Battling the Summer Invasion

(NOTE: Jim's blog is now devoted to answering relationship questions submitted by readers. Please send any questions you may have to jim@attorneyatlove.com).

DEAR JIM: I'm 55 years old and have been married for seven months to "Tony", a widower. When we got married, I sold my condo in the city and moved into Tony's house in a seaside town about forty miles away. It was great until Memorial Day weekend, when we started getting besieged by visits from his brothers and sisters and their families, plus his two grown daughters and their kids. There were literally five days all summer when no one was visiting. Some of these visits overlapped, and when they did we had as many as nine guests at a time. One sister and her teenage kids stayed two weeks, and practically no one stayed less than a week. Tony had given me the impression that his family's visits were pretty much a weekend thing. I have a home-based consulting business that's impossible to run with all these people around. I'm already dreading next summer. Tony's a wonderful guy but he just can't say no to his family, and he's off at work five days a week and doesn't have to deal with everything the way I do. Any suggestions, short of running away? ("Ann Marie" in the Carolinas)

DEAR ANN MARIE: The old saying is, unfortunately, true, that you don't marry a person, you marry his whole family. And when you come in late in the game, there's a well-established system in place that is not going to be easy to dismantle. But if you want to stay married and also stay sane, you---and Tony---are going to have to make some changes to the system.

The first thing the two of you need to do is to have a serious conversation. You can point out, correctly but calmly, that you were under the impression that the visits were mainly on the weekends. You were mentally prepared to deal with having houseguests two or three days a week, and (presumably) you'd be willing to live with that in the future. You can also explain, if he doesn't realize it already, that you can't run a business with up to nine people wandering in and out of the house all day.

But try not to criticize his relatives overtly, even if they deserve criticism; it will just make him defensive. Instead, make it clear that you need to work together to come up with a solution for next summer and beyond. What you'll probably have to do, prior to the end of this year, is to send out joint letters or e-mails to everyone who's visited and let them know that next summer you won't be able to accommodate guests other than on weekends, and even then only one group of guests at a time. Urge them to make their "reservations" as early as possible, and mention that you'll be happy to help people find hotels or rental properties if they want to stay longer.

Inevitably, you're going to be "blamed" for this. "Gee, Dad marries Ann Marie and all of a sudden she's running the place." And if he's the soft touch you say he is, he may be tempted to bend the rules if his relatives plead their case to him directly (and they will). But, for the sake of your marriage, it's vital that the two of you present a united front.

So, I hope you won't need to run away next summer. But maybe at the end of the summer you and Tony can go away somewhere for a week or so and enjoy some together-time, away from your jobs and other people. Knowing that you've got a nice "reward" ahead of you may make it easier to put up with the disruptions that even weekend visits can cause.

Good luck, Ann Marie, and let me know how it turns out.