Dear Prudence,
My husband and I live in a very desirable vacation spot and have a guest room. It has twin beds and a private bath; my twin stepdaughters shared it until a few years ago. We kept the beds (they’re nice), and we have a blowup air mattress for the living room. My sister-in-law and her partner have visited us at least twice a year since our girls went off to college. We pick them up from the airport, feed them, and play tour guide if we have time. My sister-in-law, after her last visit, decided to email me to lecture me about beds. Twin beds, she wrote, are “childish and inconvenient for adults” and said we should buy a new one for our guests. She included links to her Amazon favorites. She included this on a family email list so everyone got one. I saw red and emailed back a cost breakdown of a trip to our location and a link to a local motel, and I concluded that holiday travels were on hold for everyone for the near future. This started World War III.
My sister-in-law has always been brusque, to put it charitably, but I have never had a direct insult like this leveled in my face. My husband told me I overreacted, even though he agrees with me on every point I made. He says his sister is just “like that” and we can’t punish everyone for his sister’s mistakes. But he also says that telling her to get a motel is rude if we still allow everyone else to stay with us. I love my husband and his peaceable nature, but right now I am ready to send him to the other room to sleep in a twin bed. Am I out of line here? We have been married six years and nothing like this has come up before—but we are also a thousand miles away from his family.
—Bed Brouhaha