour, she’d remind me that her home isn’t a hotel. Now I’m literally staying at a hotel, and can come and go as I please.
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I can see both parents easier
I have divorced parents who live in the same town. My mom is the one with space for me, but because she still carries some resentment towards my dad since their divorce, she gets bitter when I leave her home to meet him for lunch or coffee. She’ll make comments like, “If it’s more important to see him, then you can stay with him.” To call it “more” important to see him as I have one coffee date with him and literally spend the other 60 hours of my visit with her is a stretch. But anyways, we can avoid these fights now.
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Eliminating the long goodbye
When I would stay with my mother, she would take on some odd emotions the day I’d leave. When I was packing, she’d come in and question why I was in such a hurry. If I said I had to work, she’d start questioning how well my career was even going. If I said it was to see a friend, she’d start pointing out the flaws of that friend. I know it is her twisted way of showing she misses me when I’m gone but, it would cause arguments. Now, she doesn’t see me pack up to leave. I do that at the hotel. Our goodbye is cleaner.
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No bickering over a made bed
I do my best when I’m at my mom’s, but she (and my stepdad) can be pretty particular about the appearance of a room. If I make the bed but not very well, they say I don’t seem to respect their home. Which makes me uncomfortable. Hotels don’t tell me I’m disrespecting them by not tucking in the sheets.
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Or clothes on a chair
I’m also not a big fan of hanging up every item of clothing or putting it in drawers when I’m only going to be somewhere for a couple of nights. But if I didn’t do that, my mom and stepdad would come through the room every day and say things like, “How can you live like this? Are you so messy in your own home? Why are you like this?” I could just do without these disputes when I’m trying to relax on vacation.
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Dirty dishes
At my mom’s home, I leave a coffee cup in the bedroom for a day, or don’t properly rinse a plate before putting it in their “finicky” dishwasher and it crusts on, or I eat the banana bread that was apparently meant for guests. I like to just pay a hotel a convenience fee of not feeling like I’m going to get in trouble every hour.
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No anxiety over wakeup times
If I sleep in at my mom’s house, when I get up, she’s upset that I slept so late—claiming that I must not want to spend much time with her if I’m going to sleep all day. The anxiety of knowing I must get up at a decent hour to make my mom happy keeps me up all night and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sleeping late. At a hotel, nobody monitors what time I get up. I get up when I get up, and make my way over to my mom’s house when I’m good and ready.
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I get designated alone time
I need designated alone time. I need to make phone calls, sit around in my underwear with a face mask on, read an important email without interruptions, and so on. When I do this at my mom’s house, I can feel her waiting for me to be done—wondering when the visit will resume. If I have a hotel room, I can go take designated alone time for hours without feeling someone is watching my bedroom door, waiting for me to come out.
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I can’t socialize all day
Really I can’t be “on” all day, which is how I can feel when I stay with people—even my family. I can’t feel like any moment someone else enters the kitchen I need to make small talk or pretend to be in a great mood. I’d prefer to have a lone time at a hotel to recharge, and then present myself, happy and energized, to my family.
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No disputes about sleep disruptions
We have vastly different sleep schedules—my parents and me. My mom and stepdad pass out around 9pm and get up around 6am. I go to sleep around 1am and get up around 9am. So, we’ll get into disputes about my being too loud at night or them being too loud in the morning. Why are we putting ourselves through this? Let’s all just get a good night’s rest, at separate locations, so we can enjoy each other’s company.
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I feel free to visit friends
As I mentioned before, I have friends I’d like to see in town. But my mom really feels that my visit to my hometown should solely be to see her. So…when am I supposed to see my friends who live there? Am I to make a separate trip to see them? As if. My mother would be upset about that, too. If I stay in a hotel, I feel more that I have paid for the right to spend my time in that town as I see fit.
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Or just explore the town alone
There are also things I’d like to do in my hometown that I prefer to do alone or that my mom wouldn’t even want to do. Again, if I stay with her, and venture off on my own, she accuses me of not wanting to spend time with her and treating her home like a hotel. But it saddens me to miss out on some of the experiences of my hometown I yearn for. Staying in a hotel doesn’t make me feel bad about just doing that.
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We carve out real time together
Because our time is now a bit more limited, we make the most of it. My mom knows I’m coming over from, say, noon to three pm, so she gets her other chores and errands done before then. She carves out the time to focus on me when I come over. When I stay there for days, she may spend a lot of that time doing odds and ends errands, thinking we have plenty of time together, then we get no quality time together.
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The trip is shorter, but sweeter
Look, I can’t afford to pay for a hotel for many nights. So my visits are naturally shorter now. But that’s actually a good thing. I make a point to get my work out of the way and treat it like a real vacation. I want to make the most of that hotel room I’ve paid for, so I make time to unwind, and I’m just in a better mood. The visit is shorter but sweeter.
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I can work without upsetting her
For some reason, seeing me working on my laptop upsets my mom when I’m visiting her. She doesn’t like knowing my focus is elsewhere. She doesn’t like feeling that I didn’t prioritize things appropriately, to get my work out of the way before the visit. But the truth is it is hard for me to fully take several days off. It’s best I have a hotel room where I can work, unseen by my mom.
