I (37m), am married to my husband (37m). We do not co-sleep, and do not have beds designed for it. Short answer, he’s a very light sleeper except that he snores, and that snoring wakes me up several times a night and my getting up wakes him up. Solution? Separate sleeping arrangements. Never been a better time in our marriage and we’re both very happy and sleeping well.
My mother flew across the country with relatively little warning (less than 6 weeks), and wants to sleep in a bed because she’s older than us. That’s totally fine, I can sleep on the couch for a bit, it’s a nice couch. She hemmed a little about why I couldn’t sleep with my husband, but I showed her that the bed in his room isn’t big enough for both of us, and that we don’t co-sleep well. It just made sense.
This seemed to be fine once it was explained.
The issue is she gets up at 2-3am and wants to call her friends who are 6 hours behind (so it’s 8-9pm their time), and wants to either sit at the kitchen table or nudge me a bit so she can sit on the couch. I tolerated this for the first day, it’s my mom, right?
Then in the morning she got up at 6am and started watching TikTok and YouTube shorts on full blast at the kitchen table. It’s open concept here, there’s no door, she’s just 10 feet away.
I told her that between the hours of 11pm and 8am, she can not socialize on her phone, want to use the couch while I’m sleeping, or make noise in the apartment that isn’t cooking, serious business questions from her job, or an emergency. I’m sleeping on a couch exposed to all those areas.
She accused me of trying to confine her to one room, and that because of the time difference I’d have to suck it up because she’s not going to all this from her bed.
I told her there’s a whole desk, computer, and side space, in that bedroom. I said that she did not need to use the communal space in the middle of the night, and just because she wakes earlier than me doesn’t mean she can make it an issue for me when getting up at 7am is not unreasonable.
She got mad and told me I was being controlling, and I snapped back with the statement that she could afford a hotel (she can, she lives in Hawaii on a VERY good salary) if she doesn’t like me requests, but I’m not required to just put her up when she’s going to be a major sleep time nuisance.
Now some of my family are blowing up my phone that I should be more understanding about the time difference and that she’s my mom and I should be taking care of her.
AITA for having some group rules?