Be our guest? No thanks. Why some people find staying in other people's homes stressful.

Allison Newman could be considered an expert houseguest. In 2019, both she and her husband quit their jobs, said goodbye to their apartment and traveled around the world for two-and-a-half years. While visiting 10 different countries — including a year in which they were stuck in New Zealand because of COVID lockdowns — and crisscrossing the United States, they were often at the mercy of other people's hospitality. When they weren't staying in strangers’ homes through Airbnb or CouchSurfing, they crashed with friends and family.

But they've cut their traveling significantly since having their first baby, who is now 18 months old. To Newman, traveling with a child and staying with someone else is no longer worth the added stress. “It’s really, really hard," she tells Yahoo Life. "The amount of stuff you have to pack, feeling like you’re imposing because with little kids you are on very set schedules and they require a lot of additional oversight, [especially when] things aren’t baby-proofed."

Betsy Verzosa’s kids are older — 10, 8 and 6 — and while traveling with them is getting easier now that they no longer need diapers, car seats or strollers, being a guest at other people’s houses can still be a challenge. One example: "Our kids don’t really watch TV, but I can’t tell these other kids we’re staying with that they can’t watch TV because our kids don’t,” Verzosa tells Yahoo Life. This forces Verzosa to be more relaxed about her kids watching TV, staying up late and eating food she wouldn’t normally give them.

Even for people without kids, being a houseguest can be a challenge, and it’s one that 29-year-old Samuel Hansen wishes he didn’t have to endure. He dislikes being in someone else’s space, feeling pressured to socialize and not being on his own timetable. “The only benefit of staying with someone is the cost savings. If I had a choice and unlimited money, I would stay in a hotel every time,” he tells Yahoo Life. He doesn’t even like to stay in an Airbnb because he is still staying in someone else’s space, which means there are more responsibilities. “You still have to clean up or put all of the bath towels in the bathroom or run the dishwasher or make sure all the trash is taken out. It isn’t as relaxing.”

Priyanka Blackard also thinks that it’s always a little uncomfortable to be a houseguest, but, for her, that mostly stems from the obligation she feels to alter her behavior to fit in with her host’s lifestyle. “I have trouble relaxing and almost feel weirdly obligated to just fit into the way they would live in their home and adapt to their routines," she says, "and understand that they aren’t going to have the same stuff in the fridge that I have and follow when they eat their meals and what they watch on TV.”

It's especially hard when her hosts wear shoes inside because Blackard prefers removing her shoes at the door. “I grew up in a shoeless household ... so when I go to people’s houses where they don’t take their shoes off, it makes me really anxious and makes me feel kind of gross because you’re tracking all of the gross stuff from outside into a personal space,” she tells Yahoo Life.

All of these things — sharing space, bringing kids into a new environment, feeling pressured to socialize when you want to rest, adjusting your sleep schedule, using someone else’s bathroom, removing or keeping your shoes on, eating different types of food — can make being a houseguest stressful. But why?

According to Shawn Burn, professor of psychology at California Polytechnic State University, it’s because people are temporarily losing their primary territory. “A primary territory is a physical space central to our daily life that we ‘own’ and control, usually our home,” Burn tells Yahoo Life via email. “Primary territories support many psychological needs, including a need for control and predictability. Importantly, they are also ‘privacy spaces’ for couple and family intimacy, relaxation and recovery, emotional release, self-evaluation and personal care tasks.”

When separated from this space, people can feel stress about meeting their basic needs (such as having privacy to use the bathroom, eating different food, getting enough sleep), being unable to perform “stress-reducing habitual behaviors" (such as working out, reading, drinking a beer or glass of wine, watching a favorite TV show) and handling interpersonal matters (such as conflicts with other people, splitting costs).

To ease these psychological stressors, Diane Gottsman, modern etiquette expert and the founder of the Protocol School of Texas, suggests that guests and hosts communicate before the stay. “I think what makes everyone stressed out is what they don’t know what to expect,” Gottsman tells Yahoo Life. “From the host perspective, it’s important to let the guest know in a kind and friendly way what the guest will be experiencing. Will a baby be sleeping? Are there kids running around in the morning? Are there pets, and are the guests allergic to pets? Is there a car they can use?”

Having these types of conversations beforehand helps both parties feel more comfortable, so they aren’t walking on pins and needles for their entire visit. However, Gottsman emphasizes, guests also need to be respectful of their hosts’ house rules and routines and keep things tidy. “You want to be part of the family without being invasive. You want to fit in because you are the guest,” she says.

Newman agrees, and after being a guest in houses across the world, she has two main pieces of advice to offer. “One. Always offer and help clean up after yourself. Even if people say they don’t care, this will leave a positive message and they will remember. If you’re messy and unhelpful, they will also remember,” she shares. “Two. Be respectful and follow their ‘house rules.’” This is especially true if you ever find yourself staying in someone’s house in a different country. For example, when staying in New Zealand, a country with much higher recycling standards, she followed her host’s directions to scrub out containers until there wasn’t a speck of food left.

It's also important to remember that when someone, especially a friend or family member, is offering you a free place to stay, it can feel like an obligation to say yes, but you can say no. Versoza and her husband have found that staying in a hotel with her kids makes their visits to see family in the summer much more enjoyable.

Most importantly, wherever you decide to stay, “If you communicate in advance and know the expectations, the anxiety you are going to feel is going to be minimized,” Gottsman advises.