I’m a 36 (F) introvert with GAD and panic attacks. I’ve worked hard to manage it, and you wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you. My husband (43 M) is very close with his family. His parents live 6 hours away, and 2x a year we go down for big family gatherings. We usually stay 5 full days plus 2 travel days. We used to stay at his aunt’s, but now we stay with his parents. They have two extra bedrooms: one closed-door room that my brother-in-law and his wife use, and the other is a loft where my husband and I sleep. The loft has no door. You can’t see into it, but you can hear everything. My husband snores, sometimes so loud that at home I end up in our spare room. When we visit, there is constant socializing. We go house to house with the same large extended family all day. My social battery drains fast, and I take alone walks to avoid getting overstimulated. I love his family. But I have a very hard time sharing bathrooms. I deal with severe constipation and get extremely self-conscious spending so much time in someone else’s bathroom. My in-laws have one common bathroom and another inside their bedroom, which they don’t mind people using, but I feel awkward going in there. My MIL also has a chronic cough that’s much worse in the mornings. For the past few years, sleeping there has been incredibly difficult..between my husband’s snoring and her coughing, I’m awake multiple times a night/morning. She tries to stay in her room longer so she doesn’t wake us, but because the loft has no door, every sound travels. I use earplugs and a noise machine, and I still get jolted awake. The TV room is directly under the loft, so once people wake up, I hear everything. My husband tells me I can “go up to the loft” for alone time, but that feels strange when we’re there to visit. At home I need quiet time after social events to decompress. On these trips, I get almost no alone time and barely any real sleep. My anxiety spirals. I want to enjoy visiting his family. I have a stressful job and limited vacation time, and I use a big chunk of it for these visits. I come back more drained than when I left. So I asked my husband if I could get a hotel room just to sleep. The hotel is less than two miles away. I’d spend the whole day with his family, but at night I’d have quiet, a bathroom I can actually use, and the ability to mentally “turn off.” When I brought it up, he said: “You’re not getting a hotel room, that’s ridiculous,” and “Do you know how hurt my parents would be?” He told me I “need to get over this stuff.” His solution was sleeping in the walk-in closet, which is even more ridiculous. He says he wants me there as his wife, but I need him to consider my mental and physical health. When I don’t sleep, everything suffers. AITA for spending a few nights (not xmas Eve) in a hotel so I can actually sleep and, honestly, poop in peace? I’m looking for outside perspectives on how to do this without offending his family while still taking care of myself.
Edit: my husband offered to stay in the closet because he wants me there so bad.
NTA. I genuinely don’t understand people who insist on staying at their families’ houses when its uncomfortable and lacks privacy
There is nothing wrong with staying at a hotel, you’re literally with them all day, get your sleep. Your husband is being unreasonable and offended over nothing.
NTA for wanting a hotel room.
One question: why does the brother-in-law and his wife automatically get the closed door room and you the loft?
If your husband truly wanted you to stay at his parents’ house, he should have at least been advocating to make it more comfortable for both of you.
NTA
FFS – sleep deprivation is literally used as a torture method.
Tell your husband that you will be staying in a hotel. He is welcome to join you. He is welcome to stay at his parents’ house. You need and you deserve sleep and you are taking action to ensure you get it.
Don’t say it apologetically. Don’t say it like you’re ashamed. Say it calmly and with authority. You are an adult with an adult job. Your vacation time is limited and precious. And you need rest. All the other stuff is just icing on the NEED REST cake.
If your hubs pushes back – ask him why he is so comfortable for YOU to be exhausted, tense, and miserable for 5 days? You’d never ask that of him – especially when the workaround is so easy (a hotel).
NTA. Your husband, your partner, should be supporting you not shaming you. Telling you to sleep in the closet like Harry Potter is not helpful. You’re trying to enjoy the time spent over the holiday not be an anxiety ridden, emotionally drained husk. Telling you to get over it is insulting and insensitive.
NTA.
Tell him you’ll nix the hotel room when he puts on his big boy pants and goes to the fucking doctor and gets the snoring stopped.
That still doesn’t fix the bathroom and social anxiety issues. I’d stay in a hotel for every visit or I wouldn’t go at all. And as long as he’s putting his mother’s feelings over his wife’s actual *needs,* I’d be tripling up on birth control and having kids would be off the table.
Your husband is a complete dick get the hotel room. Be honest with his mom about why. Or better yet- don’t use your precious vaycay every year to do this. Go every other. He can go every year if he wants. Sounds like you can use a break from him. He sounds like a dick that probably has severe apnea but won’t see a dr or get a cpap. Admittedly, they suck but so does keeping your mate up every freaking night with no godda m break and also dying early. He’s the AH. Call his mom. Tell her the unvarnished truth. Maybe at the very least you don’t have to take the stupid lift every time. Why isn’t that being alternated? Get the hotel anyway. Eff your selfish ass husband. His mom won’t care!!!
Your husband cares more about his mother’s ego than about your health. Life is too short to spend half your annual vacation being miserable. Zero concessions are being made, during these trips, for your needs: they are all about your husband’s wants and his family’s wants. It is not acceptable that the set-up is designed in such a way that you are unable to get a decent night’s sleep for an entire week. The fact that your husband is unsympathetic to this is hugely problematic.
Your husband should be ashamed. He doesn’t care that your holiday is miserable as long as his family is comfortable.
I wouldn’t go at all, but — if you must — get the hotel. NTA.
There’s no chance I would ever spend one more sleepless night on YOUR vacation. I would stop asking permission to get a hotel room. You’re a grown woman with a job. Girl, go reserve that hotel room pronto. Your husband will get over it. !!!!!!!!!!!
NTA. You and I are very similar. I see absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting to spend your nights in a hotel. If you feel comfortable doing so, I would just explain yourself to his parents. I’ve found people react better when I’m open and honest. If you aren’t comfortable sharing then that’s okay too, just find a different approach.
Your husband telling you to get over it is infuriating. If life were that simple we’d all have perfect mental health and therapists would be unemployed. He needs to get over himself.
You’re spending your PTO and personal time to be with your husband and his family for the holidays. Please give yourself the gift of a hotel room. You deserve it.
NTA and it’s not a good sign that he’s more worried about his parents being offended than about you being miserable because you’re not getting something humans literally need to survive. IMO that warrants a serious talk. I would be reminding him of his wedding vows and asking him how telling you to just be constipated and sleep-deprived for five days constitutes him standing by you “in sickness and in health.”
It shouldn’t be hard for everyone to understand that some people are light sleepers and that you need good sleep to not be miserable. If his parents can’t understand that and take it personally, honestly, I don’t have time for people like that anymore. But part of me wonders if they even would actually care that much or if he’s just projecting.
NTA
TBH, I only read the beginning of your post because it’s one long paragraph (if that was unintentional, you need to leave a blank line in between paragraphs. So, return twice, instead of once.)
But, your reasons do not matter. You are an adult, with disposable income, and the right to do what makes you most comfortable.
Book the hotel. Stay alone or bring hubby. Whatever makes you most comfortable. You aren’t responsible for the feelings of other adults when you make basic decisions (different story if you’re intentionally excluding, berating,or otherwise being harmful to others).
Basically, you do you, boo ❤️
If he wants her to “power through,” he knows that it is a burden. Why is his wife’s comfort so unimportant to him?