A few years back my sister passed away, I’m now the only child my parents have left. They live a few hours away and have for as long as I have been with my partner (7 years).
My parents are planning on moving to the place we now live to be closer to me. This has my partner worried that they will be over often or I will be over at their house more often. Her parents are very far away so can only visit once a year.
My parents are not the kind of people to show up uninvited to anyone’s house. They likely will come over once a month for dinner and I will probably go over by myself once a week.
We are both pretty private people so not having anyone over is just how we are and this potential change of more visits has her concerned that our privacy will be gone.
I am also fine with them not coming over often, I like it being just me and her but I do want my parents close when they have medical emergencies.
How do I approach this as currently she is a bit annoyed but taking a more “see how this pans out” attitude?
I don’t exactly want to jump the gun and talk to my parents ahead of time to make sure they don’t come over often because I don’t think they will and it might sour their relationship to her if they think she doesn’t want them over ever, even if I also don’t want them over often.
From personal experience I see this as a red flag. If you are close with your family your partner should want to have a relationship with them too. Having them closer should be seen as a good thing.
Exactly this. There’s still some level of understandability to not wanting more frequent visitors, but given that expectations have been set appropriately, any further objection is just selfish.
The part where she is afraid that her partner will spend too much time with their parents is a big red flag by itself though. That seems inappropriately possessive.
At this point, OP’s partner has established that they don’t want frequent house visitors, and they don’t want their partner spending a disproportionate amount of time away from the home. That is workable, but any further disagreement really needs to happen later, if and only if one of these boundaries is being crossed to a demonstrable deficit to the relationship.
And the boundary for “spends too much time with parents” has to be something nuanced. Staying a week at your parents’ to avoid a fight with your partner at home is a problem. Staying a week at your parents’ while your mom recovers from surgery is basic familial responsibility.