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holidays and family

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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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