Where do I even begin?
My brother, sister in law and 18 month old niece live out of the country so its a big deal for them to finally come for a visit and rare that we all get to be together. My parents and SO live on the west coast and I live on the east coast.
Anyway were are all planning on meeting for 2 weeks at my grandpa’s (RIP) old lake house that we grew up visiting. Its a super tiny lodge maybe 1000sqft MAX so surprriiissee theres only 2 bedrooms. Being the youngest I have been automatically delegated to the living room. Sleeping in there with all the cousins was fine when I was 14 but I am nearly 30 now and that damn pull out couch is 20 years older than me. Keep in mind that my fiance is coming AND meeting the family for the first time. I think she deserves to be comfortable and have some sense of privacy in a new environment. I have now mentioned to everyone that I won’t be sleeping there several times, which has been seemingly ignored and unsupported. As the youngest sibling I am not new to getting last pick but it pisses me off that this is extended into adulthood and being pushed onto my fiance.
Making it increasingly complicated is that the nearest airbnb (option 1) is a 25 minute drive and $2000usd for 5 nights. And the only RV to rent (option 2) within a 2 hour pickup is also close to $2000usd. All the nearby motels are booked up. The fact that we might not have wanted to sleep in the living room for 2 weeks was never really considered by anyone else.
My SO and I having to front this additional cost is hurtful enough let alone the rest of the family not caring or even acknowledging that we just want to have a room/decent bed. The best they have done to help resolve is help us get a tent and blow mattress for outside.
I have decided that I will go by myself and sleep in the living room for ~4 nights as that is the max amount of bad sleep I think I can handle. This solution apparently is “ruining the trip for everyone” and making it all about me, am I the asshole?
EDIT: the toddler is also sleeping in the living room because the 2nd bedroom has no extra space
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Where do I even begin?
My brother, sister in law and 18 month old niece live out of the country so its a big deal for them to finally come for a visit and rare that we all get to be together. My parents and SO live on the west coast and I live on the east coast.
Anyway were are all planning on meeting for 2 weeks at my grandpa’s (RIP) old lake house that we grew up visiting. Its a super tiny lodge maybe 1000sqft MAX so surprriiissee theres only 2 bedrooms. Being the youngest I have been automatically delegated to the living room. Sleeping in there with all the cousins was fine when I was 14 but I am nearly 30 now and that damn pull out couch is 20 years older than me. Keep in mind that my fiance is coming AND meeting the family for the first time. I think she deserves to be comfortable and have some sense of privacy in a new environment. I have now mentioned to everyone that I won’t be sleeping there several times, which has been seemingly ignored and unsupported. As the youngest sibling I am not new to getting last pick but it pisses me off that this is extended into adulthood and being pushed onto my fiance.
Making it increasingly complicated is that the nearest airbnb (option 1) is a 25 minute drive and $2000usd for 5 nights. And the only RV to rent (option 2) within a 2 hour pickup is also close to $2000usd. All the nearby motels are booked up. The fact that we might not have wanted to sleep in the living room for 2 weeks was never really considered by anyone else.
My SO and I having to front this additional cost is hurtful enough let alone the rest of the family not caring or even acknowledging that we just want to have a room/decent bed. The best they have done to help resolve is help us get a tent and blow mattress for outside.
I have decided that I will go by myself and sleep in the living room for ~4 nights as that is the max amount of bad sleep I think I can handle. This solution apparently is “ruining the trip for everyone” and making it all about me, am I the asshole?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I changed joining the family trip for 2 weeks to ~4 nights.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
NTA. 2 weeks is way too long. The only solution your family is offering is for you to shut-up and just accept this miserable situation.
ESH
Why, with three couples and a young child, was this the plan??
What exactly do you think the options are?
Your parents sleeping on that pull out couch?
The couple with a little kid, who then isn’t going to be able to sleep until the other adults go to bed at night???
No one thought this through, and it would not be an enjoyable vacation for anyone cramming three couples and a toddler into a tiny two bedroom cabin.
NTA
I wouldn’t even go, it sounds miserable.
If it’s not that big of a deal for you to sleep on the couch, why doesn’t someone else offer to switch their bedroom for your couch?
If you really wanted to make it work, afw.com has a few sleeper sofas that you could deliver to the cabin? $600 bucks for a sleeper sofa might make things better.
INFO: what alternate arrangements do you think your family could make that would work for you?
NTA. You looked into other options pretty thoroughly. 4 nights is a good compromise.
NTA. Why can’t you rotate so you’re not the only one going sleep deprived?! It’s the only fair thing. If your family doesn’t agree, don’t go. Dude, definitely don’t go if they refuse to compromise
ESH
I don’t think this has anything to do with you being the youngest sibling:
* Your brother and SIL have a toddler, so the toddler needs a private space to be able to sleep I imagine for a couple of hours during the day and then from the late afternoon or early evening until the next morning. You can’t expect a toddler to sleep in a communal living room that will be used from morning to perhaps late in the evening or even past midnight. Naturally, as the parents, brother and SIL will get to sleep in the same room as their toddler so they can be there in case SIL still breastfeeds at night, and to be there to keep an eye out for their child.
* The other bedroom is going to be used by your parents, people I imagine are at least in their 50s if not 60s. I don’t think you can expect they will sleep on a less-comfortable option when a better option is available, simply because with older age come aches and pains and they are going to be much more uncomfortable than you would be on a pull-out sofa.
I do understand the lack of privacy of sleeping in a living room. But you aren’t getting the last pick because you are the younger sibling, you are getting the last pick because you have the lowest kinds of needs out of the three couples on this trip due to not being older and not having a young child.
The suggestion of a tent is frankly ridiculous, so I am with you on that, but it sounds like you’re not willing to compromise either. You don’t want to spend the costs of renting other accommodation, but your brother and SIL and toddler are seemingly making the biggest travel to come join this holiday, so they will have their own, possibly big costs to deal with just to make it to this lake house.
Have you all sat down comparing the costs for every couple (and the kid) to travel here, and then see if there’s any way to split additional costs for you and your partner to stay somewhere else, perhaps for just half the holiday? So that you stay in the house for a week and spend the other week in rented accommodation?
Assuming you all want to use this lake house more in the future, why can’t you all/the person who owns it, replace that vinrage pull-out couch with a proper sleeping facility for two people and then use those room divider panels to create SOME privacy, and all agree to some rules around when the living room is available for use by everyone (I think it’s fair to ask that other people do not use the living from between 11 PM and 7 AM, or whatever schedule works for you all.
NTA. You aren’t obligated to suffer discomfort for 2 weeks because of someone else’s tantrum. Anyone saying it “ruins the whole vacation” is either being over dramatic or places way too much emotional investment in your being there for 14 days.
I’d cut the whole visit short too. That many people in that little space for 2 weeks sound like a cruel experiment. Anyone complaining about you only being there for 4 days can give their opinion on if you not showing at all is better.
NTA. They are being selfish and uncompromising.
ESH- 1. Why can’t you guys take turns? 2. Get a full bed set. Macy’s has a good sales. Make the bed look like the Ritz Carlton. Add a mattress topper too. They will want the bed and you will give them the mattress. You keep the bedding. Still cheaper than what you were thinking. 🍹
Can you get a new mattress for the pullout or an air mattress to put on top of it?
I think the space isn’t good for the number of people for 2 weeks.
Could you do one week at the cabin and all of you rent a 3 bedroom for the second week?
ESH- your family for not thinking of an alternative to the sofa bed- getting a new one, new mattress or mattress topper. Also for not thinking that a 2 bedroom for 2 weeks is good for 3 couples and a toddler.
You for not realizing that it’s not a matter of being last to pick, but logistically toddler and parents in living room or your parents aren’t a good solution either.
With the edit that the toddler is sleeping in the living room, changing to NTA.
ESH. They for expecting you do to do that for 2 weeks. You for seemingly not having done anything about it until it’s too late
You said that you told them you won’t be sleeping there several times. But did you ask them to come up with a solution? Did you book alternative accommodation? Were all the motels booked from the beginning, or just now that it’s closer to the actual time?
Not sure what you wanted them to do about the problem and you waited it out until now to tell them your decision is to cut it short rather than have found a proactive solution earlier or just told them you weren’t going earlier
If the couple with the baby can’t sleep with baby in the bedroom so baby has to sleep in living room it seems to make more sense that the whole family set up in the space that can accommodate them. Why should you be auto selected to the public sleeping space you’re sharing with someone else’s baby? NTA
NTA. If the toddler is sleeping in the living room, so should their parents.
Oh this sucks. We kept getting invited/summoned to my in-laws beach house when my SIL/BIL moved back to the area but were booted out the room we usually use into a spare, empty room. We weighed costs and it was cheaper to buy a bed for the the room than rent a hotel. Every with that, we keep it to one or two nights a year bc it’s chaotic and small and overall a huge no thanks. I’d pass but that’s just me.
EDIT: the toddler is also sleeping in the living room
This edit is very important. Brother and SIL have effectively arranged that OP and his GF would be woken up by the child when she gets up in the morning, and would probably end up watching her while her parents’ had private time.
This was likely plotted carefully by SIL and brother, OP. You’ve been had.
If you do decide to go for 4 days, OP, don’t become the morning nanny. Whenever the baby wakes you up, put her into her parents’ room, tell them that she’s awake, and perhaps leave the cabin for awhile.
NTA
You are expected to Essentially be the night nurse for a toddler
NTA, people will tend to treat you the way they did when they had the most power over you.
NTA. I know how it is being the youngest. You’re expected to just go along with what everyone else wants and not make a fuss. Screw that. If I can’t be comfortable like everyone else, then I’ll make my own arrangements or just not go. Because I’m not making myself miserable just to satisfy everyone else.
That’s kind of a family dynamic thing rather than whether or not YTA. Like you, I was the youngest in my large immediate and extended family growing up. Now I’m 43 years old, served in the military, married with kids and have grown my own business. None of that has any relevance, seniority rules. Thanks to modern medicine and medical science, while being happy that the elders are still kicking, my wife and I still sit at the kids table at family gatherings…even when we host.
When it comes to traveling to one of my siblings or cousins for an occasion or whatever when we get the air mattress or pull out bed option, we stay at a nearby hotel because I’m not dealing with that. So with that not being an option nor would it be with me for two rooms for two weeks, you are definitely NTA. You’ve stated your concern, they chose to give it no regard so that’s not on you at all. I have been absent from such occasions when there’s no reasonable alternative.
NTA. Who spends 2 weeks of their vacation with family anyway? And if you want to spend your precious vacation time together, get a space with sufficient bedrooms. Good grief, just tell your family that this is ridiculous and ignore their complaints.
NTA at all.
Your family are cheap AHs for not choosing accommodation based on everyone’s needs, and for expecting the same person to always receive the bad deal purely based on the order of birth- even as children, it was unfair on you to have to always be the one at a disadvantage.
Your partner is new to the family, and deserves privacy to be able to decompress and have time just the both of you, and it’s also ridiculous that your sibling won’t have their own kid in a room with you, and expects you and a partner they have never met to carry out childcare duties at night time, and expose their kid to people they barely even know.
You have a right to your boundaries, particularly if you are spending time and money to have a family trip together. Either your parents need to find a more suitable location for your trip (whereby there are private bedrooms for all involved), or they need to invest money into extending the current property to adapt to the growing generations and therefore build more bedrooms (and possibly even more bathrooms) on the property. It’s a family heirloom, so to speak, and if the family keep using it then they need it to be appropriate for everyone’s enjoyment.
Nta. Period
NTA. I wouldn’t attend this shizz show at all. Good god.
I think this is a personal preference thing, and NAH. My family used to vacation together, and even in my mid 20s, I slept in the living room on a lumpy couch (because I was also the youngest.) Regardless of the mild discomfort, I would not have traded the time with my family for anything.
A 1000 sq ft property is large enough for your parents to stay in. Everyone else needs to find their own lodgings.
NTA, and honestly? I wouldn’t go at all. “I’m sorry, folks, but I won’t be going. I’ve tried to tell you that my fiancée will be with me, and we are not comfortable sleeping on a pull-out couch or an air mattress for two weeks. This will be her first time meeting all of you, and I think it’s highly disrespectful to expect her to endure this with little to no privacy. So regretfully, we will not be present. I am not ‘ruining the trip’. I am taking the best possible solution considering the comfort of my fiancée among people she hasn’t yet met.”
NTA. The family has outgrown the lake house. It’s nice and all for those who still get their choice of bed but it’s super selfish of them to expect everyone to cope with buking up in totally unsuitable conditions.
That’s also really unwelcoming to your fiancé and their need to wake up and see that.
I wouldn’t go at all.
NTA. The parents of the toddler need to be sleeping in the same room as their toddler. You are not the babysitter, what happens when the toddler wakes up in the middle of the night? Are you expected to look after her? I honestly wouldn’t be going at all.
Why not buy 2 roll-away beds?
Why go at all?