Choose who you marry wisely because you're going to get far more than just a spouse. Oh no, you'll also get a set of in-laws. And if you're unlucky, they'll become your worst nightmare. Take these fathers-in-law for instance. They're as monstrous as they come.
1. Here’s What You’re Gonna Do...
My ex-father-in-law used to call us up all the time and tell us exactly how we were going to handle something. Whatever the thing was that needed to be handled, he would automatically start instructing us on what we should do. He had no regard whatsoever for what we thought of it. Not even as much as a question about it.
At the time when he first started doing this, I was engaged to my ex, a college graduate, and I had been largely living on my own for a while with the exception of summers with my parents between school years. As a result, I was not used to letting anyone have a say in my day-to-day decision-making, so I was a little taken aback by my father-in-law’s presumptuous antics.
So when he did this, I just smiled sweetly through the phone at him and then researched exactly how I wanted to handle something on the computers in the library of my grad school. This continued throughout the marriage and one of the reasons my ex finally had me adulting for him is that my ex-father-in-law would call and badger him about doing something and list out the steps.
My ex would come to me freaking out and telling me about all the things that his father had told him to do, adding a few random ones too, due to his paranoia. I would call up his father, find out what he actually said, and then tell him how I was going to handle it my own way. I always made sure to thank him sweetly for his concern while inwardly rolling my eyes so hard that they fell out and rolled across the kitchen. But it wasn’t that terrible—until…
15 years into the marriage, we're stuck living with them after my ex lost his job and my ex's car stopped working. My father-in-law comes to me one day and tells me to give him my financial information so that he can fill out the papers for the loan for a new one. At this point, I'm in my mid-30 and was already irritated to be living with my ex's parents when I had lived on my own for so long, so his demand did not make me happy.
I mean, I had bought four cars on my own before and the paperwork was not difficult. I told him sweetly that *I* would be filling out the paperwork, not him, and if I needed any information from him, I would let him know. I might have come across a little bit forcefully to him, which was intentional on my part, because my ex-mother-in-law quickly came over and tried to chew me out for “yelling at him".
Speaking to him forcefully apparently did something, though, because he let me deal with my own affairs from then on with no comment on his part. But seriously? Your kid is 40 years old. If he can't fill out the papers for a car loan, you did something wrong with him. The only reason my ex's sibling learned to adult was that they got married, and it was incredibly embarrassing for them to have their daddy doing all their financial stuff and poking into their lives on such a regular basis.
2. The End Of An Era
So my ex recently decided to randomly break up with me after six years of being together. He did so without even trying to make it work. He instead started dating a work colleague of his within a week. Then, yesterday, my ex came by to discuss some things with me. During this visit, he got super angry and aggressive towards me—but that was just the start of my nightmare.
He then called his mother, who is an absolute angel in my view, but unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she decided to pass the buck along and call my ridiculous excuse for an ex-father-in-law to get him involved. They both started heading over to intervene. My father-in-law arrived first and he started screaming at me because I wasn’t willing to just give up our joint house so that I could live in student housing instead?!
I replied that I am totally willing to move when I find something suitable, but that I was under no circumstances going to move into student housing just because it was easy and quick. I have a perfect house here, and my ex is basically ruining my life, so I am not interested in downgrading my entire lifestyle just for his short-term comfort and benefit.
My ex’s dad then got aggressive. He tried to act intimidating and started blocking the only exit in the room while cornering me. Then, my ex-mother-in-law arrived and told him to leave me alone and that she would talk to me in a peaceful and mature manner. We talked for about 30 minutes and we actually managed to clear up a lot of things.
She totally regretted calling her husband into the situation. My ex is now staying at my mother-in-law’s for the next week, which is a total blessing in my book right now as he had initially voiced a pretty strong refusal to do so. He also told a lot of lies about the situation, mostly in his own favor, as you can probably imagine.
But the ending of all of this is that I don't ever want to see my ex-father-in-law again. I told my ex-husband and he agreed that I shouldn’t have to. And if he does show up, he'll see my wrath—which I couldn't show yesterday because I was fighting off a cold and a shoulder infection. I finally got rid of him. I sure hope my next in-laws won’t be insane. Cheers, everyone!
3. Grabbing Your Attention
My 24-year-old boyfriend and I have been together for seven years. I know his family quite well. I have never experienced this sort of inappropriate behavior from my father-in-law before, and I’m very shocked and unsure of what to do about it. So a month ago, I went on a weekend trip to a cottage with my boyfriend’s family.
My boyfriend has two older sisters with husbands and kids, as well as a younger brother, and of course, his parents, who had paid for the trip. On the second day, when we returned from a long walk, everyone was quite tired, so we chilled and had some snacks. My boyfriend and father-in-law were sitting on a couch together, and I sat in a chair.
At one point, I stood up and leaned over the table in front of their couch to grab some snacks, and I suddenly felt a smack on my butt. I thought to myself: “What the heck? My boyfriend knows that I don’t like him doing things like this in public". In private it’s fine, but why on earth would he do that right in front of members of his own family?
Even though I was confused, I did not want to be dramatic in front of everyone, so I just turned around and semi-jokingly said: “You’re not allowed to do that". He then just kept silent and pointed at his father, who sat there grinning. I was now very confused but still didn’t want to be dramatic. So, I tried keeping the joking tone while saying: “You surely aren’t allowed to do that either". It was so uncomfortable—and then it got worse.
My father-in-law now almost braggingly said to my mother-in-law, who was also in the room but reading a book on her own: “I just smacked this girl’s butt and she thought it was her boyfriend!” My mother-in-law frowned and said: “Don’t smack her butt!” But my father-in-law just continued to grin and said: “Well, it had the effect that I wanted it to have".
I found that sentence to be very weird and unpleasant. I didn’t know how to react to the situation because I wasn’t completely sure if this was some sort of family humor that I so far hadn’t been privy to, and I did not want to be the “prudish” outsider who ruined it. Not knowing what to do with myself, I sat down on an empty couch and found something to read.
Shortly after, my boyfriend went shopping with his mom, so I felt kind of abandoned. I tried to keep myself away from my father-in-law as much as I could until they came back. So I went into another room to prepare some entertainment for the children that my boyfriend and I had promised to make. When my boyfriend came home from the shopping, we took a walk.
During this walk, I told him how I felt about the situation with his father. My boyfriend told me that in the moment, he had been too shocked to react, as he had never seen his father do anything like that before. He added, though, that he was disgusted by the situation and wished that he had stood up for me. The incident was not mentioned for the rest of the weekend.
After a month, I am still disgusted by the fact that my father-in-law did that to me. It felt objectifying and just wrong. It turned a situation where I had previously felt very comfortable being completely myself around his family into one where I don’t even want to be around them at all. I’m very cautious whenever I walk by a sitting male person.
This is even true within my own family. I know that I have a big butt. It’s a family thing that we are all rather small around the waist but with large hips. And thus, I also get very self-conscious about my body type, and the last thing I want is for random people to start grabbing my butt without my consent. This is my first and only serious relationship that I’ve ever had. I really don’t want it to get ruined by a completely uncalled-for incident like this.
4. Baby, You’re A Firework
About a month ago, my father-in-law got upset at us for not spending the night watching his daughter and take her to school in the morning, because I had a final exam at 7:00 in the morning the next day. He then proceeded to take money out of my boyfriend's bank account, just to be a jerk, and then asserted that my boyfriend should have made me take an Uber or take the bus to the exam rather than drive me, as we had previously agreed to.
My father-in-law makes a point of saying that me getting to my final exam on time was not his priority. Since then, I've made it a point not to go over to his house over the holidays. He didn't have his daughter at his house until a few days ago, but at some point, while my boyfriend and I were out, his dad texted him and said he had another Christmas gift for him.
We decided to swing by and pick it up. While we were there, my father-in-law asked if my boyfriend wanted to go to the gym with him. Of course, my father-in-law asks if I'm willing to watch the kiddo while they go, saying they'll be back in about 90 minutes. I'd already talked at length to my boyfriend about how I felt about being roped into babysitting and then left indefinitely at the house while my father-in-law takes advantage of the situation.
My boyfriend confirms that they're just going to have a quick workout and then come right back, so I agree. Additionally, my boyfriend's younger brother was home from college as well, and also in the house, so ostensibly there was someone else there to take over when my boyfriend got back. Well, it turns out I was totally wrong.
His younger brother goes and grabs some Subway sandwiches for us, but then proceeds to head off to the computer room, leaving me alone with the little one. I don't mind initially, until I overhear him on the phone with my father-in-law, telling him that he has dinner plans with his girlfriend. I'm immediately suspicious. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, the brother comes in and asks if it would be okay if I watch the little one while he and my father-in-law go grocery shopping?
He knew straight up that I was not okay with it, but in my head, I knew that I was going to use this to drive my grievances home later on, so I said yes. My boyfriend could hear the sheer disdain in my voice and tried to talk to me about it, but at that point, the little one was hovering around and I was not trying to argue about it in front of her.
So I brush him off and tell him to just hurry up. Little brother also takes the chance to go over to his girlfriend's house. Fast forward. It's 10:00 PM. My father-in-law and boyfriend get back. As we're leaving, the little one jumps into my arms and pleads with me not to go. The younger brother also tells my father-in-law that he did nothing while they were gone, and that I was handling the little one the entire time. I see my father-in-law make a face out of the corner of my eye.
He's clearly very pleased that his daughter and I get along, because it makes her look forward to coming over to his house. My father-in-law at no point thanks me for staying an extra three hours to watch his daughter. The plan is moving along nicely. Flash forward to this morning. My father-in-law wants to go to a local amusement park for a fireworks show at around 6:00, and also wants to hit the gym with his sons before taking off for the event.
I'm super tired from the night before, which was my friend's birthday, and I tell my boyfriend straight up that I don't want to go, but that if his little brother's girlfriend goes, then I would go as well so he wouldn't be stuck alone with his father-in-law. My boyfriend says not to worry about it, and that I should just stay home, rest, and enjoy my day. He leaves on that note.
About four hours ago, my boyfriend sends me a text message saying that all of a sudden my father-in-law is telling him it'd be “okay” for him to break off from the family and go pick me up "if he wants," because little brother's girlfriend isn't coming either and the little one is bugging him hard about me being there. My father-in-law was even willing to pay for my ticket and dinner.
I knew exactly what to say to ruin his day. "Nope. Tell him I have other priorities for New Year’s Eve and the rest of the winter break". My boyfriend just messaged me saying that the little one has been sulking nonstop since my father-in-law told her that I wouldn't be coming. Apparently, he promised her that I would be there without ever actually asking me if I wanted to come along with them for the night, and all she wants to do is go home and play with blocks.
She doesn't want to stay for the fireworks because she's "already seen them,” i.e. with me. My boyfriend is trying not to laugh the whole time that he’s hearing this. The moral of the story? Don’t promise your little ones that someone will be going with them to an amusement park on New Year’s Eve without ever asking or inviting them first, then subtly trying to pressure their boyfriend into convincing them to come out when they don't show up with him.
You do that, it’s pretty much on you if you are left stuck dealing with a sulking eight-year-old while your other kid tries not to lose his mind laughing.
5. Not A Lot To Be Thankful For
My boyfriend’s grandpa physically lunged at me during Thanksgiving. For some background, I’m a 28-year-old girl, and my partner is a 29-year-old guy. His grandpa is genuinely a terrible person, but my partner loves him for some reason. In all honesty, it’s pretty much for no reason. This man is old, rude, and thinks it’s hilarious to upset people on purpose.
His own family members usually bear most of the brunt of this bizarre habit of his. His own wife, as in my boyfriend’s grandma, cannot stand him. Meanwhile, everyone else just ignores or enables him. Now, on to the story of what went down last night. We were all at his uncle’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, and at first, everything was going perfectly fine.
We were all sitting on the couch, drinking a bit, and playing catch up with each other. We had been there for maybe half an hour or so at the time when things started to get weird. So I’m sitting on the couch facing the fireplace. This is an open-concept room, so there is a table and chairs set against the back of the couch where his grandpa is holding court.
Everyone is apparently discussing my career behind my back at the table. I work for a newly developing industry that is still largely outside the mainstream, so people think it’s exciting. That’s when he started. Grandpa grabs my ponytail from behind and starts jerking my head back and forth very forcefully while telling a few people about my job.
I am panicking at this point. I am completely still thanks to my awesome fight, flight, or freeze response. My partner laughs until I grab his leg and panic yell at him to get him off of me. He grabs his grandpa's hand and pries his claws out of my hair. This whole ordeal takes maybe about three minutes or so from start to finish.
I’m destroyed. The connotations of grabbing a woman by her hair are extremely unsettling and I’ve had issues with another male family member groping me in the past, so I start to shut down. This man has just put his hands on me in an open and clearly negative way. I’m red, rashy, and quietly crying while also too physically frozen and shocked to move.
My partner asks me if I’m okay, but I’m too upset to respond besides saying “fine” and ducking my head away. Later in the car, he yells at me for overreacting because “it wasn’t really that bad". He claims that I’m making too big of a deal about it, and that this is just how his grandpa is. Then he yells at me some more, asking what I expected him to do.
Then he asks if I want to press charges. How do I tell him that the thought of ever seeing his grandpa again makes me want to puke? That he left me feeling vulnerable and made it worse by negating my feelings as I was sobbing in the car? We had to go back to that house for family pictures later that night and I cried the whole way over because I kept having panic attacks about his grandpa cornering me in the bathroom or something.
This is a big deal, right? I’m so hurt and uncomfortable, and my heart is racing just typing this all out. I literally just started crying again.
6. Taking Out The Trash
This one happened just last night and this morning. I’m still not happy about it. I have dogs. Big dogs. We've already had to pay for a four-thousand dollar surgery because one of the loveable mutts ate a darn rock. Ever since that experience, we have been extra careful about making sure we don't leave things lying around that they might swallow by mistake.
Anyway, my father-in-law was over last night. He ate a plum. And as is his tradition, instead of throwing it in the freaking trash can like a normal human being, or putting it on a plate to be taken into the kitchen, he left the bloody pit lying on my brand new white couch. Guess who found it this morning. And then guess what is highly toxic to dogs, as in they might not survive more than a few hours if they eat one.
Plum pits. Like seriously, Google it. Luckily, the mutt puked it up within ten minutes. But who the heck leaves a freaking plum pit on a white couch?! This jerk. We'll add it to the list of: cough drops, candies, banana peels, muffin wrappers, and snack bags that he has just left on furniture and random tables. I kid you not, one day, I found a cough drop stuck to my wood table.
He stayed over a few weeks ago. I went in to clean the guest room and found the cough drop and a hard candy just sitting on the nightstand. No tissue under it, just right on the table. He's also just left full coffee cups sitting on the couch. No one around it, just an overflowing cup sitting there. Then he gets upset when I move them because, you know... baby, dog, cat, or just plain old GRAVITY will make the darn thing spill all over my new couch!
7. Making A Change
So, I want to start by saying that I love my dad. He's a stubborn emotional jerk, but I love him. I know he loves me, but he often is so focused on himself and his needs that he makes me distance myself from him. He had a rough childhood. My grandfather is a verbally aggressive jerk and my grandmother is cold and passive-aggressive.
They were very enmeshed with his life, but at the same time, it seemed to be only to control him and make sure he took care of my great-grandmother (i.e. his father's mom) so that the family didn't have to. He was 100% taken advantage of. My dad took care of my great-grandmother for 14 years. Any time that he asked for a break or explained that his PTSD was getting worse, they would guilt him by saying “Fine, I guess we'll tell Grandma that you're breaking your promise".
That “promise” was that he would take care of her so she could live out the rest of her life in her home like her husband did, and not have to end up in a retirement facility. Eventually, my dad met my wonderful step-mother (who I consider my Mama), and she helped us get out of that house and not let us be manipulated by that family any longer.
She made us realize that we didn't have the proper training to care for her and that my aunt, the trained nurse, should have been caring for my grandmother long ago or they should have hired a professional. I guess what I'm trying to say is that my family did a number on my dad. And the consequences are that he is codependent, quick to misinterpret things and get defensive, and is only slightly a problematic person as a result of this trauma.
I understand that it's hard to break a cycle like this, so I'm starting with myself now that I have a five-month-old daughter. Now, on to the main story of my post. My husband is deployed overseas and hasn't met his daughter yet. So it's just me caring for my child with the occasional help of my younger brother who lives with us, but mostly stays in his room.
My Mama and dad came to visit on their way to the other side of the country and were staying in their RV for about a week. My dad knows about my boundaries, and I wouldn't say he pushes them as much as he questions or doubts them. But I finally stood up to him. He was holding my daughter and was getting reckless with how he was playing with her.
He was doing dangerous things like balancing her with one hand, almost dropping her where she could have hit the coffee table and laughing about it. He must have seen the look on my face, because he says to me, almost challenging, "What?! If you don't like it, take her back!" Normally in our family, we'd just be quiet and agreeable, back down and say "no, just be careful" because we don't ever want to look like the bad guy under any circumstance.
And I maybe hesitated for half a second before reaching out my hands and taking her. My dad looked surprised, and my Mama later told me that she was proud of me because what he did was unacceptable. I was mostly worried about what she thought, because I get along so much better with her than I do with my father. Thinking about the whole thing now, I'm proud of myself, to be honest.
I don't think anyone in my family has ever done anything like that before. But it needed to happen. And for anyone out there who is in a similar situation and constantly makes excuses for their parents’ bad behavior: I get it. I've lived with the guilt of not wanting to make a fuss because of the hard life, mental issues, or whatever other reason your family members have for acting the way that they do.
8. I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter
My father-in-law is a major boundary stomper—so I came up with a disturbing nickname for him. I like to call him “Creepo” for short. He literally thinks that our rules don't apply to him. And since I recently had a baby, that's about to become a much bigger problem than it already has been. Not long ago, my sister-in-law moved to a country in Europe to live with a family there as part of a program.
So a few days prior, my husband and I visited our hometown to see her for a very informal goodbye party. This was all on very short notice. At that point, my husband and I had only a few weekends left to spend alone together before the baby came, because of our work schedules. We had been planning on getting seriously caught up with one another during this weekend, since we knew that we were running out of time.
Being informed at the last minute about my sister-in-law leaving the country in the middle of the following week threw a wrench into our plans, but we realized that the appropriate thing to do was to go and spend some time with her and send her off with a nice goodbye. We knew that this was going to be the last time we could see her before she moved away for the year.
The sudden nature of this whole thing was due to a serious lack of planning on my mother-in-law's part. The whole ordeal had been thrown together kind of haphazardly. And in case you can’t already tell, I was pretty irritated that we had to drop our intimate plans for that weekend. Not because of having to say goodbye to my sister-in-law, though.
I knew that saying goodbye to her was really important to my husband, and it was important to me too to an extent. In fact, I'm really glad that we did make the choice to spend some time with her before she left. I never even gave that part a second thought. No, the reason that I was irritated was that we were not aware that this was going to be happening until literally the morning of
And we had spent literally every single other weekend in our hometown, which is two hours away, leading up to that point since late July because “faaaamily". So this was going to be our special weekend together, but we had to suddenly change the plans out of nowhere, which fully could have been prevented. The whole thing was just really annoying, that’s all.
But, as a result of this incident, I made it very clear to my husband that from here until the baby is born, we're done sacrificing our precious alone time because “faaamily". That was no longer going to be a valid reason to change our plans. We had to get ready for the life we have ahead, and I wanted to enjoy what little time we had left as a twosome.
I said that from now on, someone would have to be seriously hurt or in the process of losing their life for us to give up another weekend together. My husband agreed entirely. So, anyway, we go to visit his family despite being annoyed. When we get there, we're all sitting in the kitchen and politely talking, when my father-in-law randomly walks in and says to me, "Hey, are you gonna let me have access to your husband some time during October to go to the local shooting contest?"
For context, in a town about an hour away from where the in-laws live, they have an annual show where the biggest attraction is going to watch people shoot from gigantic machines. We live in the south, so it's a pretty big deal here. It's not really my husband's thing, but he's trying to do his part to better his relationship with his dad.
I look at my husband, who without missing a beat says, "As long as it's a weekend, I won’t be available". Creepo looks at me. So I explain that our time together is limited, and that therefore if it's a weekend we both are off work, then it's off-limits for the time being. Creepo was not happy, and I think this was the beginning of him treating me differently.
A few days later, we were crib shopping. To make a long story short, Creepo basically forced his way into buying a crib for us even after we declined his offer multiple times. Nevertheless, he just called us up one day and informed us that he had found a version of the crib we wanted secondhand at half the price, and that he had bought it for us.
We then didn’t hear anything about it for several days, until we finally brought it up and asked Creepo what was happening with the crib. He said: "Oh, it's in the back of my daughter’s car. I'm going to bring it down one day and help you set it up. Then we can finish the nursery and go shopping for more baby stuff". That’s when I lost it.
I almost started crying right then and there. Setting up the baby’s crib and nursery is something that my husband and I had always talked about doing alone together. It has always been a very special dream to us that we would prepare for the baby together, on our own. My own mom has really been wanting to come help, but understands and respects that we want it to be between me and my husband.
Nevertheless, Creepo continued trying to strong-arm his and wife's way into the process by holding the crib back and promising us more "gifts" in exchange for letting them help. Keep in mind, by “gifts” he really means extra stuff that we don't need. And if they get their way but we've told my mom no, it's going to seriously hurt her feelings, aside from angering me to no end.
I reiterated our desire to save that time for me and my husband. Creepo claimed to understand. Later on, I heard my mother-in-law still talking about coming to help set up the nursery. She had just gotten home, so I explained to her that we were going to reserve our remaining weekends alone and why. I told her twice, right in front of Creepo.
Then, as we were leaving about ten minutes later, Creepo started talking again—and I couldn’t believe what he said. He told me: "Let us know what day works for you for us to come down. We can help get things set up and then go shopping for baby stuff". Umm, what the heck had I already explained to you four times that day?! I calmly explained it one more time.
I remind him that, as expressed earlier, we really want to keep as much of that time as possible between me and my husband. He wasn't listening. He wasn’t even doing a serious job of pretending to listen. My husband goes over to talk to him in private. He decides that he’s going to invite them to see the nursery one weekend that I'm working, but he explains that we want to set the crib up together on our own at a separate time.
Once again, he reiterates that they can bring the crib down, but will not be helping with the setup of the nursery or crib at all. We did not leave the encounter with very high confidence that this boundary would be respected. My mother-in-law then started asking questions about the registry—i.e., fishing for more items that they could buy us to show everyone else at the baby shower up next week, even though they already bought us the crib.
Out of nowhere, Creepo then brought up video baby monitors. My husband mentioned that they were not always safe, as some connect to Wi-Fi and could be easily hacked into. So, without missing a beat, Creepo responds: "You mean I could check in on my grandbaby any time I want to?!?" I must have looked terrified, because he immediately tried to laugh it off as a joke.
Then, surprisingly, my mother-in-law said very sarcastically, after a brief silence, "Yeah, that's not weird at all..." Creepo also looooves to buy us junk. Seriously. He thinks it makes himself seem important or some such nonsense. He often finds random junk at yard sales and thrift stores that he thinks my husband just has to have, and he makes the whole thing into this dramatic show of affection whenever he gives it to him.
We had told him more than a few times that we were trying to get rid of things before the baby arrived, so we really didn't want him to buy us anything else. That request obviously went unheeded. A few nights later, we received a sled ("for my grandbaby!"), a glue machine ("one of those that can melt plastic, yours is nicer than mine!"), and a bunch of tools that he had apparently intended to have gifted to my husband months ago, but we never were given them.
These tools included an ax. How did everything but the sled make it home with us? Creepo had literally hidden all of the items in the backseat of my husband's car without telling him. I found it all as we were leaving, and made my husband at least leave the sled there. Creepo briefly argued about this, but eventually did reluctantly concede.
We were going to have a serious sit-down conversation with him about materialism and not buying things for us or the baby without coordinating with us first. We were very hopeful about the results that it would yield, and were prepared to give it our all. But then something else happened that completely changed our plans of how to deal with this guy.
He licked my daughter. Now, I haven’t really mentioned this yet, but it probably won’t be surprising to you after some of the things you’ve already read about him. Creepo is one of those dudes that just gives you a really weird vibe when you talk to him. Like, the kind of guy you see and just know that you don't want to be touched by him or alone with him.
I instinctively recoil any time that he hugs me or tries to put his hand on my shoulder. He was very inappropriate with my husband when he was a young child, has a thing for the barely legal girls. We have lots of instances of him being creepy in general, but he's a typical Married Christian Man and in a professional career, so he's totally normal and it's all innocent as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
Here’s how the licking incident went down. My mother-in-law’s parents were in town from a state far away. They rarely get to see our newborn daughter, so we were visiting them at the in-laws' house. When we arrived, my husband was holding our daughter and everyone was fawning over her. The kitchen was full of cousins, siblings, grandparents, etc.
My mother-in-law was doing her annoying baby voice as close to my daughter's face as she could, and Creepo shoved his way in between his wife and my daughter. He squeaked in this super high-pitched baby voice, "Hi, baby!" And he freaking licked her hand. Not even like a "normal" lick (as if there's a normal way to lick your granddaughter??). He flicked his tongue over her hand.
You know the highly inappropriate and immature hand gesture where you flick your tongue between your fingers? That's how he licked her hand. My husband instantly recoiled with a horrified look, and I immediately perked up. Me: "Don't lick her". My husband (pulling farther away as Creepo continues to be in her face): "Yeah, for a lot of reasons".
My mother-in-law (She didn't hear what I said): "What?" Me: "I said, don't lick her". My mother-in-law (looking repulsed): "You licked her? Why in the world would you lick her?" Creepo: "Oh, not really, it wasn't..." He trailed off because he didn't have anything to justify how freaking creepy he was being. My mother-in-law looked over at me.
I nodded and made a face that indicated, "Yes, he really did". Creepo then slipped out of the room. Everything kind of resumed after that. I kept a close eye on everything Creepo did when he was near my daughter. We don't let him hold her unless I'm right there. Even then, probably not. Unfortunately, my sister doesn't know that we limit any kind of contact between my daughter and Creepo, so she passed my daughter off to him when I was out of the room.
When I found out, I went looking for them. He had her in the backyard, even though everyone was inside the house. He was just walking around with her and whispering in her ear. It was as creepy as you can possibly imagine. My husband took her and brought her inside, and she didn't leave my sight at all for the rest of the night.
My husband and I had previously agreed not to let Creepo hold her if we could help it, and he definitely would not have unsupervised time with her. Now, no one is going to get unsupervised time with her with the in-laws, except the sister-in-laws. They know that he's as creepy as heck, and they help us keep him away from the baby.
Creepo is never holding her again as far as I can help it. If he asks why, I will gladly say that it’s because he freaking licked my baby when she was nine months old. I'm still absolutely disgusted by that. After that incident, we think that he apparently started to sense that something was up and that we were actively trying to keep him away from the baby.
A few weeks later, my parents had us and my in-laws over for the Labor Day weekend. Creepo held my daughter one time while I watched very closely. Maybe even angrily, as my mom passed her off. She doesn't know the deal, though, so I can’t be mad at her. My mom insisted on doing bath time with the baby in the kitchen sink, and Creepo tried to watch. I carefully blocked his view with my body and made sure that he saw nothing.
So basically, Creepo is fully aware that we don't want him near our kid, but that doesn't stop him from trying. Thankfully, he hasn't tried too hard to hold or touch her the last couple of times we've seen him—but the ordeal isn’t over yet. Creepo texted my husband out of the blue and said, "I'm in your city for a meeting. I will come to your apartment after it’s done".
Excuse me? No warning, no invitation from us, yet you think you're just welcome to pop on by whenever you want? My husband responded by saying that we were planning to be in his town soon and that we would just meet him then. No response, but we knew he had read the message. After two hours, we still hadn't heard anything back.
We were in the process of getting dressed and ready to leave, but were getting food when the doorbell rang. I turned around and angrily whispered to my husband, "I told you he'd show up!" I grabbed my daughter from her walker and we went upstairs while my husband opened the door. My husband told Creepo that we were getting ready to go to town and that he had texted him earlier and knew he'd seen it.
"You're going out of town?" says Creepo. My husband says, "No, we said we had errands to run and would visit you soon". Creepo makes up some excuse about how he must have opened the message but he didn't read it, blah blah blah. We agreed to meet him downtown for dinner. Once my husband and I were ready to leave, I brought my daughter downstairs.
Creepo was standing there in the lobby waiting for us. "Oh, hi Creepo. I thought we said we'd meet you in town?" The passive aggression may have been dripping from my voice. "We had some miscommunication, apparently," he replied. "Apparently," said my husband. I kept my daughter with me at all times and continued getting her snacks and water ready for the outing.
I kept my responses very short and matter of fact while we decided where to eat. Then I whisked past Creepo and buckled my daughter into her car seat. Thankfully, he drove separately. He's an awful driver and I'm not exaggerating when I say that he nearly caused three wrecks on the way. Always because he weaves in and out of traffic without a turn signal, and only sometimes bothers to check his mirrors.
We got to the restaurant and brought my daughter inside in the car seat carrier. We never unbuckled her, which seemed to be a good choice. The weirdest he got with her was tickling her feet and up her leg, then tickling her thigh right under the cuff of her shorts. He stopped right as I opened my mouth to tell him to, and didn't try touching her again.
The whole meal was kind of tense and awkward. He knew we didn't want to be around him. He kept talking about wanting to buy us things or give us money "because I love you guys" and "I remember how hard it is just starting out". We've lived on our own for eight years at this point and have been doing really well for ourselves.
He mentioned how we have my sister-in-law babysitting for us one day a week for this month and told us he has "three months of paid vacation saved up, so if there's ever an emergency and you need me to help out..." I cut him off right there. "Thankfully our jobs are flexible and we could take care of any emergency". Of course, he was "just saying if you ever need me...in an emergency..."
We basically just gray rocked it from then on. My husband later said, "Him watching her alone would be an emergency". We finished eating and my husband said that we needed to go run errands now. We thanked him for the meal, which he insisted on paying for, and then we left. He said, "I love you guys so much," and my husband replied with a cheerful, "Yeah! Drive safe!"
Creepo was supposed to be back in town a few days later for the same activity, but my husband and I agreed on radio silence as the only appropriate course of action towards him. No texts or responses, and we wouldn't answer the door except to tell him to leave if he showed up unannounced. I told my husband, who agrees, that he's neither invited nor welcome in our house any longer. But still, he’s crept back into our lives.
Despite our lack of responses, Creepo has been texting us non-stop ever since his last visit. I'm sure soon we'll have to have conversations with my family about what's going on. My husband's sisters are very well aware and behind us on everything. My sister already knows and my parents are definitely suspicious. The plan, for now, is to find a therapist to help us determine the best plan of action for working through the issues. I have a couple I'm going to call this week.
In the midst of all this, we were just enjoying a lazy Sunday with our daughter and watching Lord of the Rings, which I had never seen. I know, I know, we're fixing that. By this point, Creepo’s daily texts had gotten significantly weirder. They started off as guilt-trippy: "I love you so much, I'm sorry about the licking! Tell me I’m good!" type things.
Then, he started sending us random memes, with random "How are you doing??" texts sprinkled in. He also sent a daily "I love you" text, as well as some random stuff about a few of my husband's various interests. My husband didn't reply to any of it at any point. So this continued to go on for about a month. Finally, my husband and I decided that we needed to sit down with a counselor and get an action plan together. This could not continue to go unaddressed.
The therapist is hoping, as am I, that my husband and I will be able to start to do some individual trauma therapy. He knows he needs it, but he wants to get through this "crisis" portion first, which the therapist is also in agreement with. Our first session went well. My husband got a whole lot out in the open and we decided that we would compose a text message to Creepo and his wife together to send.
So we did that the following day. My husband and I sat down and spent a good long while deciding exactly what to say. We slept on it, and finally sent it out the next day. We were pretty to the point with it. We made note of the fact that while they had messaged us repeatedly, neither of them had ever asked what was wrong, despite the fact that there are clearly problems.
We said that due to the previous issues we have had, Creepo is no longer allowed to hold our daughter. We told them that we were setting boundaries that they would need to respect, including no touching us, no constant messages or calls, no showing up uninvited, etc. About 45 minutes after we sent this message, Creepo replied with, "I love you".
We also got a reply from my mother-in-law four hours later, basically ignoring anything we said about Creepo or boundaries and attempting to be diplomatic and act like they'd been "giving us our space". We didn’t hear from either of them for a while after that. My husband and I didn’t, at least. Apparently, based on what we’ve been told, my mother-in-law spent the whole day we sent the text message walking around crying and trying to ask my sister-in-law what was wrong, who just ignored her.
Creepo finally made his next move a few days later. We heard about it when one of my sister-in-laws texted my husband. Apparently, Creepo had been texting her over and over again trying to get information about what was going on with us. You know, instead of asking me or my husband any questions directly or trying to clarify anything.
My sister-in-law hasn’t given them any information, so in a weird attempt to get her to talk, my father-in-law made his most terrifying claim yet. Creepo has said that he has gotten a copy of all her text messages from her phone provider and read through them, so he already knows everything. Excuse me while I explode from laughter! First of all, the only way to get text messages from their carrier like that is with a warrant.
Second of all, if he knew everything, he wouldn't be continuing to press her for information. So either he was thinking my sister-in-law would fall for this ridiculous bluff and spill her guts out to him, or there's the remote possibility that he has installed some sort of keylogger or app on her phone to spy on her with. She attends a boarding school, so she's not at home for him to be able to sort through her messages the old-fashioned way.
So what we've gathered is that instead of actually wanting to figure out "what's going on," even though we've laid it out pretty darn clearly, they're trying to drill my husband's siblings for information and trying to keep them from talking to him with this threat of "we know everything you're saying, so you might as well talk openly to me about it".
For a while, we didn’t say another word to Creepo or my mother-in-law after sending that initial text message. They were not asking us questions or requesting information in any way, so there was no need for us to contact them. When we held a party for our daughter, our therapist recommended inviting the in-laws but reiterating our boundaries to them a few days before the event.
If I have ever been as angry in my life as I was after what happened next, it's been a heck of a long time. I'm having a hard time staying focused enough to write this next part, but I need to get it out. When Creepo came to the party, things got ugly very fast. We played nice leading up to the event, because we wanted to see my husband’s siblings and extended family and didn’t want to have any further issues.
But we made clear to my husband’s parents that if they did not respect our boundaries, then we would not be talking to them. It's important to note that when my husband was in college, he liked to smoke weed pretty regularly. Now that his older sister is in college and his younger sister is in high school at a boarding school, they've both had some experiences with it as well.
My husband and I are pro-legalization and don't care to discuss the specifics with people as the topic comes up, but we do not live in a state where its usage is permitted. Neither for medicinal or recreational purposes. We don't keep it in the house, and I don't smoke, but my husband will from time to time on the rare occasion that he's out with friends who are doing it.
So, onto why I'm seething. Maybe some of you can already see where this is going. The night after the party, my mother-in-law and Creepo apparently hated seeing that we were still on good terms with my husband's siblings, so they started trying to badmouth us to them. As she was getting ready to come to our place, Creepo comes up to the younger sister-in-law.
Creepo: "You know your brother thinks he knows a lot, right?" My sister-in-law did not know how to react. Creepo: "He thinks it's okay to smoke weed. He doesn't see anything wrong with it. So if you go over there and he offers you any, you'd better tell me". Again, my sister-in-law was dumbfounded and didn’t know how to react or what to say.
But the most disturbing part was yet to come. Creepo continued and said: "Because it's very dangerous and we'd have to take that baby away from them if they were using substances like that". Are you freaking kidding me? I can't remember a time in my entire life when I've ever been so angry that I was shaking uncontrollably, but that night I was. I saw red. How dare he threaten my child!
How dare he, the man that inappropriately touched my husband as a young child, the man that licked and inappropriately touched my infant child now, threaten to take my child away from me because my husband used to enjoy weed on occasion and because of the fairly moderate political views that he happens to hold. How. Freaking. Dare. He.
At that point, any remaining doubt I had about my relationship with this man was gone forever. I knew that I was absolutely done with him, and he could not be redeemed. I swore that I would never speak to Creepo or my mother-in-law again. I swore that neither one of them would ever get to see my daughter again until she is fully grown and old enough to make that decision for herself.
This incident also sparked another fear. It made me start to worry that they might have been planning something. Like they were looking for any excuse to call Child Protective Services on us, or that they were planning to file for some kind of grandparents’ rights against us. Or maybe both. So now, at that point, I was incredibly angry, and I couldn't help but be scared. We had no reason to worry: there were no substances in our house. We never even so much as threatened to physically discipline our daughter. We have a well-stocked fridge and pantry. Our house is "lived-in" but clean.
Anything dangerous is well out of our daughter's reach. She's up to date on all doctor's visits and shots. She has plenty of clean clothes, plenty of diapers, and is absolutely spoiled rotten with toys. Plus, she's a wonderful, happy kid. She walks around singing, she adores me and my husband, and she's incredibly smart and observant. It's obvious that this child is well taken care of.
But he had threatened my child and he is an attorney. And we could not currently afford an attorney by any stretch of the imagination, should he have decided to pursue any type of court action. I was at a complete loss about what to do. Do we just keep going like we were beforehand, send a letter detailing our issues, and basically say, "You’re out of our lives. See ya, bye!"?
Would it be worth calling Child Protective Services preemptively ourselves to do a home visit and have it documented that our daughter is obviously well-taken care of, to protect us in the event that they make some kind of bogus report in the future? Or is that just overreacting and possibly inviting unnecessary and unwanted attention?
Do we truly have anything serious to worry about here other than this blatant crossing of a giant red line? These are all the questions that we couldn’t stop asking ourselves. As you can imagine, we were being tormented by this veiled threat that Creepo had made. He knew what he was doing, and there was no way either one of us could ever respect him again.
You don't get to take advantage of my husband for years, try to groom my daughter to accept the same treatment, and then turn around and threaten to have her taken away because you're annoyed that we called you out on your totally inappropriate and unacceptable behavior. If my Mama Bear instinct wasn't out before, it was certainly bearing its teeth by this point.
After days of going back and forth about what to do about this, we finally emailed our no-contact letter to his parents. It was written by my husband and detailed all of the terrible behaviors that he went through as a child and how Creepo behaved with our daughter, and that neither of them will get a chance to hurt our children the same way they hurt him back in the day.
Did y'all catch that? I said children. As in plural. As in.... we're expecting number two this winter!! We are very excited and can't wait to have all of this drama with Creepo and his wife behind us so that we can move on and enjoy our new family member very soon! Yeah, I'm not that naive. I know an extinction burst is coming, but this letter means it's closer to being behind us, too.
We decided not to tell Creepo and his wife about the new baby at all, but I'm sure they'll find out eventually. Our families live in a very small, very gossipy town. We're also moving soon, and of course, we're not giving our new address to the in-laws. I'm wondering if that's going to have any negative issues for whoever lives here after us, but we'll see what happens.
Anyway, since we sent the letter, Creepo and his wife have continued to be their usual weird selves. My husband’s sisters both still live at home and keep us in the loop, though their mother has been trying to control any and all of their communication. The in-laws have basically been walking around, moping and randomly faux apologizing to them about how "I never isolated you as kids," or "I'm sorry if you didn't like it when I held you down and tickled you and you repeatedly told me to stop," or "I'm sorry I was such a bad parent".
As in: Tell me I'm good. Tell me I'm good. Ad nauseum. Now, my husband also has family that lives outside of the country, but they come to our hometown to visit every so often. They had never met our daughter, and we were on perfectly good terms with them, so we tried to make plans when they were in town recently. We were having trouble syncing up our schedules.
Then, when we finally made plans with them, we made a chilling discovery. We were informed by the sister-in-laws that Creepo and his wife were camping out all day at the house where we had been invited to join them. Apparently, they were insisting on one of them going with anyone who left that might run into us, and the other staying behind to try and catch us.
They tried really hard to get us to walk into a trap. Since we were aware of this plan, we declined to play into it. I actually told the visiting relatives that we knew that my husband's parents were there and that we weren't comfortable coming over, so we'd make other plans another day. The next day, we made other arrangements to see them for lunch.
We fully expected to see Creepo and his wife there, waiting to ambush us. Just in case that happened, we brought multiple printed copies along with us of the letter that my husband had written to them, so that the cousins would be fully aware of what the issue was exactly. We felt this was necessary, since these cousins seem to think we all just need to get together and “resolve this problem".
They also seem to think that we're simply mad that Creepo offered us money, not that he inappropriately touched my husband and then tried to groom our daughter into accepting the same behavior. So we're ready, willing, and able to set them straight if they had been planning something. Thankfully, when the lunch visit finally happened, Creepo and his wife weren't there.
It went great! We really enjoyed catching up with everyone. Our daughter absolutely LOVED playing with her cousins, and we got to share the news about little one number two. It was overall quite a positive experience. Then, at the end of the get-together, one of the cousins came over to warn us that Creepo and his wife suddenly texted that they were on their way over for a surprise visit.
My husband and I decided that we weren't leaving on their terms, so we planned to just ignore them when they arrived. By the way, it's very important that I note here that my husband and I never gave any specific details to any family members except his siblings. Some had asked what this was all about, and we told them that there were things we preferred to keep private.
The visiting cousins knew that there was tension, but Creepo and his wife were saying that we were mad they offered us money. No one heard any details from us at all. I never so much as looked at Creepo the entire time we were there together, and neither did my husband. This, despite the fact that Creepo intentionally sat across the room and pointedly stared at him the whole time, trying to get his attention.
My mother-in-law followed me and my husband from room to room and kept trying to make conversation, but both of the cousins were tagging along so she was easy to ignore. My daughter was exhausted at this point, Like, wailing because someone moved a blanket off of the floor that she was nowhere near. She started asking for "home". So we said our goodbyes, and completely ignored Creepo and my mother-in-law.
And they finally accepted responsibility, hung their heads in shame, and never brought it up again. Hahahahahah. Yeah, freaking right! We were literally not even a quarter of the way home yet when we got a call from one of my sister-in-laws. Apparently, as soon as we left, Creepo, his wife, the cousins, and a few other relatives in the area all stowed away in a room to talk about the "unpleasantness".
Creepo was basically trying to explain why the letter we sent was all wrong or a misunderstanding. We weren't sure if he was just describing it or what, but we knew that he and my mother-in-law were trying to "get ahead of" all of it. We considered turning around and just having it out with them once and for all, but my husband said to just let them talk smack if they wanted to, as he was confident that we were in the right.
My husband decided that from this point on, if anyone asked what the letter had been about, then he would willingly tell the details, so Creepo and his wife could set the record straight for themselves if they so wished. We decided that if he was going to refute everything my husband said, then we would set the record straight for ourselves the next day by sending out a similar letter to all involved parties.
So we got home and got another call from the sister-in-laws. They were panicking and afraid to go home that night. They still live with Creepo and their mother, and will be living with them at least until the fall. Apparently, Creepo was very intoxicated and not speaking to them, only glaring at them incredibly angrily. We’d later come to find out that Creepo had forwarded the letter to all of the adults present and tried to go through it line by line to explain how it was “wrong” and just a “misunderstanding".
I repeat, this man sent everyone the complete, exact letter that my husband had sent him. Which is very explicit and straightforward, and outlines the details of all the terrible things that he had done over the years. He and his wife went into this conversation half-cocked, prepared to do damage control. Our best guess is that they thought we had already shared all of the details with everyone and they'd have to save face.
Except we hadn't said a word, just had a nice day with the family we never see. So they basically went in and spread all of the gory details themselves. Completely unprovoked. In my husband's very eloquent and well thought out words. Like seriously, he spent months drafting this letter, spending hours at a time tweaking every last word until he felt it was perfect.
The visiting cousins tried to privately ask the sister-in-laws if they believed the allegations. The sisters confirmed that they did, and then Creepo and his wife swept in to eavesdrop and control the conversation. The sisters told us they think that the cousins now fully believe my husband's letter. The sisters left the room and are now headed back to stay the night with their grandparents and not at home.
They are seriously worried about what Creepo might do in his intoxicated state. They fear he could direct his anger at them, and I wouldn't exactly put it past him. Though I also don’t think he would immediately resort to something like that. So, yeah. Basically, Creepo and his wife walked in assuming we'd told everyone all the dirty details, so they thought they'd get ahead of it and refute it all.
Of course, we hadn't told anyone anything, so they really shot themselves in the foot by sharing my husband's personal account in his exact words and his complete take on the entire situation. Saved us from having to refute all of their lies after the fact. I'm sure we'll get more updates in the future, but for the time being, we are hoping this was finally the last straw in this seemingly never-ending saga.
We're also telling the sisters to keep us posted on whatever happens, because we are worried about them.
9. A Night On The Town
This is a story about a time when my dad was an entitled parent. It's kinda long and detailed. If you've ever heard the song "Started From the Bottom" by Drake, you should know that my dad is a living testament to it. He grew up very poor and in a bad neighborhood, but despite all the odds he was able to graduate high school, join the armed forces, get his Bachelor’s degree, retire as a Captain, and hold a number of high-paying management positions over the years.
Because of these experiences, he's a firm believer in the principle of hard work, and he taught my sister and me to be respectful of others because we may end up walking through similar streets someday. But he goes overboard. Paradoxically, my dad is also one of those annoying individuals who talks down to people that aren't as accomplished as himself.
He's really good at belittling others on the sly. He also likes to believe that he is always the smartest person in the room and that nobody except himself offers anything of substance. But sure enough, he gets on our case if we say something negative about someone else. Every single day, when he got home from work, he'd always tell stories of how he got to fire people or humiliate them.
At first, I thought the stories were funny and perfectly just. But over time, they started sounding more and more jerk-y, as if he was boasting about getting to mess with people’s lives. I honestly felt uncomfortable going out with him because he always gave people a hard time. Didn't have the exact items he wanted? He'll talk to your manager.
Things take longer than expected? You get an earful. Any mild inconvenience? Everyone is charged with a capital offense. He basically walked and talked as if the world owed him every single thing that he wanted. One day, he pushed things too far. My family and I went out to eat at an IHOP on a Friday night. For the sake of the story, let’s pretend my name is “Slim".
I'm still in my work uniform when we go out. It had been a good day at work, which is kind of an important detail. When we get in, the hostess says it would be about a 15 to 20 minute wait. My family is cool with it, and I'm cool with it. Not even ten minutes later, my dad tells the hostess that we've been waiting for 20 minutes and he demanded to know what was taking so long.
Seriously, Dad? You don't see the 30 other families packed into the restaurant’s waiting area? Do you not hear the noise? I didn't say anything, but my sister and I gave each other the knowing look. That "Dad's about to start on that nonsense again" look. The hostess, obviously having an already difficult night, maintains her customer service smile and tells him that it shouldn't be much longer from now and will let us know immediately.
He stands against the wall. Five minutes later, a family pays for their meal and leaves, and we are directed to a table. My dad tells the server he doesn't want to sit at that particular table, and asks for a booth on the other side. The hostess hesitates for a moment before telling him that the server responsible for that section has a huge party, and that we may get a delay in service if we sit there.
My dad tells her to put us there anyway. I notice a young man flying back and forth to the kitchen and his tables in our row. I assumed this was our server. Sure enough, this man comes over, introduces himself, and takes our drink orders. Eight minutes later, we haven't gotten our drinks. My dad flags him down and asks why our drinks haven't come.
Slightly reasonable, I say. The server apologizes and gets our drinks. He returns, only to give us the wrong drinks. No big deal, honest mistake right? Nope, my dad is angry and sharply tells him to go re-do our drinks. The server asks what they were supposed to be once more. I can see he's a bit overwhelmed, and so I just politely tell him what I wanted. That’s when my dad began to lose it.
My dad tells him to write it down since he's "too slow to remember". Everyone looked at him in horror. Even the server was taken aback by this comment. This didn't seem to faze my dad, though. He returns with the drinks and takes our orders. My dad again tells him to write it down. My family is embarrassed and tries to lessen the hostility in any way possible.
After the server leaves, my mom and sister berate my dad, telling him he's embarrassing us. Of course, my dad doubles down telling us "the customer is always right". Some time passes and our food hasn't arrived. I see the server is running back and forth to the massive party in the neighboring room. I think there were about 20 people in there, plus the three other families that he had to attend to in his section.
To make sure he wasn't leaving the rest of us out, he asked a fellow server to see if we wanted refills and the like. The following interaction occurred. Fellow Server: "Hey, I'm Fellow Server. Just checking to make sure you're all taken care of here. Can I get y'all any refills?" Dad: "Where's our original server? Why couldn't he come do this himself?
Me, in my head: Again, are you freaking blind?? Fellow Server: "He's currently bringing out food and drink orders to another party. I will assist him for the time being". Dad: "That's disrespectful! Why are they getting their food first? We've been waiting for ten minutes for our food. Where is it??" Fellow Server: "Uhhhmm, I can go find out real quick. Give me a moment, sir".
Dad: "Hurry up!" Fellow Server raises an eyebrow and leaves. Me: "Dad, chill out. It's clearly a busy night for them". Dad: "Don't back-sauce me, Slim. You don't want to start with me". A few minutes pass, and our original server comes back with our food and apologizes for the wait. Original Server: "Hey everyone, I apologize for that wait. Taking care of a massive party, haha".
Dad: "That's no excuse. We've been waiting!" Mom: *nudges Dad* "Hunny, stop". Original Sever: "Terribly sorry about that sir, really". Our original server starts handing out the food. Dad: "Are you kidding me right now? My food is cold! We've been waiting ten minutes for our food to come. How long has our food been sitting out?
It should be noted that my dad ordered something that really didn't need to be served warm. Also, he only touched the plate. Original Server: "I... I don't think it's been out too long, sir. We have a heating lamp that..." Dad: "Are you sweating?" Original Server: "Sir?" Dad: "You're sweating everywhere!" Original Server: "I've been running back and forth. Not to mention the kitchen is hot".
Dad: "I don't want to hear excuses! You're sweaty, and you're getting it all over my food! Get me your manager, NOW!" Our jaws hit the floor. Our original server quietly goes for his manager. My dad, all angry-faced, starts talking about the "terrible" service and our "lazy, disgusting, and unprofessional" server. Some people are looking over at us.
My mom and sister looked like they wanted the earth to swallow them up. Meanwhile, I'm just boiling on the inside. Our original server comes back with the store manager. Store Manager: "Hello everyone, is everything okay?" My dad proceeds to lay into the service and the server. Dad: "I have a number of things to say. Tonight I have had the worst service ever".
Off to a great start! He continued: "My family and I have waited on drinks and they came out wrong. Our server gets another server to do HIS JOB for him because he's too lazy to do it himself. When we get our food, our food is cold. Apparently, we weren't a priority for him. On top of that, he's sweating in our food! That server has been a lazy, good-for-nothing, incompetent server the entire night and I've had it with him! I want our meals comped and this server needs to be fired!"
Store Manager: *wide-eyed* "Oh goodness... sorry about the trouble sir..." Our original server is standing next to the store manager throughout all of this, and he looks absolutely floored. He looked like he wanted to shed a tear. Store Manager: "Here. I'll take care of your meal, and here are some 30% off coupons". But before he could continue with his offer, I decided that I had to do something. So, I cut him off.
Me (standing up): "You know what, before all that, I need to say something". Me to Dad (paraphrasing): "I got to say, I'm impressed with how far you're willing to go to be an absolute mega jerk at everyone's expense. This entire night, and every other time we go out in public, whether it's to eat or buy groceries, you make it your life's mission to make everyone extremely uncomfortable".
That got everyone’s attention. I continued: "What is it that makes you feel like you can do this? Is it the money you make? What about all that hot garbage you talk about humility and being respectful to everyone because we might end up walking similar streets? Oh, it only applies to US, while you contradict everything you say? You're absolutely disgraceful! How dare you embarrass yourself and your family with your abhorrent behavior!"
Dad: "Are you cussing at me?" But I couldn’t stop there. Me: "Shut up, I'm talking now! We've heard your voice all darn night. Lord knows I earned the right to speak! You see this uniform? You know I work at a restaurant too. You even told me to be careful when it comes to pretentious people. Yet here you are, behaving like one of them! This man has been running around doing his absolute best trying to make sure everyone is taken care of.
"He even recruited another server in order to make sure we were good and looked after. But if you'd take your head out your own behind, you'd understand that. But no. We didn't even wait long for our food. You're acting like we're the only people in the packed restaurant, and everyone's watching you be a jerk about it! Yes, the man is sweating, but none of that sweat touched the food, as he brought it on a tray AWAY FROM HIS BODY!”
"We are sick and tired of you acting like a snobby arrogant idiot every time we go out somewhere. You're not impressing anybody and no one wants to be seen with you!" I then did something that I kinda regret after my anger subsided. Me (at the peak of my anger): "And your food... *pushes plate into his lap* ...DIDN'T EVEN NEED TO BE WARMED UP, IT'S A FREAKING SALAD!"
At this moment, I snap out of it. I realize that the entire restaurant has gone quiet. The manager, the server, and everyone around us is looking at me, absolutely stunned. The big party was all eyes. My mom and sister looked like they turned to stone. My dad's expression is something that has now been forever etched into my mind.
I was 6'2” tall at the time and was really non-confrontational and soft-spoken. So for me to get as loud and imposing as I had was an unfamiliar sight for my folks to see. My dad, with the plate of salad dumped in his lap, looked like he wanted to beat my behind, poop bricks, and crawl under the table all at once. It was unforgettable.
I wanted to drive my point home, so I dug into my wallet and pulled out $120 from the tips I had earned at work that night. I handed half of it to the store manager and told him not to comp the meal and that it was on me. The other half, I gave to the original server and apologized for causing trouble. I looked at my family and told them I had lost my appetite and that I'll be waiting in the car.
The restaurant was murmuring when I left, and I sat in the car trying to process what the heck I had just done. But what happened next was the most surprising part of all. We didn't talk about it afterward, but this event seemed to have clicked something in my dad’s head, as I never again heard him give people unwarranted trouble again. So yea, my dad was a flaming entitled jerk, but then I put him in his place and he changed his ways.
And everyone clapped (just kidding). To end this, I wanted to add a proverb of sorts from the Netherlands. "A customer is king as long as they behave in a royal fashion".
10. Drinking The Night Away
My obnoxious father-in-law randomly decided to ask my husband if I had a drinking problem...because I had two glasses of something very light at dinner when he was here visiting and I had work the next morning. I know, I know, the horror!! Maybe be concerned if you saw me more than once every few years and I had a true problem or if I was harming myself or other people by driving a vehicle afterward?
But I'm a 32-year-old ADULT having a casual drink at my own darn dinner table. I'm gonna enjoy my weekday drink and go to work the next morning completely unphased, because two glasses of something very light doesn't even get me at all tipsy. It's especially unfortunate, too, because this was the first time that we saw him in almost two years after an awful trip, and I was actually trying my hardest to give him a second chance.
But nope. He really is a piece of trash human.
11. Doctor’s Orders
Background: I’m 20 weeks pregnant, for starters. This past Friday, I went to the ER because I swell up horribly, and when I’m laying down I can’t breathe. They don’t know what is wrong with me, but they put me on bed rest for a week. And I’m now only allowed to lift 15 pounds for the rest of my pregnancy. This is where the real story begins.
I was sitting in the kitchen with my sister-in-law, waiting for my mother-in-law to finish changing so that I could take them to the tanning bed. I’m just sitting in the lobby reading while I wait on them, and out of nowhere my father-in-law starts attacking us about how we’re lazy and how we never do anything. I cut him off because I can’t do anything right now.
I tell him I’m on bed rest for the next week, and start struggling to breathe after the second sentence. I then tell him that I can’t lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for the rest of my pregnancy. He completely ignores the first part, and says there are plenty of things I can do aside from lifting heavy stuff. My sister-in-law and I both tell him that I’m on bed rest.
He then starts tearing into my sister-in-law, because she’s allegedly lazy too. My sister-in-law has asthma, they won’t fix the air conditioner, and she’s been sick with food poisoning for the last three days. She has been babysitting one of her parents’ coworkers’ kids every single day aside from that. She also does everything they ask of her. Her younger 14-year-old brother never gets called lazy or gets asked to do anything by them.
He lays in bed all day, sleeping and playing video games. When my father-in-law is done with his attacks on her, he jumps back onto me. So, I just walk out, telling him I’m following my doctor’s advice so that my baby will be born alive.
12. Trick Or Treat
This is gonna be short and bitter, but I just need to rant and thought that some of y'all out there might find this story interesting. So my husband and I flew to Florida for a short vacation and to see my step-son who had just moved down here a couple of months ago. Since my husband’s mom also lives here and my husband's birthday coincided with the visit, I decided that it might be nice if I treated the four of us and my mother-in-law's long-term boyfriend out to a pretty fancy and not cheap dinner to celebrate the occasion.
We had a lovely dinner, successfully embarrassing my husband with a special birthday dessert complete with singing and all. When we were all finished, I clearly paid the check, as I had promised to do. I did this despite my step-son trying to give me a $100 bill toward paying the check, which I appreciatively but absolutely rejected. I was very touched by the gesture, but more mention it because the exchange was not subtle. It was witnessed by everyone, so it was abundantly clear that I was the one paying the check and treating everyone to this lovely celebratory dinner.
My husband then excused himself to go to the bathroom and we all started getting ready to leave the table, too. Just then, my mother-in-law’s boyfriend says "Thank you guys!" Wait, guys?? Who does he mean by “guys”? My husband wasn't even present at this point, and I had obviously paid for everything myself. Guys? Okay, whatever. Don't be so sensitive, right? But then, he dug in deeper.
We go to get our cars and as we are waiting for the valet to bring them around, my mother-in-law’s boyfriend goes over to my husband and thanks him directly, with a warm handshake, for buying him dinner! My husband tries to tell him that it was all me, and that he didn't have anything to do with it, but the boyfriend starts arguing: Oh, well yeah, but he knows it was really my husband and he appreciated it!!
What in the heck? I was standing right behind them, clearly hearing every word they were both saying. He didn't say another word about it to me directly, even when my husband corrected him again, and even when I hugged him goodbye. I know I should get over it, but I'm just annoyed and offended and insulted and feeling affronted on behalf of all women, and I'm hoping this rant gets me through it so I can stop thinking about it while I'm on vacation!
13. A House Divided Against Itself
This is the story of how my terrible father-in-law finally got called out on his nonsense. He always tries to make my wife and mother-in-law out to be the bad guys. A bit of backstory: My wife and I got married about six months ago. Due to some unfortunate goings-on, we've been living with her parents while we get our life together.
Her father has always had a few issues here and there, but tonight's story took the cake. My mother-in-law is not very tech-savvy, and asked my wife to help her with a computer problem. While my father-in-law has always dealt with these in the past, he tends to be very snarky and condescending when doing so. So when my mother-in-law asked my wife to help her, she was more than happy to oblige.
My father-in-law was livid. He wanted to always be the one to fix the problems. My wife, who is very non-confrontational, asked him to let her have some space and she would be more than happy to take care of it this time. For whatever reason, this did not sit well with him one bit. He started calling her all sorts of nasty names—and then it took a disturbing turn.
He eventually threatened to hit her. I was not present at the time, and I only found out about this later. I lost my mind when she told me about it afterward. "How dare you think you're going to threaten my wife? You will never, ever lay a single finger on her, do you hear me?" This of course escalated the situation even further. The funny part? My mother-in-law had our back the entire time, and even let loose a few shots of her own.
My father-in-law then starts trying to flip the blame back towards my wife. I kid you not, he says "If you weren't so nasty, I wouldn't have threatened you". This, of course, caused more of a shouting match. Finally, my father-in-law says, "Then you two can just leave". We all began immediately laughing at him. My mother-in-law is the breadwinner of their house.
My father-in-law can hardly be bothered to move from his chair, let alone pay for anything in the house. My mother-in-law tells him that we are staying right there and that there is not a thing he can do about it. My wife is still understandably freaked out about the whole situation, and I imagine that I won't be feeling much better when the adrenaline wears off.
But I feel like it ended up being a small win. Plus, my mother-in-law is cool as can be!
14. Going Away For A Long Time
Recently, my dad was apprehended and taken to a secure hospital for mental health just before Christmas. He abandoned me as a baby and has five children who he doesn't see. He has been officially diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and is deteriorating fast with his newly developed case of dementia. The craziest part? He’ll never get out again.
It’s clear that he will now spend the rest of his life in a secure unit. My mother has now changed her name back to her maiden name to cut off any apparent connection to him. She is also changing all the bills into her own name. She is done with him forever. I am also done with him forever. And yet, there’s one thing that’s still bothering me. I am starting to feel a pang of sadness for him. He is all alone, locked up, and no one wants to see him.
Should I go and see him one last time? Or will it be too painful? My dad isn't fully "gone" yet. But the social worker said he is deteriorating by the week now. Oh yes, and it turns out my dear father fought my mother in court over maintenance for me and my brother. And because he paid for the best lawyers he could, he was ordered to pay 50 pence a week for us for our mother to take care of us while he didn’t have to.
As a result, my mother suffered for years and we lived in poverty. Meanwhile, he drove Jaguars and carried on with his fancy lifestyle.
15. Four Weddings And A Funeral
I work for the troops, which is semi-important to the story. My sister is going through the same training that I went through. With that said, I only get x amount of vacation days a month each month and, like most things, I can't go into the negatives of accumulated days. My sister is graduating from boot camp next week and wants me to go and attend the ceremony.
One issue is that I'm getting married in March, and I'm taking a lot of vacation days for the celebration. But also, I want to be there for my sister on her big day. But due to financial and vacation day issues, I can't go to both the graduation and my wedding. I'm going back home for my wedding, which will be very expensive and time-consuming, so both are simply not possible.
Now, right after graduating, my sister will have to go to tech school (training class for her job) and she'll be in training for at least two more months. And then more training at her first base. The only time she'd be able to take vacation during that time at all is two weeks in between her going from her tech school base to her first base. After that, she's in training for at least six months straight. Here’s where my dad comes in…and makes everything a problem.
My dad wants me to reschedule the wedding so that I can go to the graduation, and so that she can go to the wedding. Ordinarily, this would make perfect sense, but everything is already paid for and booked and has been for a while now. After I told my father about these issues, he said something so to "pull the veteran card to reschedule and get a refund".
Now, I barely even like asking for discounts at places, let alone doing something like this. After I said I wouldn't do that, he dug in even further. He started guilt-tripping me and saying I'm a bad brother because I wouldn't reschedule my wedding so that my sister could go and so that I could go to her graduation. He goes to these extremes every time he brings it up.
I keep telling him that I can't do anything about it and he makes the guilt-tripping even worse. I just don't know what to do anymore. He's had people in our family who are veterans yell at him, basically backing me up and saying the same thing, but he just basically ignores it. I just want this to be done and over with because this has been stressing me out so bad that it's affecting my personal and work life.
It is putting my stress and anxiety through the roof.
16. Your Mini-Me
My father-in-law is a jerk to our baby. A little backstory: my father-in-law hates me for no real reason. My husband suspects it is because I am not as submissive as he expects women to be. My husband also says it is because I have an advanced degree, a good job, and I was well-established with my own home before I met my husband. He says this “intimidates” his dad.
In terms of how he treats me, he basically ignores me entirely, even when I talk directly to him. So I basically just don’t talk to him anymore, because what’s the point? I don’t particularly like how he treats my husband either. He makes him feel guilty for not spending time with him, but the man NEVER calls or comes to see us either.
The phone and roads work both ways. My husband's mother, who lives 2,000 miles away, has visited us more than his dad has, who is only a 40-minute drive away. Anyway, to get to the point, we had a baby six weeks ago. His dad did come visit us in the hospital, which was honestly a shock to me. I was exhausted, but I kept a smile on my face and tried to engage him.
His reaction was chilling. He came in the door, didn’t even glance at the baby, sat in a chair, and watched football on the TV. His wife even told him to look at the baby and hold her, to which he simply said “I’ve seen pictures” and went on watching football and talking about his fantasy league. He didn’t ask us anything about how the labor or delivery went, whether we needed anything, if she was healthy, ANYTHING. Just football.
When he left, my husband got teary-eyed and said to the baby: “I’m sorry your grandpa is so rude, baby girl,” and I literally burst into tears. Granted, I had been up for nearly 40 hours at this point. But still. There’s something else that really grinds my gears. He has nine other grandkids and he is not like this towards any of them. For example, he has posted to Facebook with a photo holding them at all their births.
He posts photos of them all the time, brings them presents, etc. He dotes on them. But he is ambivalent and rude to our baby? Just because he doesn’t like me? She is a BABY! She has done nothing to deserve that. It’s heartbreaking. I told my husband I was never going out of my way to see that man again and he agreed there’s no point of putting in extra effort, but I know he is hurt.
This was six weeks ago and I’m still so mad about it. Every time my husband mentions him, I just see red. As if that wasn’t bad enough already, there is another part of the story that paints the picture even better. After she was born, our daughter had to stay in the hospital for an extra five days and was nearly admitted to the newborn ICU.
My Facebook is pretty small. I basically only have friends and close family members on there. So I had been using it to keep everyone updated, but not with the specific details. Just posts like “We are still in the hospital, but hope to be home soon. Thanks for everyone’s support". The man NEVER called his son the entire week to even see what was wrong, if she was home, when she was coming home, etc.
UGH! That jerk! Suffice it to say that I am very hurt by his actions and I definitely don’t want to associate with him anymore.
17. Finding The Way To Grandma’s House
My dad has bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. It didn't really hit him until he was in his teens. He managed to mask the symptoms for years with substances, as did my mom—she's a whole other can of worms. My grandma is no longer able to take care of herself and function. She has two living sons, HJ (my dad) and Greedy Gambler (my uncle).
Her oldest son passed from lung cancer in 2010 I want to believe. Her two remaining sons are both terrible people. For the past 15 years, HJ has emotionally manipulated and harmed me. And I've been taking it because I truly believe that his mental illnesses are the reason that he is like this. Until one month ago. HJ called me after not speaking with me for months because he is now homeless.
I told him Gram was sick. His reaction was devastating. He said he didn't care. He needed to stay in her condo and "I don't care if she dies, but I'll get the condo as part of my inheritance". Y'all, I lost my mind. I called him a deranged, worthless substance user and I ordered him never to call me again. I hung up and blocked him on everything.
Two days later, a social worker from a hospital calls and wants to talk about him. I declined, but told her that he would work best in a permanent mental facility. She agreed, but informed me that HJ has declined all help. I told her that I still wasn’t interested in ever talking to him again, and that was the end of it. I really do feel free now.
I am content with the knowledge that my kids will never see him again. It's been three years since. And they will never hear about him either. Also, in case you are wondering, his nickname comes from the time when HJ thought he was Jesus for six months. Yea, he literally believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus. He even made a LinkedIn page for it. That’s why his nickname now is “Hypochondriac Jesus".
Then, something happened that I knew was coming sooner or later. My grandma has dementia, so I have been getting her condo ready for a while now for when she passes. It's finally ready to sell and everything has been replaced, including the carpet, showerheads, repaired appliances, etc. All of the furniture is out and it's completely empty.
Cue HJ. He has been homeless for about a month now. He has refused all help from social workers and myself for the last 15 years. He was offered a room in a rehabilitation facility and a long-term facility and he refused both. So, in his genius, he decided to try and break into my grandma's condo. Which would have worked, except for one small detail...
He couldn't remember what unit he was supposed to be in, and so he broke into a random family's home and scared the daylights out of the kids. He was thrown behind bars very quickly, where he remains to this day.
18. Saying Goodbye
My husband and I were talking about my oldest son's biological family today and this story came up. It’s only one of many with this awful man, but it is also one of the last we will ever have since it truly opened my eyes up to who he really is. Back story: this was in October of 2014. My mom had both small and non-small cell lung cancer, and she had been taken by an ambulance to a nearby hospital ICU.
She told me I didn’t need to come, but soon after I got a call from the hospital saying it was urgent and that I needed to be there. So I dropped everything and went. I don’t remember how my then-eight-year-old son got into the care of his grandfather, i.e. my father-in-law, that day. I may have called my ex and asked him to get our son.
Anyway, when I get to the hospital, the doctor tells me that it’s over and that we need to put her on morphine and to let her go over the weekend. This was a shock to me at 26 years old, having to handle this. But the first thing I did was call my ex and ask him to get my son to the hospital as quickly as possible because my mom was not going to be around much longer.
Within an hour, they had intubated her and put her on life support. We never heard her voice again. Eventually, my idiot father-in-law shows up with my son. A full hour and a half after I had called. I was sitting in the hallway sobbing, and neither myself nor my son was allowed in the room at the moment, so I hugged my boy and asked my father-in-law to just take him home.
My mom was gone within ten days. So, fast forward about six weeks. My son and I are preparing to spend our very first Christmas without my mom. Holidays were always hosted at my mom's house. I get a text from my father-in-law saying that he would like to spend Christmas morning with my son, between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. I told him that this wouldn’t work for us, but 1:00 to 3:00 PM would be better. His reaction was truly deranged.
He Flew. Off. The. Handle. He tells me the afternoon doesn’t work for him because he’s driving to Temecula to see his wife’s family at 11:00 AM. Oh boy, a whole two-hour drive! So he insists that he HAS to see my son in the morning. I say that I’m sorry, but that this won’t work for us and that we’ll have to find another time or day.
Now, this is after literally eight years of battling this man and being called every rotten name you can think of by him because I don’t let him have his way with my son. I’ve had it at this point. But, here is the quote that made me go from hating him to wishing he was no longer alive. He told me: “I can’t believe you! You’re such a selfish witch always keeping your son away from us. He’s going to hate you when he’s older and realizes what a loser you are. You’re such a jerk you couldn’t even say thank you after I brought him to the hospital!”
Oh no, you did not. You took an hour and a half to get there and erased the opportunity for my son and mom to say goodbye to each other, and you expect me to thank you for that? And what normal, rational, or caring person would even expect a thank you while I was sobbing on the hallway floor in the ICU?! I responded by calling him a lowlife and saying that I didn’t owe him anything, and that if he wanted to see his grandson he’d have to coordinate that through his deadbeat son.
I blocked him and he stayed blocked on everything of mine for nearly two years.
19. Emergency Meeting
Buckle up kiddies. This story is absolutely ridiculous. So, my boyfriend just had a talk with his parents about his dad’s behavior this morning. They flat out admitted that they’ve been cold to me on purpose this whole time. So, since I am getting the conversation secondhand, here were some of my FAVORITE highlights: A) They know they’ve been cold to me.
So all the ignoring my greetings and being short with me that I thought I had picked up on? Intentional. Good to know. B) Apparently, they don’t feel like I’ve put in enough effort to get to know them?? Um, according to my boyfriend, when we started dating during our senior year of high school, his father-in-law admittedly had no desire to get to know me since I “wouldn’t be around for long, so what was the point?”
Like, how do you treat someone like that when you first meet them and then get all angry later when they’ve just kept to themselves in the time since? I can remember multiple times when my boyfriend had told me about conversations where his dad told him to date other girls BEFORE he told him he would do anything to get him to break up with me. So... you think I’m the cold one? Okay, and it just gets better from here.
C) They liked how my boyfriend’s brother’s ex helped them out more than I did. Um, excuse me? I can distinctly remember my father-in-law leaving the kitchen a mess on Thanksgiving last year, and just to be helpful, I went and did the dishes for them all by myself. Even after dinners that we have with them now, my boyfriend and I always clean up and do dishes together, so I don’t know where the heck they got that idea.
Also, my boyfriend’s brother’s ex was going around defaming him with false accusations. Like she’s a full-blown psycho, but my father-in-law still has a silly nostalgic love for her and the days when she had not yet gone crazy. D) They want to just start over with a clean slate with me, after talking to my boyfriend like he’s my personal spokesperson. That’s freaking cute.
An apology to him is not an apology to me. They have said so many nasty things and been so cold to me when I have been nothing but polite to them. And they think by my boyfriend confronting them about their lousy behavior means the slate is just wiped clean? Um... no one asked my opinion on this. I told my boyfriend that while I appreciate that he spoke to his parents, in no uncertain terms am I just hunky-dory and okay with them now because they realized they’ve been bad.
Not only that, but I am disappointed that he would be manipulated into believing that it would be okay. So anyway, those were some of the fan favorites from the conversation. There were so many others, but through the tears, while I was having this conversation relayed to me after the fact, those were the only ones that I could easily remember clearly.
But before I go, I almost forgot this part, which completely blew my mind. They genuinely want my boyfriend to go over their “house rules” with me, since I keep breaking them. For the love of god almighty. I AM AN ADULT. No one needs to pander to me about how I should and should not behave. I’ve realized a few things after this experience.
I think my father-in-law has extremely controlling behavior that he has instilled in his family. He has clearly convinced all of them that he is the be-all and end all of their existence. I didn’t think I wanted my boyfriend to have to go to see a counselor, until now. Honestly, after this experience, I might make couples therapy a requirement before we consider getting married.
20. A Quick Fix
My father-in-law just told me he thinks he could fix my mental illness by “dominating me". I was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I just started lithium. I've had several diagnoses over the years and have been on a bunch of SSRIs, done talk therapy, etc. The bipolar diagnosis definitely explains the missing piece of the puzzle of my life.
Anyway, my husband was talking to his parents recently and mentioned that I had been recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that it's been pretty hard on everyone. I've been in a manic phase recently and, with an 8.5-month-old baby, that comes out as a lot of anger. His mom contacted me right away saying that she loves me, is there for me, etc.
Last night, my husband got a message from his dad—and when he read it, his jaw dropped. It linked to a post by this idiot on Facebook describing how, in his opinion, women's problems today are a rebellion against men not benevolently dominating them. My husband responds by calling the guy an idiot. And, of course, that's where the fun begins.
It was all downhill from there. My father-in-law goes on a whole rant, talking about how the only way my husband can "fix" me is by “dominating” me. Apparently, bipolar is just a fancy way of saying I talk back? And the only way to fix that is for my husband to be an “alpha” and tell me what's what. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan for dealing with a diagnosed medical condition, right?
For some background, I have a PhD in biological science and am a tenured track professor at a big R1 University. My husband stays home with our baby and is a nurse. My father-in-law told us at our baby shower that this arrangement would never work because I would resent my husband and eventually cheat on him. He also sent lengthy messages with nonsense articles telling my husband not to vaccinate our newborn son.
Like dude, pay attention to your own mess of a life before you start dishing out advice to other people.
21. An International Case
My father has secret post-it notes about traveling to other countries, and randomly took out life insurance on my mother. My mom woke me up this morning to share her snoop findings, since my dad was supposedly up at his parents’ place visiting because his father had just been in the hospital over the weekend. It's been probably three weeks now since my mother got the divorce paperwork and since he last mentioned finding an apartment.
They're supposed to have a "simple" and quick divorce, where they both agree to the terms in the paperwork, but everyone thinks my mom is being too easy on him. She's rethinking her decision to not get a lawyer after what she found out today. She found a folder hiding underneath a bunch of stuff on his desk with a pile of post-it notes inside of it.
There are so many, with so much random stuff written on them. His handwriting is really awful, too. It always has been, but this makes it difficult for us to decipher some of the stuff. The really suspicious things come in the form of what seems to be usernames, the top one being a string of euphemisms for having big equipment. Pretty disturbing stuff.
There's also a note about someone's height and weight, in the form of centimeters and kilograms, like he has to keep track of... what they look like, I guess? The worst part, I think, is the note where he has information about how many miles it would take to get from a town in Latvia to a town in Russia, and then how many miles and hours from Boston it would take to get to both of these places.
She also found bank receipts from last month for an account he must have opened for himself without telling her about. Looks like he's depositing his overtime money into it. Some of the other notes consisted of what seemed to be song names, bands that he wouldn't usually listen to in a million years. He's a serious country music person and used to tell me when I was younger that the rock music I liked is the "devil's music," yet all of the bands referenced in his notes were rock bands.
One had nothing but the words "padaschdi" and "wait" written on it. From what I understand, “padaschdi” is just a translation of “wait". But why write the same thing out in two languages? He also had another "I love you" written in Italian, with some other words above it that none of us have really been able to clearly decipher.
These new findings all come after I learned on Christmas that he took out a life insurance policy on my mother, after his secrets came out and they decided to divorce. She also already had one, and he knows this! HOW SUSPICIOUS IS THAT? Our lives are starting to feel like an episode of a show on the detective channel, and I absolutely hate it.
22. Setting Off A Firestorm
To preface, I'm a female who happens to like sports. Mainly hockey and American football, but I'll watch basketball and baseball in the playoffs, and I understand baseball better than the average girl thanks to my idiot of an ex. My husband likes sports too, but I'm definitely the bigger "fan". We also both played hockey, and my husband was also forced to do Little League.
Who forced him, you ask? My one and only father-in-law, who I lovingly refer to “Hagar the Horrible". Hagar forced my husband to play Little League until my mother-in-law put her foot down, because my husband would come home crying over the fact that he hated it so much. Hagar was the coach and screamed at his players non-stop, so go figure.
When his mother got involved, he was finally allowed to quit. Anyway, point being, we both know and like sports, me possibly even more than my husband. Hagar considers yacht racing a sport, so he claims that he does sports all the time, even though the owner of the boat and his crew are the ones doing the work while Hagar just makes drinks and snacks and sometimes gets to steer for a couple of seconds.
He is also, obviously, all-knowing about all sports, including ones he didn't even know existed until the Olympics. It turns into one of the many things I've given up trying to correct him on, and I just roll my eyes at him being confused about why the sport we're watching isn't being played by his rules. My husband and I randomly decided to go to a baseball game this last Sunday, partly to get away from Hagar and his obnoxious new girlfriend, and partly because I'd never been to the nearby stadium and the tickets were cheap.
In my opinion, baseball is much more entertaining at the game than watching it on TV, but I've also been spoiled by some pretty awesome stadiums. The game was exciting, the stadium was as great as I'd heard, and we had some amazing dumplings afterward. The next day, Hagar decided to try and be an idiot jerk about it. Not really sure why, since he knows I like sports.
Him: "Hey Daughter-in-law, did you like the game?" Me: "Yeah, it was--" Him: "Did you understand what was going on? I'm sure it was confusing". Me: "...Yes, I--" Him: "I'm surprised my son talked you into going". I was pretty over it at this point and was just going to make a non-committal grunt noise in his general direction, but my husband piped up at this point.
My Husband: "Actually, she is the one who wanted to go. She picked out the seats and paid for them. We had a great view and the game was a lot of fun!" So I decided to chime in just to shame Hagar a little further, since he was already taken aback. Me: "Yeah, I've never seen so many pitching changes, and we even got to see a splash homer. The ump was being a little bit generous with his strike zone though. Dinner was great too. Too bad you couldn't come".
Hagar walked away grumbling and seemed upset the rest of the night. I know it was sort of because he was politely told to screw off after talking down to me, but also because the reason he couldn't come was that there was a major regatta that I didn't ask about and his boat didn't do well in it. We unfortunately didn't know about it until after I bought the tickets, or I would've picked a different weekend when he was actually going to be around. Small victories.
Hagar also lies constantly, but he's not very good at it. There was one day, though, where his lies were even more laughable than usual. Basically, everything that comes out of his mouth has to be taken with a grain of salt, and if my husband and I are genuinely curious about what the truth is, we try and ask someone else who was actually there whenever possible.
Well, on this one particularly bad day, Hagar decided to try and lie to my husband about events that had allegedly happened the night before. He thought I wasn't listening, and so he lied despite the fact that I was there for everything that he was trying to lie about. First off, he tried telling my husband that our neighbor's wife came over and told him that the lawn had caught fire, but they put it out.
I say neighbor's wife because she doesn't live there herself and only comes over when the kids and grandkids come over to use the pool and BBQ. So she probably wasn't there to begin with on a random Wednesday night. Hagar then said that he had to talk to the authorities, because apparently, another neighbors' lawn had caught fire, so they were investigating arson in the neighborhood.
My husband is supremely confused at this point and asks Hagar where we were when all this was going on, and Hagar says that we were in bed. My husband then asks what time it was, because unless we seriously were erased from the world, we would have heard the neighbor and then the officers knocking on the door and then having a conversation with Hagar.
Hagar is practically deaf and can barely hear his TV unless it's at full volume, so I doubt he would have heard the door, especially given the circumstances. Hagar said it was at around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening. It was at this point that I had to leave to crack up, and a minute later Hagar dragged my husband outside to "examine the arson damage".
So, besides probably lying about the neighbor and the officers coming, there are sooooo many other lies he told that I seriously don't know how he thought he could get away with it. He was sort of nice to me earlier that week and had taken me to a doctor's appointment. I'm pretty sure that my husband threatened to close down the family shop and take me himself if Hagar didn't do it.
You may ask why Hagar wasn't at the shop himself. It's because he always goes sailing on Wednesdays. It was also his friend's birthday this week, who is the owner of the boat, so he didn't even get home until close to 9:00 at night. That's right, the jerk WASN'T EVEN HOME when he claims that my husband and I were in bed and he was talking to an officer about arson.
My husband has it in his cell phone’s call log that Hagar called at 8:48 to say he was home and ask if there was anything to eat. My husband and I didn't even start cooking our dinner until around 7:00, and I promise that we did not do it in our sleep. But it gets even more ridiculous. When he dragged my husband outside to “examine the evidence,” my husband was able to point out that it wasn't even the lawn, it was a planter box that was slightly charred.
The same planter box that I tried to point out to Hagar was smoldering when we were leaving for the doctor, but he ignored me repeatedly and got irritated because I was taking too long to get in the car. It was smoldering not because of arson, but because Hagar put a bunch of wood shavings from the bowl he made for his friend's birthday in it, then decided to toss his still-lit smoke on top.
Thankfully the wood he used doesn't burn very well, or it might have actually caught fire. When I got home from the doctor in my Uber, that was the first thing I checked, and it had put itself out without any apparent intervention from the neighbors. I seriously don't understand why Hagar even brought it up, because it's not like he was the hero in his own made-up version of events.
I didn't even think to mention it to my husband, because, whatever, Hagar was an idiot again and nothing really happened. Hagar also could have made it slightly more believable. He could have just said it was the neighbor who used to be a firefighter, not his wife. I guess he said that because my husband and I could actually have gone and asked the neighbor, but the wife is hardly ever around and I've never even talked to her.
He also could have left the officers out of the story. He could have at the very least said they came by at like 10:00 or 11:00, when he was actually home and my husband and I might have been asleep. And most of all, why say it was the lawn, THEN DRAG MY HUSBAND OUTSIDE TO SHOW HIM IT WAS LITERALLY NOT THE LAWN?!?!
If catching Hagar in a lie accomplished anything ever besides screaming and cursing and various threats from him, this definitely would have been a prime time to do it. But it never does, so I just had to go laugh, and my husband just patted him on the back and gave him an "Okay, Dad. Sure". I wonder what his next work of fiction will be.
Oh, and then there was the small matter of Hagar deciding that inappropriate slurs would be a good reaction to advice. I wasn't there for this, but I trust that my husband wouldn't just make this stuff up, and I don't think the awesome guy who got called the offensive slur would do so either. A customer at Hagar and my husband’s workplace remarked that Hagar's dog smells terrible.
She really is in terrible shape, and nothing I say, or anyone says, will convince Hagar to take her to the vet. But Hagar got upset that maybe he was losing business because of his dog. So “Awesome Guy” (AG), who is an employee too, and also happens to be half black and half Native American, pulled Hagar aside and said something along the lines of "Your dog is literally rotting and has needed to go to the vet for years".
And what does Hagar do? In front of the customer he was afraid of losing because his stinky dog tried to say hi? He screams out: "You're just a dumb (insert offensive slur here), what do you know?" My husband says the customer promptly walked out. Hagar has slurs for everyone, by the way. My ex-roommate, whose family home is next to George Clooney’s in Italy?
They get a slur. That's wrong all around. I get called a slur for Irish people by Hagar, even though my name is severely Scottish, and my background is more a combination of German and Jewish than Irish.
23. Truck Stop
My father-in-law took my husband’s truck, screwing us over financially big time. He then tried to gift it to his grown child, my husband’s younger sister. My husband and I were living on our own, working full-time jobs, and adulting just fine until we conceived as planned. But then things took a horrible turn. My body didn’t handle pregnancy too well and I was constantly sick, in and out of the hospital.
My employer said I could take leave and come back when I was able to work my full shifts again, which was pretty darn cool of him! Anyway, our truck starts messing up, big time, and with me not working, we didn’t have the funds to fix it. We were already full no contact with my husband's horrible father because whilst we were staying there and he found out we were moving out on our own, he started becoming violent and hostile towards us.
He would walk past me and call me names like, “stupid witch,” “freaking loser,” dumb jerk". Every single time he passed me, he muttered something derogatory in my direction. He also called my husband into his bedroom nightly to “scold” him and insult him. Calling him a “wuss,” a “complete idiot,” and so on and so forth. So, we left the next day while he was at work.
He comes home to find us gone and is absolutely FURIOUS! He goes totally nuts, blowing up my husband's phone, calling everyone in the family and telling them I have “taken” his son from him, etc. Umm, okay psycho! Well, back to the point of the story. Like I said, I was sick all the time and the truck just clunked out on us.
Now, this is a 1992 Chevy 1500, and it was booted up. With the engine trouble, it clearly wasn’t worth very much. So, a man my husband worked with offered to take it off our hands for $3,500! Great deal considering it was in pretty bad shape! Only problem? My father-in-law, even after my husband turned 18, never transferred the title to my husband’s name.
Even though it was his truck. So, we informed my father-in-law that we needed the title and are selling the truck. He threw a fit and said no we aren’t. He then refuses to transfer the title and comes and tows the truck, essentially swiping it from his son. His intentions were to screw us over financially in the hopes that it would make his son leave me, whilst I was pregnant, and move back in with him.
Now he succeeded in screwing us over financially, but that just made his son despise him even more. And as the years have passed, he just continues to make his son hate him. Here we are nearly five years later, and we have been full no contact for over a year. And we plan to keep it that way. Oh yeah, and after he took the truck, he tried to give it to his youngest grown child as a graduation present, much like it was previously given to my husband as an 18th birthday graduation present.
24. This Hits In The Feels
My mother-in-law and father-in-law stayed with my husband and me for five days. And boy, was it a long visit! Some background: I am a South Asian American millennial woman married to a southern Caucasian millennial man. My husband and I are not religious. Both of my in-laws identify as Catholic. My mother and father identify as Muslim. Everyone has already met at our wedding.
My father-in-law and mother-in-law eat only a handful of home-cooked meals out of the year, the remainder being take out and dine in. Night 1: The first hour in, we order take out from a Thai restaurant and we somehow cannot manage to have a civil dinner conversation. My father-in-law asks me if the woman at the restaurant is “insert politically incorrect term for Asian people here,” and I dismiss it because it wasn’t the hill I wanted to lay down on.
I indirectly correct him by replying, “Yes, she was Asian". My husband chimes in and says that it’s not correct to use the term he used and that he should be saying “Asian” instead. He tries to explain that the term describes an inanimate object and not the background of a human being. I deduce that it makes sense as to why Asians would be offended if you used an objectifying term to describe them and my mother-in-law agrees that it makes sense.
My father-in-law, however, continues to justify what he says by using the baby boomer argument: “You snowflakes are so easily offended, so sensitive, and everyone is always so concerned about being politically correct". My husband explains that it’s just an evolution of language thing and that it’s the same concept as the regretful time when other bad slurs were normalized, and things have changed and progressed for the better since then.
My mother-in-law agrees. I agree. My father-in-law tries to refute and says it’s not language that we are disagreeing about, it’s politics. And I back up my husband and say that it is language. My father-in-law digs a grave and says that this is the exact same concept as people being offended by the word “insert offensive slur for disabled people here".
Now I’m just angry because my father-in-law thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to still throw around this word and I explain that his words are insensitive, and he doesn’t know his audience’s relationship with someone with mental disabilities and he has no way of assuming what they could be. My mother-in-law agrees. My husband agrees.
I tell him that there are other words to describe someone’s ignorance like uneducated, ignorant, dense, asinine, and even swear words. My mother-in-law gasps that I used an obscene word at the dinner table, of all places! My father-in-law doesn’t see any reason to change his ways and mumbles under his breath. Uncomfortable silence ensues at the dinner table.
I play with my pad Thai noodles remaining on my plate, mostly tracing invisible profanities with my fork. I leave the dinner table and proceed to seethe while I wash my face and get ready for bed in the comfort of our private master suite. My husband meets me on my way back, and says that he’s making my father-in-law apologize, which is relieving knowing that my husband has my back and that my father-in-law is taking responsibility for his rudeness even though he was likely not going to alter his actions. I thought it was over—but I was so, so wrong.
My father-in-law’s attempt at a half-serious apology was, “Sorry I said stuff about [insert same slur here]s hehehe". I have a very difficult time disguising my true feelings from my demeanor, so I can safely assume that everyone could read the very annoyed look on my face before I walked away. My husband says his father needs to be sincere and apologize for being abrasive.
My father-in-law says “Sorry for being loud,” and I just looked at him straight-faced and asked “…and?” which I did not realize I had the gall to say out loud. But then he finishes his apology with, “…and being abrasive". And I thanked him for his apology. Even though we all know that my father-in-law did not actually feel like he was in the wrong, nor did he learn a lesson.
The next night, Christmas Eve, we are all watching trash Christmas movies together when my father-in-law has me all wound up again. I honestly don't even remember what it was about this time. My father-in-law then claims that he’s just “being honest,” which is the lowest possible excuse for inhumane behavior. So naturally, I call him out and say that he may be claiming to be honest but in reality, he’s just being patronizing, insensitive, and inconsiderate to other people.
And my father-in-law says, “Ya know, you’re a lot like me...” I couldn’t believe what came out of my mouth next. I unwittingly interrupted and said, “What? Like a jerk?!” I suppose it was a tad disdainful and I normally would have felt contrite about my comeback, but my mother-in-law was quick to agree with me and so was my husband. Thankful for them for supporting my shiny spine and speaking up about it!
The next day was Christmas. My husband and his mother are in the garage working on a project while I am in the kitchen and my father-in-law is in the living room. My father-in-law has the audacity to ask, “So how do your parents feel about you and my son being married?” I let him finish his thought so that he can elaborate, even though I’m already feeling defensive.
He continues, “I heard this story about how a religious Muslim father took his daughter’s life for being too Western, and they later discovered the Muslim father was part of an extremist group". Instead of giving him the satisfaction of seeing me all riled up, I simply stated, “Well, I’m still alive". My father-in-law tries to keep pushing my buttons on the matter and I just repeat my previous statement of, “All I can say is that I’m still alive".
He let it go. Oh, but how I wish I could have ripped him a new one. My father-in-law has met my parents. He is aware of the reciprocating unconditional love that we have for each other. I am still baffled as to why he would ask such a ridiculous question when he understands my relationship with my parents. My husband hasn’t been feeling well and, on the evening of Christmas, he announces that he needs to take a break to rest.
My in-laws and I continue to hang out in the living room, but they are both taking my husband’s temporary absence very personally. I explain that he is pretty introverted and just needs to recharge, and he’s also feeling a bit under the weather so it’s good for him to rest. My husband’s away for about half an hour and then joins us all again.
He proceeds to explain the same thing I just told my in-laws. My mother-in-law is listening while I explain that my husband has been introverted ever since I’ve known him and he even needs breaks from me. And it’s not personal, he’s not annoyed or upset with me or them. He just needs alone time. My mother-in-law hears me out and now understands that this is normal behavior, but her husband does not care to listen to our conversation.
My husband and I finish making Christmas dinner for all four of us. At the dinner table, my father-in-law is quiet and, after finishing his meal, he excuses himself to go to bed without saying a word. My mother-in-law is very appreciative of us cooking dinner for everyone, and we continue spending more time with her since she’s not ready for bed yet.
The last night of their visit we have the final showdown. My father-in-law tells my husband that next time, if he needs alone time, that he should just say he is tired instead. I cheerfully chime in, “Are you asking my husband to spare your feelings?” And my husband smirks at me and says he loves my spin on this, which is funny considering that he is very insensitive and makes fun of others for being so sensitive.
It was so amusing to watch him trying to reverse his statement and backtrack. Then, my husband points out that my father-in-law acted like a child the night before and just pouted at dinner and went to bed early, which was very passive-aggressive behavior. My father-in-law is still tripping over his words and I tell him, “Even though you may be upset with my husband, that is no reason for you to be unappreciative of our time and energy spent on cooking a meal for you".
My father-in-law finally stops and, even though he doesn’t fully admit all his faults, him stopping was a sign of defeat. This holiday wasn’t the best, but my husband and I got to go to bed with at least one win. After the showdown, my mother and father call so they can wish my mother-in-law and father-in-law happy holidays and invite them over to their home. But the jerk had to get one last jab in.
My father-in-law then says to my mother, “When is your daughter giving us grandchildren? You need to talk to her about that". I interrupt with, “I don’t think anyone should be telling me what to do with my body". My mother didn’t hear my response, but I told her later and she supports me 100% and knows that I am the only person that is allowed to make decisions about my body.
She also agrees that my husband and I are the only ones that should decide whether or not we want to have children. So yeah, my father-in-law is a guy who justifies using offensive terms for no reason, despite being extremely sensitive himself. And his impolite demands that I carry on his bloodline did not get him anywhere. I suspect that next time, my husband and I will be invited for a shorter stay.
The visit was not enjoyable, but at least I know that my husband 100% supports me. He's happy that I stand up for myself and, during each one of the little flare-ups, he agreed with all of my rebuttals, my tact, and how I generally deal with his parents. I am lucky to have met him and married him, even with all of the silliness that his father has brought into my life.
25. Bad Roommates
My father-in-law got kicked out and still doesn’t understand why. This happened a few weeks ago now and I figured I'd post about it to kinda cope with the situation. So late September or early October, my father-in-law moved in with my husband, our two-year-old, and myself. It went okay at first. My husband had told me that his dad wouldn't use his substances in our house.
I had grown up with someone who had a serious substance problem and I wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea that my child would be around something similar. That and him keeping his room clean were the only rules that we had. He did good with those rules for the first week or so…and then things went south really fast.
My father-in-law has always had a problem with me. I didn't graduate high school because my mental illness got to the point that I had to go to the hospital. I had "ugly" face piercings, and I took his baby boy away from him in his eyes. Just an entire list that any normal person would have gotten over at some point because I make my husband happy.
He just couldn't let it go. For months, he would make sly comments under his breath about my parenting, about how the food I cooked wasn't to his liking, or about how I only cleaned after my toddler went to bed. I had told my husband for a while that I just wanted him gone. I had my problems with him. It's not really a big deal, but to me it was, for Christmas 2019.
He got my husband a $400 radio that he had put time and effort into looking for. Nothing for my child. And for me? He got me something that cost $3 at the dollar store. He literally saw it two weeks later and just thought "This will be good". It doesn't matter, but he clearly just held his son in a higher regard than his grandson.
I would say about a month ago, he blew up. My toddler was being loud because he liked the cartoon that was on TV and my father-in-law got upset about this. He had been sleeping for the past four days at that point, and I was apparently the reason that his sleep was interrupted. So he said "This is garbage, I'm trying to sleep. Make that freaking kid shut the heck up".
I blew. I told him to get his stuff and leave. I texted my husband to get him out or the kid and I wouldn't be returning home. My husband sided with me and kicked out his dad. Yeah, I may have been a jerk about the situation, but later that night we were looking for evidence for confirmation of my suspicion about him using illicit substances in our house.
Turns out I was right. He was not only making his substances in our house, but was also lighting up when no one was home. I was enraged and saw red. I blocked him on all social media, and advised my husband to do the same. He hasn't, because he wants his dad to get his stuff out of our house first. So at this point, our house is ours again.
Now, he is apparently still talking smack about me to people, and can't seem to understand that it was his actions that made him homeless. This man literally does not take responsibility for his actions. He blames me for his actions, but I had the last laugh.
26. A Dog’s Life
This story sounds more and more bizarre to me the more I think about it. I am coming to realize that my father has changed from a great dad into a selfish, favorite-child-seeking jerk. I learned several years ago that I was just not in his "golden corral". And I don't know what I did to deserve this Little Matchgirl treatment, always looking in and never invited.
I called my dad to wish him and his wife a happy Thanksgiving. In the course of the conversation, my dad let slip that my younger sister and her son from out of state would be staying with him over the long weekend. Blah, blah, putting up Christmas lights, blah blah blah. Since I work full time and was off on Friday, I asked if I could come by and visit him, my sister, and my stepmom.
Most importantly, I wanted to bring my two granddaughters, i.e. his great-granddaughters, to meet him and the family. The girls are seven and almost four years old, respectively. He has not seen my kids for years. Dad says, sure, c'mon out. So I made plans to gather up the kids and make the 40-mile trek to his house. Well, I was in for a harsh surprise.
The next morning, I received a rather garbled text from my stepmom which I interpreted as, "Don't come out. The dog won't like it". What the heck? So, I called the house. My dad answered and when I asked what's up, he confirmed that my younger sister's dog is not a "people person," and "might get upset" with too many people around.
"We'll make it another time," he said. Uh, yeah. My sister's freaking dog's feelings are more important than finally meeting his great-grandchildren. At that moment, I realized that I have been making all the effort with him and my sisters, and that this effort is never, ever reciprocated. I think it's time to be done and drop the rope.
I'm just tired of being treated like the least of his acquaintances.
27. Hitting A Wall
The last time I saw my father-in-law, he was pushing his wife into the wall because she was trying to stop him from taking a swing at my husband (his son). He had gotten furious at my son for having a typical eight-year-old's reaction to something, and he lost his temper and lunged at our son. My husband pulled his father off our son and told him to stay the heck away.
The next 15 minutes were chaos. My father-in-law was completely out of control, telling us to "Get the heck out" of his house, refusing to get out of my husband's way while we tried to leave, daring my husband to hit him, and trying to pick up our toddler who was crying from all the noise. Our eight-year-old was howling in fear and pain and, the next day, he had a bruise the size of a softball on his hip, courtesy of his "loving" grandfather.
So imagine my delight when this llama-looking jerk texts my husband and me a link to a recall of the type of water bottles our kids use. Apparently, there's a faulty valve or something in them. Whatever. This jerk hasn't apologized for losing his mind on an eight-year-old and putting the four of us through an avalanche of terror because he couldn't regulate his temper.
And NOW he thinks he should go ahead and text us "helpful" tips to keep our kids safe?? Hey dummy, the safest thing I can do for my family is KEEP THEM THE HECK AWAY FROM YOU AND YOUR ENABLING WIFE. His wife has been known to say stuff like "That's his way of saying sorry," like it's cute or something. No, madam.
Offering a real, sincere apology is the only way to say "I'm sorry". And even then, we don't have to accept it. Enough with your pathetic rug-sweeping!
28. Seafood Diet
My father-in-law once tried to stop us from getting married by having a meeting with my parents. Spoiler alert: it didn’t go well. That’s the first thing you need to know. The second thing you need to know is that my husband has been deployed overseas since the beginning of the year, leaving my daughter and me mostly by ourselves.
I have a strong friend network in the area, but it's nothing compared to having family around. So I had a choice to make for that summer. I could stay two states away from my family, just myself and my baby daughter for the whole summer, or I could go home and stay with my parents. I chose to go home. Here is the story of what happened when I did.
Every summer, my in-laws take a family trip in July because there are altogether five of us, including spouses (like me!) who have birthdays in July. So we have always picked that month to have a family trip that doubles as a group birthday bash. This year, we decided to go to the beach where my in-laws had a timeshare. It was wonderful!
We had a great time. My daughter got to play with her cousins. I got to get burnt on the beach. Just kidding, actually, I was super careful because I was adding to my tattoo collection at the end of the month. But either way, we had a great time. However, I obviously would not be posting a story online if something didn’t go wrong along the way!
We always go out to eat once while we are on vacation. This time, since we were at the beach, everyone wanted to go to a seafood buffet. Being at the beach, we knew it would be expensive, but we were planning on eating our weight in seafood, so win/win, right? Nope. My father-in-law did not like the $40 per person price tag for the buffet and said that we needed to find somewhere cheaper to go.
I should add that he was not paying for everyone. He was paying only for himself and his wife. We spent the whole week trying to find a cheaper place to eat. We did not find somewhere, but what we did find was coupons to the original buffet as well as vouchers from their timeshare meeting, and then a veterans’ discount. All in all, it brought the price down to about $30 a person, and everyone was happy except him.
He was still saying that we needed to find somewhere cheaper. Saturday comes, and after we have packed everything up, it is time to eat. We all agree that we still want to go to the buffet place and my father-in-law finally relents a little. He says maybe there is a lunch price and a dinner price, so we load up in our cars and show up as the buffet opens at 2:30.
I go inside and ask the hostess if they have a lunch price. The lady says no ma’am, we don’t open till 2:30 so it's just the one dinner price. I thank her and go back outside to relay the message. My father-in-law asserts that we are going to find somewhere else to eat and starts heading towards the cars as the cacophony of disagreement erupts behind him.
All of us argue that this is where we want to eat and he says fine, then four of us can eat here and four of us can eat somewhere else. At this point, I have had it. Seafood is my favorite, and I can smell the crab legs coming from inside the buffet. So I look my father-in-law in the eyes and say: “Well, I am eating here, and my daughter is going with me". She also loves seafood.
I turn around and walk towards the restaurant, as I hear the group murmur their agreement and follow me in. We get inside, and my mother-in-law comes in just a few minutes later, letting us know that her husband left and took her wallet and phone with him. I tell her I’m paying for her food, and we go sit down and dig in.
Later, we are all chowing down on some crab legs, and my youngest brother-in-law comes to the table with a plate full of food and says that my father-in-law is waiting for us in the lobby. He asked if we should go and get him? I look up from my plate and say no, he is on time out and he can stay there for a while. We all chuckle, including my mother-in-law, and then go back to eating.
I eventually asked my mother-in-law where he went. Apparently, he had gone down the road and gotten himself a cheap basket of popcorn shrimp.
29. Putting The “Fun” In “Funeral”
My husband (32), myself (32), and our two-year-old son are at a funeral for my husband's grandmother this week. We've traveled 11 hours away from home to be here, and it's been a great opportunity for my husband to catch up with his mom's side of the family. A little backstory: my father-in-law has been a problem for a lot of reasons over the ten years that my husband and I have been together.
We live almost 12 hours away from him and his wife, and we see them about once a year. My husband has excused his father's behavior in the past by saying "He's the nicest jerk you'll ever meet," or that his dad is just "socially awkward". My husband used to be extremely close to his father after his biological mom passed when he was about six years old.
My husband has said that his father was expecting either him or his siblings to take over the family business, but they've all moved far away from home. I have felt for YEARS that his father doesn't like me, and that he puts a lot of the blame for us moving to our current city, and so far away from him, on me. It hasn’t been a pleasant experience—but that was nothing compared to what happened this week.
Today, we're at this funeral, which is at a Catholic church, and I'm seated next to my mother-in-law, and next to her is my father-in-law. In the middle of the service, he leans over and asks me "Are you SURE my son is the father? Your kid looks nothing like him". To clarify, my son definitely does look like my husband. People call them twins. There is NO mistaking it and I know he was "joking".
But I found it incredibly hurtful that he would even jokingly insinuate that I would be unfaithful to my husband, and in a church, no less. I responded that yes, I was 100% sure, and faced forward because I really couldn't think of any other way to reasonably respond. My mother-in-law quickly hissed at him: "Why would you say that?" And then the eulogy started.
And since it was a Catholic mass, I had to sit next to these people for two hours with my son next to me, just holding back tears. I can guarantee that my father-in-law would not have said that if my husband had been sitting by us. Now, I'm sitting in the car at the burial while my son naps. I’m trying to collect myself so that I don't impact my husband’s day.
I honestly don't know if I'm overreacting to this, or if it was truly as gross a thing to say to someone as it feels.
30. I’ll Be Watching You
I call my ex-stepfather Nascar Ned, and I have been in full no contact mode with him for over seven years at this point. This happened after my mom divorced Ned almost 31 years ago. After my mom divorced Ned, I guess he got jealous that she chose to move on and date other people, because he got really, really creepy. He would park outside of our house and just watch the house in silence.
I lived in the country and my mom's family owned all the land around my house. Ned lived 20 minutes away in another county. How do I know this? Because Ned owned a specific car in an unusual color with lights underneath it. I think he thought he looked cool, but he didn't. We could all see him parked across the road from us, awkwardly watching.
I don't remember if my mom called the authorities on him, but even if she did we lived so far away from town that by the time they got there he would have been gone. What gets me is that he would sit out there and watch for nothing. She didn't go out that much, and that would only ever be on the weekends. She also had only two other boyfriends before she married my step dad. I don't think my mom knows that I still remember this all happening.
31. Choked Up
My father-in-law and I do not have a good relationship. Last night, it finally escalated. He lives in our backyard still, but we mostly had a silent understanding that we would keep away from each other as much as possible to keep the peace and spare my wife any hardship. I'd do my best to keep up with household chores and work, and he pays for our groceries in lieu of rent or anything else.
The reason we have this arrangement is that he hasn't been working on our property like he originally said he was going to do to earn his keep around here. What pushed him over the edge last night was that two nights ago he bought dinner for all of us. I went and picked it up, but did not take his food out to him right away.
My reasoning for this was because A) I genuinely thought he was going to come into the house and get it, and B) I was on the phone with my wife trying to find out if she was going to be stuck in Seattle overnight in the middle of some chaos, because the curfew was blocking her path to the ferry terminal, so I was feeling rather anxious and distracted by that.
Last night, he came in fuming about his food not being delivered to him while it was still hot. I tried to explain to him the reasoning for why that happened and I sincerely apologized for the confusion. His reaction was truly horrifying. At this point, he reached out and put me in a chokehold. I fought back and he wrestled me to the ground, continuing to attempt to choke me out before my wife came downstairs and broke us up.
My neck is fine. There’s some light bruising and soreness, but it'll heal. I talked to my wife and told her that I'm willing to let this go this time, but if anything remotely close to this happens again, even so much as just a threatening voice, the authorities will be called on him. She said that was fine and that she would back me up if I ever felt that I needed to do that.
12 hours later, I'm anxious and shaken up. I already had to take my emergency anxiety medicine. And I’m finding it hard to concentrate on work today. I've already informed my closest friends of what happened and they all agree that I'm being too lenient and should have called the authorities on him right away.
32. The Old Switcharoo
So the relationship between myself, my boyfriend, and his father is, uh, precariously cordial at this point. My father-in-law uses the fact that he helps pay for my boyfriend's truck, insurance, and phone bill to intimidate and guilt him into spending inordinate amounts of time "helping the family," which is usually just a guise to get my boyfriend to spend time around him because he has zero friends of his own.
More notably, he tries to lasso us into babysitting his elementary school-aged daughter, AKA my boyfriend's half-sister, who he has limited visitation with. He wants us to do this so that he can go on dates or attempt to go to the gym. Afterward, he got upset at us—and the way he lashed out was devastating. He emptied out my boyfriend's bank account. This was all because we did not swing by at the drop of a hat to babysit for him the day before our finals last December.
After that incident, we took several steps to distance ourselves from him. We got a new bank account that he doesn't know about or have access to. I started a new higher-paying job and I let him know that my schedule is no longer open to random babysitting requests at the last minute. This resulted in him being left high and dry several times when he wanted me to help him with his little one. For the most part, he pulled back after this and things were okay for a while. I didn't see the little one or my father-in-law until her birthday in May, and that was mainly because I actually wanted to see her.
She can be a little brat, but I can't deny that I do care about the little goof. In June, though, we did agree to help him watch the little one in the mornings so that he could go to the gym, as he had her for the entire month. He initially wanted us to do this for free, but I flat out said that this wasn't an option, given the gas per week that we'd be paying for in order to help him out.
He agreed to fill up our tank once a week. We drive a truck, so this was actually a good deal for us. Plus, he also agreed to pay us $250 for our time each month. At times, he took advantage of our generosity and wouldn't return to the house until 2:00 in the afternoon, which was three hours past the previously agreed upon ending time.
However, the biggest benefit that my boyfriend got out of this was that his relationship with the little one has made significant progress. Her mom talks very badly about my boyfriend to her and it hurt him to have his little sister disdain him so blatantly. But by the end of June, she was excited to see him daily and to hang out with him by going to the pool, playing video games together, biking, etc.
During all of this, my father-in-law has been in a custody battle with his ex-wife, who is a major jerk for a variety of reasons. He initially just wanted more time with the little one and tried to settle out of court, but that didn't happen. So now they've been in and out of court on a constant basis for the last year or so at least. They're reaching the finale though, with temporary custody orders scheduled to be made in the next month or so.
This brings us to what he did last night. He made the most nonsensical proposal to my boyfriend while I was at work. Prior to my boyfriend moving out of his father's house and moving in with me, he managed to hook his father up with a fellow college student to rent out the extra room in their house too for an extra $400 a month. After my boyfriend left, the student continued to rent from my father-in-law and has been doing so for about a year.
We’ll call that student “A". My boyfriend and I were initially renting a room from a friend, but we recently moved into an apartment very close to our college campus that has a ton of amenities and locational benefits that will help us save even more money. We have two other roommates, but they're seldom here and it's been wonderful having our own place so far.
Yesterday night, however, my father-in-law told my boyfriend that he was worried that his ex-wife would try to use the fact that A was still living in father-in-law's house to keep him from getting more time with her. His master plan was to ask us to take A's place in his house for $400 a month, and then he would give A $500 to take our room in our new apartment.
Y'all. When my boyfriend told me about this, I had to stop myself from straight-up going off on the messenger. Never mind that I pay $200 more than A does a month for our apartment, so there's no telling if A would even be willing to pay the extra money. Not to mention the extra $500 wouldn't do much for him in the long term. But that’s just the first problem.
On top of that, my father-in-law lives right off of a major road that has disgusting constant traffic, is further from our campus and my job and public transit, and has a much higher cost of living for groceries, gas, etc. Even if I were comfortable moving into his house, which I'm not, we would not be saving any money because the extra gas and Lyft and Uber expenses would quickly eat through our entire budget.
On top of this, the bathroom attached to the room does not have a functional toilet. A uses the one downstairs, and my father-in-law has told A that if he wants the A/C lowered then he'd have to pay extra for it. I can already tell you that I'd have to pay extra because the second floor gets unbearably hot during the summer, and I'm not going to sweat in my sleep every night.
So effectively, he's asking us to pay him $500-ish a month to live under his rules. Now, the easiest thing to do in my humble opinion is to simply talk to A, explain the situation (which he already knows about to a good degree), and let him know that if the courts deem his presence an issue, he will be put on a 30-day notice to leave. He rents month to month, and there is no signed lease.
My boyfriend's younger brother, who will also be attending our university, will be back from service training in the next few weeks, and he can stay in A's room. Bam, problem solved. However, my father-in-law doesn't want to lose the $400 per month if he doesn't have to by prematurely evicting A, hence spoiling his brilliant freaking workaround.
Despite my boyfriend trying to tell his dad that these ideas and schemes seem overly complicated, he refused to listen and instead asked if we could come over on Saturday morning to talk about it. I am so ready to take him to task over all of this nonsense and let him know that not only is his plan convoluted and absurd, but that there is literally no net benefit for me or my boyfriend to go along with this.
Our entire life would be more expensive, more stressful, and more inconvenient. Trying to finish up our schooling while dealing with his incessant lectures and blatant time-wasting would not exactly be a walk in the park either. We also highly suspect he's pushing my boyfriend to do this because then he'll have all his kids under the same roof again.
And as I've stated before, this man has no friends, is lonely, and is obsessed with trying to force his idea of being a family onto his children. He's made multiple attempts and comments to my boyfriend about him moving back in, but each time my boyfriend shuts him down. He's almost certainly not going to take our refusal well, but I really don't care at this point.
I'm not your daughter and you don't pay squat for me. I have zero obligation to put my own life into a more difficult position just to help you out, when you won't even treat my boyfriend and me as adults with our own priorities and our own free will. Wish me luck, everyone! Hopefully this meeting will put an end to this ridiculous saga once and for all.
33. Never Lose Hope
So this one actually has a somewhat happy ending. My father was always a yeller. He loved to go nuts on everyone, and scream and tower over my mother and me. He never physically hit me, but the mental and verbal mistreatment was always pretty darn rough. It all came to a head during my junior year of college. I attended a university that was about two hours away from my hometown.
My parents had ended up splitting up during my freshman year, and they were living apart at this point. I would mostly spend breaks with my mother, for obvious reasons, but I kept trying to make things work between me and my dad. My mother decided to divorce him, which made my dad's anger problems even worse. To the point that anything would make him go off.
Now, I was formally diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD during my university days. At the time of my junior year, I had just started taking antidepressants. They really messed with my energy levels, and I was tired all the time anyway. Well, all of this leads up to say that at the end of one of my visits, it was my dad's turn to drive me back to university.
Now, we were meant to leave early in the afternoon. But I woke up feeling very sick. Both my mom and I let him know that I was not feeling well and would be late getting to his house. I stayed in bed most of that day and was finally feeling well enough to travel by around 4:00 PM. So at that time, my mother packed me up, and drove me to my father's house. That’s where things took a turn for the worse.
Now, when I got there, he was clearly very angry. So I did my usual stay quiet and scrunch up to stay small routine. I quickly grabbed my things that I'd left at his house and we started the drive back. About ten minutes away from the house, I realized that I had left my medication behind. I asked my dad to turn back so I could get it. His reaction was truly vile.
He started shouting full volume at me. His car, I should mention, was a two-seater convertible. It was a very small car and we were very close together. So he's shouting at me at the top of his lungs, gesturing in my face, and I'm just trying to keep it together. The second we make it back to his house, I get out of the car and slam the door. I honestly did not mean to slam it.
My hands felt numb because I was that afraid. And in the scariest tone I ever heard, he called me a jerk. I ran full tilt inside the house and locked myself in the bathroom. I was crying and having a panic attack. I refused to come out and he was banging on the door. I demanded to speak to my mother. He called her up. I heard him speaking to her but the sound was muffled.
He came back and said, "Your mother doesn't want to deal with you! She isn't coming to get you. So you better come out and get in the car. Now". Now, my mom has had her bad moments from time to time. And I was so panicked and upset that I didn't question it. We drove back to my school and he dropped me off in front of my dorm. He took my bags out of his trunk, tossed them on the ground, and drove away.
I called my mom once I got inside and asked her why she hadn't come to get me. That’s when I found out the devastating truth. She had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out my dad had never actually told her about the situation. She had no idea that I had been locked in the bathroom, nothing. He had lied to me. And that was it.
That was the final straw. I wrote my dad an email. It was long and I detailed every hurt and major issue that he had ever caused for me. But I ended it by telling him: Today I was terrified of you. I believed that you would have hurt me or done even worse to me. And you lied to me to get your way. Something you have never done before. And something you promised you would never do. You broke that trust and now it is gone.
I told him he needed serious counseling. And he would never be allowed in my life again until he got help. I told him he would never walk me down the aisle at my wedding. That if I had children he would never see them. Not unless he changed. And really changed. Then I went full no contact. For nine months, I didn't call, text, or email him. Nothing whatsoever.
If he tried to reach out, I ignored him. I was in therapy then and used that to help me deal with it. Nine months later, I was in a play at my university. It was a bit part, nothing special at all. But my dad had seen it advertised on my university website and had noticed my name in the cast list. One night, after a show, I walked into the audience. I was going to go out with friends to eat.
But I got an unexpected surprise. My dad was there. He was holding flowers and gave them to me. I was speechless and a little afraid. But then my dad, on his own volition, apologized to me. He got choked up and was fighting back real tears. He said he was very sorry for what he did and that my words had hurt him. But he also said that he had taken a step back and looked at his behavior, and he was horrified by what he had become.
He told me that he decided that he loved me more than wanting to be "right". He had sought out a therapist and had been in counseling for the past eight or nine months. He didn't force his company on me. He just apologized, told me that he was getting help, and told me that he would always answer any call or communication from me if I ever wanted to reach out.
That was nearly ten years ago. I checked up on his claims, and he was telling the truth. He and I had a couple of sessions together where I went and talked to his therapist with him. My dad has never tried to justify any of his past behavior or mistreatment. He never blamed me again. He had a darn good therapist and saw them for several years.
My fiancé and I are not going to be having children. But my dad will be walking me down the aisle at our wedding. My mom will be too. My dad has helped me move across the country. He has financially supported me and has talked me through anxiety attacks and depressive episodes. He has learned to be patient and is kinder than I have ever dreamed possible.
And it's all because he decided that he loved me more than being right. That his love for me was more important than his anger. So if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me! My dad is one of the very rare problematic parents who actually became a good one through hard work and serious effort. And it was because he took a long hard look at himself and chose his daughter and love over rage.
The end.
34. Expecting Something
I'm currently a little over five months pregnant and I haven't gotten as much as a “how are you doing” from my dad. But my mom and dad still talk regularly even though they have been divorced for 14 years. And if my dad isn't complaining about his current wife, he's talking to her about how excited he is to be a grandfather. Weird coming from a guy who literally doesn't speak to me.
In fact, on the rare occasions that our paths do cross, he treats me like I'm still 12 years old, so I'm not sure where he's getting these ideas that he's gonna be an active grandfather in my child’s life. His wife also just gave birth, so at the age of 28, I'm a big sister...again. I called my dad to congratulate him on his new baby, and he said thank you.
He was trying to make small talk about his new child, then the conversation turned to, "Oh, I can't wait to babysit my first grandchild, take her to do activities that a parent would usually do, and for her to have play dates and sleepovers with her uncle," basically parent-free visits. I'd like for my child to know her young aunt and uncle, so I'm not opposed to play dates, but I told him over the phone that I'm not okay with unsupervised visits, so sleepovers would probably be a no.
Also, you live an hour away, so it's inconvenient for you to babysit. He just went silent and said we will see about that. My father never made the effort to interact with me after my parents got divorced, didn't try to get to know my husband, tried to make any milestone I had all about himself, and just doesn't even know anything about who I am as a person.
So I don't know if he's going to try and treat my daughter as a do-over. To make matters more difficult, my mom keeps saying that I need to give my father another chance.
35. All Over The World
Background: My dad has some mental issues. While he has his moments of crazy, they often come from being raised by my horrible grandparents. I know that my dad has good intentions, but he doesn't have a good concept of normal sometimes. For reference, I am an adult and have been one for a while. Now, here comes the twisted story.
My dad has a club that he attends and is very active in, made up of mostly older men united by a common hobby. They lost contact unexpectedly with one of their members for a week and were very concerned until he could be located. This club's solution was for everyone to voluntarily share their location via a location-sharing app. Keyword: voluntarily.
But my dad now wants to make another group with the same app for just my immediate family to share our locations with each other at all times. I do not want to do this, because when I was a young adult I fought very hard to not have to send them a check-in text every night. I know if I give my location, my dad will check it every night to make sure I got home, and if I am anywhere unusual or out later than he thinks I should be, he will text me about it.
I know because that's exactly what he used to do and why I made this boundary in the first place. It also bothers me that instead of asking me if I'd be okay with doing that, he said "I am asking you to do this," which with him really means "I am telling you to do this, but I'm trying to be polite about it". I see the point of knowing a family member's location if they are on a trip somewhere and I voluntarily check in when I am traveling long distances.
But I am an adult and I feel like my parents knowing my location all the time would be infantilizing. They see it as being able to find me quickly if something really bad should happen to me. Am I being the jerk here by not wanting to install the app? Is there a middle ground where I can maintain my sense of privacy while still soothing my parents, and especially my dad's fears?
Is there a polite way to maintain my boundary or am I being paranoid? Apparently, he tried to volunteer me to join the group, without my consent, even after my mother told him not to ask as she thought I'd say no. When I did initially say no, things were rough. He first tried to argue, to which I said I wasn't changing my mind, to which he claimed he wasn't trying to change my mind.
If past behavior holds true, that will be the last I hear of it until the next new way of creepily stalking your family arrives on the scene. Thank you all for listening. Y'all are good people.
36. Please And Thank You
My father-in-law is offended by his nine-year-old granddaughter. He has been the bane of my existence our entire marriage, which is over 20 years old at this point. He's one of the most self-absorbed, entitled, and selfish people I have ever met. He's the man who said he didn't need a seeing-eye-dog because, "I have my wife". Yeah...
One day, I went to drop off my youngest son at my in-laws’ place, which is a once-a-week thing. My youngest daughter, who is nine years old, said on the way over there, "I can't wait to see Grandma and ask for a popsicle!" We drive up and I send the kids in. I've been teaching all day and my feet are DONE IN, so I stay in the car and wave goodbye to everyone.
A few minutes go by, and my mother-in-law comes out. We chat for a minute, then my daughter gets back in the car and we head out. The next day, my husband gets this text from his father: "I want you to know that I am not happy with your daughter. When she came over this afternoon to help her brother bring his stuff in, the first thing she did before even acknowledging your mother or saying hello to her or giving her a hug was asking if she had a popsicle".
It went on: “She ran by me without even acknowledging me or saying hello to me or hugging me and she just ran and got her popsicle. When she ran by me I said, ‘Well, hello to you, too,’ and when she came back then she finally hugged me. I want you to know I am not happy with her. I think she can be, and a lot of times is, a rude person. She was rude to me and your mother today. I'm not mad at you. I just wanted you to know how your daughter acted today".
Seriously. SERIOUSLY? So much no. Was she rude? Yes. Was she "I'm a 24-year-old entitled adult who does not have to speak to anyone to get what I want" kind of rude? Heck no. She was a "nine-year-old kid who is oblivious" kind of rude. Did she need to be called out on it? Sure. But did it deserve this type of response? Nope. Not even a little bit.
We sent back a response saying that we would deal with the manners issue, but did not want our little girl being labeled as "rude" when she was simply being childish. You know, because she’s a child?? My husband said, "She feels very comfortable at your house and so doesn't feel the need to be extremely formal when she comes over there. Though if you would prefer that, we can teach them to be when they come over there".
His response? "I don't recall telling you that she is a rude person". WHAT? Those were your EXACT WORDS. They are literally RIGHT THERE IN WRITING, in the very conversation we are still having!! He did later say that he got his wife to read the message back for him, and realized that he did say that. He apologized, which I really appreciated, but the fact is that this is what he really thinks.
He said, "She's more interested in getting something for herself than she is in being nice and polite to people like me and your mother". This is getting long, so I'll wrap up with a couple more thoughts. What's with the "your daughter" and "your mother" stuff? Why can't he just say their names? I don't understand what that's supposed to be communicating.
And finally, the "I'm not mad at you, I just wanted you to know..." thing. Do you think I give a freaking flying flip whether you're mad at me or not? I'm mad at YOU for the way you've spoken about my daughter!! I mean, how does a person get to that age without realizing that this is not normal behavior? I don’t think I’m overreacting by being annoyed about this whole experience.
37. Food Fight
My father-in-law has a history of testing boundaries. He loves to talk about "corrupting" his grandchildren and telling them they don't have to listen to their parents, etc. A few years ago, he fed my first child "little tastes" of food when he had explicitly been told not to because she was too young. As a result, I now hover like a helicopter every time he, or pretty much anyone for that matter, holds my baby.
We went to Christmas dinner at my sister-in-law's house, and my father-in-law had my baby. I was trying to keep an eye on my two-year-old and also get a bite to eat for myself. Somehow, I lost track of him and the baby at one point, and when I found them, they were in the kitchen. I am stressing out, so I figure the best route is direct.
I point blank ask him if he has fed my baby anything. His reaction was SO awful. He snarks back with "What, are you gonna smell his breath to check?" I don't like playing his games and I can't be sure that he is teasing, so I take my baby back and return to my seat. When I look up, my father-in-law is putting his coat on and screaming at me, “WELL, IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE A RUDE IDIOT LIKE THAT, YOU CAN JUST STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM MY HOUSE AND MY FAMILY!”
And he storms out. Obviously, this got everyone's attention, so they ask what happened. Most people seemed to be a bit more on my side, but I don’t know how they really felt because he wasn't actually around to influence them or make anyone feel the need to voice their support of him. I did, however, get a lot of "He was just kidding, you know how he is" type things, as well as "I think both of you could have reacted better," etc.
Luckily, I have a wonderful husband, He doesn't like that there was drama, but he actively has my back on this. He spoke up in my defense immediately, and he privately spoke to his mother about it at the first available opportunity. He feels that his father has put us in a bad situation. When my father-in-law says or does things that we find inappropriate, especially regarding our children, my options are limited.
Speak up for myself and risk disrespecting him, or let it go and let him get away with his nonsense. My husband thinks I probably did what was best for the situation. Most of his family lets his father do and say whatever he wants all the time. My husband has always butted heads with his father, but their relationship has improved significantly since adulthood.
We aren't sure where this leaves us just yet. I've suggested accepting the ban on coming to his house, rather than a full no contact situation. We would still see each other at other family get-togethers, but my husband isn't ready to go that far yet. He says we also won't accept a rug sweep where everyone just pretends nothing happened, so we need to have some kind of sit-down discussion about the situation.
Sadly, knowing my father-in-law, an actual apology is completely out of the question, so we aren't setting our bar very high. I think I'm going to request that this discussion take place at a neutral location. We’ll see how it goes.
38. Mug Shot
I accidentally broke my mum's favorite mug. Her boss’s wife had bought it for her, and it was an expensive brand, so I immediately ordered a replacement for it. It arrived today, and my dad asked what the parcel was. When I explained that it was to replace the mug that I had broken, he said “I hope it’s not that one with the guy sitting on the bench".
And when I said it was, he said, “Would she really have missed it?” Maybe she wouldn’t have, but if she broke my favorite mug, I’d hope she’d replace it, so it goes both ways. He’s now mad at me for...... doing the right thing and trying to be a good person? We’re only in the second week of him working from home and I’ve already had quite enough of it
39. You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!
So this happened a couple of years ago, when I was first getting together with my girlfriend. I’m a young male that happens to like makeup. Actually any accessories, but that’s beside the point. My girlfriend, who also adores makeup and who’s absolutely thrilled to be able to dress me up nicely, was going to a pre-planned party with some of her old high school friends that night, and since we lived apart at that point, I stayed in her room for the night.
So I make plans with one of my mates from the area and forget to wash off the nail polish that my girlfriend had put on me the night before, before I exit the house. We hang out for a while, but his girlfriend comes and picks him up after her shift at this restaurant she works at, so we part ways relatively early in the evening.
I then go home to my girlfriend’s house and spot her parents drinking in the living room. I announce to them that I’m home and that I’ll be in my girlfriend’s room if they need anything. But her parents are intoxicated at this point and in the mood to mingle, so they wave me over and offer me a glass of something to drink. Me being “the new boyfriend,” I see this as a good opportunity to hang out with them in a less formal setting.
I accept their invitation and sit down at the table with them. OH MAN, have I lived to regret that decision. My father-in-law, immediately spotting my nail polish, goes on a rant about how ugly makeup is for men and starts passive-aggressively threatening me, saying stuff like “If I saw you at a bar and didn’t know who you were, I can’t promise you that I wouldn’t beat the heck out of you".
Yeah, that’s a normal thing to say. So me being rather non-confrontational in this sort of situation, I try to leave the conversation as courteously as I can, saying that I’m sorry he feels this way and that I won’t be making any trouble for him and the family. However, as I try to leave the room, my mother-in-law, completely absent from the conversation until now, runs over to stop me, saying that I deserve an apology and that I should rejoin the table.
This would turn out to be a futile exercise and another excuse for my future father-in-law to escalate the situation even further. Immediately as I sit down again, he asks me if I’m hiding something from them, suggesting that I’m a “closeted (insert offensive slur here)” and that my girlfriend is covering up for me. His wife is taking a different route, trying to psychoanalyze me and asking if I was ever mistreated by my peers in elementary school, since I look the way I do.
At this point, the “conversation” is rounding its second hour, and I am not being allowed to leave the room. Well, I start making mistakes. I take the bait. I tell them that it’s none of their business whether or not people mistreated me in elementary school, and I ask her father why my orientation is so important to him. This was the match that lit the kerosene-soaked bonfire.
My future father-in-law stands up, walks over to where I am sitting, calls me a slur once again, and shoves me out of my chair. I, believing I’m about to be beaten up, maneuver myself out of the room as quickly as I can, run down to my girlfriend’s bedroom, lock the door, and dial up my girlfriend who unfortunately doesn’t pick up her phone.
So, I don’t know anyone in the area, outside of the person I met up with that evening, and I don’t know what to do. I call my parents, but it’s late at night at this point and nobody’s awake. Not that I had any time to make plans for a departure, as my mother-in-law suddenly comes down after a few minutes and starts crying on my girlfriend’s bed, demanding that I comfort HER.
She cries that she has been terribly embarrassed and inconvenienced by the situation upstairs. To this day, I don't know why I even let her into the room. After half an hour, she finally leaves the bedroom, and I’m left to my lonesome in a house with two intoxicated sociopaths. I’m not proud of it, but having no other viable options, I just go to bed, hoping my girlfriend will be home early the next day.
Thankfully, she was. I tell her everything and she proceeds to pack bags for us to go to her grandparents’ house, who to this day are none the wiser about the state of affairs at her parents’ house. So, yeah. That’s pretty much how my introduction to my girlfriend’s family got started. Since then, we’ve gone very little contact with them. And, thankfully, our relationship has never been better.
40. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
My boyfriend and I live in a small apartment side building on his mother's property that she's letting us live in. Before we had gotten the cats, we consulted with her and she said it was fine. She loves cats and adores ours. My father-in-law, on the other hand, hates both cats and me. So we knew right from the start that there could be some issues ahead—but we didn’t know how bad it would get.
We had managed to keep it all a secret, until yesterday when we were cleaning out my father-in-law's van so that they could go on a road trip for my mother-in-law, who has terminal cancer. My father-in-law asked my brother-in-law where the scratches on his chest came from. Without thinking twice about it, he says our cat did it. No hate for my brother-in-law. It was an honest slip-up, and clearly not meant badly in any way.
My father-in-law absolutely blew up. He started cussing my boyfriend out and telling him to get the cat out. He literally said he would cut the cats’ heads off if we didn’t get rid of them. I slipped upstairs to hide our favorite cat since he only knew that we had the one. Everyone was screaming. My father-in-law tried to hit my boyfriend, but the others stood in between them.
All of this happened in the driveway, in broad daylight. My brother-in-law offered to take the cats for protection, and went to his house to get a carrier. While he was gone, my mother-in-law pleaded to my father-in-law to let us keep the cats. Bless her heart. I hate that she was put in the middle of this on top of dealing with her illness. Whatever she said must have worked, because we are now allowed to have the cats.
The thing is, though, that we still don't trust my father-in-law, and we need to install some kind of cheap surveillance camera or device somewhere in the apartment to make sure that nothing happens when we’re not around. In our state, it's a very serious offense to harm or kill someone's pet. So if he or one of his employees breaks in to try and do anything, we want a video recording.
41. A Little Accident
I am a 21-year-old male. When I was six years old and in First Grade, I once accidentally pooped my pants because I was too shy to ask the teacher if I could use the restroom. When I did it, I came up with a plan like, "Okay, I am going to poop my pants and I'm going to try to make it through the rest of this school day. Then when I get home, I'm going to dump my underwear in the trash".
However, this plan didn't quite work out. Other kids knew I had pooped myself because they could see poop stains on my pants and I knew I was stinking. My teacher called my mother about it, and my mother had to leave work early to come and get me. She escorted me to the bathroom, cleaned me up, and gave me a new pair of underwear.
When I look back at this incident, I laugh. Because it's a funny story now that I’m all grown up. However, my father is still very negative about it. To this day, he often makes comments like, "I can't believe you pooped your pants in school. What the heck is your problem? When you pooped your pants that day, I knew there was something off about you".
I can't believe he's holding something against me that I did when I was SIX YEARS OLD! I pooped myself because I was too shy to ask the teacher if I could use the bathroom. However, I was only six. It was first grade. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only child who ever pooped or peed on themselves. He's making me feel abnormal about something I did when I was a little kid.
42. Dancing Queen
I feel that I should name my parents. So my mom is Darkness, it’s an inside joke. But my dad is Ego, because it’s his biggest feature. My dad went to one of my dance recitals when I was 12 years old. He told me that I was awful and that when my brother, who was 9, was that bad at soccer, he made him quit because he didn’t want to waste his money on something he was so bad at.
He then went on to say that he would never go to another one of my dance recitals again. He kept his word. Not that it mattered much. His harsh words led to me quitting dancing soon after. His words stick with me so much that even five years later when I was cast in my school musical, the very thought of dancing and singing in front of an audience sent me into an anxiety spiral that led to me quitting in favor of a spot on crew.
My mom, on the other hand, has been to every performance and has had nothing but good things to say since the start. Every play, every school concert, every recital, all of them. In fact, most recently, my school's Shakespearean plays final night was $60 a ticket because of the particular theater we were in. I told her not to go because she saw the first performances and it was expensive.
She showed up anyway, with flowers and offering me a ride home.
43. The Undemocratic Process
My father-in-law filled in my husband’s ballot for him during the last election. Yes, for real. He left for an out-of-state job a few weeks before Election Day, but before he left he filled in my husband's mail-in voter ballot and left it for him to sign. The audacity! My husband told me about it a few days later, and so we got him a new replacement ballot.
We just bought a house and we're just waiting for underwriting to finish so we can close. I'm just so annoyed and angry on his behalf and like, he knows that it's wrong and that's why he told me, but I know he's ignoring it just because we're already taking the steps to deal with all of this and now it's just down to a couple of weeks and then we're gone from having to live with him.
I just really wanna report him for voter fraud but I know my husband just wants to keep things calm. So when we close, we can load up without too many problems and get the heck out of there once and for all. I'm just raging and wanting to scream. Screw him. Screw him for hovering over my husband's shoulder every time he votes and forcing or trying to force him to vote exactly as he wants him to.
It's been nine years since my husband could vote, and he's never been able to vote in peace because of his father’s imposing ways. And I wanna hit his father for it. Just. No.
44. Spring Cleaning
I finally cut my father out of my life this spring. We had been having very little contact for about 20 months previously, after having had a really bad relationship since the spring of 2017. The only reason he was in my life anyways in the previous eight years, since I moved out at the age of 18 for a whole lot of good reasons, was because I fell for his guilt-tripping.
He treated me badly, endangered my life, and did really terrible things to me for more than a decade. To name a few: after I was taken advantage of by a teenager, he said it was my fault and that I was promiscuous for seducing my poor attacker into betraying his girlfriend. Yeah, you read that right. After I was forcefully intoxicated and taken advantage of, he called me a bunch of names, blamed me for it, yelled at me, told everyone what a horrible person I was, and made my mother punish me. But that’s not all he did.
He lied to her and told her I had been sleeping around with the whole village, which was not true. He then essentially locked me up at home until it was too late to go to the authorities or the hospital to do anything about it. He tried to prevent my mother from pressing charges when I was underage and a gang tried to physically attack me for being bi, because the lives of the poor gang members shouldn't be destroyed for attacking a loser like me.
He enabled my brother to physically and mentally harm me for 20 years and tried to force me to continue being mistreated and keeping it a secret because “I deserve it". Also, because my not covering it up might destroy the poor guy’s life. He blames me for his favorite child losing friends after he beat me up in front of them.
He grounded me in my room at Christmas so that my brother’s friend could have a "family Christmas" without being bothered by my existence. He tried to ground me and forbid me to have friends because one dared to tell me it was not normal to be treated the way I was and another one refused to be my brother’s slave. I was 18 at that point and moved out weeks after that.
My dad essentially kept me as a slave whenever my mom wasn't around. There were times in my life where I was literally starving while he showered his other son with gifts, completely aware of me not having food. He tells everyone I am insane when I try to complain about any of these things. In the spring, I totally came out of the fog while, at the same time, he started to try everything to destroy my life.
Really everything he could think of. Some incredibly terrible things. You would think he was fine with me cutting him out. He didn't try to have a relationship with me anymore and instead tried to destroy my life. But no. He feels that he is entitled to having me as his obedient slave because he impregnated my mother. At least he thinks so.
After I decided that I’d had enough of him pestering her with his fake grief and trying to get information about me, I wrote him a message demanding that he stop asking my loved ones about me and pretending to care for me while still lying about me and trying to destroy my life. The answer I just received: "You forget that those are my loved ones too. Also, you shouldn't forget that you owe your existence TO ME. So accept what I do".
My mom read it and just said, "block him, he'll never change". She is currently working on moving out herself, and getting as far away from him as possible. I think she's right to do that. But really, that sense of entitlement that he has is unbelievable! Because he had intercourse with someone more than 25 years ago, I now need to be his obedient slave for as long as he lives?
45. Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Growing up, my parents were extremely awful towards me. Luckily, since I moved out at the age of 17, my dad has been in therapy, and my mom has grown a shiny spine after seeing my two younger sisters and me act like total bosses in the face of garbage-like misogyny. Still, I’ve lived at least 1,500 miles away from them for the last ten years, so going home for Christmas scares the heck out of me.
Now to the recent story. My dad has “baby rabies”. And “get those girls married” rabies. I don’t really blame him. My very intense grandma (i.e. his mom) always placed an obsessive level of importance on the three of us getting married and having kids as early as possible. These rabies have been around in my family for many years at this point.
12 years ago, my dad got intoxicated and cried that if he and my mom had only saved up enough money to pay for my wedding, then I would have been married by then. Except for the fact that I was 22 years old and single after breaking up with my terrible boyfriend. He failed to realize that there were other reasons I wasn’t married beyond their money…
Since then, as family friends have grown up, gotten married, and started to have children, my dad has kept close tabs and constantly updated us on every development. “Do you remember so and so? She was seven years younger than you?...No?...Well, she got married six months ago and they’re now pregnant!!” or “So and so brought her granddaughter over and she’s just the best! I love having babies in the house!”
I get that he’s excited about the idea of being a grandpa, and there’s probably some do-over desires in there since he was so bad when we were growing up that he basically missed out on ages nine through 18 in our lives, but I don’t think he understands that his words can be painful, especially since my sisters and I would all like to be wives and mothers.
So when we were all together, my dad brought up babies again. My middle sister is married to my amazing brother-in-law, and her two best friends were both pregnant. One has since given birth. So our dad is going on and on about wouldn’t it be cool if my sister and brother-in-law had a baby at the same time to grow up with her best friends’ kids!?
He also asked if we saw all the kids we used to babysit for with kids of their own at Christmas Eve mass!? This comment also made me realize that having 12-year-olds babysitting multiple kids between the ages of two and eight was a really weird thing. Babies, babies, babies!! But there’s something that he doesn’t know. My sister and brother-in-law do want a baby and have been having trouble getting pregnant.
They had told our other sister and me that morning that they had thought she was pregnant and were so excited to be able to announce it in person over Christmas, but before she could borrow a car and get a pregnancy test without our entire nosy family (myself included) knowing, her period started that day. They’re positive and hopeful that it will happen soon for them, but they were obviously very bummed and sensitive about the subject at this particular point in time.
But having read stories of difficult parents and in-laws for a month beforehand, in preparation for my visit, instead of letting the situation get awkward, I loudly blurted out, “Dad! Your baby rabies are out of control!!” in a joking tone. Everybody looked at me awkwardly. I’m a now-sober former heavy drinker, so I don’t blame them. They had about 12 years of me making Christmas uncomfortable as heck for them.
But I cheerfully explained what baby rabies are. Everyone else laughed at how funny they found the subject and name. Then they made some inoculation jokes, and moved on to other topics of conversation. My dad turned red and asked if he really brings up babies that often. My mom patted his hand and said “Yeah. All the time” and made a joke, lightening the situation while my youngest sister and I teased, “What!? Daily pictures of your grand-puppies aren’t enough!?”
In the last month since, he’s been great in our family chat thread. He was excited that my sister's best friend gave birth without pushing the whole “But when are YOU going to have babies!?” thing. He has also decided that being a great uncle to my cousin’s kid is perfect for right now. Long story, I know, but hopefully a bit of a positive post since I know all the difficult behavior becomes overwhelming at times.
Thank you all for putting baby rabies, and healthy boundaries, into my vocabulary!
46. In The Garden
My husband’s stepfather, who I usually refer to as “Garden Gnome,” is a complete and utter jerk. I haven’t liked him from the very moment I first met him. So some background, Garden Gnome (GG) has been married to my mother-in-law since my husband was around six or seven years old. GG has always been emotionally harmful to my husband.
Very over-controlling and wanting to know every little detail—and I mean every gruesome detail. GG even asked my mother-in-law if she knew whether or not my husband and I were having unprotected intercourse. Why do you need or want to know what your stepson and his wife do in bed?! He has also often forced my mother-in-law to wear matching outfits with him every day.
He threw a fit at Christmas dinner over the fact that my mother-in-law didn’t set out the “right” clothes for him that morning, because he had wanted to match. They have a sweet little curly-haired dog. My mother-in-law went on a trip without GG about a week after my husband and I got married, and had us pet sit the dog because she was scared he’d hurt the dog if she wasn’t there to stop him.
The dog was so matted that it looked like he was covered in dreadlocks. GG wouldn’t allow my mother-in-law to get the dog groomed because it was “too expensive,” yet he had no problem buying an RV that they never use. So we ended up getting him groomed on our own dime. They had to completely shave the dog because the mats were so bad.
My mother-in-law can’t eat gluten due to a medical issue. GG gets very angry that she needs to buy a gluten-free pizza whenever they get pizza, because it’s “too expensive”. So every time we see them, I always bake her gluten-free treats. GG has also expressed anger over the fact that my husband doesn’t call him Dad. Umm, excuse me?
My husband’s father is very involved in my husband’s life and is a wonderful person. He already has a dad, so I don’t know why GG thinks that he should be more important than my husband’s actual dad. Their house is three hours away, so at least I haven’t had to see them very often, not that this makes the situation any better.
Anyway, there is an unexpected bright side—and it’s going to ruin my “father”-in-law’s life. My mother-in-law recently decided that she is leaving the Gnome! She applied for apartments in the area, she talked to a lawyer, and she made an exit strategy! My husband and I were at his grandparents’ place last weekend and his grandpa told me that GG is always on his best behavior around me because he’s scared of me.
For reference, I’m 5’3” tall and 140 pounds, so I’m not exactly physically intimidating. I just don’t hide my resentment for GG and have called him out on his ignorant nonsense before. So, one weekend, my mother-in-law and GG visited. GG proceeded to mansplain my mother-in-law’s job and how her favorite chair that she sleeps in works. Bruh, you’ve never even sat in the chair!
My mother-in-law called my husband and me the following night and she asked us to come up on the day when she was going to tell GG that she’s filing for divorce, so that there’s a witness if he gets aggressive. We offered to help her move and do anything else she needs. The apartment that she’s looking at is gorgeous and I’m so excited for her!
That weekend was quite the experience. We drove the three hours to my mother-in-law’s house to be with her when she told GG that she was leaving him after 15 years of mental and emotional mistreatment from him. He took it better than we expected, which isn’t saying much considering that we were expecting him to pretty much ransack the place and attack us.
But at least he didn’t get physically aggressive. He started complaining about their finances and how they’re in debt. Again, they’re in debt mainly because of his purchase of an RV that HE wanted and the house that HE intimidated her into getting. He’s retired and my mother-in-law is the breadwinner of the family by quite a bit. They only have a joint bank account.
Luckily, my mother-in-law created a secret account that she’s been putting money in for a few months. With this account, she’s been able to get an apartment in the area. He got VERY angry that they’re going to be selling the house and kept trying to find out where my mother-in-law was moving to. But then, it seemed to settle down for a bit. That is, until the next morning...
This man has 12 grandkids and he is so uninvolved in their lives that he doesn’t know the names of the youngest six! One is literally only a few months old. Even I know her name, and I’ve never even seen the kid! GG texted my mother-in-law the next morning to ask what the kids’ names were. We’re trying to convince my mother-in-law to get a restraining order against GG because he has now accused her of mental and emotional mistreatment over leaving him “destitute in his later years".
He’s not that old and doesn’t have any medical issues—but it gets even worse. My mother-in-law is a religious leader and Garden Gnome actually called her boss to try and get her fired. But luckily, my mother-in-law is doing a lot better now that she’s not living with him anymore and is in the process of getting divorce papers drawn up to move the process along.
47. Getting The Message
Sooooo, I have a huge number of stories about this monstrosity of a man that I call my father-in-law. I really didn't expect to have many more new ones at this point, but life is full of surprises. Some back story is that this man has been awful towards me and mistreated me for many years. Never physically, mostly in the form of extreme name-calling.
Some of the other things he’s done to me have included gaslighting, making me feel guilty for completely normal things, blaming me for his lack of relationship with my son, etc. It goes on and on. Some more backstory is that I was pregnant with twins until January—when tragedy struck. They were stillborn. My husband and I were heartbroken, and are still trying to grieve and move past this.
Anyways, this morning I was at my computer working from home, making my to-do list and relishing the fact that I lost another pound on the scale, when suddenly a Facebook message comes through from my father-in-law. Now, this is weird because we're not friends on Facebook, even though we have sent messages to one another in the distant, distant past.
Also, I don’t really use Facebook anymore. I haven't for years at this point. But nevertheless, this man apparently somehow found out about my babies dying. He sent me a message so disturbing, it’s impossible to forget. It said: "Doesn't karma suck? The worst part is you still have a lot more coming :) !" Word for word, complete with the emoji and all. I was fuming—but, only for a few minutes.
It was like a PTSD response or something, because my adrenaline was running, my hands were shaking, I was afraid, the whole nine yards. But then I realized that this guy is just sad. He's sick and hateful. He doesn't love my son (his grandson), he loves his possessions and he hates me for taking one of his possessions (i.e. my son) away from him when we moved out of state.
He never even asked how my son is doing after losing his baby brother and sister. Sick, sick, sick. So, I made up a plan for revenge. I came to the decision to post on Facebook for the first time in like four years. I told all of those friends about the babies, the tragic loss, and finished off with the beautiful message my father-in-law sent me this morning.
Behavior like this cannot live in the sunlight. It thrives in the shadows. I was afraid of him for years, but I'm not afraid of him anymore! He doesn't have anything to take from me. He doesn't hold any power over me. I'm already getting messages from his family telling me how disgusting he is. I'm sure he's heard about my post by now. Public shaming for the win! In addition, my son is going to be 14 years old this month.
He's old enough now to hear the truth about his grandfather. So, if he wants to hear about it, I will tell him. If he doesn't, I'll respect that. My response to my father-in-law? "My son will know who his grandfather is. He loved those babies too". So, good luck to my father-in-law in trying to have a relationship with my son any time soon.
Does he not realize that my son actually loves me and our family? What a doofus. I'm sure he doesn't even realize that my son isn't a sweet six-year-old anymore and that he's capable of having his own thoughts and opinions now.
48. The Gift Of Not Giving
This is a story about my future father-in-law. We had Christmas at my fiancé’s grandmother’s house on Sunday. My fiancé and I moved out on our own this spring into an apartment and it’s been a wonderful experience so far. However, we don’t have very much disposable income now. Due to that, we only got Christmas cards with gift cards for everyone in his family.
Now, I didn’t hear the comment, but apparently, when my fiancé was handing his dad his card, my father-in-law said under his breath, “I guess the real gift must be in the mail". My future husband heard this, and flat out said that we don’t have a lot of money. We had considered not doing gifts at all, and that’s the thanks we get for still trying to provide something nice?
I didn’t know about this comment and as soon as we left, I ordered a gift basket online to be delivered to his parents’ house because I personally felt I hadn’t done enough. When my future husband informed me yesterday of this comment, that, combined with all of their other transgressions, made me want to cancel the gift basket because I don’t think they deserve it now.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to cancel the order or to change the address. Well, whatever. I hope they feel like the idiots that they are when they receive it. I hope what I did was the right thing.
49. On Holiday
We were just on a family vacation—until my father-in-law ruined the whole thing in an instant. He just lost his temper at his four-year-old grandson because he ruined his drawing. He then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and caused our family holiday to be cut short. Yes, as pathetic as it sounds, we're all on holiday and my ridiculous father-in-law was sitting on the floor drawing on paper when his bubbly four-year-old grandson came over and playfully drew over his drawing.
My father-in-law is an artist and takes his drawing very seriously. Fine, I get that this incident must have sucked for him. But instead of seeing that the kid is four years old and dampening his response, he completely flew off his rocker, both literally and figuratively. After yelling and swearing at his grandson, he did the same to his son (i.e. the father of the grandson).
He was yelling at him because he allegedly wasn't disciplining his son. In reality, he was, but my father-in-law didn't have the mental capacity to see that. To give some context, there's my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my wife, my two-year-old daughter, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and their son and daughter. That was everyone who is on this trip.
The nine of us are all sharing a holiday house, and it's literally been awesome up till now. The kids absolutely love it, and all but one of the adults are smitten watching the grandchildren, children, nieces, and nephews having a blast. One of them was having such a blast that he decided to play a trick on granddad, and ruin his drawing!
It's only a drawing, right? Annoying, but kids innocently do that kind of thing all the time, right? His parents are normal responsible parents, and he's not a bratty kid. Yet my father-in-law has a big chip on his shoulder about how kids are raised, and how his children and their partners (me included) are all doing everything wrong.
We do this holiday getaway every year, and when our daughter was only a few months old, we had to leave early because my fragile father-in-law couldn't handle our daughter crying as we were trying to get her to sleep. We were clearly bad parents and we needed to get her out of bed and put her down again later. It was a big blowout with lots of yelling and swearing.
There's one common denominator in all this, and it's my father-in-law. He claims that at the age of 62, he's too old to change, and that getting angry is a part of who he is. He has severe anxiety issues and sleep problems, but hates medication. For a brief period when he was on Prozac, it was the calmest time I've ever experienced in my life.
Honestly, I wish I could just punch him in the face, but I know that this would just be a bad idea for everyone involved. I want what's best for my daughter and wife. But when he's talking at the top of his lungs, not letting anyone else talk, ranting, raving, swearing, cutting other people off, and then yelling "LISTEN TO ME, DON'T INTERRUPT ME!" when someone has the audacity to respond, I secretly dream of walking up to him and punching him as hard as I can.
I'm trying my best to remain calm, but holy cow, what a handful he is to deal with!
50. Hey Little Sister
My father-in-law is “making the moves” on my sister, and it’s making all of us very uncomfortable. So, I'm a 24-year-old female. My sister is 35 and my father-in-law is 49. He's never been a great dad to my husband. He was terrible towards him when he was a child, and he walked out on them when my husband was about 13 years old. He chose his new wife over his family.
He's made an effort to have a relationship again with my husband over the last few years, and they now have a much better relationship as adults. In September, our only child was stillborn, and at the funeral, my father-in-law met all of my family members for the first time. That’s when things took a turn for the disgusting. Since then, he's been constantly chatting to my sister. They both have mental health problems and she likes to “fix” people.
Apparently, he took this to mean that she was interested in him romantically. He’s been commenting on all of her Facebook posts, and he now messages her daily and makes inappropriate comments to her. Things like how beautiful she looks and how if they were together he'd spoil her with gifts. He'll share memes that are a bit vulgar and tag my sister in them.
He got intoxicated a couple of weeks ago and made a big Facebook post about her. He then messaged her, telling her how he feels about her. She 100% does not feel the same way about him. She told him this a couple of times now, but he hasn't relented. My husband hasn't done anything or talked to him about it, and I'm getting close to talking to him about it myself.
We’re just concerned that he's going to pull the “everyone's ganging up on me” card and leave my husband’s life again. But he's making my sister really uncomfortable, and it's causing some serious tension between me and my husband. He can't seem to take no for an answer and I don't want things to be difficult between them. We'll be having a major family gathering soon, as well as all the other family occasions in between and after, and I just don't know what to do about this.
51. All Part Of A Balanced Diet
My husband is in his hometown for two weeks for work, and he took our four-year-old son along with him to visit my father-in-law, who I call “The Jerk,” and my mother-in-law, who I don’t have a nickname for. It was agreed that, a few days in, I would take the train down with our other baby to visit for the long weekend. The trip is about three hours long. We came back home yesterday. My husband and older son will be back home on Friday.
My father-in-law has a lot of annoying habits. For example, he likes telling grown adult members of his family how to dress. He takes every possible opportunity to criticize other people's appearances and wardrobes, even once going so far as to make snide comments about his cousin's attire (a sweater and long skirt) at HER OWN FATHER'S FUNERAL.
The Jerk and my mother-in-law also insist that whenever we are in town, my husband, all of his siblings, and their respective families stay at their house, even when it means a total of ten adults and seven children in a four-bedroom house with children on cots and a couple sleeping in the living room behind a dressing screen. Totally unnecessary.
But this past weekend was the worst by far. My brother-in-law and his family were also visiting. He has a wife and three kids. The Jerk and my mother-in-law do not have air conditioning, nor do they have screens on any of their windows. I've asked in the past why this is, and my husband simply says, "It doesn't usually get that hot". These are people who just bought a brand new car, own about half a dozen motorcycles, and take trips across Europe every couple of years.
Money to put in central air or a window unit here and there or even screens on their windows is definitely not an issue for them. The bed we were sleeping in during our stay is also an antique that is constantly falling apart. The Jerk literally builds furniture from scratch, so I don't know why he can't be bothered to fix it.
Our first night there was absolutely awful. It was a Saturday night. My husband, son, baby daughter, and I were all in one guest room together, while my brother-in-law and his family were in the other. It was 101 degrees outside, and while there was a ceiling fan, as darn hot as it was in that house, it was about as effective as blowing your breath across the top of a volcano to cool it off.
We had a choice of sleeping in a veritable sauna or opening the screenless windows and waking up covered in mosquito bites. Since we didn't especially enjoy the thought of our kids or ourselves contracting West Nile or being miserable and itchy, we opted for the former. The kids needed lullaby music to fall asleep, so my husband had it playing on his tablet.
I have to have silence to sleep, so this was a struggle for me. My son also woke up screaming in absolute horror at least twice. I suspect night terrors, but who knows. Either way, he woke up his baby sister in the process, so you can imagine how much sleep we got. The kids woke up early the next morning and my husband, bless his soul, got up with them so I could sleep a little longer.
Still, I was exhausted and not in the greatest of moods when I got up. But knowing how critical the Jerk is of others' appearances, I made sure to comb and smooth out my bedhead before I exited the bedroom wearing my typical nighttime attire of a T-shirt over a camisole and cotton pajama pants. The first thing the Jerk says to me as I enter the kitchen is a sarcastic "Snappy PJs".
I am so not in the mood for his garbage, so I say, "Excuse me?" Again, he says, "Snappy PJs". I respond, "What about them?" He can only reply, "Snappy!" I say, "You're going to critique my pajamas? Seriously? What would you prefer I be wearing?" He makes a big dramatic show trying to be funny, saying, "Oh, you know, something silky, a nightie of some sort".
I say, "Dude. I'm going to sleep". He says, "That's when it's most important! That's when you need to be alluring!" and strikes a pose like Leonardo DiCaprio is about to draw him like one of his French girls. He walks away and my mother-in-law, smiling like this creepy act of telling his daughter-in-law she needs to look more attractive for bedtime is some cute endearing quirk of his, brushes it off, saying, "He made fun of the nightgown I was wearing the other night".
My brother-in-law's wife (whom I'll refer to as SIL1, because my husband's sister will be mentioned later as SIL2) comes into the room a short time later wearing her own nighttime ensemble of a tank top and shorts. I make it a point to say, "Hey, SIL1, snappy PJs!" with the Jerk still in earshot. She being the secure, give-zero-hoots person she is, laughed and said, "Thanks! They're all the rage in Cairo!"
I pulled her aside later and explained the Jerk's comment on my wardrobe and that I wasn't taking a potshot at her, but instead subtly calling him out on his behavior. Having had many, many dust-ups of her own with the Jerk in the past, she completely understood and found it hilarious. Most of the weekend went fairly well, relatively speaking.
And when I describe a weekend where my father-in-law darn near sexually harasses his son's wife as "fairly well," you can imagine what fairly poorly would entail. After lunch, owing to the lack of air conditioning and finding ourselves positioned directly beneath Satan's behind, the family as a whole decided to take a dip in the swimming pool for a bit.
The Jerk, my husband, and my brother-in-law have a long-standing tradition of swimming pool horseplay, so they decided to have a chicken fight. For those not familiar, it involves two teams of two people, where one person from each team sits on their teammate's shoulders and tries to topple their counterpart on the opposing team.
The Jerk prompted my husband to sit on his shoulders, but my husband was leery, not thinking the Jerk could handle his weight. My husband has a slight dad bod, as do my brother-in-law and the Jerk himself. The Jerk says, "Oh, that's nothing. The last time SIL2 (My husband's sister, as previously mentioned) came to visit, she climbed on top of me and almost ended me!"
The second the words left his lips, we all recoiled in horror. SIL2 is, by the clinical definition, obese, perhaps even morbidly so, and I'd guess she outweighs her brothers, but in what universe is that an okay thing to think, let alone say, about your own daughter? But of course, because it was the Jerk, we weren't surprised.
That night, my brother-in-law and his family having headed home, we decided to put our son and daughter down to sleep in the same bed in the back bedroom while we remained in the front room, figuring that if they had each other for company, they wouldn't be scared if one of them woke up in the middle of the night.
This part of the plan worked beautifully. They slept peacefully all night long without a peep. When my husband and I went to bed, I opened one of the windows in the bedroom because I could not face another sweat-soaked evening. We slept well. But in the morning, I woke up to about a dozen mosquito bites on my legs. I wasn't too thrilled about it, but I was just happy to have had a decent night's sleep.
I made sure to dress and make myself somewhat presentable before I went out into the kitchen, because I didn't particularly feel like having my wardrobe criticized yet again. I came out and made myself a cup of tea, and the Jerk pounced on me. "Here, sit down and eat your oatmeal! I've already made a bowl for you".
I've known my husband for fifteen years. We have been consistently together for the first eight, and since then married for six. In all that time, I have never once eaten oatmeal. I know that the Jerk hates pears and that my mother-in-law is allergic to passion fruit and can't eat nuts, seeds, etc. due to diverticulitis. As such, I go out of my way to provide foods that comply with these dislikes, allergies, and restrictions whenever they visit.
I'm a picky eater. I know this. But, that being said, it's been pretty well established that I don't like seafood, onions, or mushrooms. My in-laws cook very frequently with all of these things. I have never once complained or asked anyone to cater to me. I've eaten everything they've ever put in front of me, eating around things I didn't like whenever possible without a single word of protest.
And yet, the Jerk always calls me out for it. Several times, I've choked down things I couldn't stand just to try and be polite. But with oatmeal, I just can't. One mouthful and I gag to the point of almost vomiting. So because I really had no desire to vomit, I politely declined. Me: "Oh, thank you, but I don't do oatmeal". The Jerk immediately scoffed and replied: "What do you mean, you don't do oatmeal?"
Me (Trying to be diplomatic): "I just don't really eat oatmeal. It's okay, I'll find something else". The Jerk: "Who doesn't eat oatmeal? I made this for you!" Me: "Well, why don't you have it?" The Jerk: "I can't! I just took medication and I can't eat for 45 minutes!" Me: "So just reheat it". The Jerk (as if I had just insulted the wee baby Jesus himself): "YOU CAN'T REHEAT OATMEAL!"
Me: "Well, I'm sorry about that". The Jerk (being completely unhelpful): "Have you ever had it the way I make it, with raisins and lots of butter and cinnamon?" Me (knowing full well that there's no magical method of preparation that can make me enjoy the texture of cat vomit in my mouth): "I'm set, really. It's a texture thing". The Jerk: "I'm going to have to throw it out!"
Me: "I'm sorry about that. Why don't you eat it?" The Jerk: "I can't!" Me: "Neither can I!" The Jerk: "Why not?" Me: "Because I don't like it". At that point, I was sitting with my back to the Jerk, so I couldn't see the look he shot my husband, but judging by my husband's hapless shrug, I can pretty well guess what it was like.
A few minutes later, my mother-in-law emerged from her bedroom and asked about the oatmeal. The Jerk: "I'll make you a bowl. I just had to throw one out because your daughter-in-law wouldn't eat it". The rest of the morning was decidedly frosty. I was busy packing up our baby's things, as well as my own, for our return trip home, when my husband came into the room.
Me: "So your dad is mad at me about the oatmeal, huh?" My husband: "Well, you could have at least tried it". Me: "I have tried it many times in the past. I don't care for it. It's a texture thing". My husband: "Well, it'd be nice if you could say something to him". Me: "I did! I explained to him precisely why I don't like oatmeal". My husband: "He doesn't get that".
At this point, I wanted to scream. Me: "I told him I was sorry for the waste of food, but that I don't like oatmeal because of the texture. I don't know how much clearer I can make it". I was seething about the whole darn thing for the rest of the morning, and my husband sulked like a child and kept to himself until our baby daughter and I left for the train station.
As we got in the car and we were all saying our goodbyes, I told the Jerk, "By the way, I'm sorry about the oatmeal. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings". He offered a huffy, "Well, it's okay". I know this man well enough to know that he was still mad. In the car on the way to the train station, my husband said, "I appreciate you saying something to my dad".
I responded, "I can't believe he's seriously pitching a fit over a bowl of oatmeal". My husband said, "Well, you know, he was tired. I'm not making excuses for him". I replied, "Gee, it sure sounds like you are". He bristled and said, "How about we just don't talk about it?" So we didn't. That night, after my daughter and I had returned home, I texted my husband and said, "When you get home, we need to talk about your father. I really don't feel comfortable around him".
My husband and son are due home tomorrow around dinnertime, and after the kids are in bed I plan to have a sit-down with my husband about the Jerk and his nonsense. I have another sister-in-law (my brother's wife) who is a complete, certifiable harpy who all but refuses contact between my brother and our family. To be perfectly candid, she's a selfish, controlling witch.
I never wanted to be that person. I never wanted to be that person who can't stand their in-laws, but the Jerk and my mother-in-law have made that all but impossible for me. As such, I've erred on the side of being a complete doormat, putting up with their garbage because I was afraid of rocking the boat. I'm not afraid anymore.
Between the decrepit beds, the lack of air conditioning and window screens, the Jerk's criticism of pretty much anything I wear, and his insistence on playing the breakfast officer, I'm going to tell my husband point blank that while I cannot and will not dictate what he does, I will not spend the night in their house ever again, nor will my children.
If an occasion requires us to travel to their area, we will book a hotel and visit for an hour or two and retire to a room with beds that have been made in this century, central AC, no danger of waking up covered in insect bites, and a breakfast buffet where no one will question our dietary preferences. The Jerk and my mother-in-law stay at a hotel every time they come to visit us, so I don't think it's unreasonable for us to do the same.
I haven't even mentioned the creepiest part yet, but it definitely speaks to the kind of creep factor that emanates from the Jerk. Whenever we women in the family are greeting him, he always demands a kiss on the cheek. He holds his cheek out and awkwardly taps it with his finger until we comply.
Just the other day, he told SIL1 and me (after he'd insulted my pajamas, naturally) that we weren't meeting our "quota" of kisses and that we needed to catch up. YUCK! I've decided that's stopping, too. I'm tempted to tell him I have a disease so that I never have to put my face anywhere near his again. That is one aspect of visiting him I know I will not be missing.
Thank you for listening to my story. I desperately needed to get that off my chest. I've tried several times in the past to have sit-downs with the Jerk and my mother-in-law to try to discuss how I felt, and each time they've just simply stated that they won't change. In a perfect world, we'd be completely no contact, but because I know how much my husband loves his family, I'd never ask him to do that.
I'd prefer very limited contact, but I have no idea how to navigate that. I would greatly appreciate feedback from anyone who has ever been in a similar situation.
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