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I don't have to spend a lot of time with them because we do not live in the same city but I do understand how you feel...
I'm in the same boat as Sharron04. But even if we lived in the same city, my husband wouldn't really want to spend that much time with his parents. Have you tried explaining to your fella that you'd like to try to spend more time with friends? If you're worried about hurting his feelings, you could always phrase it like you are missing some quality time with X, Y and Z. Naturally by bumping up time with others, your time with the FILs will decrease. I would think he'd understand.
But you also might have to be flexible with your bf. Sometimes you might have to each agree to do your own thing.
Hmm - I grew up very close to my family and now live about 10-12 hours away from them, so when I have time to make it home, I like to spend a lot of time with my actual family. I just spent about a week up North visiting family, and really only spent time with friends for about a day total. Mr. Bananas' family lives a lot closer, though, about 2 hours away, so we see them a lot more often. Sometimes they passive aggressively manipulate us to try to get us to hang out with them all weekend when we visit (when we usually divide the time between family and friends evenly) and it can definitely be frustrating.
I totally understand. But I love that we are both really close to our families. Sometimes, my MIL drives me up a wall and I hate that we live 5 minutes away from them, but you take the good with the bad. And I find the balance to be mostly good.
i understand where you're coming from. both of our families liv in the same town, so i'm pressured a lot. i got ticked this year b/c we spent every holiday this year w/ HIS family....what happened to splitting it up? ughh...i'm getting angry just thinking about it! his family will get angry at us if we even thin about spending holiday's with my family...gurr>(
I know how you feel! Imagine my surprise when I realized how common it is for Swedes to visit their folks at least once every 2-weeks, for about of 8-hours each visit 
No TV as a distraction ... I've never in my life spent this much quality time with people ever! I love them, they are the sweetest in-laws a girl can ever hope for, and we do get along well, but it was tough the first couple of visits.
I feel this way sometimes... I'm curious - how much time do people think is too much time? What's the right amount of time?
I'm on the other side of this discussion. I love spending time with my parents. I usually go over once a week after work, while my fiance is out at his guy's night. We also typically will go over at least once a month on a weekend day. Honestly, I could probably go over even more often than we do!
I also wonder whether my fiance gets annoyed at how much time we spend with my parents, but whenever I ask him, he reassures me that he also likes spending time with them too. I guess I'm lucky that they get along.
However, sometimes he'll make a comment that he's a little familied-out and he would like to take a little break from hanging out with parents for a little bit. Usually just him making that comment is enough for me to scale back on us hanging out with them during the month.
We see my parents once, maybe three times a year if they/we travel a lot. We see his parents AT LEAST once a week for 3-10 hours. They call all the time. My FI talks to his brother online every single day. They are a very close family. I've grown use to it, but it was a lot to get use to! I sometimes still get upset because a "quick in-and-out visit" with them is never that, its a multi-hour affair. Mostly i don't mind because we watch all our tv out there (they have cable and record our shows for us) and they feed us whatever we want and often buy us things for us or the house and we used to do all our laundry out there before we moved to a place with free laundry. I spend more time in a month with my FILs then I've spent with my family since I was a child.
rabbit-that's what I'm talking about. Dinner at least once a week. Plus they live very close to us so that's a problem too.
Both my FI and I's families are in our city, so we have plenty of opportunity to visit. However, my FI doesn't tend to visit his family much, while I am very close to mine. He get very frustrated with me when I even want him to spend time during the holidays with my family.
We had a problem in the beginning of our relationship, because his mom showed up unannounced almost daily. Now, I'm happy with seeing her maybe once a week. And the same with my family. But we also compromise and go our separate ways sometimes.
But, I do understand how you feel from past experience. I try not to give my FI a hard time, because I know how it feels to spend ALL my time with my SO's family instead of friends. It does suck after a while.
@lynnabby- how close is very close? We're only 15-30 minutes away (depending on how bad traffic is). FMIL is already freaking out about how far away we're going to be for grad school (other side of the country). I have been told that we are Forbidden to move out of the area in fact. *sigh* My parents were all "you're 18, get the @#%#$^ out of the house, find a job, and go to school!" and his are all "live with us, go to school, you don't have to work! Never leave!" Totally different experiences with our parents.
I feel you. My FMIL has expressed to both of us how much she would like to see us more. And for the most part i do see them pretty often. I feel like I can handle once a week, like on weekends. Don't get me wrong, I like them all, and love that my FH is so close to his family like I am with mine but like you said I like to hang out with my friends and family too. So I guess my answer once a weekend.
Lately, we've been spending more time with his family. And it makes me a little bit sad, cause they live so close and mine are so far away... and our families are so, so different that it's a little startling to have to change my idea of how family should be.
HIs Dad lives 45 minutes away and we mostly see him on holidays and a few other times throughout the year, I think its awesome that his family is so cool and we have the opportunity to spend as much time with them as we could, i mean, i AM going to be his wife, which means i will be a daughter and sister in law too! We are spending the rest of our lives together, so I dont feel like spending time with his famiy here and there would take away from us, I feel like it makes our relationship stronger, and seeing how happy he is when we are with his family makes me feel better about it
Our families live out of town so this really isn't an issue. We all get along well so we both enjoy spending time with each others families. I don't know how it would be if we had to spend a LOT of time though, I'm sure it would get tiresome. Normally I suggest talking to your BF but it seems there's way too much potential for a fight to erupt. If his family is like his best friends, they're always going to be around and I would never suggest trying to stop that. Maybe you can suggest doing more things alone or planning events with friends and just by that there would be less time to hang out with them?
It's frustrating for me because most of my FI's family lives near us, while none of my family does because I'm not from here. I do feel like we spend a lot of time with his family, and it is obviously very lopsided since we are unable to spend much time with mine.
I would talk to him about it and tell him how you feel. You should be able to come to a compromise.
I like his family, but man, we saw them 4 times in the span of 10 days. It's too much and I told him I was feeling overwhelmed. If we lived closer (we are 30 min away) we'd have dinner every Monday over there (tradition...) and they do Wednesday lunches together (I work but last week I went). When we go over to even have dinner, we're there for like, 5 hours. We get there at 430 and leave around 9 or 930 or so. I told him i was feeling overhwlemed, that it was taking up SO MUCH of our time to just do things like dinner or there's always a party for someone or a get together for who knows what. If we get to play Wii or something it's okay, but I get antsy after small talk for an hour or two.
Now that he knows how I feel, he said I am allowed to bow out of the smaller stuff (no big birthdays but I can just not go over for dinner). He'll just tell them I have too much to do. It just eats up "my" time to do stuff like laundry, make lunches, do homework, study, catch up on a TV show, etc. "Me" time. It's stressful over there, with the two kids screaming and playing and everyone chattering and there barely being enough room for people to sit. It's a lot for me, mentally--so much hubbub. Now that school is starting, I'll probably use some of that time to not only study, but get in some relaxing moments.
we don't live anywhere close, so we see them as often as we can if we fly in or they fly down. But if we lived in the same town, i think we'd see them once a week - the fam would pressure us to be over every day but neither of us wants to pack too much of anything into our schedule... then it wouldn't be as fun to visit! :)
Fi and I live in NYC and both of our families coincidentally live in Pittsburgh (we met at a Steelers bar in NY). I thought it would be wonderful to never have to argue about whose family to visit at holidays; going to the 'burgh would be a given.
Yeah, not quite so simple. I say this with all the love in the world because they truly are all great, but FI's family is a cult! They are all very very into spending time together, whcih I get since both sons live out of state. They're very welcoming and happy to include me in everything when we're in town, which is lovely since as I mentioned they're all very nice. The problem is that they don't like to share, and it's like pulling teeth to get FI to spend anytime with MY family. It's actually become a huge problem and pretty much the only thing we argue about. My family has repeatedly said that after 2 yrs of dating they still feel they barely know him because he only "stops by" at holidays for an hour or 2 before quickly returning to his family. We did Christmas separately this year, but I'm really worried how it'll be next yr when we're married. FI's brother and his (now ex)-wife stayed separately with their families even after they were married anytime they visited Pittsburgh. I told him several times even before we got engaged I'm NOT AT ALL OK with that, and once we're married we're OUR family and travel as a pair. He SAYS he agrees, but he also said he'd come see my family this Christmas Eve, and when I called him an hour after he was supposed to have shown up he said he didn't think it would be a big deal if he just stayed with his family for the entire night.
I'm getting mad all over again just typing this!!!!!
My FI also is very close to him family, and we spend a lot of time with them. The problem is that my FMIL has not accepted the fact that her little boy has grown up. The entire time we are there she swoons around him, making a big show of that fact that he is her baby, that he can never live with out momma. We have been dating for 4 years and living together for 3 years, so this is not a new relationship and she still does this every time we see them. She has even gone so far as to crash a romantic weekend that he and I had planed at a resort a few hours away from her house. She calls him all the time, and expects him to take her side over mine (when really ladies there should NOT BE SIDES) and it really is a huge long list of stories and instances that I would spell out here. Needless to say this is the most frustrating part of our relationship. We don’t see each other often as he works night and I work days and when we do get a few days together we are spending it with his family also and than I am dealing with his mother smothering him, and him not noticing. We have talked extensively about this and it just doesn’t feel like its going to go away, for me the spending so much time with his family is only half the battle.
We recently moved closer to DH's family (like 15 minutes away) and DH just commented to me this weekend that we are WAY too close to them (geographically). They are always giving us these not-so-veiled guilt trips for not coming to see them more often. This includes his siblings too (all 3 of them). Guess how many times they have been to visit us or see our house? Answer: 0.
Honestly, I can't image having to spend that much time with IL's...but we only see them like once a month or once every 2 months. We see my parents about twice a month and just yesterday DH told me he missed them!!
I think it just depends on who is closer to whom. I'm really close with my parents/family AND I like them! DH - not so close to his family because they all drive him crazy!
Have you talked to him about wanting some more alone time with him? I'm sure he could see that as a reasonable request!
I love to spend time with my family, but not all my time. Luckily, my fiance and I are on the same page about this. We usually see both of our families about once or twice a month. To me that is plenty and quite a lot when you consider it means we pretty much see a family a week, or every other week on the weekend. When we do visit we spend several hours.
His parents often drop hints that they don't see us enough and I am sure they'd be happy to have us visit every day. I feel guilty about it sometimes, but mostly when I open my big mouth and am the one to point out that both of us are the type of people who need time for ourselves after a full work week. Since I am just saying what my fiance would say and he always pipes right in to back me up, I guess it's not as bad as I sometimes feel it is for me to say so.
I also feel guilty because I much prefer visiting my own family. When visiting my family we do things together and talk. His family seems to talk very little and we usually end up watching tv (which I hate).
I have a friend who is in a similar situation to you and I don't know how she stands it. She visits with his family every single weekend whether she likes it or not.
If we lived 15 min away from either of our families I would totally lose it. My fiance's parents like to drop in unexpectedly, which drives me nuts, because sometimes a person has to spend the weekend in their pjs and let the cleaning slide a little.
we do spend a lot of time with his parents, but i can't complain because we spend even more time with mine! i like that he is a family person. i think it's important to balance your time though, to have alone time and friend time, which is hard.
Rabbit-only about 5 mins away. Yes, really close. It just annoys me that we have to always take into consideration that we have to go there both weekend days and have dinner at least once. I am feeling better now reading these posts because although he loves to be with his family he will always visit with mine or spend time with my friends. The only issue is when is comes to holidays, but thats not too bad. Of course my family lives more like 2 hours away. And I do love that he is a family guy.
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I'm just wondering if other gfs feel the way I do. It seems as though bf parents are his best friends. Although I love them I don't really want to have to spend so much time with them. We all get along great so that's not the problem. I'd just like to spend more time alone together or out with friends. How much time do you spend with his or your parents?