Dear Carolyn: My sister and I are my mom’s only children; both of us are women in our 40s. One of us is single with no children; the other is married with four children. Each holiday, the two guest rooms at my mom’s house become a point of contention for one of us. The single sister is told the sleeping arrangement available to her is a couch or air mattress. The married-with-children sister is given both guest bedrooms. The single sister doesn’t feel it’s fair for her to sleep on a couch or air mattress when her nieces and nephews get a bed, even though it’s only for a night or two. Should the married sister give up one of the bedrooms, or should the single sister just suck it up and sleep on an air mattress?
— A Mattress Impasse
A Mattress Impasse: The prevailing “should” here applies to all the adults: to put an immediate stop to any of this “the single sister is told” business. Wow.
The sisters can resolve it between themselves if the mother refuses to budge. The sister who gets the better deal is in an especially strong position to say, “[Single sister] always gets the air mattress, and it’s time we came up with a new, more respectful arrangement.” The amount of goodwill in a gesture like that is worth a crap night of sleep on an air mattress for the gesturer, and I say this as someone who guards her sleep with something resembling lunacy.
But my answer isn’t about who specifically does or doesn’t belong on the couch. Any arrangement can potentially make sense. My answer is only this: Adults who love and respect each other don’t stand for systems where one of them always gets the broken cookie.
Instead, they talk. They listen. They offer suggestions. They get creative. Or they don’t budge but validate in abundance: “Kids and parents have a valid claim to beds, on the assumption nobody wants to be around us when we’re all sleep-deprived and screaming” — if the kids are little, it is indeed grueling — “but the day our family outgrows this demanding stage, you get the best room going forward into eternity, along with our undying thanks.” Or something like that.
Point is, this one-or-two-night room problem hints at a (possibly lifelong) scoring system that’s impossible for one sister to win, and the losing sister is the only one who seems to notice she always loses, much less minds that she does, and she apparently believes she either can’t advocate for herself or won’t be heard regardless. That’s the problem.
Ideally, you can get a solution started by pointing it out to family members distracted by other things: “I would like to talk about the holiday sleeping arrangements at Mom’s. Erfteen years of couch duty is one thing, but a system that can’t be questioned is worse.” People willing to recognize the validity of each sister’s interests will at least listen with an open mind. Even if the outcome is to stick to the original plan, it’ll be by mutual agreement, not preferential reflex.
If you’re the designated couch sister and they refuse you so much as a conversation about it? Hotel. I mean it. Honor yourself, even if it means weeks of ramen to afford it. You can’t make your family treat you well, but you can make sure you’re not around for them to mistreat you.