My Visiting Teacher is my only remaining connection to my ward. She has been assigned to me for 10 years! The first 5 I was active, the past 5 she has dutifully done her job. We are not otherwise friends. But I have allowed her to keep visiting me because of her approach. She doesn't bring a VT message, and for the most part doesn't talk church at all to me. We share stories of our families, news about what we are up to, etc, so it has a feeling of friends getting together for a chat, but it's so fake. We have never ever been friends. I've stopped hiding the coffeemaker and the wine bottles. It's quite comfortable...but I'm so bored with it now! It's so annoying to think that we are both just checking off our to-do lists every month. I have a letter ready to ask the ward to take me of their VT list, but I fear that this will lead to some other arrangement on their part--unexpected guests at my door etc. What do you think I should do?

Go ahead and send the letter. Be sure to let them know that you also don't want HT's mishey's the bishopric, or anyone else showing up.

If they don't honor it, maybe it's time to resign.

I would send the letter. You might also ask your ex-VT if she would like to go out and meet you for lunch or coffee. If she says no, then her friendship is only church deep.

Most of the time I ignore her texts for about a week. I used to be genuinely too busy, but I fit her in anyhow and it gave me a chance to be home rather than run the kids around, and also a reason to get the house "company clean."

Actually, we have met for breakfast or lunch in the past. And I've ordered tea, and we've had a genuinely nice time. I always give her a warm hug at the end of our visit.

My plan has always been that whenever they reassign my VT I will call it quits. I just never thought it would last a DECADE?! That's almost half my adult life! It's sort of a game now I guess. I've dragged it out this long, I might as well see how long it takes for them to reassign me. Could be a new world's record!

I don't think I could turn around and give her what-for about the church, though. Ever.

Tell your VP that the end of the month is when your Aunt Flo visits...and, sorry, you can only handle one guest at a time.

If you are opposed to simply telling her off, you could just stop setting up appointments with her. Just make it seem like no time really works out for you. After a few months, she'll probably get the point.

Honestly, she'll probably be relieved. I was a home teacher for years, and I ALWAYS hated doing it. I LOVED being assigned to people who would never make appointments with us, because that meant that I had a way of not doing home teaching without feeling guilty about it, since I offered, and they turned it down.

I also LOVED having HTs assigned to me who never came. I had one setup like this, where I didn't have any home teachers (at least none that I knew of) and no home teachees who wanted a visit. That lasted for about a year, and it was GREAT!