Sure, wedding vows may contain a promise to stand by your spouse for better or for worse, but "for worse" hardly describes the living nightmare that is ending up with a bad set of in-laws. From the controlling to the creepy to the downright criminal, these monster-in-laws had their poor victims running for a restraining order.
1. A Bad Sense Of Humor
I am half-white and half-Asian. My dad is Dutch, my mom is Singaporean (Chinese). We’ve been living in the US for almost 20 years now, and we moved when I was five. So, I met my boyfriend’s mom a few weeks back, and it went okay I guess. A few days ago, however, I found out she’s Facebook stalked me and found a picture of me with my dad at a black-tie event.
I was holding his arm. The Asian features really came through with me, so I don’t really “look” like my dad. We meet again, and halfway through the conversation she casually goes, “So where’s your sugar daddy?” The conversation stops. I’m just like, “I don’t have one?” She pulls up my Facebook profile and shows me the picture with me and my father.
I just laugh it off and explain that’s my dad. She then asks me whether I was adopted. I again laugh it off. She lets it go for a while, but she brings it up again! “Well, I hope your dad did a DNA test when you were born.” At this point, I’m just like, what is up with this woman? Maybe I just had a really sheltered upbringing, but I’ve never met anyone who was this brand of weird.
I tell her very plainly that I don’t appreciate her insinuating that my mother cheated on my father, and then I left. That night, I get messages from my boyfriend saying, “I took a joke too seriously” and “She was just making fun of the fact you don’t really look that much like him.” Yeah bud, I don’t think she was joking. I don’t think she was joking at all.
2. Dishing It Out
My husband and I have been together for 15 years. We both work full-time and share the chores at home; I cook, he does dishes. My mother-in-law adores her son and in her eyes, no one is good enough for him. We have never lived in the same city as her. The first time she visited our home, I cooked my best dinner, four courses, nice wine, the whole fireworks to impress her.
After dessert and coffee, my husband started taking the dishes to the sink and started washing, while still making small conversation with my mother-in-law and myself. I was exhausted after a day of work and cooking. The moment my husband's hands touched the water, her face changed. Her mouth twisted and she started mumbling and breathing weird.
She apologized and walked out. I thought she went for a smoke, so I just went to lie down in my bed. I was just touching my bed when I heard my husband consoling his mom, as she was crying. She didn't know I went to my bed and I could hear them. She started sobbing about all the sacrifices she made to give him a good life, that she never thought she would see him washing dishes.
She said that she had raised him better than this, and that I broke her heart for making him do house chores. My husband is the best man ever, he has an incredible sense of humor, and he found the whole situation hilarious. He started laughing very loudly and asking her to stop the drama. He told her that they had just had one of the best home-cooked dinners of their lives, that I had worked very hard to have a nice dinner, and that crying over some dishes was infantile.
He went as far as tickling his mom to stop her crying. That first visit has set the tone of the relationship with her now. She hates me, dislikes my daughters, and over time spends less and less time with her son. Last I heard, she wants my husband to travel (we live in a different country now) to her place, so she can put her affairs in order.
She claims she will die soon and wants to leave in peace. My husband kindly told her that she should spend her wealth, and that she doesn't need him to write a will.
3. 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!
4. Powerpoint Perfectionist
This is my sister’s experience after living with our brother and his wife. Our sister-in-law has a very particular way of doing things. She told my sister to not do any cleaning because of her schedule and approach. My sister felt guilty for not helping but listened to our sister-in-law. Lo and behold, she gets upset that my sister is messy. My sister was confused—but it was about to get so much worse.
Sister-in-law made a PowerPoint presentation on everything my sister did wrong. These presentations would range from twenty minutes to an hour. When my sister did help, she was told she was doing it wrong and to stop. Now that she had stopped, she was getting in trouble for not helping. It was a lose-lose situation and my sister sat through multiple presentations while living there.
5. Let Me Count The Ways
Both of my in-laws have serious flaws. My father-in-law is in denial about how much he drinks and hides it when possible. He also genuinely believes that the government wants to spy on him and is horrible with money. When he was about to lose his house, we drove ten hours in a moving truck and did all the work for his house to be sold.
We then drove ten hours back and he lived with us for three months. That's when his secret came out. His habit started in the morning, which meant I got yelled at in the morning. He was supposed to stay for a year but I was seven months pregnant and the stress became unbearable. We found him a new place to live, and he is banned from our property.
My mother-in-law is wild and manipulative. When we were planning our wedding, I asked her to help plan the decorative details and she refused. The day before the ceremony and she’s walking around and tearing things down because we hadn’t done it right. My mom also caught her stuffing her purse with all the gift bag items in the bathroom.
Even though we asked for no wedding photos to be posted on social media, she did, with full public settings. She thought she was being helpful and found every single person online to tag them in her album. She threw an epic tantrum when we asked her to take it down and didn’t speak to us for weeks. Now she messages us too much scheduling time with her new grandchild.
Last month, she called us six times to update us on restrictions and give us a timeline plus itinerary for her future planned visit. We still haven’t agreed to this and are waiting to see what happens. Her husband is a great guy, but an awkward conversationalist. He’s a super-smart man but can be very particular, and sometimes I compare him to Sheldon Cooper.
However, the worse of the bunch by a mile is my sister-in-law. She is shallow, entitled, and snarky. She was furious after our child was born. She was enraged because people didn't hold the door for her anymore like they did when she was pregnant. This lasted for a few years. She was also annoyed that she no longer got to use the "pregnant or new mother" parking spots at the local mall.
She became hyper passive-aggressive when she realized she no longer had the only grandchild. Personal favorite moment was when she got super offended and blocked her mom for three months because she didn't want to quit her job and become her full-time nanny. Apparently, her mom should have been honored by the request!
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6. 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.
7. Mother Knows Best
I ended up terminating my engagement with the person I fully planned on spending my life with— all because if I stayed with him, I’d have ended up miserable because of his mother. Here are some things his mother did that he defended, ignored, or outright supported: She insulted me to my face, with comments ranging from my weight to my intelligence.
She took my fiancé’s ex out for monthly dinners where they’d gossip about me and post nasty rumors on a joint Twitter account dedicated to airing out details of my private life. Things like my miscarriage, or my dad cheating on my mom. She told my fiancé that if we ever have a child, she’ll dismiss it as a “mistake.” She also told him “it’s me or her.”
She slammed my hand in a car door and started crying when I screamed because it “scared her.” Then she made me apologize for upsetting her. She pretended to take me out for a birthday dinner to “try to connect and make amends,” only to stiff me with a $270 dinner bill because “I should always pay for she and my future father-in-law, out of respect.”
She mentally and emotionally mistreated my ex his whole life, so I understand why he took her side and refused to defend me. His dad passed when he was six, so she kind of used him as an emotional spousal replacement. I tried for a year to get him to go to therapy, in hopes of opening his eyes to her disgusting behavior, but he thought that agreeing to therapy would be disrespecting his mom.
We ended things and to my knowledge, he hasn’t dated anyone since. So, yeah. When you sign up for a partner, you sign up for their family too. Make sure that’s what you want to resign yourself to.
8. Holier Than Thou
My mother-in-law is prejudiced, obsessively Christian (read: in a cult) and, to be honest, an utter witch. She threatened to ruin my wedding, tried to have everything changed, and after we canceled our wedding, she tried telling people my fiancée (now wife) and I broke up. It’s been a year, and although we’ve tried to handle her, she’s getting worse.
My wife and I eventually got married by going down to the courthouse to get it done as quickly as possible. We didn’t mention it to my mother-in-law, but agreed that we’d have a ceremony at some point down the line. Things are going well, we keep it from her that we got married (kept our rings off around her) and it seems like we’re somewhat at peace.
She’s still preaching about how us being together is wrong, and she still attends church. We keep the peace so we have access to my wife’s minor brothers, who are nine and 12. One day, the mother-in-law is over at our house to watch our son for us. We get home, and we made a fatal error. We’ve forgotten to take our rings off, and she sees.
She freaks out, but eventually calms down. We plan to get together at her house to talk about it, since she is hurt. Understandably, but we were worried about her reaction in the first place. So we go to her house. We had to bring our son with us since we couldn’t find a babysitter, but that was fine since my wife’s brothers got along well with him.
We sit down with my father-in-law first, and we make small talk. The mother-in-law’s gone out to grocery shop, she’d be back soon. We were hoping she’d hurry up. At some point, my father-in-law tells us that she’s late. That’s fine, we say, we can reorganize this meeting for another time. We go to grab our son and leave...but we can’t find him. Or my wife’s brothers.
We panic; we get frantic. My father-in-law just sits there. We call the authorities, tell them we can’t find the boys, and they come over and help us try to find them. They search the neighborhood, and after asking my father-in-law again and again why he isn’t doing anything, he tells them the truth at last. He confesses that my mother-in-law has the boys.
It took the officers the rest of the night to find them, and both in-laws ended up being detained. To make a long story short, my father-in-law was released, mother-in-law was not, and she has a court date coming up soon. A CPS case was opened, and my wife’s brothers were temporarily placed with my wife’s aunt, who isn't bonkers.
We’re not allowed to go into specifics, but due to some serious things found in my mother-in-law’s phone and in her house, it doesn’t look like she’s going to get away with it. I’ve been doing my best to comfort my wife since then, and all three of us (us and our son) have gotten into therapy. We’re doing well, and I’m happy to report that I don’t think we’ll have to deal with that woman again.
9. 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!
10. An Irish Goodbye
This is about my cousins’ wife, so my aunt’s daughter-in-law. They are both really alike and like to party. The first time I met her was at my grandfather’s funeral. Unfortunate circumstances but you could spot her a mile away. She was dressed like Betty Boop; too much makeup and a sheer, black tube dress. I know everyone processes grief differently but this was unique.
After the funeral, we held a sort of Irish wake at my uncle's house, whereupon my cousin's wife approached every male cousin, asking them to do shots with her. I avoided her, so I was last. She got to me when I was on the driveway with two other cousins. One she had already approached inside. The other cousin, through grinding teeth responded, "The Mother. Of. My. Newborn. Child. Is. Inside."
I'm less creative, so I tried to ignore her hoping she would get bored and leave me alone. At first, she tried to chat. Then she tried to dance. There was no music and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. She moved around to my back and in a final attempt for attention, bit me! I let out the weirdest yelp and hopped away from her.
Eventually, she got the hint and left. When I checked my backside later, I had a dental impression turning into a purple bruise. I tried to actively avoid her at family functions and heard a rumor that on the morning of their wedding, my aunt offered to pay for 100% of the wedding if my cousin ran away! Neither one of them will confirm or deny.
11. What Could Have Been
My mother-in-law is a lunatic who believes I should have ended up with my brother-in-law. Rundown: My brother-in-law and I were friends in high school. He got a crush on me, and I didn't reciprocate. He took it badly. In college, I started dating his older brother who also attended that college. I feel some blame can fall on me here because I knew how he felt and I ended up with his older brother, but that's just how it goes at times.
I didn't intend for it to happen. My brother-in-law told his mother a very different story. According to him, outings with me and my group of friends in high school were actually one-on-one dates. We were highly passionate, according to him. Basically, he told her we were the OTP of the world and we'd be together forever. We were NEVER together.
Anyway, my mother-in-law accused me of a lot of things when I started dating my now-husband, but eventually had to step back because of how many people backed my version of events up. Shockingly, the truth has witnesses. Years passed, my brother-in-law has always made me and my husband feel uncomfortable and so we don't see him that much.
We see my mother-in-law twice a month at most because she has supervised playtime with the kids. She even once asked my husband if he'd be open to “sharing” me with his brother at one point. It was a rough few years. The last visit with her ends up coinciding with my brother-in-law being there. We push on with formalities and my husband steps out for a smoke.
I was solo supervising the kids while my mother-in-law plays with them on the floor. My son is old enough to call my brother-in-law “Uncle,” while my daughter is still going through her first words. I get up for a few moments to leave the teacups in the kitchen, and I come back to an absolute horror show. I see my mother-in-law holding my daughter up to my brother-in-law and saying, “Say hi to daddy. Say hi to daddy."
Worst of all, he was playing along and making faces at her. The only reaction I had was to grab the kids and leave while they protested. I explained why we were rushing out to my husband and he was really upset. He called his mother to find out what the heck she was up to, and she just got very defensive about me not hearing correctly.
My husband lied and said he'd heard it as well, and she stuttered that she was just letting the children know the truth. Their daddy was my brother-in-law, and my husband was being stupid by not realizing I was cheating on him and being taken in by my charms so I could bag both brothers. We're putting them both on a “time out” and she is not happy that her twice-monthly grandma visits are canceled for the next four months.
12. Day One Debt
My brother’s ex-wife has always caused drama. Before they got their own house they moved in with our family. We have a large age gap so when she moved in I was a teenager. My mom had no problem with me bringing friends back to our house as long as we kept the noise down. My sister-in-law completely took advantage of this, sending my brother down to yell at us when no one else complained.
It made my brother so uncomfortable he would try to leave the house if I had friends over to avoid an argument. One time, he came downstairs to tell us we were being too loud, and my mom overheard. She was in disbelief and blew up. She shouted at my brother before going upstairs and giving my sister-in-law a piece of her mind.
My sister-in-law moved out for a bit but came back eventually and made sure that my brother spent all his time and attention on her. She makes him pay for trips to New York and England because she needs tattoos from Instagram famous artists. We barely hear or see my brother anymore because she’s still holding a grudge from that one night years ago.
In the previous year when they couldn’t travel and had to stay home, she found out how bad my brother’s debt was from funding their lifestyle and she left him. My brother was so embarrassed we didn’t find out for weeks. Even though she left him to pay off everything, the future is bright and we can’t wait to forget she was ever in our lives.
13. Beat Em At Their Own Game
My revenge on my mother-in-law was GLORIOUS! So I've been married a long time, a long time. My mother-in-law was mostly just annoying but had her awful moments, and I’ve been low to no contact for probably the last 10 years with her and my life has been divine because of that. My husband doesn’t mind because he gets lots of romance when his mother isn’t interfering in our relationship.
But way back, I tried so, so hard to get on her good side. I was such a sweet summer child. I thought to myself, she should be happy for my husband that he has me. I cooked and cleaned and threw parties and most people liked me. But she was sly, so my husband didn’t catch the nuances of her behavior. I tried to point it out, with little luck, because I had no experience with a woman like this.
We left for our honeymoon a week after our wedding, which was enough time for us to set up our small apartment and get cozy living together beforehand. We left for a week and left the keys with my mother-in-law to fetch our mail and various things. Y’all, when we got back, she had completely rearranged my kitchen, the living room, threw out some of my pictures and knick-knacks from our bedroom, and I swear she also tossed some of my lingerie.
I was upset, so upset. I cried to my husband, and he got angry at his mom, talked to her, then came home with the usual, “She can’t imagine why I’d be upset! She was being SO helpful! She didn’t mean to do anything wrong!” Then she started crying on cue and my husband was thrown for a loop, having never experienced woman-to-woman territorial rages.
He came home spewing her diatribe and simply told me that he would help me put things back. And he did, except for the kitchen—he only made things worse in there but not for lack of trying. My mother-in-law never even taught him how to butter bread. Sigh. But, I learned a valuable lesson. Whenever the mother-in-law was up to her shenanigans, she would wait until we were alone, look at me and do this evil smile with a nod to acknowledge her disdain to me properly.
I learned from the best, the very best. My mother-in-law was the town pillar; active in church and charity, and so sweet to the people she approved of. So, here is the revenge. My mother-in-law is old now, and still just as sneaky. If anything, old age has sharpened her skills, and she has taken on the role of helpless old lady quite fabulously.
There are these volunteers who help her and bring her meals, sit and read with her, and it’s all quite nice, really. She did a week-long stint in the hospital recently, and my husband got the key to her house to retrieve her mail, etc. Well, I made a copy of said key (without him knowing, of course) because I had a plan.
During that week, I took some time off work and let myself into her house to rearrange, I mean, clean her kitchen. I also threw away some broken porcelain and other items, and took pictures off the walls and put them in the closet. Then I rearranged the linen closet, the coat closet, my mother-in-law’s closet and her bathrooms. Both of them.
I left the living room mostly alone, sadly, but I didn’t want my husband to catch on, see. Then, on the day my husband was supposed to pick her up from the hospital and bring her home, I offered to help him clean her house for her homecoming! He was mildly surprised at my offer, but I said I’ve decided to let bygones be bygones.
I will help, then get out of the way so he could help the mother-in-law get settled in. She can mostly live by herself, with a little help every day from friends and family. So we cleaned, mopped, and vacuumed. Got everything sparkly and clean. I went with him to fetch his mom and sat in the back seat.
When we arrived, my mother-in-law immediately noticed things were askew but she couldn’t tell what it was yet. Then she noticed the missing pictures. Mother-in-law: "What did you do with my pictures?" Husband and me: "What do you mean?" Mother-in-law: "You took my pictures!!!" Me: "Oh my, no mother-in-law, I helped him clean and that’s all."
My husband confirmed that this is all I did. I asked if she’d like some tea, and she yelled at me to stay out of her kitchen. She went in herself and screamed, “What have you done?” I looked at my husband, all puzzled, and he repeats that he and I only cleaned the counters and dishes, and mopped. My mother-in-law was livid, so I told my husband that my presence must be upsetting to her so maybe I should leave.
My husband, confused because he had no idea why his mom was acting so outwardly hostile to me, agreed. So I cheerfully told my mother-in-law that I’d be on my way and my husband could call me when he’s ready to be picked up. That’s all he heard, but I did one more thing. He didn’t see me smiling at my mother-in-law because he was facing my back.
Then I nodded at her with her very own signature nod. She was livid. My husband told me on the way home, when I went to pick him up a few hours later, that she had accused me of all sorts of things, and that’s when I said, “The poor dear’s mind must be going.” He agrees, the poor thing is getting so old, after all. She should have been nicer to me.
I get to help pick her nursing home, and I know very well how to play the helpful supportive role. Thanks, mother-in-law!
14. A Formula For Disaster
After my son was born, due to some medical problems, I had supply issues. It didn’t get better, and what little supply I had left dried up. He’s exclusively formula fed now. However, my mother-in-law is very pro-breastfeeding and won’t accept that I can’t do it. “I’ve breastfed five children until they were two. This is the most basic thing a mother should do. Why can’t you?”
This is her favorite thing to say. My husband put her on a time out because of it, and eventually she apologized. I think it’s because we refused to let her see our son until she did. But I digress. She comes by a few times a week now. She won’t bring up the breastfeeding issue anymore, but still grumbles when I bring out the formula.
In order to help keep track of the feedings, one of the things we do is keep a feeding timetable on the fridge. She sees it, and made him a bottle and started feeding him before he was meant for another feed. She only managed this once while my husband and I were preoccupied. Our baby didn’t like it, we didn’t like it, the only person that did was her.
My husband asks her why she did it. “The baby was crying,” she says, and she doesn’t see anything wrong with wanting to feed her grandbaby. Then comes the piece de resistance. “Blame your wife, if she was breastfeeding I wouldn’t have been able to.” Uh, bye bye. She’s been calling, but you’re going to need more than one insincere apology to get back into this house.
15. My Grandma, What Big Hands You Have
Oh boy, guys. I took my kids to McDonald's this morning for breakfast. That was three hours ago and we are just getting home, having never eaten our breakfast, because of a personality trait of mine that my son calls "Oh-Heck-No-itis." You see, when I'm out and about and I see something wrong happening, I cannot look the other way.
I cannot pretend I didn't see it. No, my pushy butt gets involved to right the wrong. Especially when it involves kids. Makes sense given my upbringing. So, we are walking through the McDonald’s parking lot and this older woman, about late 60s, has this adorable little toddler with her. She isn't holding his hand even though there are cars and traffic.
The little boy runs almost in front of a car and I grab him and pick him up. He is such a happy little guy. I go to give him to the woman and she says, "Come to grandma you bad boy" and grabs him out of my arms. She then proceeds to pull down his pants and hit him in the butt about five times really hard. It echoed. When she went for the sixth hit, I grabbed her hand and pushed her away.
This poor little boy is screaming now, and she is screaming assault. I pick up the boy and call 9-1-1. You do not hit a child with that kind of force while calling him a demon child and cursing at him. I take the little boy over to the side of the restaurant as I'm on the phone, telling the operator that I just had to physically restrain a woman from beating a toddler.
The old lady is screeching and my son is blocking her from getting me and the baby. Officers come, and we tell them what happened. By that point, the boy is calmed down, but he had huge red welts on his little behind. You could tell it hurt him to sit down. The officers get mom's number off grandma. We sit with the boy, as he seemed more comfortable with us than the officers.
Half an hour later, a car comes into the lot and the little boy's face lit up when he sees it’s his mom and dad. They come straight to him and are hugging and kissing him and apologizing. They get the full story from the officers and us. Dad is angry. He is practically breathing steam. Mom is crying and just looks...broken. Dad marches over to the patrol car housing his (as I found out) mother-in-law and asks her what the heck she thought she was doing not holding his hand near traffic, then beating him for her mistake?
She is still screeching about me hurting her. That's all she would say. I apologized to the boy’s mother for putting my hands on her mother, but she gave me a hug and thanked me for helping him. Dad comes over and asks mom if they're going to press charges this time. This. Time. This time? Ok, I'm not gonna ask, it's none of my business, but dad looks done and asks as if this is finally enough for mom to understand her mother is terrible.
Mom says yes, and I give my full statement, as does my son. Mom and dad take my phone number and take their poor boy home. I told them to call me, as I have experience in these areas and know people who can help them if they need it. The mother-in-law gets taken in to be booked. That old witch not only almost let that poor boy get hit by a car, she then beat him for her error.
Not a good idea if I'm around. So, we ended up just coming home and now I'm making brunch to burn off the excess adrenaline. I hope they call me. Poor mom looked so heartbroken.
16. Out Of Her Mind
I’m a male officer, I’m dating a man, and my mother-in-law hates this. Yesterday I came in for my shift in the morning, without thinking about my mother-in-law at all. I got changed, had a cup of coffee, looked who I was going to be paired with, and when my partner and I walked out of the station to go to the patrol car, I saw my mother-in-law.
She did kind of come up to me, not close enough for a conversation but close enough so that I could hear her. She started to say something about my boyfriend and some money she needs. I saw her but I totally ignored her. I just walked past her without saying a word and went straight to the patrol car to start my shift. The fact that I ignored her annoyed her pretty badly, I guess.
She stepped back a bit, waited until we got into the car, and just before we turned on the engine and started to drive, she grabbed a rock from a nearby flowerbed and threw it into the windshield of our car. The windows of our patrol cars are quite durable, fortunately. It cracked but didn’t shatter and I didn’t end up with a face full of glass.
I wasn’t driving, my partner was driving and it was obvious that she aimed her throw right at the passenger seat where I was at. Then she probably realized that doing that to a police car in front of two officers in front of a station wasn’t the smartest thing to do. She turned around and took off running. I got out and ran after her. This pursuit wasn’t very long.
She only made it to the park that’s not far from the station when I caught her. And that’s when she started to make the biggest scene I had ever seen. She had no intention of calmly letting me put handcuffs on her. Instead, she dropped to the ground and started to yell for help. Mind you, it was an early morning, but there were already quite a lot people in the park—some were walking their dogs, some were jogging, some were just walking through to get to wherever they needed.
She was yelling at the top of her lungs, “People, good people, help me! I’m being attacked! This isn’t a real officer! He’s trying to kidnap me!” and things like this. She was yelling for help so loudly that everyone in the park stopped whatever they were doing and looked at us. Everyone—men, women, children, dogs, and cats. There was not a single person who wasn’t looking at us.
You might think that I’m a man and she’s a woman, so I should be able to hold her down, but really it’s not that simple. She was hitting and scratching and biting. She was spitting at me. Also, during the struggle, she kicked me several times, quite hard, and it was really painful. Honestly, at this point, I had all the rights to tase her. I didn’t.
My partner came with a car, helped me, and together we managed to handcuff her. The next problem was getting her into the patrol car. Our patrol cars are like vans; the back door opens and there’s like a cage with a bench where you can put the person in. And my mother-in-law wasn’t going to get in there without a fight. Even with her hands cuffed, she was kicking the door, and spread her legs very wide so that we couldn’t get her in.
When we finally got her in, she was putting her feet in the doorway so we couldn’t close the door. While she was doing all this, she was yelling that we’re breaking her bones, that we have no rights to treat her like this, that this is against the law and still asking the people to call the real authorities. During my whole career as a cop, I had never had an arrest like this.
I have detained many aggressive people, many weird people, but this right here was the stupidest thing ever. We took her to the station, and if we had trouble getting her in the car, now she didn't want to get out. She held onto the bars and we literally had to grab and pull her out. Once inside, my mother-in-law immediately demanded to see the captain.
She wasn’t listening when we tried to explain that the captain isn’t going to do anything for her and shouldn’t be bothered with this. She insisted that she has the rights to see someone superior, and technically she’s right. So we went to get a captain for her who recognized her from the last time she had gotten in a scrape with me (yeah) and wasn’t too happy to see her.
My mother-in-law said that she wants to complain about “this officer” while pointing at me. She said that I misused my power, used way too much strength on her, and didn’t even care that she’s a fragile woman. She claimed that I twisted her hands and brutally pushed her into the car. The captain asked to see my body camera, since this is one of the reasons why we use body cameras all the time.
If the suspect says one thing and the officer says something different, then you can watch the recording and see what actually happened. So, the captain played the recording for all to see. Then he asked her, “What’s this, ma’am?” as she was clearly ignoring my orders on camera. My mother-in-law was like, “This is me fighting for my life! It’s a survival instinct. I thought he would shoot me right in the head!”
The captain was like, “No, ma’am, this is you resisting. If an officer is giving you a lawful order, you’re supposed to listen, and if you don't listen, the officer has the right to use a certain amount of force to detain you.” This is when she amped it up. She hissed, “I take no orders from gays!” while glaring at me. She was charged with vandalism, fleeing from an officer, resisting and assaulting an officer.
And just as she was going to be booked in, she suddenly started to complain that’s she’s not feeling well. She said her heart hurts and she’s dizzy and her blood pressure is too high and she wanted an ambulance. Everyone realized that she was faking, but just to be sure that we’re not mistaken, we called an ambulance. The medics came and examined her.
Just like we thought, she was fine. Her heart rate was normal, her blood pressure was normal, and she had no need to be hospitalized. I was just thinking, “What do you think would have happened???” The charges don’t disappear just because the person is taken to hospital. She probably didn’t know that even if she was hospitalized, an officer would have gone there with her and stayed with her all the time.
And as soon as she was ok again, she would be transported behind bars anyway. She wouldn’t sneak away if that’s what she was thinking of doing. The ambulance left and even though our captain is a very calm and composed man, at this point he seemed very irritated. He was like, “Ma’am, is the circus over or are you going to give us more nonsense?”
My mother-in-law then asked him if he was going to punish me and he answered that no, he’s not going to punish an officer simply because I was doing my job. And then she looked straight at him and went, “Are you gay too?” I froze. I couldn’t believe that she really just asked that to a captain. I know he’s not gay but this was probably the most inappropriate thing she could have done.
He knows I’m gay because I was forced to come out to him when my mother-in-law tried to cause troubles for me the first time. He ordered her to be taken behind bars immediately, and even then she still had the audacity to speak. She insisted on having a phone call so that she could call her son and he could pay her bail. I’m not sure why she thinks my boyfriend is going to bail her out—he didn’t do it last time.
I called him first and I told him that his mother is behind bars, and he seemed quite delighted as he’s so tired of her. The captain offered for my boyfriend to come to the station and see the recording if he wants, but we really don’t want to show ourselves as a couple more than absolutely necessary.
17. The God Of Thunder
I work at a business location that easily rhymes with Buck Free Keys’s. It is/was my first job, and I worked my butt off to keep it. It’s the easiest job to have where I live, and I wouldn’t trade it in for the world. Ours isn’t the prettiest Buck’s, nor the largest, but all of the staff I work with are great and so are most of the managers.
I even became a manager after three years of dedication at Buck’s, and I am proud of myself for it. With Buck’s, a lot of people in my area come in and are usually surprised and/or upset with how pricey and yet cheap we are with our games. This usually changes when they realize, after our explaining, that our Buck’s is the only Buck’s in a good two or three hundred miles.
Our corporate sucks, no lies, and as such our prices jump around like an angry toddler chasing a balloon. We have a lot of mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, and moms come in. It’s a kid’s place, unsurprising right? Well...a week or two ago was my area’s spring break. And this is where we met the most stubborn, evil, old hag I’ve ever thought one could meet.
And working where I work, I’ve met a lot of these kinds of people. We’re busy throughout the day, and as one of only two managers on duty, I’m helping the front of the house stay afloat. Between helping fix some of our more difficult machines, and soothing the complaints of some of our more difficult patrons, everything has been going well!
One might have even thought too well. Well, in walks the world’s Depository of Witchitude, right after I had just finished telling my co-worker that “today was going to be a fun one!” This woman could’ve pickled a live elephant with the sheer amount of witchiness resting on her face. I had been walking over to another staff member at our kid check station.
This is essentially where we...now get this...check your kids in with you! (Gasp! Horror of horrors! Safety for children!). What that means is we literally give you a stamp, and your kids a matching stamp, in invisible ink so that they leave with YOU and not SOMEONE ELSE. Anyhow. This woman has come in with her grandkids, though soon the husband (her apparent son), who is now my favorite action hero, will arrive.
She enters first and immediately turns her nose up at my staff member, who politely asks to see their hands so that they can get a stamp. “Why are you stamping us?! We don’t need a STAMP.” “Ma’am, the stamps are so that no one leaves with any of your kids. They’re only supposed to leave with y’all.” “Well, my [granddaughter’s name] and [grandson’s name] are too little to get a stamp!”
During all of this, my staff member and I are getting treated to the extremest form of stink eye I have ever seen from a grown human. This woman is glaring at us in a way I thought only possible by demons, and perhaps very, very irate cats. She’s gone back and forth with my staff member, and still has yet to even raise her hand for the stamp.
Now, my co-worker and I are both the darkest people in our entire store, skin-wise (an important thing to note, I promise), and neither of us is very shy about letting our accents change depending on the people we talk to. Someone from the ‘hood? “Hey, we hood too!” Someone from the nicer parts of town? “Yes ma’am! No ma’am! We hope you have an absolutely blessed day ma’am!”
This too, is also important. We had been nothing but pleasant as can be. This whole time, my staff member has been using his nicest “white people” voice. He’s already a generally soft-spoken dude, but this is the nicest and most panicked I’ve ever seen him get. This woman, this fiend, is getting increasingly louder while the two children standing behind her are looking more and more embarrassed.
The granddaughter is the older of the two, and the grandson is clinging to her hand with the most nervous stare possible. And all the while, she is just growing louder and more unruly. I quickly step in, taking over and letting my staff member turn and begin checking people OUT of “kid-check.” This apparently was the wrong move.
Clearly, loudly, and with him still standing right next to me, this fiend in the shape of a woman goes: “Oh good. Another one. Y’all must breed like roaches.” In what is such a casual tone, she might have been talking about the weather. I’m sorry...What. I’m so caught off guard by sheer nonchalance of her statement, I can’t do anything but stare.
But, then was not the time, and I simply hold out my hands and look the woman in her eyes. They are furious. So I speak, using my own “white-people” voice. “Ma’am. If your kids cannot be stamped, we have stickers for them. But we cannot let you in otherwise.” I say this as coolly as I can. “G’ammy—“ Is begun to be said, a sentence in its infancy immediately ceased by this demonspawn of a human, who turns and immediately hisses, “Shush! Gammy is talking.”
After which, she turns back around and then proceeds to holler for a manager. Over my shoulder. Directly in front of me. “Can I speak to a manager, please! Hello! I need some help!” Now, I had mentioned earlier that I myself am a manager, and we wear these nice red lanyards that clearly mark us out as managers. Like, they have MANAGER written all along the length of the lanyard, in bright white against a red background.
I raise my lanyard, continue to stare as calmly as I can at this woman, and state that I am—in fact—a manager! Wow! She sneered at me y’all, then told me, “Well someone like you ain’t no help to someone like me.” What? “Ma’am. I am a manager, and any other manager will tell—” “HELLO! AH, YOU! HEY! SWEETIE! CAN YOU GO GET YOUR MANAGER FOR ME?” She screams past me, waving her arms at my cashier...Who is a short walk away from kid-check.
My cashier, bless her soul, pauses in the middle of the order she’s taking, looks directly at me, and makes the most confused face ever. “He’s...right there ma’am?” She shouts across the way. I could have hugged her then and there, and she immediately went right back to her own work. This sends the woman right to the edge. Then she went overboard.
She puts her finger under my nose and begins jabbing my chest to boot. “Where is YOUR manager then?” and “I want to speak to YOUR boss!” and “Why won’t you just let me and my babies go in!?” Plus all other manner of complaints and shriek-whining. “Gammy, mommy and da—” speaks the little girl, who has stayed silent through most of this otherwise.
"Gammy" turns around and screams at her to, and I quote, “Shush before gammy throws you in the trash like daddy should have!” My staff member next to me stops at hearing this. He looks at me, looks at the woman, and I can SEE his brain telling him that man-handling her is indeed the answer. He opens his mouth, his shoulders and spine are pulling back and straight, and he’s sucking in a breath...!
I nudge him with a foot and send him to go get another manager. Firmly, there are no chances for things to get worse. The little girl? Crying. Her brother? Crying too. Gammy? Turned right back around and screaming at me once more. Y’all, I felt like I was trapped in that conversation for eternity. This woman was going ‘round in circles, telling me to “get my boss” and “look what you made me do.”
Then, as my other manager is walking up, she hisses the winning statement in my face: “This is why people like you shouldn’t be getting jobs like this.” I’m not a very large guy by any means now, I’m just shy of 5’11”, I’m what is essentially a walking collection of sticks and skin, and I have a terrible habit of smiling when stressed or upset.
Now would be a fair time to assume I would be upset, and as such, I’m smiling as I tell this woman: “Ma’am. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you do not vacate the premises, I will be calling the authorities.” “Are you threatening me?!” Foolishly, I replied with a stinging comeback. “No ma’am. Promising.” This sends her on another spiel right as my fellow manager walks up and the front doors to our store open up.
In comes my hero, who storms through those doors like a hurricane given life. Y’all, this was a man who was sun-tanned white, tall and broad, with tattoos running from shoulders to wrists. Enter the husband/son, whose expression shouts with the vitriol of the devil incarnate that he is displeased. “Mom. What are you doing here?” rumbles the mountain, as she turns about and immediately shifts tactics.
“Oh, finally you’re here! Would you please tell this nice young man that he can let us in now! I was telling him we needed to wait for you and we were just chatting!” “Why are my kids crying?” “Oh they got scared of the stamps, the young man right there didn’t listen when I told him they don’t like stamps—” “Stop. Just stop. I could hear you. I heard everything from when you started shrieking.”
The woman looked absolutely floored. “You’re done.” He continued. “You don’t deserve to see these kids anymore, my kids, who you ‘love so much.’ Get out. Go home.” Grumbles the mountain, with a tone that would have made me poop my pants were I the one being chastised. And so she did go, not without crocodile tears, not without shrieking that, “You can’t do that to your mother!”
Not without her son turning around, handing his crying children to his wife who had just walked in, and then leaning into his mother’s face to, and I mean this quite literally, rumble the most intense parting words I’ve heard: “Leave, before I carry you out. I’ll throw you in the trash right here.” She swiftly made her exit, sobbing and wailing all the way out.
He then walks over to me, and I’m trying my darndest to not run for cover at the wrathful expression that turns my way. “I’m sorry about that.” Rumbles the voice of Zeus, God of thunder and massive size. “No problem! Would your kids like to have something off our prize wall?” Chirps my co-worker, the voice of an innocent, innocuous cherub. And thus, does our story end.
18. The Grinch Who Saved Christmas
My husband and I have this board hanging on our wall. It's a list of all the things we want and need, how much it will cost, how much we saved for it, and when we should be able to have it. It has things like a new fridge, dishwasher, nice knife set, wish list items, etc. I even include pictures, model numbers, or other specific descriptions for a lot of these items. I'm very proud of it.
My father and his wife come to visit on a semi-regular basis. My stepmom always makes sure to look at my board, comment on it, and express her sadness that we are unable to afford the stuff. Within a week or so, she will buy one of the exact things on my board…for herself. Sometimes it's a smaller item like the coffee maker, other times it's a larger item, like a motorized toy car for her children.
Her buying these things isn't really what bugs me, what bugs me is her rubbing it in my face that she was able to "get it first" or how I was "copying" her when I do finally get the item. It's super annoying and childish. Anyway. I was walking through a local store's Christmas section right after Thanksgiving one year. I was looking for board ideas and happened upon a giant, ugly, and super pricey outdoor Christmas decorations set. Which gave me an idea.
It was definitely not my stepmom’s style. But hey, why not try? When I got home, I put the set on the high priority section of my board. I went as far as to erase the money I had pooled for other things and move it to this Christmas monstrosity so we could "buy" it sooner. I was hoping this trap would be tempting enough for her, especially if I made this set seem super important.
A couple days after that, my father and her visit. She looks at my board and asks about the set. I gush over it, describing it as the way to make my Christmas dreams come true. I really lay it on thick. On Monday, we go to visit my dad at my stepmom’s request. Sure as heck, she bought and put up the entire set. It's ugly and over the top, and I hate it.
It's hilarious. Immediately, she dives into describing why she just "fell in love with it" and how she "had to have it.” She’s making a huge deal on every little piece and how it was soooo worth the money. Finally, she concludes her gloat fest with telling me that I really do have great taste and she’s sorry she beat me to it. That’s when I dealt her the fatal blow.
"Oh, I don't actually like the set. I just put it on the board and said I liked it to mess with my husband. He hates the over-the-top stuff like this junk. Glad you love it though." If her smile fell any harder, it would have fallen right off her face. The rest of the visit she was quiet and didn't say much. She looked like a kid who got coal for Christmas.
My dad kept asking her what was wrong and got a lot of "I'm fines” and then finally she got a headache and went to bed early. She now refuses to talk to me, with none of her usual texts or calls. Best Christmas ever.
19. Picture Imperfect
I make part of my living as an artist. I make nerdy works of art, and sell poster prints to awesome people with money. One of these works has become really popular over the past few years, and has garnered much interest—it’s a take on the old “dogs playing poker,” except the pups in mine are playing a popular tabletop role-playing game.
A few weeks back, I received a request on Etsy for a custom print. The buyer wanted me to swap out one of the dogs for her own dog, wearing a tuxedo. Dog pictures were sent, and we chatted a bit. Turns out, she is getting married in the spring, and the dog in question has been a part of her and her betrothed’s relationship for a decade.
The dog will even be part of the ceremony, and the commissioned artwork will be a wedding gift from her to her new husband. Awesome. I am a rank sentimentalist, I will admit it. I thought the idea was very cool and offered to make additional changes to the piece to make it even more meaningful to them: their miniatures will be on the table, along with their own character sheets, among other little details.
She was over the moon, and increased the scope of the project. Instead of a poster print, it’s now going to be a huge canvas print, in a beautiful custom frame. Suffice to say, this project is a big deal to me. It would take a lot of time if I rushed it, and I’ve no intention of rushing it. I had just started working on the project when Thanksgiving rolled around.
Things paused while my family visited remote relatives, and then while we dealt with the passing of a close friend the week after. During this time, I got a message on Etsy on Thanksgiving morning from the client: “Hi, I want you to make changes to my poster before you send it.” Ok, no big deal, I thought. We had chatted a bunch about changes, and the piece was far from finalized.
I asked for details. Her response stunned me. She said, “Take out our dog in the tuxedo from the poster, I don’t want him in it. Also take out our character sheets and miniatures.” I was floored. What had happened? Did I do something wrong? Did I somehow blow the sale? I asked if she was sure…that it seemed like a lot of good stuff discarded.
And a lot of time and effort wasted, even if it was only time spent discussing and brainstorming. The response I got back was infuriating. “Yes, I am sure. I am the customer you little jerk. Don’t question me, or else I’ll just cancel the project. Further, I don’t think that [the game in the artwork] is a good fit. I want you to change it so that the dogs are [doing unrelated, non-nerdy activity].”
I was so angry. How dare someone speak like that to me? I, unfortunately, had a good amount of time over the holiday to keep mulling it over. By the end, I had mentally decided that I was going to fire her as a customer. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the busy schedule of the holiday visit, and the swamped week that was to follow.
When the smoke cleared, I decided to reach out and be diplomatic. I messaged her and said that the original idea seemed great, but the revised idea was not really my thing. I didn’t think I would do it justice. I’ve never been so glad I reached out. She responded that she hadn’t made any changes. Instead, her awful mother-in-law had been staying with her and her fiancé over Thanksgiving, and her phone went missing for a chunk of it.
As best we can surmise, the mother-in-law took her phone and saw the emails talking about the artwork project. She took it upon herself to message me, pretending to be her daughter-in-law. She then deleted my emails so that the customer wouldn’t see them. The missing phone was "discovered" on a kitchen counter at the end of the weekend.
I can’t wrap my head around why someone would do something like this. What was she hoping to accomplish? Ruin her daughter-in-law’s gift to her son on his wedding day? Was she hoping that he’d be so outraged, he’d call off the whole marriage?
20. The Revenant
I’m a single father. I have raised my son alone because when he was just a few days old, his mother suddenly decided she didn’t want a child anymore. She claimed she’s not ready to have a child and refused to even feed him or hold him. I wanted to give her some time, since I thought that maybe it’s just postpartum depression or something.
I was ready to be there for her, but she was serious. She packed her stuff and left the hospital. Her last words were that she wants to see neither me or our son ever again. I have never seen her since. But I suspect I know what really happened. I kind of feel like my mother-in-law had something to do with it. During her pregnancy, this woman was talking all the time about how young her daughter is and how inappropriate of a moment this is for her to have a child.
I don’t have any proof and I can’t tell anything for sure but I feel like she somehow secretly persuaded her to take this step for whatever reason. So I was left alone with an infant in my hands. It definitely wasn’t easy, as I was just 21 years old. I had to leave college and work very hard to give my son everything he needed. Fortunately, I wasn’t completely alone.
There were people who helped me to get through the hardest period, people who babysat him while I was working, who gave me advice on how to take care of a baby, and I’ll be forever thankful to them. When he grew up a little, it became easier. I could send him to a kindergarten and work without asking people to take care of him while I’m not there.
During all this time I hoped to hear from his mother, and hoped that she’d eventually come around and realize you can’t just leave your child like a worthless piece of trash. But even though I had left her in my contacts and she could call me or write me a letter or something, she didn’t. She never once used her rights to visit him.
When he was little, he often asked me why did his mother leave him, why didn’t she want him. I didn’t know what to answer because I always tried not to speak badly of his mother in front of him. Now my son is 25 years old. He’s a hardworking, educated young man and I’m so proud of him and I’m proud of myself that I was able to raise him to be a good person.
We stopped talking about his mother a long time ago. It was his choice. He was like—well, if she doesn't want to be with us, then it’s her loss and there’s nothing we can do about it. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Recently my mother-in-law appeared on our doorstep. Without a call, without any kind of notification, she was just there and she had come to visit her grandson.
I couldn’t believe my ears and at first, I almost didn’t recognize her because so many years had passed. She was behaving as if she was a caring grandmother who had come to see her grandchild like she does all the time, not like she was gone for 25 years. When my son saw her, he didn’t recognize her either. I have shown him pictures of his mother and his grandmother just in case they show up one day but I never really thought that they would.
She ran up to him and hugged him just like a loving grandmother would, asking how he’s doing and commenting how big and beautiful he has become. He pushed her away and looked kind of confused. I told him that it’s his grandmother who has randomly shown up to visit him, and he was like ”oh” and walked away from her. She didn’t take this reaction well.
She looked at me and was like, ”What have you taught him if he doesn’t even say hello to his grandmother? He’s looking at me as if I’m a stranger! Haven’t you told him about his mother and me or shown him our pictures?” Well, technically you are a stranger, lady. He had never seen you in person, so why are you so surprised? You show up out of thin air after 25 years when he’s all grown up and expect him to treat you with love? Isn't it kind of delusional?
My son said, ”Dad did showed me your picture, but I didn’t need a picture—I needed you to be there for me.” He was quite hateful with her, throwing question after question at her, and her responses were so incredibly narrow-minded and limited. It was like she wasn’t expecting him to ask any questions. He asked her where his mother was and she was like, ”Oh, she’s doing very well, she’s living together with a great man and she has two nice kids. She has gotten over that misunderstanding about your birth.”
She was acting as if her daughter was the victim here. As if we were the ones who left her. He asked her why his mother abandoned him, and she said, ”Well, she was such a young girl, it would be craziness for her to have a child at that age! She had her whole life ahead of her and a baby would only be an obstacle. You must understand it, she didn’t want to lose her freedom!”
Honestly, her daughter was older than me when our son was born; she was 24. I don’t think it’s too early to have a child, it’s not like she was 14 or something. Actually, age has nothing to do with it. I could have given up my son too, but I didn’t because I loved him and I wanted to be his father. At this point, I wanted to show my mother-in-law the door, but my son stopped me. He had one more heartbreaking question.
He asked why she didn’t want to be his grandmother. His mother left him, fine, but why did she leave him too? She said, ”Well, I had no time to take care of you. I was a young woman too, I had my life, too. And grandkids are only obligated to take care of grandparents when they’re old. So that’s why I’m here.” My son told her to leave and never come back.
He said he doesn’t want to see her ever again and he won’t help her with anything. As she was leaving, she attacked me like, ”That’s what I thought, a man alone cannot raise a proper human being! Such a rude and impolite boy, he would have turned out better in an orphanage than with you!” So according to her, the conclusion is—don’t have children while you’re young or if you do, feel free to leave them and then come back a few decades later and they’ll love you even though they have never received any kind of care from you.
But seriously, what the heck was she expecting?
21. A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
My brother and I started a successful event photography business. He was the photographer and I managed administration, marketing, accounting, bookings, and web management. Even though he was the main photographer I went to every shoot as secondary and did the leg work of holding lights and running around to take photos of the guests.
I never complained because my brother was the one who invested in equipment and we split everything fifty/fifty. This business was my sole income and after two years all of my bills relied on it. Eventually, I made a terrifying decision. I decided to drop out of university and focus on it full-time. I was close to my brother’s wife and we worked out together three times a week.
I had opened up to her about my mental health struggles and how they were the first people to make me feel safe and understood. I had never opened up like that to anyone else before, and the two of them got to see me at my most vulnerable. One evening, she broke down crying over the fact that my brother spent so much time on the business that she no longer felt secure.
She said that she felt safe when he had a salary job and they were thinking about their future. Now, everything was uncertain and he was always irritable and focused on work. He was having mood swings and getting angry for no reason. With my struggle, I immediately understood! I told her to forget about the workout and to go home and have a talk with him.
I told her to be honest about her feelings and to have a true heart to heart without pride. I told her that my brother loves her more than anything and that if they decide for him to leave the business, I would accept their decision. I told her not to think about me and only see it as a matter that involves the two of them and no one else.
Later that night she texted me that they talked, and everything is good. I told her I was glad and asked what they'd decided regarding the business. She was avoiding the subject and kept saying things like "I'm lucky to have a sister-in-law that worries about me.” I let it go and just decided to wait for the business decision. After three days, I asked her again but she still deflected.
I told her, "I do have to know what's happening with work. I have clients waiting to hear back from me." At that point, seemingly out of nowhere, she simply texted back, "I don't know what is going on, but you clearly have unresolved issues and I just can't deal with it. Sorry." I was totally stunned—but this was just the beginning. After a hurtful, pointless back and forth she told me to ask my brother to drop off my stuff from their house.
An hour later, my brother e-mailed me asking for all of the leftover client information that I hadn’t had a chance to update in our software. I seriously couldn't understand what was happening. My other brother went to pick up my stuff, and my sister-in-law told him I told her to break up with my brother and come live with me.
She also said I was salty at my oldest brother for yelling at me when we did business and tried to manipulate her into leaving him. She told this story to everyone, including my mom. They locked me out of the website and all of the software we shared with all the client information. My brother had all the equipment. I had absolutely no qualifications or savings.
I ended up getting checked into the hospital for stress and my older brother came to visit. I was excited he wanted to repair the relationship but all he wanted was tips on how I managed administration and certain high-end clients. Even now as I’m writing, he and his wife have continued the business. They ruined a lot of the relationships I built but are somewhat successful.
22. The Cautionary Tale Of Huggy Holly
This story requires some background, so buckle in. I promise that I'll get to the mother-in-law part and it'll be worth the wait. When I was six, bad things happened to me at the hands of someone I had been told I could trust. Part of the aftermath of that situation was lots of therapy and an introduction to a strange and wonderful thing called "bodily autonomy."
I was told that I, even as a child, could tell other people that I did not want them to touch me. If anyone touched me without my consent, it was okay for me to tell them "no" and it was okay for me to be as loud and emphatic about this as it took for them to get the message. I could even push them away if they persisted! Adults might be upset if I said "no," but that was not my problem, because adults are expected to control their emotions and actions.
At first, the only people I would allow to touch me at all were my mother, my maternal grandmother, and my aunt. It took a while, but eventually I was able to expand the list. Family members who received my permission were aware of the implications of my trust, and treated it as a serious privilege. People Who Were Allowed to Touch Me at the Time of This Story: Mom, grandmother, aunt, brother, grandfather.
People Who Were Not Allowed to Touch Me at the Time of This Story: Everybody Else on Planet Earth (This is relevant). Now, there's a substantial age gap between me and my brother—about 14 years, because I was quite a surprise. At the time of this story, I was about eight years old. I was a small kid, and even now, I'm under five and a half feet tall.
I was a major tomboy, and my mom kept my hair trimmed into a shoulder-length bob because I was terrible at taking care of it. My brother had been dating a girl for a couple of years, and they decided that they liked each other well enough to get married. His mother-in-law-to-be was...interesting. Very, very touchy-feely, huggy-wuggy, smoochy-woochy, why won't you get the ever-loving-heck out of my personal space-y; thus she earned the nickname of "Huggy Holly."
Upon seeing pictures of me, she squealed that I was just the cutest thing she'd ever seen, and she couldn't wait to meet me and give me a biiiiig hug! And pinch my cute round cheeks! And ruffle my pwetty hair! And kiss my widdle rosebud mouth! My brother told her no. "No, don't hug my sister. Don't pinch her cheeks. Don't ruffle her hair. Don't kiss her. Don't touch her at all. Don't even ask to touch her. If she offers you a hug, that's one thing, but do not, under any circumstances, touch her without her express permission."
Huggy Holly could not wrap her head around the idea that a child could tell an adult not to touch them and expect to have their wishes heeded. My brother has mentioned that he must have tried to explain it to her a dozen times. She just could not, or would not, understand. During the course of the wedding planning, there was a fair amount of communication between my family and my brother's future in-laws.
I was brought up as a topic on several occasions, and every single time, my mother reiterated my brother's warnings. Huggy Holly would always say, "Yes, I remember, but—" and as we all know here, "but" is shorthand for "Watch how fast I invalidate what I just said." In this case, the "but" was always followed by weirdly rapturous comments about how adorable and darling I was and so on.
Moreover, she seemed to have unclear ideas of how this in-law thing works, because she kept talking about how much she was looking forward to "getting another darling little daughter" that she could spoil with fancy tea parties and dress up in pretty princess outfits, like she'd done with her own daughters. My mother must have so much fun dressing me up like a little doll!
I remember my mom laughing until tears came into her eyes during a few of these phone calls, because she knew exactly what kind of semi-feral wolf-child she'd raised, and no matter how much she tried to gently explain this to my brother's mother-in-law, the information never, ever sank in. This woman believed with the holy fire of a fanatic that I was some kind of living, breathing Precious Moments figurine.
She'd be rabbiting on about this coochie-coo stuff while my mom was gazing out the back door, watching me roam the back yard, eating live ants and mud while building elaborate stages for the battles of my Thundercats and He-Man figures out of sticks, grass, rocks, and whatever mud I didn't eat. When I could be induced to hold still long enough to be cleansed of accumulated filth and clothed in strange human garments, I was reasonably cute, but I constantly longed to fling off the constraints of civilization and go roll around in the dirt and play with the mangiest stray animals that a major urban area could produce.
I once tried to convince my mother that a huge, evil-eyed sewer rat was top-tier pet material and had bonded with me and I should totally be allowed to keep it. (She disagreed. The rat was returned to its natural habitat and went back to catching and eating pigeons in the alley behind our house. But I have now seriously digressed).
The day of the wedding rolled around. Because I loved my big brother and had opted to gracefully tolerate his chosen spouse until such time as I developed an actual liking for her, I cooperated with the efforts of my mother and grandmother to make me look presentable. I was wearing my very best outfit, which was a frilly pale-blue dress trimmed with white lace and, yes, it made me look adorable.
We disembarked from the car and went into the church to mill around in the pre-ceremony confusion. Suddenly, out of the crowd, this strange woman in a cerise satin dress which emphasized a bust that needed no extra emphasis and a hairdo like an explosion in the blonde factory came swooping at me with her arms flung wide, emitting a sort of teakettle noise.
I back-stepped fast and said, "No!" loudly and clearly, but on she came, her fuchsia lips scrunching into a kiss-pout that resembled a hemorrhoid pillow, burping out something about the "sweet little princess." My entire assembled family—brother, mother, aunt, grandmother, grandfather, one uncle and his wife—all shouted, "Don't!" at the same time.
It was probably the most organized as a group they've ever been. (My family is mostly Irish, which means we mostly fight with each other, except for my Czechoslovakian grandfather, who always watched the fights from a peaceful safe distance). My uncle, the person physically closest to the brewing disaster, tried to intervene, but the weird lady was moving like she'd been fired out of a ballista made of bad decisions, and frankly that particular uncle isn't a fast mover even when not faced with a high-speed idiot.
Secure in my knowledge of Bodily Autonomy and armored with the assurance that defending myself from unwanted contact was the Right Thing to Do, I was prepared to act. So, as Huggy Holly stooped upon me like a Haast's eagle upon a moa, single-mindedly focused on hugging the child she'd been repeatedly told by several different people not to hug, I took action.
I squared up, planted my feet, and hauled both fists back at shoulder level. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" I screamed at the very top of my lungs, and double-punched my brother's imminent mother-in-law squarely in the breasts. Anyone who has ever been punched in the breasts knows that this is not a fun experience. Possessing a balcony that one could do Shakespeare off of, Huggy Holly had a fair bit of upholstering, but her momentum combined with the small contact patch of my eight-year-old fists concentrating the force resulted in a not-insignificant impact.
She reeled backwards, arms flailing Kermit-fashion, and my uncle just barely missed (so he claims; I suspect intentional action, but that's fine by me) catching her as she toppled onto her be-satined butt, incidentally crushing the gigantic stupid frilly bow on the back of her dress. Having defended myself adequately, I shot into the cluster of my family members and hid behind my grandfather.
He was a short, cheerful, smiling, gentle old man whose heirlooms included a WWII Luger that he acquired from "a German officer who didn't need it any more" occupied Czechoslovakia (you may draw your own conclusions). My uncle, who honestly looked as if he'd rather kick the woman, helped Huggy Holly back to her feet while she began to gasp and sob, clutching at her bosom.
"Why did she do that?!" she demanded. My mother calmly said, "We did warn you not to touch her. Several times." Huggy Holly wailed, "But she's so smaaaaaaaaaall and prettyyyyyyy!" "You know, dynamite comes in small decorative-looking packages, too," my grandmother remarked, then turned to my brother. "Okay, where are we sitting?" That was literally the first time I saw this woman. She did not improve with further exposure.
Unsplash
23. What A Girl Wants
I’m pregnant. Last night, my husband was talking to his mom and mentioned the baby because he was so excited about an ultrasound picture I showed him. In the picture, the baby is clearly flipping the bird, which is also funny. He tells her about this and her comment is along the lines of, "She’s gonna be a trouble maker like you already."
Now, we don’t know the sex yet, but she’s insisting I'm having a girl. It's a squish with limbs, but she’s set on a girl. Whatever. So he gets into talking about how when the baby’s older he wants them to learn cars, because that's what he does and how my gramps raised my mom. So it’s tradition. Guys. My mother-in-law lost her darn mind.
"I’M not having MY granddaughter be a little butch! She will wear pink and bows and dresses! None of that greasy mechanic stuff. She’s gonna be GIRLY!" Uh no. HECK no. That’s where I stepped in and said, "Ok. First, it’s my kid, and my mom didn’t raise me girly so I'm not forcing that on my kid if it's a girl. Second, my grandfather raised my mom to know how to take care of her car so she didn’t need anyone else to do it. That's what your son is gonna do for our kid, girl or boy.”
She apparently wasn’t hearing any of this because she goes, "Listen here, miss preggo, my grandbaby..." before my husband cut her off. Here's where you are going to love him. He says to her, "Ma. Shut the heck up for a minute. Is it your kid?" My mother-in-law says, "No but..." "No. That's right. It's not. It's our kid. Now shut up. Were going to raise our kid how we want to. Not how you want to." I love him.
24. Sparkle & Shine
My first mother-in-law was over the top. She lived five minutes from our apartment, and she came to clean five days a week. She was always telling me to clean more, or how to clean better. All our conversations were about cleaning. She would come over unannounced on my days off when I was laying in bed, and yell at me for being lazy. It was exhausting.
While I was trying to fall back asleep she would tell me what and how she was cleaning, screaming advice from the other rooms. Before I moved in with my ex-husband I cleaned my house three times a week. I left home at fourteen years old and valued my own space. When we moved in together he was twenty-seven and I was twenty-four.
Eventually, I had enough and couldn’t live with it anymore. I was tired of feeling lazy because he wouldn't stand up to his mother. When we broke up, she texted me and asked why I broke up with him. I told her in a kind manner that I thought he had a lot of growing up to do, and that it would be helpful if she would let him do this on his own!
25. An Unexpected Visitor
My mother-in-law ruined the birth of my son four days ago. I’m still pretty shocked about what happened and still kind of baby-brained after the birth, so I hope this makes sense. I’ve never got on with my mother-in-law and have probably met her about 10 times since I’ve been with my partner. She has never liked me and it’s obvious.
She doesn’t speak to me, she ignores me, she leaves me out, and if she does speak to me it’s to say something derogatory. She started being a bit nicer when my partner and I found out I was expecting. She was very excited for her first grandchild and we finally had something she would talk to me about. She asked my partner several times if she could be in there when I gave birth.
That was a firm “no” and I didn’t think about it again really...until she stormed into the delivery room four days ago. I was in active labor by then, and she suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I’m an incredibly shy and anxious person and I could not bring myself to ask her to leave myself. I just have no balls. I know this is terrible.
I presumed my partner would ask her to leave. He didn’t. She stayed for hours and I started to feel like I needed to push but I desperately did not want to push with her in the room. Eventually, I just told my partner it was time to ask her to leave, and my mother-in-law looked furious. He did though, and she left. Fast forward to an hour later.
The baby was not coming out no matter how hard I pushed and things had started to get panicky in the delivery room. I ended up on my hands and knees in the least dignified position…and then the worst happened. My mother-in-law came back into the room. I was mortified. My partner had to get her to leave again. The pushing wasn’t working and we ended up in the theatre.
It ended up being a forceps delivery, which was extremely traumatic and I’ve had more stitches than I even feel comfortable with saying. In the theatre, people kept coming in and saying that she was STILL trying to get in. When we came out, more people came and said she was trying to get in to see the baby. I was horrified. My partner didn’t think it was as bad as I was making out.
I allowed visits the next day and my mom came first (I made sure of that) and my mother-in-law came slightly later because I told her the wrong visiting times. I know that’s childish, but I felt like after what happened it was the last thing I could do to get my own boundaries back. My mother-in-law wasn’t happy she wasn’t the first to meet the baby.
Four days on, and my mother-in-law asks every day to come and see the baby, but I’m absolutely furious at what she did. I’m also trying to establish breastfeeding and I’m anxious and vulnerable and I don’t want her around. She keeps telling my partner I’m mean and horrible keeping her away from the baby. I don’t know what to do.
I’ve spoken to my partner about it but I haven’t pushed it about how upset I am about it all because I’m trying to enjoy time with my baby. I feel really let down by him for not sticking up for me more and keeping her out properly. I also feel confused about medical staff not keeping her away when I said I didn’t want her in there.
One of the midwives said to me after the birth that the reason the labor went so badly was probably a lot to do with how stressful I was finding it having her in the room when I didn’t want her there, and honestly, I feel like that’s true.
26. Some Windfall
My husband and I went over to our in-laws’ house about a week ago and of course, like always, I got stuck being with my mother-in-law while my husband and his dad grilled outside. We were on the subject of luxury handbags and my mother-in-law talked about wanting a $7,000 bag. She has this amazing trait where she does nothing all day and has done nothing with her life, yet acts like she’s the queen and expects her husband to spoil her.
While she’s talking about this super expensive bag, she says, “I’m just waiting for someone to die in my family for me to be able to afford it.”......I’m not joking. She said that word for word, and of course me being tired of her nonsense, I asked her, “What do you mean by that?” Cue her stumbling over her words, saying things like “Oh...you know...inheritance...” as she turns bright red.
I about fell out of my seat just hearing her selfishness. She continues to back pedal, and I just sip at my drink with my eyebrows raised. I said “Ohh, ok,” and acted super unimpressed while I was screaming on the inside, debating if I was really hearing what I heard.
27. Food Fight
This happened a few years ago, but I just cooked spaghetti for dinner and we had a fun trip down memory lane. Before we were engaged, I invited my husband over for dinner. He got to my place early, and I was making spaghetti that night. I had chopped onions, garlic, mushrooms, and had it all in a pan with butter when he walked in.
It smelled great. He just kind of sat back and watched me and was being so darn cute. Asking questions and wanting to help but not wanting to mess anything up. Once the veggies cooked, I added ground beef and seasoned it. In went the noodles, then I added canned sauce to the meat, nothing fancy, pinch of sugar, extra cheese, and done.
Quick meal and full of flavor. He loved it! I mean, this guy who ate like a bird got three servings! He was gushing about my “gourmet spaghetti” and was so grateful. He kept the leftovers for work the next day and thanked me a million times. When he told his family about it, his mom asked him something to the effect of, “Is it better than mine?!” And he said it was.
He said that I make it so well and that it’s his favorite thing I make. Well, we get a dinner invite from his mom for the following week. She’s making spaghetti...and wanted to have a spaghetti cook off to see whose he liked the best??? What the heck? I laughed and he thought it was a joke, but said that she did seem upset about his comments.
He tried to play it down and tell her that he likes them both but that he’d never had some like mine. I refused the cook off because I thought it was silly and I didn’t want to set a bad tone with her. The day comes and we show up. She had invited her other adult children and their children to partake in the epic spaghetti dinner.
We all ate a bowl and it was ok. I mean, it was literally sauce and noodles. I said to my husband, “this tastes familiar but I can’t place the sauce.” My mother-in-law was behind us and chimes in that it’s her special recipe. My father-in-law then says, “The bottle is in the trash can if you want to see the brand.” Poor guy got The Stare. I kind of laughed it off and stage whispered to him, “Thanks, I’ll check before I leave!”
My husband and him chuckled and we went on with our conversation. My mother-in-law was still standing there, but I figured she would know we were joking because I’m not actually going to dig through rubbish. Welp...she got mad. Like, really mad. She stormed into the kitchen and took the bag to the dumpster down the street. She got back and smugly said, “Now you’ll never know what I used and I win!”
The silence was so, so awkward. Then she turns to my husband, “Why haven’t you eaten more!? You’re supposed to have seconds!!” He just said he was full. Everyone was so uncomfortable at this point. We left shortly after, but not before she gave my husband an industrial-sized portion of leftover spaghetti, which sat in his fridge until it became a science experiment.
Little did I know that I had only had a taste of the pettiness that would become my mother-in-law. Cute side note because my husband is a sweetheart. Anywhere we’ve had spaghetti, he’ll quietly whisper to me: “Your gourmet spaghetti is way better than this.”
28. Family Values
I have two brothers, and unfortunately, they share the same terrible taste in women. My younger brother met his current fiance while she was dating our older brother. The relationship was toxic from the beginning but continues to get worse every year. In the beginning, she would spread rumors at family gatherings or make a big deal to get invited and then not show up.
She finally chose which brother she wanted to date full time, but doesn’t trust him because of how their relationship started. So she’ll play power games to see if he will always choose her. She’s organized a family dinner in a restaurant and then called after we’ve been waiting that they weren’t coming. She’s canceled weekend trips after they were booked and non-refundable.
While my sister was in university they tried to guilt her into cat-sitting for them every weekend and called her selfish for saying no. Then she jacked up the crazy to 11. She asked my sister to choose between them and our parents, telling her she couldn’t speak to one anymore. She brought it up in a group situation and my sister-in-law made a huge scene about being attacked.
When our grandmother passed they sulked because my brother didn’t “get enough” from her will. Then they decided to move over 200 miles away from our parents and then got angry that no one helped them move or decorate. My father broke his leg right before they moved and they accused him of doing it on purpose to avoid them.
At one point they had a dog that bit me, my partner, and my dad on various occasions. They refused to train it or engage in any kind of dog lessons. They decided instead to tell the family not to come over to their house or our parents’ house if they were there as they wouldn’t be able to relax. They've given the dog away now.
When they got engaged, they didn't invite my stepdaughters to the wedding, just my partner, our daughter, and myself. They said my stepdaughters "aren't really their family"—then couldn't understand why our family declined their invitation to go to their destination wedding. It was scheduled for summer 2020, so we’re still not sure if it happened or not.
29. It’s Hard To Find Good Help
My mother-in-law always complains when she isn't asked to babysit when me and my husband look for someone to babysit the kids. To me, this was an ongoing issue and at times, years ago, we did ask her, but she always had other plans. Well, this morning I woke up to a swollen and bruised knuckle on my right hand. It hurt a lot, and I could barely do anything with my hand because it hurt so much.
My husband decided to take me to get it checked out, but being so late to call around to ask someone, we asked my neighbor (a close friend of mine), to watch the kids. However, she wasn't home, and I checked with my mom and she couldn't do it. So my husband asked if he could ask his mom, and I told him to have a back-up plan if she said no.
Turns out she said yes. My husband didn't mention me but just told her we had an emergency and needed her to look after the kids. I'm surprised she actually agreed to help out. We thanked her when she arrived. Me and my husband were gone for two hours, and when we got home we found my friend in the living room with the kids. Then she told us the story that made my blood run cold.
She said my mother-in-law showed up at her door the moment she got home, half an hour after we left, and asked our friend to watch over the kids because she had been unexpectedly called into work. The thing is, my mother-in-law has no job. I think she just got bored and expected to leave when she wanted to. She didn't even bother to tell us she was leaving either, which is what I find even more annoying.
Not long after, though, did she call my husband…to tell him to pay her for watching the kids. My husband let her know she wasn't getting paid and staying half an hour and expecting other people to watch the kids was unacceptable. This caused her to freak. She told him we were both being selfish and should be thankful for her being there when we needed someone, and that she didn't do anything wrong.
My husband told her if she saw no fault in her actions then she no longer could see the kids, or us, and until she realizes her mistake, don't contact him. She tried to fight him, cried on the phone and said she needed him. What she didn't expect, though, was to be hung up on and ignored whenever she tried to call back. From this point on, no more contact with my mother-in-law.
30. Daddy Issues
“My son is your children’s father and there’s nothing you can do about that.” This is the exact quote my former mother-in-law screamed at me in my own driveway back in 2006. All while her worthless, addict son literally hid behind her. My girls were three and six and my fiancé had already taken them into the house. What set her off was hearing my kids call him “dad.”
We hadn’t taught them this, they had just started doing it because her precious son only saw my girls four or five times a year. So here I have this garbage human that literally had his mommy fighting his battles, who didn’t answer his phone when I called, didn’t work or pay child support, and didn’t even know our youngest daughter’s birthday or how to spell our oldest child’s middle name.
And then I have this fiancé, this sweet, kind-hearted man who fell in love with me and my girls, who said to me when he proposed, “Those girls deserve a dad and I want to be it.” This guy wanted the job, so why should I be dealing with this fool and his mother anymore? I replied to her, “Nothing I can do about it, huh? I guess we’ll see about that.”
That was the last time she saw my kids. I never called her son again and I stopped answering her phone calls. It’s amazing how quickly he disappeared when I stopped forcing him to do his job. My fiancé and I married that fall. We filed adoption papers after Christmas. My ex didn’t contest it. He didn’t show up to court. His mother showed up on my doorstep on Easter but my husband told her to take a hike.
My children are 20 and 17 now. They don’t know my ex. In 14 years, they have not seen or heard from him. No phone calls or birthday cards. No social media requests. If he walked by them on the street, he would just be any other guy to them. He’s been completely erased from my children’s lives. He does not exist to them. He is not their father. So yeah, I guess there was something I could do about it.
31. Cat Fight
My hassles with my mother-in-law have become somewhat legendary around my friend group. She has been gone now for about 12 years, but sheesh did that gal go down fighting! The scary part is that my own mother was just like her. In fact, they were bitter enemies before my husband and I were even born. This is the reason we did not have a wedding and 44 years later I have never once regretted that decision.
Much to my mother-in-law's disappointment, I never gave her the satisfaction of yelling at her or arguing with her, but my sister is not one to back down from someone acting like a spoiled toddler. See, my sister has a very unconventional way of dealing with crazy folks. So one day, my sister had come over to my house for a visit.
We were watching TV with our kids, so that meant Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Mr. Rogers. (All great shows, by the way.) There was one hand puppet kitty cat on Mr. Rogers that would meow while saying something. For instance, it would say: Meow meow meow friend, meow? When it was asking someone to be its friend.
For some odd reason, this hit us both as hilarious and we began doing this to the kids. Like asking: Meow meow meow hungry, meow? We kept it up all afternoon, just being silly. The kids loved it. Later after dinner, I went to drive my sister home. She wanted to stop for a soda on the way to her house, so we did. To my dismay, my mother-in-law was in the convenience store where we stopped.
This woman immediately started being awful to me. She said: "Oh my God...why are you out so late?! (It was 9 pm) What are you even doing here? Does my son know where you are? Are you buying drinks? Does my son know you are out buying drinks? Are you going to drive while in that shape? Where are my grandkids?!" For what it’s worth, we were buying SODA.
Lord, this woman was exhausting. But my sister had the perfect response. Before I could even open my mouth to answer, my sister stepped up and said to her: "Meow meow meow stupid, meow?" My mother-in-law stared at her for a few seconds before stammering, "W...what?" To which my sister said: "Ahh! Meow meow meow, witch meow!"
At this point, several other people near us started snickering. Without another word, my mother-in-law turned on her heels and stomped out of the store. I hadn't said a single word to her. I hadn't really even gotten the chance. I took my sister and nephew home after that— my nephew had been off looking at the candy bars in the store and had missed it all.
By the time I had gotten home, my mother-in-law had called my husband and had told him my sister and I had been tipsy in public and were also rude to her. He knew better though, so he asked me what had really happened. He laughed so hard after I told him that he had tears in his eyes. To this day, my husband and his brothers will say: 'Meow meow meow, witch, meow?' to anyone being unreasonable.
32. Ruining The Big Day
This story is about my friend’s mother-in-law, and her wedding. Strap in guys, this is a wild ride. I did THE THING that got me banned from any of her family functions. Plus a few threats of dismemberment and bodily harm. So, a good friend of mine from university was getting married! They had been a couple since junior year of college, through her two years in the Peace Corps and currently her return to this continent.
Six years in total. She had been to all manner of family functions and always came back with a strange story about how she thinks her mother-in-law secretly hates her. But, she being a very quiet and sweet person, pushed those thoughts aside. Point 1: She is vegetarian and Jewish, while her husband is not. She was invited and went to Christmas dinner and figured she would just eat sides, plus she brought a vegetarian casserole.
Her mother-in-law, after knowing her for THREE years and being reminded of her being vegetarian just beforehand...proceeded to put meat in every dish. My friend drank water and ate her casserole the whole night while the mother-in-law cried to everyone that the friend was so rude for not eating her cooking. Anyway, back to the main event. A few friends and I were asked to be in the wedding.
My friend has a HUGE family, so this was not going to be a small affair. Neither of them is particularly religious, but my friend said it would be nice to be married under a Jewish hoopa, which is like an arbor but with four poles and covered with a white cloth and lots of flowers. Her husband said he could care less, and told her to go and rent one for the wedding.
I was at the bridal shower when the mother-in-law found out the "pretty canopy" was actually a hoopa. She almost lost her mind in front of a bunch of people, but managed to compose herself and laugh angrily that "if the Jews were being represented, so would the Catholics." There was just one huge problem. In my head I heard a record screech. Guys...they aren't catholic.
So after much fighting, a lot of screaming, crying, threatening to pull money (which is funny because she contributed nothing), the mother-in-law lost. The boot was firmly placed, and nothing was moving it. Hoopa yes, Catholic priest no. Things got stupid quiet, until my friend texts me the night before the wedding that she has a bad feeling.
I tell her it's probably just nerves; she is getting married and this is a big deal! Oh how wrong I was. We all show up and get our hair and makeup done. We slip into our bridesmaid dresses and hang out waiting for the bride to be finished with her hair. She makes a comment saying she hadn't seen her mother-in-law all day and that she skipped her hair and makeup appointment.
We all side eyed each other, took a few sips of our drinks and hoped the eerie feeling would go away. 30 minutes later as we are helping the bride into her dress, guess who shows up? If you guessed the mother-in-law, you win a cookie! Flushed from coming up the stairs, (she is not a light woman) in full hair and makeup...and the piece de resistance. A white dress.
Not ivory, not cream, full snow-freaking-white. In fact, the dress was clearly a wedding dress; it was even from David's Bridal (which she would later shout at me). Floor length satin with a sweetheart beaded top, a bit of a train, and off-white lace on the bottom. The dress was even tailored to her—this has been one long con that she has orchestrated.
The bride burst into tears while aunts and friends ushered the mother-in-law out. We did our best to console the bride, touched up her makeup, and I made her a promise that the dress would never be seen in a photo. But she looked me in the eye and nodded with a strange expression only I could read. The game was on. The venue only supplied white wine and champagne for the wedding party, but I grabbed my purse and ran down into the reception area and managed to flag an attendant by the bar and pay him with a cool $20 to give me a bottle of red early.
I cracked the baby open, filled a solo cup to the brim with it, and stalked outside. After a few swigs from the bottle for courage, I went over to where everyone was getting ready to take photos. With one last hard stare at my friend, I got her nod of approval. I pulled out my phone, held it in front of my face like I was reading a text and walked straight into mother-in-law. I poured the entire cup of red down the front of her dress, jumped back and gasped.
The look on her face was priceless. She screamed, yelled, threatened, and promised she would sue me. People had to hold her back because she wanted to fight me. Eventually she switched from screaming to sobbing and sank to the ground and threw a tantrum on the floor. Everyone moved back and just let her go at it and walked away to go take photos.
It was surreal, as if everyone just hit their limit and noped out from around her. The 12-year-old flower girl whipped out her phone and snapped a few photos, much to our amusement. Eventually, the mother-in-law went home and changed into a nice dark green, too small and low cut dress. Because of this, she missed all of the photos. By the way, the wedding was beautiful.
I got glares from everyone she told that I attacked her, but I couldn’t care less as I drank and danced with friends. The bride thanked me in secret and three months later took me to the spa for a day of pampering.
33. Thou Shall Not Covet
This incident happened exactly one year ago today. My wife and I are in therapy, not so much because of issues we have in our marriage but because both of us have horrible families, and neither of us until meeting our therapist had strong spines about it. We are very low contact with my mother-in-law. She more sucks than is horrible but she also has some substance issues she’s dealing with, namely an addiction to pain medication.
Anyway, let’s go back a year and a few days. My wife is due any second with our first child. So the plan was to have both sets of parents at the hospital after the baby arrived and my wife and I had time to bond. Her parents accepted that, my dad who is an enabler was okay with that, but my mom was not. She demanded she be at the hospital earlier, and we told her no, she had to wait.
Finally, she said OK after she saw we weren’t budging. So the baby was born. It’s a boy, and we hadn’t found out so it was a big surprise. Anyway, both sets of parents come, everything’s good. Until suddenly, it took a dark turn. My wife was getting tired so I walk my parents out; hers had already gone home. My dad went out to get the car while I waited by the front door with my mom.
She then turns to me and says that my dad and her are filing for custody of the baby. Before I can speak, she claims my wife is on drugs like her mom (my wife doesn’t even drink) and that she saw how my wife was around the baby and she fears for his safety. I’m stunned. My dad pulls up and she gets in and leaves. I go back upstairs and my wife sees my face and knows something is up.
I really don’t want to tell her but I’m not going to lie to her, either. She’s as upset as I am, so I text my mom that she’s not to contact us anymore. I then block her number. At this point, my younger sister is blowing my phone up and I know it’s my mom. We go home the next day, and my wife had tearing and therefore needs medication.
She refuses pain medications because of her family history but says she will take Advil. So I go get some things at CVS, she and baby are sleeping (him in his cot) at home. I’m in line getting us dinner when my wife calls me sobbing. She woke up and there’s no baby. I run home and we are both a mess at this time. Then my neighbor comes over and asks what’s going on.
She sees me running like my feet are on fire, so I tell her. She tells me, “Wait, so your parents weren’t supposed to take the baby?” Yep, my mom came and kidnapped my baby. I immediately call the sheriff’s office, since my best friend is a deputy there. As soon as I tell him and his partner what happened, they head to get our baby.
Turns out my dad wasn’t involved in the actual kidnapping, although I’m sure he knew about it. My mom knew at the time where we kept a spare key and let herself in. We went all the way and pressed charges. According to my friend, they had a nursery waiting at their house. Our baby was returned to us. My mom was sentenced, but because of her standing in the community she was only given a slap on the wrist.
However, the negative attention she got after that event spurred her and my dad to move. Thankfully, my sister turned 18 before then and she stayed with us a few months before going a few states away to school. For a long time, both my mom and my dad were radio silent. However, my mom has tried to reach out in the last few months.
Thankfully we’ve learned from this. We now have cameras, a security system, and no spare key outside. Our neighbor, who is now a great friend, has our spare. We are three months along with our second child, and I’m hoping my mom doesn’t find out about it until long after.
34. Loose Lips
My partner and I were out shopping, and he had wandered off to look at something else, wanting to avoid the makeup and beauty counter. I haven't physically been to the makeup section in a while, choosing instead to use Sephora online, so this was exciting to me to get to be at the actual counter and do a whole lot of swatches and drool over makeup in person.
You know that scene from Parks and Rec where Ron can sense a shift in energy and he can “smell” his ex-wife whenever she's in a few miles’ radius? It was kind of like that. I felt someone watching me. I felt this shift in energy. I was very much aware of being alone and that there were no store attendants close by. I look over and I see my mother-in-law, and she's staring at me and throwing me a dirty look.
She doesn't like me. She looks down on me. She looks down on my teaching job, and she thinks I'm vapid and vain because I wear makeup. She thinks I'm a gold digger. She thinks I'm a troublemaker. She's called me a makeup-wearing hussy behind my back. Which to be honest, I kind of own that. I dig it in a weird way. She comes over to say hello, this huge grin on her face because of course, I'm looking at makeup and skincare.
To her, this just re-iterates those thoughts she has of me as being shallow and vain. We mumble a greeting to each other, and then she says to me, "Buying more makeup?" Her tone is very surprised, as if I couldn't possibly need more. "Yes," I say. "Apparently I have a reputation as a hussy to uphold." Her. Face. Dropped. She knew that I knew.
She knew that there was a mole and someone was telling me stuff about her and what she said about other people. It felt great. I walked away and left her there, and then my partner and I left before she could spy on him and try to feed him information or gang up on him.
35. Grandma Time
Background: My daughter goes to her grandma’s house (my mother-in-law) one afternoon per week for “grandma time.” My husband has always let it be at my discretion and I have fought my anxiety to accommodate this. My mother-in-law has tried to turn my husband and I against each other multiple times but has since figured out we are a team.
Story: Two weekends ago, my husband and I went to her house and corporal punishment for our daughter came up. We have committed to no hitting, slapping, or spanking and said no one else is to do it either. My mother-in-law said she is going to do it anyways because, “That’s how they were raised and they turned out just fine.” I informed her that she will not and my husband agreed.
She fought back and said that she will hit anyways, and in a half joking tone said, “And if you don’t like it, just don’t bring her over.” I responded in a cheery (but made it clear I took her “serious”) voice: “Okay!” She was taken aback and realized she shot herself in the foot. She tried to renege but after all the stuff she has put me through, I didn’t let her.
After we left, she called my husband and “was almost in tears” and asked that we “not stop bringing our daughter over because she loves having her there so much.” I know this woman and she doesn’t cry. She was trying to manipulate my husband, which he agreed with. Since our daughter going over there is at my discretion, I told him after the latest development I no longer chose to fight my anxiety and will no longer be taking her over.
He agreed to this. Our daughter hasn’t been there alone for almost three weeks, and my mother-in-law is not a happy camper. You want to disrespect all the decisions we make for our daughter? You’re a witch. You insist on doing things your way because “that’s how we did it and we survived.” You’re an idiot. You are going to hit her after we said no? Say bye-bye to your unsupervised visiting privilege! “Grandma time” is a privilege, not a right.
36. Nothing Hurts Like Good Manners
My mother-in-law wants us to have children, and we won't. My husband finally told her about his vasectomy, which seemed to shut her up, and all further interactions with her have only been mildly annoying. Until now. Yesterday, my mother-in-law told us all that she had purchased a burial plot for her and my father-in-law, and how she's pre-planned a funeral.
She wanted to start working on their long-term medical requests and power of attorney documents. All good things! Then she starts to tell us about her estate. My father-in-law tries to change the subject, but no no, we have to talk about this as a family. Well, mother-in-law gets this smug look on her face and then goes on about how their estate will be divided up.
Basically, it gives my husband almost nothing because we "don't have children, and the money is to support their family line." Our response was perfect. Y'all. Her face when my husband and I both nod approvingly at this and confirm that this seems like a smart plan. I'm fairly certain that she wanted us to either fight back or cry and make a scene or beg her for money.
She controls two of her children with money but not us, and it drives her batty. She sent my husband an email last night "apologizing" for her decision and giving him a "method of communication" about this without me involved. 100%, she was trying to get him to beg her for money or change her mind. So, he popped me on the email and responded, "Mom, she and I want you to enjoy your money and have a happy and secure retirement. This is your money, you can do whatever you want with it, and we'll never criticize you for your decision about this."
Ha. The rest of her kids are already fighting over their bones, but not us. I'm using good manners as an insult.
37. Chosen Family
My husband and I met when my oldest daughter was almost two, and they have had an amazing bond ever since they first met. My oldest daughter has always referred to my husband as her dad. She only asked once when she was younger who her dad was, and when she got an answer she didn't ask anymore. Her 10th birthday is in two weeks.
My husband came to me and asked about getting adoption papers as a present, and I have agreed that it should be done. My husband went over to his parents’ house recently and since he's been a little excited about the decision, he told them. While my father-in-law is happy about it, my mother-in-law is not. She has never actually called my oldest daughter her granddaughter.
She only sees her as my daughter from a previous relationship, which I know upsets my daughter. My husband has always told her off in the past, and for a good period of time, she will treat her like a grandkid but won’t call her one. My husband and I haven't cut her off yet because of the fact she doesn't refer to her as a grandkid. She still is treated like a part of the family.
When my husband left his parents’ house was when mother-in-law started texting me about how my daughter wasn't blood-related and my husband adopting her wasn't an option. When I asked her why, all she said was, "She has a dad. Make him step up to the plate and do his job, my son shouldn't have to do it for him.” I even tried to tell her that her son was my daughter’s father and she just dismissed what I said.
Over the next few days, she complained to anyone and everyone about it and people were calling me to say how amazing or cute the idea was. Nobody seems to agree with her, which set her off even more. She then started calling my daughter an unwanted child. That broke me and I ended up in tears. My husband walked in on me crying and consoled me while I told him everything.
He eventually went to lock himself in his office before calling to yell at his mom. I know that conversation didn't go well and she's been texting me ever since, calling me all sorts of names and telling me I’m a witch for starting drama about something that should not be happening at all. I completely ignored her and told my husband every time she sent me a text.
My husband had gotten his dad involved, and even though both of them were now trying to talk some sense into this woman, she wasn't listening, My husband spent a week every night coming home from work on the phone to his dad about the situation. On Saturday, my sister-in-law had her birthday and we were supposed to go over to her house for lunch.
At the last minute on Friday, my husband was asked to fill in for someone on a business trip. He agreed, but not before asking his brother and his wife to have my back if any drama went down with the mother-in-law. The birthday lunch comes around, and my mother-in-law ignored me and my oldest daughter while my father-in-law had a few conversations with us.
An hour or so later, it all unraveled. I'm standing there talking to my brother-in-law and his wife about the adoption papers when my mother-in-law walked over and said, “No, stop it, that will not be discussed here." She full-on got up in my face and demanded to know why I thought everything was about the adoption papers. When I told her that I had been asked, she abruptly stopped me from speaking to rant more about how it wasn't going to happen and how nobody should have to put an unwanted child under their name.
Even though I pretty much was about to cry again, I straight-up looked her in the eye and said, "Whether you like it or not, your son wants to do it. You will not step in between just because you don't like something.” That's when she went over the brink. She slapped me. Everyone was surprised for a minute until she started shouting at me again and people had to drag her away from me.
All the poor kids were crying over watching what happened, and my oldest daughter was pretty much clutched to my sister-in-law. Even though my father-in-law ended up taking my mother-in-law home after what happened, I took my kids and left not long after. I sat on the couch at home with my oldest daughter, holding her while she cried for an hour about what she heard.
I managed to speak to my husband after I had put all kids to bed, and he is livid. He has left a bunch of messages for his mom but she doesn't respond. My father-in-law called earlier this morning to offer an apology for what had happened and I've told him this is not his fault, but I think it'll be affecting him for a while. I will also be looking into some counseling for my daughter. She has been a little bit attached to me since then, so I know she is taking this hard.
38. Mi Casa Es Su Casa
This is happening as I type this. I’m currently at work until 2:30 and my boyfriend is home. His mother texted him that she and my father-in-law will pass by at 2:00 and bring lunch. My boyfriend immediately texted me: “BABE THE STRIPPER POLE!!!!” So I’m at work laughing, imagining the absolute horror in their faces when they walk in and the first thing they see is my shiny, beautiful stripper pole.
Did I mention that they are veeeerrrrrryyyyy Christian? I’m talking the worst kind. Nothing against Christians, but I don’t like extremists of any form, and they use their faith to hurt people. So I texted back: “Screw it, it’s our house. They’ll have to live with it.”
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39. Out Of The Frying Pan…
My mother-in-law prides herself on her crepes. It’s a major thing for their family, to the point where I wouldn’t make them for my husband for the first eight years of our relationship because the first time I did, he stood over me and said, “Hmm that’s not how my mom does it.” OK, WE’RE A PANCAKE FAMILY NOW. Anyway, recently this year for his birthday, I made him crepes because it makes the man happy.
Now we’ll probably have them a couple of times per month. Yesterday, we were at my mother-in-law’s house and she made crepes. My toddler is two and very talkative and expressive. She had already eaten breakfast, but I set her up with a crepe. She took one bite and pushed away the plate. Totally just a toddler thing, as she’d rather be playing.
I watched my mother-in-law begin to obsessively ask her, “Do you like grandmama’s crepes?!” She probably asked the kid five times in five minutes. Not one answer. She couldn’t be more done with this lady and her crepes. It was delicious to watch. Sorry lady, the kid is too young to pander to your neediness. God bless toddlers and their undeveloped brains.
40. More Harm Than Good
Right now I have a lot of problems going on with my mother-in-law on top of a bunch of other issues. Foremost, I’m fighting cancer for the second time in my life. I was first diagnosed when I was 14, fought it and won. I lived a happy and peaceful life until recently, when I had my health checked for job necessities and surprise!—I’m 30 years old and I’ve got cancer again.
This is secondary cancer, different organ, nothing to do with the first one. Fortunately, stage 2 only, however my oncologist warned me that it’s aggressive, grows and spreads fast, and I could be stage 3 or more in a short period of time so we had to act fast. Hearing that you have cancer is always devastating but to me, it feels like something wants me gone very much.
I was distraught that I’ll have to go through this again. It’s a very hard fight, both physically and mentally; any current or former cancer patient will agree on that. I had a surgery and now it’s time for chemotherapy. The doctors decided on oral chemo that I can take at home and only have to go to a hospital to do blood tests and scans every few weeks, which is very good.
I wouldn’t have the strength to go there every day. I’m on a sick leave from work now and because of the treatment, I’m quite weak and I’ve lost a lot of weight. Before that my wife and I, we both had an equal share of household chores. Some days I feel better than others, however directly after every chemo appointment, even the simplest chores are often a physical impossibility for me.
I try to do as much as I can, but my wife has been amazing. She doesn’t care at all that I don’t help around the house as much as I did. She’s like, “Your only obligation now is not to die.” The other day my mother-in-law came over to visit. She knows about my diagnosis, and I was on the couch reading while my wife was doing something around the house.
My mother-in-law walked over to me and was like, "Look at that! Lying on that couch as if you’re on the beach! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself—a grown man and lying down in the middle of a day while your poor wife is working so hard!" I said, “I just had chemo, I have a headache, I’m nauseous, I don’t feel good.” Nope. She was like, "A young man like you and you cannot beat some silly cancer! You cannot cure yourself with those chemicals! Nature products only!"
Later that day, my mother-in-law was talking to my wife in the kitchen. I didn’t mean to listen, but I heard their conversation anyway. The mother-in-law was like, "You really shouldn’t let him take that poison he’s taking or he will be a goner. It’s poison, otherwise he wouldn’t feel so bad. Doctors nowadays are totally stupid, you should seek herbal treatments instead!"
As all of that came from someone without any medical education, my wife shut her up quickly and told her to stay away from things she understands nothing about. The next day I was going to take my chemo, as I’m scheduled. I’ve got to take it once a day and I prefer to do it in the morning because then I feel better in the evening and I can sleep better.
But, as I walked into the bathroom and opened the cabinet, there was no trace of my chemo bottles. They were gone, completely. I asked my wife if she moved them by any chance and she said no. We looked around but realized it’s pointless because they couldn’t fall out of the cabinet and there’s also no need to hide the chemo; we don’t have children or pets who could accidentally swallow it. Then the horrific truth hit us.
My wife remembered that just before leaving the day before, my mother-in-law asked to use the bathroom. She could have easily taken the bottles with her, considering her words about the toxicity of chemo. My wife turned into a dragon. She was literally almost spitting fire as she got dressed and stormed out to go to her mother’s house.
I had never seen her so mad before. She came back a half an hour later or so and told me that she demanded my medication from her and my mother-in-law admitted she took my chemo but that when she left our house, she threw it out. Obviously, it’s gone. We can’t search through every garbage bin the city, but just the fact that she did it blew my mind.
My wife and her mom had a huge argument, and this woman really thinks she did me a favor. She was like, “Don’t you see he’s dying, don’t you see how fragile he’s become? It’s not cancer that’s hurting him, it’s those pills! I got rid of them, I saved your husband and that’s how you thank me, by insulting me? Better go and buy him some herbal teas!”
Because of her, I missed a dose of chemo, which is very bad, and I had to see my oncologist immediately. When I told him I need more chemo, he was surprised and said, “What happened to the chemo I gave you a short time ago? You couldn’t have used it all already.” And I had to be like, “Well, you see, doctor, my mother-in-law took my chemo.” He looked totally baffled, as if the fact that someone would take someone else’s chemo is ridiculously stupid. WHICH IT IS.
He prescribed me new bottles of chemo and a new schedule on how I’m supposed to take it, and now I keep it in a cabinet with a lock. Even though my wife swore to me my mother-in-law will never set her foot in our house again.
41. By Any Other Name
My mother-in-law got off the phone a little while ago with my fiancé. She was trying to convince him to name our daughter Elizabeth after her mother…which I hate and so does he. He gently let her down because he says the more firm you are with her, the more combative she becomes. I've only met them a handful of times as they live in Arizona we are in NYC.
So she called me. She said: "You know, it would mean so much to me if you were to name my grandchild Elizabeth." But I had had it. I said: "Didn't your son just tell you no? Isn't that what he said? (She tried to interrupt, I cut her off) Did you think if you called me with your sickly sweet voice that I would somehow cave, because I can assure you all you’re doing is making me angry and tap dancing on my last nerve."
She said: "Well, I feel I should have some sort of say in my grandchild's naming." Side-note: This woman has pressured her other daughters-in-law into naming their children names she has picked out. Wrong witch, wrong time, wrong day. I said: "Your feelings are irrelevant, you are not the parent.” She said: "I'm the grandmother.”
I said: "Yes, the parent of one of the parents, know your role. You can visit, dote on, spend time with our child as we as her parents deem acceptable, but please do not think your job is to raise our daughter, because it is not. So no, you do not get a say in what we name her. It is strictly between me and her dad." I continued: "Is there anything else you want to say?”
She’s silent. I took that as a no, and just said goodnight and then I hung up. I know I might have been harsh, but with all I'm going through I just don't have the patience. My husband is now on the phone with her, telling her she should not have upset me considering my condition. He's beyond angry too, but honestly I'm fine. I said what I meant and I truly meant what I said.
42. Getting Along Like A House On Fire
The last few months have been rough. Near the end of last year, we lost the house to a freak accident, and we lost almost everything we owned. It's just been a really stressful time for my little family of four. We were out for a school recital when we received the call from a neighbor, and we returned to find the house in flames. The fire department tried to save what they could, but the damage was really bad.
We ended up selling the property and moving altogether because the repairs amounted to essentially rebuilding the house. I have been married for 10 years and my mother-in-law has never liked me. I still didn't expect her to act the way she did during this time. I always believed that even if she didn't like me, she'd help me in a time of need because I was the mother of her two grandsons and the wife of her son, and I made them happy. I found out just how wrong I was.
On the night of the accident, we needed a place to stay temporarily, at least until we could have a few moments to breathe and get our bearings. My husband suggested we stay with his mother for the night. It was late and it made the most sense to us both. We drove over to the house. My boys were half-asleep in the backseat and we left them in the car when we went to speak to my mother-in-law to explain what was going on.
She was very sympathetic at first and said she had no problem with my husband and my sons staying…but I would have to make other arrangements. My husband lost it with her and began to yell that she was being unreasonable, and she refused to budge. In her words, I wasn't true family and she'd never blessed our marriage in the first place, so I was not her responsibility.
We left and spent the night in our car, and we got a motel the next day. She began calling and inviting us over to stay again, and she said that she'd graciously permit me to stay in the garage for a few days. Again, we didn't take her up on the offer and my husband told her that she was being very disrespectful. My mother-in-law got very angry in response and said that we were spitting on her generosity.
She then offered to keep the boys so that they wouldn't need to stay in a motel while we put our lives back in order. Again, we rejected her offer. We heard nothing from her for a few days until we learned that she had been badmouthing me to people. She was claiming that I was tearing the family apart in this time of need with my grudges.
From her point of view, she'd opened her house to us in an instant and I'd turned her down and forced my husband and sons to live in a cheap motel because I didn't like her. My husband set the record straight, but my mother-in-law did not ease up. It turned into a nightmare in the blink of an eye. She made an official complaint to the fire department claiming that I had caused the accident purposefully to destroy the house and force the current situation.
She said that I was money-hungry and had designs on her house and this was all part of my plan to take her house from under her. I was taken in for questioning and I understand why due to the nature of the allegations, but I was cleared off everything as the investigation proved it was an accident and there was no way someone could deliberately caused the accident.
She later showed up to the house while we were going through it to see what could be salvaged, and she made disparaging comments about how we should not be upset as these were just things. Yes, they were things. I'm not upset about the stove and the couch and the bed. I'm upset about the arts and crafts projects my sons made for Mother's Day every year.
I'm upset about family heirlooms that are irreplaceable. I'm upset about the memories that were lost. The house was a fixer-upper when we bought it and we did a lot of the restoration ourselves. We had professionals handle things like the wiring, but we did the painting and the sanding and whatever we could to save money. My youngest son had a gaming console that he owned, which had been left at her house before the accident.
They'd been over for a weekend with their father and had taken the console to keep them occupied. My mother-in-law stated she didn't have it, and we must have taken it back. My son argued with her that he'd had a conversation with her about leaving it there for the week so his cousin could use it while visiting. She gaslit him to the point of frustrated tears and kept saying we'd taken it back and it had probably been lost in the accident.
The truth came out from others that my mother-in-law had given it away after we'd refused her initial offer of hospitality. The shining ray of light through all this has been that this is the straw that broke the camel's back for my husband. We all went no contact after these incidents and a few more, and we cut contact with her shortly before moving to our new place. She has been trying to get our address from family members, but she hasn't had any luck just yet.
My husband made it clear that he'd have no problem cutting off anyone else in the family who gave her our address or contact information. If she can't support us when we're at our worst, she doesn't deserve to be there when we're at our best.
43. The Big Day
This is one the best revenge stories I have ever heard, and is even now, years later, it's constantly discussed when the subject of weddings or awful mothers-in-law comes up. So my friend was together with his girl for a good six years at the time of the story. Let me give you a bit of background. The whole story plays out in Germany, where the mother-in-law’s family comes from.
My friend's wife’s family is of Sinti background. Now, Sinti and Roma do have a bad reputation here in Germany. They are called gypsies, and supposedly are all scam artists who have no real home and travel around to be always two steps ahead of the law on their heels. You get the picture. But her family is actually really well off. In fact, they are quite a bit richer than the mother-in-law’s family.
However, she did not know that, since instead of asking she decided that her prejudices are a way better source of information. They’ve lived in Germany for well over 30 years and own their own company that produces motor parts for several big car and truck companies. Now, how much the company is worth is really not all that important, but to paint a picture: They employ well over 250 people just in production alone.
The mother-in-law’s family, meanwhile, is typical middle class, nothing much to say there. The dad works an office job, and she works delivering drugs for a pharmacy a couple of hours a week. Now, there was so much leading up to the wedding. The first year of the relationship, the mother pretty much ignored he had a girlfriend.
That is, until she sees a photo and realizes the girl is a few shades too brown for her taste. This is pretty much a quote, only she said in a way less friendly way I do not want to repeat here. My friend then explained her being Sinti, and she lost it even more. It boiled down to her being a gold-digger or a scam artist, and she was constantly switching between the two.
But my friend has a backbone, and this ended with the mother being in a timeout for six months, which became over a year, since every time she tried to force contact, the time out started again at zero. Once contact was established again, the mother-in-law had realized open battle was not something she could win, so she decided to switch to guerrilla tactics.
The absolute highlight was creating two fake Facebook profiles, one for my friend and one for his ex. She sent back and forth “texts” for months to create a fake affair. Odin be thanked, she made a grave mistake. A month before, my friend was supposed to go on a four-day business trip for his company. The texts basically claimed his ex had come with him and they had wild times every night.
What the mother-in-law did not know was that friend never went there. It fell through a week prior, and he took the days off instead to do a short trip with his girlfriend. So he had the best possible alibi for the time. Otherwise, I don't know what would have happened on the day she came into the house with printed-out screenshots from that page.
At first, his girlfriend was devastated and angry, until they found the messages about the business trip. In that moment, they both turned on the mother-in-law, who of course denied everything. It landed her with nine months of time out again. The rest of it until the engagement was constant hints at the girl not being trustworthy, bringing up news stories that showed Sinti in a negative light etc., etc.
But since they were low contact (meeting twice a year), she did not have many opportunities. Then came the engagement about one year before the wedding. Her family was over the moon of course, while the mother-in-law had a complete meltdown over the phone. The worst sentence was that she would stop this wedding if it is the last thing she would do in her life.
The actual wedding planning began, and it was a total circus. When she was asked for an address list, the mom actually gave them false addresses, in the hopes once the cards would have been returned, it would be too late to send a new batch to the actual addresses. Of course, the cards came back within a week, and this time they were smart enough to ask someone else for the addresses, and simply did not tell her.
She also started a rumor campaign that was at least partially successful, so the contact to his side of the family got worse and worse. She tried to just cancel the flowers, but since the florist knew the bride in person, he called her to confirm. After that, everything was secured with passwords. This way, they found out she also tried to cancel the venue and change the whole menu.
Most of the bride’s side of the family is vegetarian, and she tried to change it to an all-meat menu. Finally came the thing that made my friend and his fiancée snap. He had found out thanks to his brother, who was acting as a mole in his mother’s camp, that all of the women on his side planned to come in black mourning clothes, to make it clear this was not a day of joy for them, but a day of mourning, since her son made the biggest mistake of his life.
When they found out, they did…nothing. At first. Since they wanted to embarrass her to the bone, they acted as if they knew nothing, and decided to exact their revenge on the wedding day. This was a good four months before the wedding, so it gave them ample time to plan. So the day of the wedding comes, and all the guests have entered the church and are sitting down.
The guests are informed that the wedding party would be late by about half an hour, but they would show a DVD in the meantime. And that DVD was explosive. They had collected evidence and witness accounts detailing exactly how the sneaky mother-in-law had tried to sabotage the wedding. It started with an account of the food deliverer saying that she had tried several times to change the menu.
This was followed by the florist's story about how she had tried to cancel all the flowers for the wedding, including a message she left on the answering machine trying to act like she was the bride, but everybody could hear it was her. Up to this point, the mother-in-law had been shocked into silence. But the next part would change that.
You see, the groom’s brother had secretly recorded how she trash-talked and lied about the bride to everybody who would listen to her on Skype. Once she started to hear those words, she suddenly screeched like a banshee and stormed to the front to stop that DVD. But they had anticipated that, and before she could get even close, three gentlemen closed in on her and told her to either sit down or she would be escorted off the premise.
The film only went on for another three or so minutes anyway. Where was the bride’s family in all this? Well, they had already had a full showing of the video the day before, but were sworn to secrecy. So they acted as normal as they could until the DVD started, then just shot daggers with their eyes. Once the film was over, the father went to the altar with his wife and addressed the family of the groom.
He told them the following: "Our daughter could have accepted that you do not like her, and had tried for years to get a good relationship with all of you, but to no avail. She was either insulted or shut down. So the couple has decided your side of the family does not deserve to be at the wedding. I hereby inform you that there will not be a wedding today at all.” He paused.
“Months ago, they changed everything to a different date. My daughter and your son have married a week ago and let you believe the wedding would be today. That way we could ensure there are no further evil plans to ruin this young couple’s wedding, and we all had a wonderful time. Without any of you there, it was a day of joy, and a day where everybody was happy for the couple and supportive.”
“Right now they are already on their honeymoon, and will return in four weeks. Since the wedding was so much smaller than originally planned, they had a way bigger budget for that. Once they return, they do not want any contact with any of you for a year. After that, they are ready to get into contact again under certain requirements, which you will be told once the year is over.”
“ANY attempt to contact them in any form leads to the perpetrator’s year to start again at zero. I suggest you take the year to reflect on your behavior, and decide what is more important to you; to have "friend" in your life, or to treat my daughter badly, because right now he is ready to cut contact for good. But I talked him into giving you one last chance.”
Friends and family stayed very silent during this speech, probably shocked and embarrassed into silence. For what it’s worth, yes, the mother-in-law was not the only one in the family treating the bride badly, but she was the reason for it. They are back in contact with most of the family, but definitely not with the mother-in-law.
After the year was over, some sheepishly apologized and told the couple about all the lies they were told. Now the mother-in-law is a pariah for at least 80% of the family.
44. Cruella De Vil
Today my mother-in-law was over and as always, she started to talk about children. We’ve been married for eight years now but we don’t have children because we don’t want them. My mother-in-law has a hard time wrapping her head around this, though. She started to wail that we’re going to be too old soon (we’re both 30), and I kind of feel like she thinks our dog is to blame.
I think she sees our dog as some kind of a hindrance that prevents us from having children because sometimes she says things like, “If you didn’t have the dog, you could have children more safely” or “It’s so weird that you care so much about an animal but don’t even think about having your own child.” Our German shepherd is 14 years old now.
Of course, my husband and me realize that his life is coming to an end and it’s really hard because he has been my dog since I was a teenager and my husband has come to love him even more. He’s like a child to us and it’s very difficult to say goodbye. He doesn’t have any terminal illnesses, though, and the vet said that as long as he’s still eating, drinking and walking, we don’t have to think about putting him down yet.
So this time my mother-in-law got upset because we asked her to close this topic about children once and for all. Whether or not we have children, it’s none of her business, and we’re definitely not going to have them just because she wants us to. She went out of the living room and to the foyer to get her jacket that was hanging there on the rack.
Between the living room and the foyer, there’s this short hallway and our dog was walking there. I went out of the living room just in time to see her snarling, “Get out of the way, you dirty mutt!” as she kicked him on the side. The dog staggered aside, surprised, as he has never been hit before. Even when he was a puppy and was doing all kinds of mischief, we never ever physically punished him and this witch wasn’t going to either.
So I was like, “What are you doing? Why would you kick the dog?” She said, “Well why is he getting in my way, moving like a snail! I don’t have time to stand here forever! ” Yes, lady, the dog is slow. It’s because he’s old and doesn’t have the energy anymore to run around all the time. So...MOVE AROUND HIM! Honestly, she could have easily walked past him, the hallway is wide enough.
But no, she probably hoped that no one would see her taking her frustration about us not having children out on the dog. I told her that the dog lives in this house and she doesn’t, and that she doesn’t have any right to treat our pet like that. The dog doesn’t have any fault in anything. If we wanted to have children, we would have them regardless of owning a dog, he’s not an obstacle.
I told her that if she ever does something like that again, I will rip her head off. My husband didn’t see his mother kicking the dog, but he heard the noise and came to see what’s going on. I told him that his mother attacked our dog. First, he couldn’t believe it, and then he blazed in fury. He was 100% on my side and he told her to leave our house and never come back.
He said she’ll never step over the doorstep of our house because our dog deserves a peaceful remaining time of his life and she’s a danger to him. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised. I knew he puts me above his mother but I never thought he has that much of a spine. My mother-in-law was starting to say something, but my husband dragged her into the foyer.
He didn’t even let her get dressed. He threw her jacket and her boots out the door and told her to never contact us again and that if we ever decide to have children, she’ll never see them. My mother-in-law was offended beyond words. She was like, “All because of one dirty, shedding, unsanitary piece of hair? You’ll both regret it. ”
Our dog is fine, in case you’re wondering. My husband insisted that we go to the vet to make sure she didn’t cause some internal damage, but everything is ok, as much as it can be at his age. My husband blocked my mother-in-law’s phone and it looks like he’s very serious about going no contact with her. So am I. I will never understand cruelty towards animals.
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45. The Nastiest Place On Earth
My husband and I got married last summer. We were limited to 10 people and planned to have a big reception this year. Our area is tentatively opening up, but almost all of our guests would be coming from out of state, including my husband’s entire family, so we decided to just cancel the celebration. As a “consolation,” we decided to go to one of our favorite places, Disney World, for our honeymoon.
I have a ton of food allergies and Disney is one of the only places I can safely eat at, meaning I won’t have to cook the whole time! We booked our package through Disney for later this summer, hoping we’ll be vaccinated by then. My husband was excited that we finally had a plan, so he mentioned it to his dad while they were talking on the phone yesterday.
No big deal. I’d told my mom and one of my aunts I’d talked to yesterday. We should be able to share—we’re excited! Well, I found out how wrong I was. My mother-in-law calls this morning and tells my husband to put us on speakerphone. She has the most exciting news for us. They’re joining us on our Disney trip! It’s going to be so fun.
Finally a family vacation! My mother-in-law is pumped! My father-in-law booked everything last night. She wanted to just surprise us this summer by showing up, but couldn’t hold it in anymore. Plus, she wanted me to make us all matching shirts. WHAT. This was supposed to be our honeymoon. The only “normal” part of the wedding experience we didn’t get to have, and the in-laws decided to crash it.
Thankfully she “couldn’t contain her excitement” so we had a heads up. My husband, without my prompting, called Disney and got the dates switched and told me not to share with anybody just in case, with the exception of my mom closer to because she’ll babysit our dogs. I’ve had some creeping doubts about my husband’s willingness to stand up to his mom in the past, but I am SO beyond happy with how he responded.
He’s not planning on telling his parents we switched the dates we’re going. His comment was, “They’re getting what they deserve.”
46. Sharing Isn’t Caring
I’ve always had issues with my mother-in-law, but this year, I’m so angry I can’t see straight. We arrived at my in-laws (a four hour drive) for Christmas on Saturday. We were only staying one night and then heading back home. We don’t visit them often, mainly due to my job. I’m an OB/GYN and have very few days off. We get there on Saturday and my father-in-law is nowhere to be found.
This was after my kids hugged and kissed my mother-in-law hello. My husband asked where his dad was. Mother-in-law: “Oh, we have both not been feeling well. We’ve had vomiting and diarrhea for two days. He is in the bathroom.” My husband: “Did you guys eat something bad?” Mother-in-law: “No. Everyone has been sick at the office!” I could have screamed. I nearly burst into tears.
Me: “How could you do this? How could you knowingly expose us to something like that? It’s Christmas! And you know I work with newborns and pregnant women!” Mother-in-law: “Well if I would have told you...you wouldn’t have come to visit.” My mouth just fell open. My husband told her that it wasn’t right and asked what if her grandchildren got sick?
Her: “They’ll be fine!” And guess freaking what. On Christmas Eve, I was up with my children. All throwing up. All night long. I woke up this morning and have been vomiting. I’m going to have to let my partner do my scheduled C-section tomorrow. And my kids are unable to enjoy Christmas because of my stupid in-laws. I’m so angry. I just don’t even know what to do.
47. Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda
I got married a couple of years ago. It was a small wedding with our close friends and family and went along smoothly. At first, my mother agreed to come, then five weeks before we got married she said, “I can’t come because it's on a Sunday and I’ll miss church.” I wasn’t bothered. I said “okay” because it wasn’t like I was truly missing anything by her not being there anyways.
Five weeks pass, wedding prep is done, and we’ve made sure to work around those who had to cancel as well as a few extra things. The day before the wedding, my mother sends my wife and I this long paragraph that basically boils down to: “God told me that church is more important than a wedding.” Again, fine, thanks Mom I get it.
The day of the wedding comes, everything runs smoothly, and a ton of photos are uploaded to Facebook…and then my mother sees it. A couple of hours into the night, I’m with my in-laws and a couple of friends, and my phone buzzes. I open it up and lo and behold, my mother! The message from this oh so lovely woman boils down to this: “I can’t believe you didn’t include me in the wedding! You replaced me! I can’t believe you!”
I just responded, “It’s not replacing. You didn’t show up to the wedding, not my problem.” She started calling me several times and left voicemails of her crying, yelling, screaming, saying how just because she went to church instead of my wedding doesn’t mean she didn’t want to go. Then…why didn’t you go? I knew she was trying to play some weird manipulation game with me, so I just muted her and let her ride out her wave of…whatever the heck she was on.
She then messaged my mother-in-law and started spamming her with strange nonsense, which prompted my mother-in-law to block her and not respond. She calls me a few days later, crying and asking me to forgive her, saying that “she just wants her daughter to love her.” I respond with: “Don’t contact me unless it’s absolutely an emergency.”
48. A Hairy Situation
When I was younger I dealt with a lot of bad situations. My only real escape from that was my hair. I know how silly that sounds, but it is what it is. When stuff started to fall apart, I'd turn to my hair and use it as a medium to control and reflect how I felt. I'd cut it, dye it, style it weird, whatever, and it would make me feel better. In 2011, I gave myself an 80s-like purple mohawk.
This involved shaving off a good portion of my hair, and it was the last time I truly felt like I wasn't in control of my life. Since then, I've let my hair grow without much messing with it other than regular maintenance. This year after the birth of my third child, my hair reached the length of my thighs. To me, my long beautiful hair is a reflection of how far I've come with my overall mental health and happiness.
It's very, very important to me. This brings me to now. With three children under five, my long hair stays in a ponytail, braid, or bun. Little hands tend to pull on it otherwise. This fact for some reason has been EXTREMELY annoying to my husband's stepmother. Every time I'd see her, at least once she would bring up what a waste my hair was on me.
She would tell me that a mother shouldn't have a "rat’s nest" like I have or something snide like that. She's annoying and I ignore her for the most part because she just wants attention and I won't give it to her. Until yesterday. I was sitting on my father-in-law’s couch, breastfeeding my youngest and having a pleasant conversation with my husband and father-in-law about what we were watching on the TV.
Suddenly, I felt a tug on my hair and before I could pull completely away, I heard the scissors close. There's my mother-in-law and my four-year-old standing behind the couch, both laughing as she holds a large portion of what was my bun. The three of us turned and stared at her. It was like looking at a cartoon villain. Now I'm devastated and trying not to cry in front of my children.
My husband starts yelling at her, asking her if she insane. My four-year-old starts to cry, which is followed by my mother-in-law, who tearfully claims, "It's just a joke, it'll grow back. We thought y'all would laugh." The whole situation falls apart with my husband arguing on my behalf, my three children and I crying, my mother-in-law snot bubble sobbing, and my father-in-law trying to get us all to calm down.
We end up leaving with my husband telling his dad to divorce his wife because being married to an overgrown eight-year-old is probably against the law. Which I would have giggled at if I wasn't so upset. My husband drives us around looking for a stylist that will take a walk in, and I call my sister-in-law to come sit with me. She meets us at her stylist’s work place.
She was off work but came back as a favor, thank God. Looking at my tattered hair was horrible. Large chunks where gone, the length was all over the place. It was awful. I felt like I lost a body part. Luckily the stylist was very talented and salvaged my hair to right above my shoulders. It looks nice, but I'm still sad looking at it. I don't know how long it'll take to get over this.
My mother-in-law sent me a couple half-baked apology texts like, "Sorry but don't be a baby, hair does grow you know" type of stuff.
49. Ashes To Ashes
My son passed over a year ago when he was seven, and it's been hard on everyone in the family, obviously. My mother-in-law was pretty close with him. She babysat him for me while I worked, until he passed. I felt more comfortable leaving him with her as she was a nurse. He was born at 24 weeks and had cerebral palsy and was generally medically fragile.
My mother-in-law and I aren't too close. At first she didn't like me but seemed to warm up once we had kids. She still babysits for us when needed, which is less often these days. We had my son cremated. When he was cremated, my mother-in-law suggested that we get a few smaller urns and split up the ashes so we can all have an urn—the in-laws, my parents, and us.
Obviously that did NOT go down well with me and I said no. She seemed to admit it was a bad idea and didn't mention it again. For mother’s day this year, we planned on getting my mother-in-law and my mom a necklace with some of his ashes in, which she knew about as she'd been asking for one. We were up for it (I fancied one myself so was going to get us all one) but we never got around to doing it.
She seemed pretty irritated by that at the time but never mentioned it again and thanked us for the other gift we sent her. A few days ago, she babysat my daughter at my house. Today I was cleaning and while I was cleaning the shelf that we have for our son for some of his things (pictures, trophies from baseball, ornaments, etc), I noticed a detail that sent a chill down my spine.
His urn was gone. Naturally I freaked out. I asked my daughter if she'd moved it even though she can't reach. It has NEVER been moved in the time it's been there. My mother-in-law is the only other person that has been in the house, so I called her. She owned up to it right away and explained she took them so she can “spend some time with him”!??? and get the ashes sent off for her gift because she was disheartened that I didn't get it sorted in time for mother’s day.
She hid the urn in her bag so I wouldn't notice, and took it home. I told her she was completely out of order and demanded she bring the ashes back as I did not give her permission to TAKE HIS ASHES from his house and his family, but she said as his grandma she has every right to “have him for a while.” Screw. That. Even if she'd asked I probably would have said no, but I'm in complete shock that she would just TAKE him like that?!?
She says she will bring his urn back tomorrow and told me not to be angry about it because what's done is done, but every time I think about it I get so angry. I'm so worried now that she won't even bring him back.
50. Strings Very Much Attached
I'm engaged, and planning on getting married next fall to my fiancée. We want something very small. We have a guest list of 11 people and we want to wear clothes we already own. When we first met, she was in a suit and I was wearing a white dress. We have a mutual best friend who is helping us design custom rings, and we want a short ceremony where we just sign the certificate and we're done, followed by a meal at our favorite restaurant.
My parents transferred me $10,000, and her parents did the same. We did not ask for this. We both called our parents and explained that we were fine for money, but they said it was a "wedding gift," so we thanked them. My mother-in-law wanted to know how we were doing the outfits and we told her that I'd be in a dress and my fiancée would be in a suit.
She has spent two weeks trying to convince my fiancée to wear a dress so she will look "pretty" for the wedding. Every time either of us has tried to say we'd already chosen our outfits and explained why, she insisted that we both had to buy wedding dresses. My parents, meanwhile, have been nagging both of us about our guest list.
We said small and intimate from the start, but they've given me expanded guest lists, which includes cousins, uncles, and aunts I've never even met. When we tried to reinforce the "small and intimate" aspect, they brushed us off. So we met both sets of parents for lunch earlier. They said that there was a miscommunication and the money from her parents was actually a "dress budget" for both of us, meant to only be used on dresses, and the money from my parents was for "the guest list" so it was meant to cover venue and catering for an expanded guest list.
We both went away from the table to talk. We discussed it and agreed that the money wasn't worth it, so we brought up our banking apps and transferred the money back. Then we went back to the table, sat back down, and told them what we'd done. Chaos broke loose. They responded that we were acting like children, and we said that we wouldn't be told what to do.
My mom and my future mother-in-law promptly burst into tears, and both fathers looked pretty angry. They told us that the money was meant for us, and we said that we wouldn't accept anything from them that came with strings attached. We repeated that we had all wedding elements, including our outfits and guest list, already decided.
We said it was final and we wouldn't be taking suggestions, to which they said we were being unfair by not giving them a say. We then thanked them for the meal, put down a $20 each (our meals came to about $15) and left without another word. We felt justified at the time, but since then we've both gotten messages from our siblings, saying that we were rude to our respective parents when they were just trying to do something nice, and now we feel like we went too far. I still don’t think so.
51. Some People’s Mothers
I started working when I was 13 for a friend of the family’s restaurant as a dishwasher and groundskeeper. My friend started working at 12 at his dad's catering company. My friend and I met when he was hired at a restaurant I had just started at as a prep cook six months before. I was 16 and he was 20 at the time. He coached me and grew me and eventually got me onto the line within a few months.
At 21, his father passed unexpectedly and he left the restaurant to take over the family business, asking me to come work for him from time to time. His father's clients were all big old money, and so my friend kept to that demographic at first, which is why we have such a sordid collection of tales to tell. I think that's enough background for now, so back to what ya'll really came for: Super Cop and Super Human.
We start with the catering consultation. The wedding planner had changed three times already before this couple even came to visit us, and the appointment kept getting rescheduled. We almost rejected the contract because it was becoming a waste of our time. The day of the consultation came and they actually showed up, both the mothers with the bride and groom in tow.
The wedding planner didn't show, but we kept the consultation going and would email all relevant paperwork later. The mothers of the bride and groom were the best of friends, and they were so excited they got to plan their kids’ wedding together and faaaaamily, and the future of family names preserved. It was during this rant that my friend cut them off and spoke directly to the bride and groom.
Friend: "I want to know what you two want. What cuisine do you like? What style of service would you like? Bride's Mother (BM) jumps in: "They want a full service buffet with carving stations, hors d'oeuvres, and cocktail hour, and the cake will be from this bakery." Friend: "I'm sorry ma'am, I thought this consultation was for the bride and groom. If you want a consultation for your own wedding, you will have to book one with my assistant."
BM: "Excuse me, but I know more than these two kids do, I planned my wedding myself you know." Groom's mother (GM): "Now BM, let's just sit with the assistant, it is our kids’ day and they should be choosing what they like." Friend: "How about this, you two ladies can sit with my assistant and give him all the details of what you are thinking, and I will give the bride and groom a private tasting."
BM: "Fine, but I better see every piece of paper before it's signed." I take the ladies to another part of the office and listen to BM overtake everything, occasionally pointing out that a handsome young man such as myself shouldn't disappoint my mother when it's her time to plan my wedding. I just nod and smile and do my best to keep them busy while my friend gets the real story from the bride and groom.
Back at the main consult. Friend: "So I can already tell there's some tension, so let me assure you that my company has nothing but the best intentions to make your wedding day as grand as you envision. You, the bride and groom, are our first priority." Groom to bride: "I told you they shouldn't have come. My mom caves to her every whim, and we will get railroaded."
Bride to groom: "I know, but I couldn't say no, she says it's her God-given right to plan this and I don't know what else to do." Friend: "Let me assure you that my assistant is merely hearing their suggestions, this is the real consult. But before we go further, if we cater your wedding, who will be signing and paying for our services?"
Groom: "Us, I won't have a dime of their money be involved with our day." Friend: "Perfect!" They proceed with the rest of the consultation, going over menu options, service styles, table set ups, time tables, and coordinating with the bakery. The last thing they went over was allergies. The groom has a very severe allergy to peanuts, which has apparently been a problem with the bride’s mother.
She believes it's a mind-over-matter thing, just keep eating them and you'll get over it eventually. Except the groom's allergy is basically: touch nut, full anaphylactic shock. We jot down a huge note that peanuts will not be anywhere near this wedding. Before the consult wraps up, my friend suggests putting passwords on the account.
You never know who might try to change something. The bride says no, but before they leave the groom pulls my friend aside and says absolutely, but please don't give it to bride. After their appointment ended and everyone left, I went straight to my friend and I compared notes. As we suspected, the bride and groom wanted something almost entirely different than the mother wanted, but since the bride and groom were paying and signing the contract, we shredded her plans.
The bride and groom opted for a plated dinner for 80, with a cocktail hour. The bakery would deliver the cake and their staff would handle it. All was relatively quiet with this contract—until three weeks before the wedding hit. That’s when a huge man came to our office. He said he was here about his cousin's wedding and gave the proper password.
My friend and I sat down with him and he introduced himself as the bride’s cousin and said he's worried about the wedding. Earlier that week, the groom was admitted to the hospital after going into anaphylactic shock. The bride’s mother lied to the bride and groom and fed him a meal where at some point peanut oil was used. He witnessed the whole thing.
When he confronted his aunt (the bride’s mom), she said "It's a mind-over-matter thing!" He wanted us to be aware that both the mother and father were uninvited and banned from the wedding, bride's orders. There was a lot of drama with the other vendors and general wedding planning, and this was the final straw. This bouncer also wanted us to know that he was an officer, and he'll be providing security at the wedding.
He brought three of his officer friends with him and left one in the kitchen to keep the mother from sneaking in and ruining any more food. The day of the wedding was mostly drama-free…until the reception started and the bride’s mother and father showed up with a gaggle of their friends and tried to force their way into the wedding.
The bouncer took no nonsense, and my friend and I backed him up as best we could. They were ejected from the reception. The mother tried one final time as the reception ended. She sat in her car until the bride and groom were visible, then gunned her car at them. The bouncer rushed them out of the way and she smashed her car into the reception hall's front door.
My friend and I witnessed the whole thing from the parking lot and rushed over to make sure the bride and groom were safe. We gave our statements to officers, and the mother was detained. The couple was shaken but not harmed. A few weeks after the wedding, the bouncer showed up to our office again. He thanked us for everything we did to help his cousin enjoy her day.
He told us that the groom told him everything we did distracting the mother and setting up passwords. He was grateful for everything we did and gave us his card, saying that anytime we needed security he'd be sure to have our backs. Not long after this, he was shot in the line of duty and took a leave of absence from the force for a bit to clear his head.
Since he had previous experience as a bartender, we hired him on and he has been with us ever since. He still works as an officer, but only at a desk in the precinct, and eventually, he'd like to open his own bar. He has a heart of gold and the brawn of an ox, and we are glad to call him part of our team. Meanwhile, the bride’s mother went behind bars and was cut out of the bride and groom’s life.
The father divorced her. The happy couple just had a little bundle of joy a year ago, and are asking us to cater the baptism. The groom’s mother was very apologetic for just going along with the bride’s mom and was able to salvage the relationship with the couple. Oh, and my friend and I were sued for damages, slander and breaking contract, by the bride’s mother. The case was laughed out of court.
52. Fight Fire With Fire
I have an angel for a mother-in-law and a sane human for a mother. However, I have a truckload of stories about OTHER people's moms and mothers-in-law. This incident just happened, and I finally decided to share. Quick bit of background: I live in an apartment complex. Two-storey buildings, with outdoor stairwells that are used by four apartments on each level.
I have a front window that looks across a short stretch of grass to the parking lot. My upstairs neighbors are generally calm, unobtrusive people and we have a sort of nodding acquaintance with each other. There's a husband, wife, and two boys; one's 15 while the other's about nine. I am sitting on the couch, reading, when I suddenly hear a commotion outside.
A bunch of shouting, feet running up and down the stairwell, general panic. I look out the window, and it's my upstairs neighbors, who are apparently losing their minds as a family unit. The husband is literally running in circles, clutching his head, yelling, "Oh my God, is it dad?! It's dad! What's wrong with dad?! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Dad! Daaaaaaaaaaad! Wait, is it [female name]?! Siiiiiiiiis! What happened to Siiiiiiis!"
He's naming off members of his entire family tree, as far as I can tell, and bewailing their as-yet-unknown conditions. The wife is standing on the grass, swaying back and forth, flailing her arms like a wacky-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-man, alternating between making this yodeling "alalalalala" noise and yelling to the kids to "Hurry, hurry, get the extinguisher, get the go-bag, grab everything, go go go!"
The older boy is dashing in and out of their apartment and up and down the stairs at full speed (while still using the handrail; good kid) and spouting garbled literary lines like "To the last, I grapple with thee; from the heart, I stab at thee!" and "Out, out, damned spot!" to pick just two examples. The younger boy is doing laps around the wife, trying to howl like a siren, but breaking up into completely justifiable giggles.
Then I start hearing these huge whiny sobs, and at this point, I decide to step outside and get a better view of what the actual heck is going on. I look at the wife and raise my eyebrows, and she just winks at me in between "alalalala"s. I move out of the stairwell just enough to look up—and see what's happening in front of their apartment.
The husband's mother is up on the landing, staring in shock. She begins sobbing, "Why are you doooooing thiiiiiis?! What's wrooooong with youuuuu all?! What's goooooing oooonnn?!" Just like that...the husband stops running. The wife stops flailing. The kids stop sprinting. All four of them gather at the foot of the stairs, staring up at the husband's mom.
Husband: "Mom, we have told you 10 times if we've told you once. We gave you that key to use ONLY IN EMERGENCIES. We've also told you 10 times if we've told you once to call or text us before you come over. Since you just unlocked our door and walked in, unannounced, using your EMERGENCY KEY, there must therefore BE AN EMERGENCY! AAAAAHHHH!!!"
Off go the kids, now running around in the parking lot. Off goes the wife, running with them, going "alalalala." Off go my ribs, because I absolutely can't hold back the laughter any more. The mother bursts into tears. "I just wanted to come by and see my graaaaandbaaaaabies! I wanted to drop off some presents!" Husband: "And we've told you that you need to call first, and not just let yourself in."
Mother: "But you weren't answering your phooooones!" Husband: "You should have taken that hint that we DIDN'T WANT TO TALK TO YOU TONIGHT. We were going to stop by next weekend, like we arranged, but now we're going to have to cancel those plans because you broke the very simple rules we requested that you follow. Go home, Mom."
Mother: "Your father won't let you do this! Your father will hear about this!" Husband: "You think?" Husband takes his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and holds it up to show a connected call. He thumbs it to speakerphone. "Hey, dad? You hearing all this?" Father: "[Mother's name], YOU COME HOME RIGHT NOW." Cue renewed outburst of sobs and backpedaling from the mother.
The father has a voice like James Earl Jones with a head cold. He is not yelling, but speaking in an incredibly calm, level voice that drops words out of the speaker like lead bricks. He's not letting her get a breath in edgewise, just repeating, "GET HOME RIGHT NOW, WE ARE GOING TO TALK." The mother looks around and realizes that I am not the only person who's staring; other neighbors have popped out to see what in all heck is happening.
The wife and kids have stopped running and are sprawled on the grass, laughing. The mother draws herself up, then reaches towards the apartment door, presumably to get her key. Husband: "LEAVE THAT KEY WHERE IT IS." Mother: "But!" Husband and father (at the same time): "LEAVE IT." The mother recoils like the doorknob just turned into a live rattlesnake and comes stumbling down the stairs.
The sobbing is drying up, and now she's just looking mortified and angry. She stomps past her son, who just turns to track her with the phone; she stomps past her daughter-in-law and grandkids, who are still lying on the grass having giggle bursts; she stomps past the other neighbors who are rubbernecking, and she gets in her car and GOES AWAY. And I go back into my apartment and head for my computer.
53. I’m No Angel
I have been low contact with my mother-in-law for a few years. My husband is not. I don’t relay any information to her, and I make everything go through my husband. The entire family states that the mother-in-law has a hearing problem, but it seems to be just my words that get twisted by her. My mom passed years before I met my husband.
My mom loved the holidays and always had poinsettias around the house at Christmas. To help keep my mom close to me at Christmas, I also have poinsettias around the house. It’s because of this that my husband knew the gift he found to give me from our kids was perfect. It was a tabletop wooden angel that had poinsettias on her dress and was holding garland of poinsettias.
It was perfect and I loved it as soon as I saw it. My father-in-law passed just before Christmas, and it has been hard on all of us. He was a wonderful man. Since we have the youngest children in the family, my husband wanted my mother-in-law to be there to watch the kids open gifts Christmas morning. I was fine with this. She would come over early and the rest of the in-laws would be over later in the afternoon.
We stopped exchanging gifts between the adults years ago and just exchanged between the kids. However, I wanted my mother-in-law to have a couple things to open, since she would be with us when we opened gifts. My kids made her ornaments and glittered pinecones, and we got her some mints that she liked. It was a couple of small things like that.
When I opened the angel from my kids that day, I loved it. I went over to the kitchen table to take it out of the box and really look at it. My mother-in-law happened to be sitting there at the time. I asked her if she saw the angel they gave me for Christmas, and I explained why I loved it so much and how it reminded me of my mom.
The angel even had my mom’s hair color. I explained how it meant so much to me and that I would probably keep it out all year long as a reminder of my mom. I then left it on the table. I should add that my mother-in-law also saw me unwrap the gift and watched as I hugged my children after opening it. Anyway, I left it sitting on the table because everyone else started arriving.
It did get a little hectic with gift exchanges between the kids and we ended up outside for a bit. When I came back, my angel had disappeared. I thought it might have gotten moved to make room at the table and figured it would show up. Ohhhh.....it showed up....at my mother-in-law's house. I haven’t seen it there, my husband did. My mother-in-law called a few days after Christmas and asked my husband to come in for a bit to do some things around her house.
He then brought her back to our house for dinner because she wanted to see our kids. While we’re eating dinner, my mother-in-law gets a big smile on her face and is telling me that she loves her new angel and she wants me to have it when she dies. At this point, I don’t realize that she is talking about my angel that I’ve been looking for all over and trying to find.
She then mentioned how she loves the poinsettias on it. That’s what got me to look up and see that smug grin on her face. I looked at my husband and he gave me the look that “we’ll talk about it later.” After she went back home, my husband and I discuss it. He says when he walked into her house, he immediately saw it and did a double-take on it.
My husband usually has good boundaries when it comes to his mother. This time he didn’t. He said she loves it so much and with his father just having passed, he doesn’t want to take it from her. He truly believes that she misheard me and my mother-in-law thinks it was a gift to her from our kids. WHAT?!?! She watched me unwrap it.
Why would I unwrap it if it was meant for her?!? She really didn’t hear anything I said of how it reminded me of my mother?!? Instead, he wants to find a duplicate online for me. I asked why we couldn’t just buy her a different angel and he can go trade her for my angel. He doesn’t want to be insensitive since she just lost her husband and she obviously wanted the angel.
I would go myself and do it, but I don’t think I’ll get a good reaction from her. She’ll probably answer the door and say “WHAT are you doing here?” She’s done that to me before when I’ve gone to her house to help take her to a doctor’s appointment.
54. A Dark Day
I can't have children. My soon-to-be mother-in-law didn't like that and did what she could to sabotage our future wedding, telling people not to attend, and calling me "defective." My future (no more) husband and his father were going to sit down with her Tuesday night and try to talk sense into her. Well, she won. I don't know what happened or what was said, but my boyfriend came home and we got into a big fight.
Despite what we had discussed before, he now said that he wanted kids and if I couldn't provide them, the wedding was off. I basically said, "That sounds like your mother, not you." He replied with, "I can speak for myself" and it escalated into a bunch of shouting at each other and I quickly put together a bag and went to my parents for the evening.
I called in sick from work the next day and basically stared at the ceiling. We first met when I was nine, 23 years ago. It went from being friends to more romantic, we dated through high school and went to college together, then after graduation, moved in together. I have never dated or seen anyone else, neither has he as far as I know.
We waited so long to get married because it wasn't important to us as long as we were together. That changed when my dad got a terminal illness and he expressed his wish to walk me down the aisle (I'm his only daughter) before he became too ill to walk. I'll be giving two-months’ notice at work on Monday, to give them time to find a replacement and for me to train them, then moving back to Germany.
I was born there and lived there at first and still have friends and family there. My friend has said I can stay in her spare room with her and her family until I get situated on my own there. I'm sorry, no happy ending here. The evil mother-in-law won and got me out of her son's life. Technically, she got me out of the country. I know I could move elsewhere in town, or even in the state, but I don't want to be alone here.
There's too many memories, and I have a strong support group overseas so that's where I'm going. I have been picked on so many times for so many things over the years, from my height to my accent when I first moved here to other things, but this one hurts. I was able to handle the others by telling myself, "That's who I am, if they don't like it, that's their problem."
I'm sure in a few years, I'll think that about this situation too, but it's too soon..
55. Something’s Fishy
My first Christmas with my husband, we were invited to his aunt’s house to celebrate with his family. I had never met any of them, since they live pretty far away and we eloped. Two weeks before, my mother-in-law calls my husband to ask him about my allergies, since I have several severe allergies and require at least three epi-pens on me at all times.
I thought that was really sweet! My husband told her most of my allergies are bug bites, animal dander, and several medications, but a major food allergy I have is shellfish and raw fish. When cooked, I’ll have a reaction to fish that to normal people would be severe but non-lethal. However, when raw I’ll go into anaphylactic shock almost instantly and stop breathing in less than a minute.
There is no fish in my house, ever. I don’t eat at restaurants that serve fish. It’s a major part of my life since I live in a very seafood-heavy area. On Christmas Eve, we were all opening presents and at some point my mother-in-law and husband’s aunt say my gift isn’t under the tree because it’s in the freezer. I’m confused, but that sounds super intriguing.
They bring out a box that’s blue cardboard and unmarked. I open it and nearly scream. It’s a variety pack of frozen fish filets. I literally threw the box out of my lap and my husband RUNS to the kitchen, grabs an epi-pen and hit me in the thigh. With my allergies, you don’t wait for a reaction to respond, you start immediately.
We’re about 70 miles out of the city, so my husband is already on the phone with 9-1-1 and we run to the car. THANKFULLY I don’t end up reacting badly to it, probably due to the box being frozen and the fish being individually wrapped, but being that far out of a populated area with only three pens can be lethal for me. When the reaction is severe enough, I’ll burn through an epi-pen in about 10-15 minutes before starting up again, and then I need an IV and an emergency room.
We got to the hospital and other than hives on my hands, I’m fine. I’m monitored for six hours to wait for a delayed reaction and sent home. When we got home, my husband had about a dozen sobbing voicemails from his mom saying WE ruined Christmas with our way over-the-top reaction to a thoughtful gift. She said she had “forgotten” and that we owed them all an apology.
We later found out it was the aunt that asked her sister to inquire about my allergies so she could cook safely for me. My mother-in-law told her I didn’t have any food allergies and suggested the gift. We’ve been no contact for six years.
56. The Cherries On Top
We live on an acreage, and my pride and joy the past several years has been putting in long-term plants. Specifically fruiting varieties, berries and long-term harvestables like a rhubarb patch and even some sunflowers. I prune my trees each season. Every tree gets a once-over a few times to deal with pests. It's meditative for me. I grew up in the city and always wanted to work towards this point.
I even talk to my trees and plants and everything I grow. It helps with my depression and anxiety. Very grounding, hah! My cherry trees were doing so, so good this year. Big, beautiful crops. I had nets up. The birds were leaving them alone. No serious pests. I watered them through a huge dry period during June, where most plants were scorching.
They made it through, and did so good. I was so proud of my little trees. I had everything ready during the week to harvest them. Got my ladder. Got my buckets. Got my canning equipment out and sterilized and freezer bags ready to rock. I had planned for a whole day on Saturday to get my cherries processed, and time on Sunday too if I underestimated.
Work had been hard all week. I had an anxiety attack at work from the stress. It's been rough. On Friday, I got up early, checked my cherries and was excited for the day to be over so I could get a head start on some things. I roll into my driveway and tell my other half that I'm going to just throw together a quick supper then head out and pick some cherries.
He tells me: "Sounds good! Mom stopped by earlier and grabbed some cherries too." My stomach turned into an instant knot. This was my hard work. The cherries were my reward for all of that. All the years of tending and pruning and caring and fertilizing and love. I go out and my nets are still on the trees, but the cherries are picked as high as I could reach. All of them.
All four trees are naked except for the very, very top. I started crying. I threw my bucket like a child with a tantrum. I was so mad. Those were my cherries. Mine! I went inside to husband and he asked what was wrong. I told him all my cherries were gone, that his parents had taken all of them. He immediately calls them and puts them on speaker, asking what the deal was.
The response?! The reason they took ALL my cherries? "Well they were ripe and ready to be picked! Since she hadn't done it yet, we assumed she just didn't want them." Yes, because I put up bird netting for fun. Because me having the ladder out is just me doing yard feng shui. Because having buckets on hand is just me giving the buckets some sun and fresh air.
The kicker?? The best part of all of this?!?! THEY HAVE CHERRY TREES! And apple trees. And fruit bushes! When I brought this up, they said that their cherries hadn't come in well this year. No kidding. Their trees have a fungus I've been telling them to deal with for years but they couldn't bear the thought of pruning their fruit trees! So, they took my cherries as a result.
My mother-in-law had already frozen the majority of the cherries, plus given some away to friends. She turned the rest into various canning recipes. I picked what I could and ended up with a single ice cream pail worth of cherries total from my four trees. Words can't explain how absolutely gutted I am. I cried again on Saturday as I put away all my canning stuff, realizing I wouldn't need it for the amount of cherries I managed to get.
I don't think I've ever been this mad before. My mother-in-law has had moments in the past that I could deal with. That I've worked through. That I can almost forgive her for. Or at least pity her for, to be so desperate for certain attention or affection from people. Even just typing this up just makes me feel so upset. My trees are something I love, you know?
I've taken care of them, tended to them, talked to them, and was so excited for this year to have that moment of picking a beautiful harvest that I worked so hard for, despite depression and anxiety telling me I wasn't a gardener, couldn't do it, that I wasn't talented enough to have fruit trees. I proved that wrong. I had a beautiful reward waiting for me, with beautiful weekend weather, and happy cherry trees to feel pride about.
And it was taken from me. This feels like heartbreak. It's not even about the cherries, you know?
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57. Tongues Will Wag
Way back more than a dozen years ago when my now-husband and I met, we came to a rapid mutual decision—friends with extremely frequent benefits. Neither of us wanted re-marriage. We both had kids, though, and religious parents, so we tied it up in a nice “we are dating” bow and presented it as a package deal. My parents loved him.
His dad was kind of iffy with me, but his stepmother hates me. She'd managed to run off the ex-wife , so she didn't appreciate a newcomer to share attention with. I am a brutally honest person by nature, but I put up with, ignored, or rolled my eyes and walked away from far, far more than I should have. I wasn't trying to be the bigger person, I was simply an adult who didn’t need or want to play mean girl games.
What finally tipped the scale was when my guy’s brother, after a nasty divorce, found an extremely sweet, very innocent young woman to date. The stepmom’s target shifted from me (a hard target) to my now sister-in-law (a soft target). She could bring this young woman to tears with her barbed tongue and insults, and she enjoyed it. She was always waiting until her boys were distracted, then she would move in for the hit.
One Saturday evening, the stepmom was just viciously tearing down this girl (and me) while we were BBQing. My guy and his brother were out at the grill with my father-in-law and well distracted. The stepmom went on a hateful, relentless rant about their ex wives, and how they didn't or couldn't love us or they would have proposed by now.
Frankly I was ignoring her and eyeballing my now-husband’s cute little butt through the window, making some mental plans for alone time once we ditched the rest of the family. It was in that window that I caught the reflection of the innocent girl with tears running down her face, and my mind snapped back to the conversation just in time to hear that the “boys” only had room in their hearts for one woman—and that was her! I had the perfect reply without thinking.
"You can have his heart,” I said. “I'm more interested in his package and tongue." It rolled out of my brain and off my tongue before any filter could catch it. My sister-in-law choked, then laughed until she was laugh-crying, laughing and snorting at the same time. The stepmom screamed and cried all the way out to the “boys,” wailing about the perverted godless heathen sitting in her house. Oh, but it got better.
When my father-in-law and brother-in-law both high-fived my guy, she wailed louder, ran into the house, and locked herself in her bedroom with a resounding slam of the door. My father-in-law decided he liked me that night, handed me a drink, and welcomed me to the family. He also told my sister-in-law to up her game. He knows his wife is a witch, and what she starts we are clear to finish in his book, no harm no foul.
To this day, my sister-in-law and I can make the witch run away from us and leave us in blessed peace with one simple tongue gesture.
58. The Truth Will Out
My mom was never a good mother, and I ran away at 13 to live with my dad. I then found out I have a medical condition—a tilted uterus. It never caused me issues so I never paid the news any mind. Fast forward a few months, I'm 14 now. I’m home at my dad’s alone, and suddenly I collapse in agonizing pain. I'll try to describe the pain.
My back felt like someone had a hold of my lower spine and was trying to pull it from my body, while simultaneously twisting a knife in my stomach. All I could do was crawl my way to my bed and cry. My dad and his girlfriend came home to hear me screaming. He asked what was wrong, and I tried to act tough. “Oh it’s nothing, just my period. I'll be fine, etc.”
His girlfriend told him that's not normal and I needed to go to the hospital. Being the manly man he is, he didn't want to handle lady problems, and called my mom to take me. Well, my mom shows up angry, but remains outwardly calm…until I get in the car and we pull away. Instantly, she came in with a horrific accusation. She starts telling me that I'm probably having a miscarriage.
That this is what I get for being a hussy and getting pregnant at 14. I, between sobbing and screaming in pain, try to explain what the doctor told me about my tilted uterus. She, of course, calls me a liar and tells me to shut up. We get to the ER, sign in, and she’s explaining her theory to the nurse. We finish and are told to go wait.
While in the waiting room, she never said a word to me, just glared. The nurse calls me in and tells her to wait until the exam is done. She’s not happy about this, but, not willing to argue with the nurse, she sits back down. The exam finishes, and she's called in. The doctor explains everything I had tried to and follows up with, "She's definitely not pregnant. It's just a bad month and it will pass in a day or two."
He says he can give me something for the pain, but my mom denied that offer. I was sent home to just wait it out with instructions to take it easy. Get in the car, still crying, no words from her. It’s very tense. I admit, knowing my mom, that this next sentence was a mistake. But in my delirious state I just wanted my mom’s comfort, and for her not to be mad at me as I did nothing wrong.
I said, "I told you I wasn't lying." She instantly pulls over the car, and simply but very angrily says, "Get out of my car now." She left me there to get myself home. No cell, no money, in crippling pain. I managed to walk a few blocks very slowly, and the last few I literally (I really wish I was exaggerating) crawled back to my dad’s.
After finally getting home, his girlfriend found me and helped me up to my bed. She got me Tylenol, a hot water bottle and all that. I told them what my mom did. My dad’s girlfriend was just stunned while my dad just shakes his head in disgust at his ex’s actions. That was the last time I spoke to or saw my mom for eight years.
59. Stay In Your Lane
Where I live, it’s quite common for people to break into cars to get handicapped permits, so when I get home I take mine out and keep it inside the house. It’s stored in a cabinet near the doorway, right where we keep our car keys. My mother-in-law came over on Monday because she was helping my sister-in-law move into her new apartment.
The sister had asked us to keep some of her stuff in our garage while she looked for a place, so my mother-in-law was helping her take her boxes there. She’d fill up her car with boxes, unload them at the new place, and come back for more. My husband was at work. I work from home and haven’t been feeling well these few days.
My mother-in-law knows that I wouldn’t drive if I wasn’t feeling okay and she also knows where I keep the placard. Without telling me, she takes the placard and puts it in her car so she can park in the handicapped parking space at my sister-in-law’s apartment complex so it’s closer to the entrance and easier to unload boxes. The only issue was that at some point, officers caught her.
They ran the placard, found out it wasn’t hers, and wrote her up and confiscated it. Now I have to apply for a new permit, and my mother-in-law may be facing fines up to $3,000. Mainly because this ISN’T HER FIRST PARKING OFFENCE. Like, what? Apparently, she’s parked in handicapped spots before and got caught twice. I’m so angry and so is my husband.
The cherry on top? She can’t afford any fines over a few hundred dollars and is asking the family to chip in to help her pay. In order to apply for a new permit, I’ll need a letter from my doctors stating why I need the permit, etc. I’ve been trying to get an appointment with my doctor even before my mother-in-law pulled this and I haven’t been able to. I can’t. I’m so tired of this already.
60. That’s The Tea
So my mother- and father-in-law have been staying with us for a week. It’s the first time I have ever had to stay with her. I’ve never particularly liked her but I stay civil for the sake of my husband. However, in the past week she has made my blood boil. Some of it I can put aside as just lifestyle differences. For example, she came and rearranged my kitchen, threw out some of my things, etc.
What is annoying me beyond my belief is that she was whispering and complaining about me to my husband just seconds ago, less than 5m away. We live in a small two-bedroom apartment, so it's not like there is heaps of space. My husband and I have a great relationship and even he thinks that his parents are overbearing. Anyway, I walked outside and offered her tea.
I then told her she did a lot of talking and must be thirsty by now. She got all embarrassed and mumbled that she didn't meant for me to hear it. I told her if she wants private conversations, my home is not the right place. That was as passive aggressive as I could be with a smile on my face.
61. Save The Date
I feel like I’m in some bad wedding movie where the parents of the bride do everything possible to ruin the wedding. I received this text from my dad’s parents on Wednesday: “Unfortunately, your celebration and your mom and dad’s celebration are at the same time. Grandma and I have thought long and hard as to what we should do and have finally decided that we will go to your mom and dad’s anniversary and not come to your wedding, as painful as this is.”
“We love you and wish you well in your future relationship. We know it’s an exciting time and hope all your plans and dreams will be realized. Please stay in touch and let us know how you are doing and if you need anything. Much Love —Gran & Grandpa.” I am livid at my parents; this was the first I’d heard of it. I simply said I was disappointed, asked them not to contact me again, and then blocked their number.
I had a vague idea that something weird was happening when I received a message from a probably-not guest who told me that she hadn’t received the invitation yet but to message her. So I did, giving her details and asking if she was coming or not. She said she’d get back to me as my mom’s event was on the same day. I just didn’t realize what this “event” was.
Y’all. My parents got married in DECEMBER. My wedding is at the end of SEPTEMBER. I got an email from my mom the same day I got the text from my grandparents. I won’t include it in this post because it’s long, but she mentioned how she “had a celebration next weekend with 40 of her closest family and friends.” Family and friends from MY guest list.
Still, the people we actually want will be there and that’s all that matters. But just, what the actual heck. Who DOES THAT??? My uncle and his family also backed out, but they’re weird and I don’t care about them coming anyway. He texted me, a month and a half after I sent him a text asking if they were still coming, that they weren’t coming and he “hoped my relationship with my parents got better going forward as that’s important in the future.”
I didn’t ask for your unsolicited advice. I asked you to confirm whether your kid was still my flower girl. At least now I know my mom 100% will not be crashing! That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore! Things for the wedding are coming together and I don’t think it’s going be a complete circus now that I don’t have to worry about that, so that’s good.
62. Good Boys And Girls
My husband has an ugly history with his stepmother, who is a terrible person. His father was a really great man who has since passed. Anyway, we adopted a beagle named Winston from the shelter when he was already over 12 years old. His owner had passed and he was so sweet and sad that we decided to take him home. He was with us for about a year and had a few health problems, but nothing major.
One weekend, we went out of town and asked our in-laws to watch Winston while we were gone. When we got home, my father-in-law was reluctant to return him as they had bonded over the three-day weekend. My in-laws had a small shepherd dog at the time named Minnie. I hadn’t ever heard them complain about her in the past but, when we picked up Winston my mother-in-law started making a huge deal about how Minnie was digging holes in their yard.
After a week or so of my father-in-law bugging my husband, we decided to trade Winston for Minnie. I know it sounds weird, but I figured it was a quiet environment for him being a senior dog, and I hated to see Minnie wind up in a shelter, which was what I suspected would happen. They had Winston for about a year when my husband and father-in-law went on a trip together.
A few days after they left, it all started to unravel. My mother-in-law called me all upset. She said that Winston had a seizure and she took him to the vet and the vet wound up putting him down. I was in shock. He had one very mild seizure when we had him and I knew he had a few when he was with them, but they said he was being medicated.
After we got off the phone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with her story. She added the detail that the vet didn’t charge her for putting him down because he felt sorry for her. It struck me as an odd, unnecessary detail, so I decided to call their regular vet and ask about what happened. They told me that they hadn’t seen Winston and didn’t know what I was talking about.
I decided to call another vet in that same area, but I had to leave a message. This was on Friday afternoon. The vet was closed over the weekend and the boys returned home on Sunday. My husband and I went over the story and both picked out things that we thought didn’t add up. My husband asked his dad which vet the stepmom took him to and he said it was the first one I called. Ok, even weirder.
Monday morning, the second vet’s office called me back. I asked if someone had brought in a beagle having a seizure, and after a pause, the woman told me the whole, jaw-dropping story. She told me that a woman in a bathrobe and slippers (no doubt my mother-in-law) had brought in a beagle and said she hit it with her car and didn’t know who it belonged to.
Apparently, they turned it in to the pound. The pound is not open on Monday so I had to wait until they opened on Tuesday to see if it was really him. I was there as soon as they unlocked the doors. When I walked into the dog kennels, I heard him baying and burst into tears. I couldn’t believe that after everything he had been through, he had to spend four days in the pound, abandoned again.
It cost me over $200 to get him out, which we did not have to spend, but there was no way I was leaving him. When I got home, my husband couldn’t believe his eyes. We took him straight over to my in-laws’ to confront her. She dug in and said that he was having a seizure, that the vet told her he was putting him down but HE must have lied.
We knew we weren’t getting anywhere so we left with Winston and went no contact for about a year. My husband still had a relationship with his dad, but we never trusted her again. So we wound up with both dogs and Winston was totally fine. He lived two more lovely years before he developed cancer and had to be put down when his time actually came. Minnie never dug a single hole in my yard.
63. Grandma Doesn’t Know Best
So let me tell the story of how my friend saved a boy from a mistake his grandmother made. Two weeks ago, said friend and I went to the cinema to watch Glass. We get in line at the snack stand behind an older woman and a little boy, I'd guess he was four or five years old. She tells him, "You can have anything you like, just pick! But don't tell mommy!"
This was a red flag to me being a lurker over here. Anyhow, the boy picks a Mr. Tom bar, which is peanuts covered in caramel/honey (?) or some such sugary glue. Does anyone see where this is going yet? The grandma gets her stuff and pays, and they go toward the staircase leading to the theaters and we order our stuff. By the time we're done, I had pretty much forgotten all about them.
But when we got halfway up the stairs, all heck broke loose. The boy suddenly falls down in front of us, the grandma a few steps ahead of him. At first I thought he just tripped or missed a step, but he was coughing. We didn't notice right away as we were chatting, but my friend worked in childcare before and crouched down to help him up.
He looks at her and tries to say something but can't get a word out. The grandma gets upset and tells my friend to step away and tells the boy to get up. My friend says: "I think he has trouble breathing." "No way, he just fell and is upset, get away!" in a ticked-off tone from grandma. The boy now starts wheezing and putting his hands to his face, the candy bar falling down.
Now, at first my friend thought a piece of the bar went into the wrong pipe, and patted the boy on the back quite heavily. As the wheezing gets worse, my friend realizes much faster than me what is going on and tells the grandma: "He can't breathe, is he allergic? Do you have an epi-pen or medication?" She loses it and starts crying because she doesn't have anything with her.
My friend shouts to the crowd that a child is having an allergic reaction and if anyone has an epi-pen. A man comes running with a pen and she administers it. By this time a crowd has formed, but everyone is just standing and staring while the grandma is crouched next to the boy, crying over him. My friend has to remove her to give him space to breathe.
I am frozen in place, completely useless. My friend looks at me and pretty firmly tells me to call an ambulance. I would have botched that too, if the man on the line didn't remain calm and talk me through what he needed to know. About five minutes later (man those were long) the ambulance arrives and takes the kid away. My friend offers to drive the grandma to the hospital.
Now, the rest of this is hearsay, as I can only report what my friend told me went down. In the car, my friend tells the still sobbing grandma to call the boy's parents. She says, "I'll call my son." As my friend tells it, she could hear the father scream through the phone that he and his wife told her multiple times about his allergy and if the kid died, that was on her.
At the hospital, my friend left her information with one of the nurses in case an investigation was going to be done. She then quickly got out of there because the parents arrived and a shouting match with grandma ensued. So why am I telling this now? Today, the mother and the little boy called my friend and said they would like to send her a thank-you card for all her help.
The mother said that the boy made a full recovery and she was grateful for her son's life. After a few questions, it became clear that the little boy is not allowed to be alone with grandma from now on and he got his very own cool backpack (Batman) with emergency medicine! Happy ends for all! :)
64. Raw Emotion
My mother-in-law and I don’t have the greatest relationship over the two months I’ve been married to her daughter. We got married after my then-girlfriend moved into my apartment. When we decided to get hitched, she didn’t want to tell her parents and sent them a letter instead. They wanted her to marry a guy from church, and they’d had it figured out since she was in elementary school.
My parents came to the ceremony because...they actually like both of us. I was at work yesterday and the mother-in-law texted me around 10 am and asked me if I would be interested in getting dinner with her after I got off. I thought this was mad weird because I’m pretty sure both my mother and father-in-law hate my guts. She texted me the address, and it was the most expensive steakhouse in our city.
I let my wife know about these post-work plans and that I’d be late. Well, this woman wanted to talk about us and how she thought I was going to ruin her daughter’s life. My dad always tells me when I’m not sure what to say, listen more than I speak lest I say something stupid. She asked if my wife was pregnant...and I said no.
Her next question was then, what reason was there to get married? I said I love her and didn’t see the point in waiting. Her whole attitude changed from warm and curious to really apathetic. I assumed we were going to do separate bills or that she was just paying because she invited me. She asked for the check, one check. The waiter placed it in the middle of the table…and she asked if I was going to get it.
I thought she was joking. This woman’s car could probably pay off my student debt twice. I laughed uncomfortably and she pushed it toward me. It’s a good thing I’m used to getting the cheapest thing on the menu (chicken). I got the same thing for my wife, so my part of the bill came up to like $70 for both our orders. She got a $200 steak.
I told her I’d pay for my orders, started to take out some bills, and she said that that was poor manners. I do okay for us (my wife’s still looking for work), but not “I can drop almost $300 on dinner” okay. My hand physically would not allow me to place my debit card in the book for that amount. I asked her to excuse me because I had to call my dad.
I then paid separately and left without telling her mom. When I was waiting for the train, I felt a lot of things. Stupid, inadequate (because I couldn’t pay that, almost like I wasn’t living up to this standard she’d created for her daughter). But I got several texts and calls from my mother-in-law, which I dismissed but took a minute to look at my lock screen, which is a picture of my wife from her college graduation last year, and I felt happier.
I told her about it when I got home, and she broke down laughing that I left her mom in the restaurant.
65. Difference Of Opinion
For as long as I can remember, my mom liked to tell the story of how my brother gave me a nickname when he was a toddler. The story goes like this: my brother was little, just learning to talk. He hasn't learned to say my name yet, though in all fairness, it's a fairly difficult name for small children to say. One day, she realizes that while he doesn't say my actual name, he has given me a nickname.
That nickname? "Way." At first, she's confused. It's cute! But where did it come from? Then one day, I was getting into typical toddler shenanigans, and by shenanigans, I mean trying to sit on her lap while she's holding my brother. She pushes me away and says, "(my full name) GO AWAY!" To which my brother giggled and said, "Way!"
And that was when she realized that she had told me to "go away" so often as a kid that my brother thought that was my name. She looooved to tell that story, thinking it was just so adorable. I grew up thinking that as well. It took me almost 30 years and having kids to realize that it wasn't.
66. You Are What You Eat
My nine-year-old daughter became a vegetarian about eight months ago after her friend's older sister's influence. She takes it surprisingly seriously, given her age. For some bizarre reason, my mother-in-law has a serious bug up her butt about it and hates that my husband and I allow it. We had a small confrontation about it a few months ago, and she seemed to back off after I made it clear I wasn't interested in her input. And then it all blew up.
On Friday night, we had dinner with my husband's parents and she served spaghetti. It was a meat sauce for the rest of us, but when she gave my daughter her bowl, she said "and a special veggie sauce just for you" all sweetly. Halfway through her bowl, daughter started to panic and asked my mother-in-law if she was sure there was no meat in the sauce.
She insisted there was none. I took her plate to inspect and sure enough, there was beef in her sauce. When I stated there was indeed meat in it, my daughter immediately began to cry. I took her into the living room to calm her down while my husband confronted his mom. She at first insisted it was an accident, but after he established he didn't buy that for a second, she admitted it was intentional.
She said she thought by reminding her how delicious meat was, she would "give up that vegetarian nonsense." She said she couldn't see what the big deal was and suggested we get our daughter therapy because the fact she cried over it was "very troubling and a sign something is wrong with her." At that point, I insisted we leave.
I was starting to seriously consider throwing the spaghetti in the witch’s face, but I knew it would traumatize the kids. In the car, we obviously explained to our daughter that there was nothing wrong with her and grandma was 100% in the wrong. She seemed to have already come to that conclusion on her own, though. My mother-in-law sent a half-baked text apology to my husband last night.
Basically "I shouldn't have done that, but...—insert essay about why eating meat is no big deal and our daughter overreacted here—" He hasn't responded because we're still trying to figure out what to say and how to handle the situation. I'm beyond livid. He's trying to figure out things to say to get her to understand our daughter's feelings, like asking her how she would feel if someone tricked her into eating a dog.
However, I strongly feel like we shouldn't have to do that. We shouldn't have to defend our daughter's personal choice not to eat meat and her right to have that respected. We shouldn't have to try to validate her feelings of being deeply upset after she was tricked into doing something she is strongly morally opposed to by someone she trusted. I knew what I had to do.
I told my husband I don't trust his mother to feed my kids anymore. He thinks I'm overreacting and we should give her a second chance once the dust settles with this, but my trust is gone. She took it upon herself to decide my daughter was "wrong" for being a vegetarian and try to "fix" her. She decided she knows best and to ignore not only my daughter's boundaries, but ours as her parents not to push meat on her.
It also worries me because our five-year-old has a peanut allergy that she also scoffs at. She's never tried to sneak her peanut products, but she's dismissed it as "probably not serious" and has said how people "outgrow allergies, so she probably will too." After this incident with the meat, I'm terrified she'll decide to ignore that food restriction too.
67. Drastic Measures
Yesterday, my husband, our two kids, and me got back from a family vacation. This vacation was planned, and my mother-in-law knew we were going. We came home to a nightmare. We found out this morning that she reported my husband missing on day two of our two-week vacation. We think it's because he didn't reply to her messages the second she sent them, so she decided to take drastic measures.
We're not in full contact with my mother-in-law, and she's been upping her crazy in the last few years, especially since we got married. We're probably somewhere between medium and low contact. She's also on a pretty strict information diet. We pretty much only tell her things when it's too late for her to mess them up, or when we have no choice because other family members (or our kids, which has happened a few times) have let slip information that they didn't realize we were keeping from her.
We've talked to the authorities this morning and said that we want it noted wherever possible that she filed a false report. They've said they can't do more than that because technically they “found” my husband because he was missing for over 10 days. But he was on a planned vacation. What. The. Actual. Heck? I just...I just don't know what to do anymore!
68. Food For Thought
So my mother-in-law is very nice. However, her twin sister who helped raise my husband is awful. When my husband was little, his mother had some pretty aggressive health issues and spent a large portion of his childhood in the hospital. Because of this, the sister did a lot in raising him, and since she has no children of her own she sees herself as his second mom.
My husband and I live in the same city as my aunt-in-law but purposefully avoid spending time with her because she’s rude and more than a little bit crazy. This story actually started last Tuesday when my mother-in-law called me up and asked if my husband and I could go visit the aunt because she’s been very lonely and feels like she never gets to see him anymore.
Now, I consider myself a pretty nice person and I don’t like when people are sad or lonely, so I agree to give her a call to see if she’d like to join us for dinner. Which leads to dinner last night. We agree to meet at a restaurant she likes for dinner. My first problem with her, though, is how inconsiderate she is. For example, the restaurant she picked is less than a ten-minute drive from her home, but does she show up on time? Of course not.
She was more than 40 minutes late, and didn’t answer a single one of our calls to check if she was okay. But she finally gets there and starts to chat with us—more like complain—about her life. She keeps turning the waiter away because she isn’t ready to order, and at this point I’m starving and just want to order some darn food.
Finally she’s ready and the waiter comes by again to take our order. I order French fries as my side. She gives me a look but doesn’t say anything. As soon as the waiter walks away, she hits me with a brutal insult. She says, “Do you really think fries are the best choice? You’ve gotten pretty chubby lately.” Thankfully, my husband shuts that down real quick.
He basically tells her if she’s going to say things like that, we will be taking our meals to go. She isn’t technically wrong. I have gained weight recently, but it’s because I’m pregnant, which she doesn’t know. She quickly changes the subject and goes back to complaining. When the food comes out, I quickly grab a fry because pregnancy cravings, plus I’m starving since we should’ve started eating like an hour ago.
She gives me that look again and I just know she’s going to say something stupid. And boy, I wasn’t wrong. “You must really turn him off in the bedroom eating and gaining weight like that.” What the heck?? Y’all, I’ve always been slightly chubby but I’m not overweight, and according to my doctor I have gained a completely normal and healthy amount of weight.
My husband immediately flagged down the waiter and asks for the check and to-go boxes. She starts to whine that it isn’t fair of us to leave and she was just stating the obvious, blah blah blah. My husband completely rips into her and tells her she needs to apologize, which she refused to do. As we were leaving, he told her to not contact us until she was ready to apologize.
I’m so grateful for my husband’s spine. My mother-in-law ended up calling to yell at us after the aunt spoke to her, but once she got the whole story she was on our side too.
69. Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer
Turns out the pictures weren't "destroyed while uploading them." You know? The pictures of my child’s first Christmas? That Christmas where my mother-in-law wouldn't let anyone else take any other photos because her camera was so much better than what we had? That one where she called me to tell me in the most laconic tone of voice that she had lost them all?
The ones she heard me cry over losing, several times? Yeah, she had those all along. My baby sister nonchalantly swiped past them on her phone while showing me something else, and I about half lost my mind. Apparently the whole family has them except me. Why? Why would you do this to a new mom? This was years before I ever opposed her in any significant way.
What could she have possibly gotten out of taking my baby’s first Christmas pictures from me?! What the heck?? I went no contact years ago for something completely unrelated, but this came out of left field for me, and I sobbed on my husband in the kitchen like a child. It was just so unexpectedly incredibly mean, and I honest to God don't get why.
I'm still angry. At least I have them now, and my baby was exactly as adorable as I remember. But looking at the pictures now I'm seeing something neither my husband or I noticed at the time. I'm happy and smiling at my baby in all of them, and she looks completely furious/silently seething/like she's sucking on a bag of lemons in every. single. one.
70. Grandma The Great
My great-grandmother and I were very close. As I grew up, her home was always a sanctuary away from my dad and stepmother's horrors. She was also always very kind to my mother, even after my mother remarried, and at one point called the authorities on my father. The last year of my great-grandmother's life, she seemed to just...deflate.
My great-grandfather, her husband, had been gone for almost 12 years at this point, and I knew she missed him terribly, but that last year she seemed to talk about him more and more, and she lost a lot of weight, but never her mental acuity. One day, out of the blue, she calls my grandmother (her daughter) and asks for a ride to an appointment.
My grandmother obliges, and my great-grandmother gives her an address—to a hospice. Turns out she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer six months before, and decided it was her time rather than fighting it. She didn't tell ANYONE because she didn't want us to try to talk her into chemo and such when she was nearly 90 years old.
She passed very quickly after she entered the hospice, and meeting up for the funeral was the first time I'd seen my stepmother in person since I graduated from high school. I avoided her, and spent most of the time talking to my grandparents and my aunt. Even my mother came to the funeral, and I could tell she was very distraught about my great-grandmother's passing.
It was a lovely service in her tiny Methodist church, and then she was buried next to my great-grandfather in the nearby cemetery. My grandmother asked everyone to stay in town while she handled the will, and then we'd separate everything out. I told her I couldn't afford to, but I wasn't working at the time and she offered to let me stay at her house.
My great-grandmother's house was locked up like a vault. My grandmother, probably in a blessed moment of foresight, hired security to watch over the house and its possessions 24 hours a day, and wouldn't you know, every day they had to report that a redhead in her mid-30s tried to go into the house and they had to turn her away. About three weeks later, my grandmother called everyone together at my great-grandmother's house to "handle the will."
My grandmother decided to do a reading of the will. Attorneys don't normally do readings of the will like you see in movies, so my grandmother read it, but my great-grandmother's attorney was there with a box, and he was to handout things from my great-grandmother's safety deposit box in the bank. The will was organized by generation.
To my grandmother: the house and whatever remains of her possessions and money after everyone else listed has received theirs. To my great uncle: my great-grandfather's personal effects, like his watches and cuff links. To my aunt: My great-grandmother's antique sewing machine that she'd inherited from her mother, and a lot of her vintage designer dresses.
To my aunt's husband: my great-grandfather's classic car. To my uncle: their summer home by the lake. To my uncle's wife: my great-grandparents' books except the cookbooks, and the bookshelves to keep them in. To my dad: my great-grandfather's golf clubs, pipes, and camera equipment. To my stepmom: $1, with a notation that she never forgave her for the way she treated her “precious great-grandchildren.” But she didn’t stop there.
She also said that she will enjoy watching her burn, even if it means she was condemned herself for such vindictive thoughts. I think my grandmother was fighting off a smirk the whole time she read that. It was taking all of my self-control to keep my mouth SILENT. Thank God I had tissues so I could pretend I was crying into them while laughing silently.
To my father's first wife, my mother: $250,000, plus whatever is needed to pay off her house and student loans. Y'all, my mother wasn't even AT this meeting. My stepmother started SCREAMING, insisting that someone had tampered with the will. "She's not faaaaaammmmily!!!" My grandmother looks at her with that 1,000 yard stare and says: "Neither are you."
My dad is beet red, but my grandmother has always been able to at least keep him quiet. After a few minutes of yelling, my grandmother told her to sit down and shut up. They weren't done. To my great uncle's son: my great-grandfather's cabin, and all the contents. To my aunt's children: a trust fund to pay for college, each.
To my uncle's stepson, who he always treated like his own son: a trust fund to pay for college. To my younger sister: a trust fund to pay for college. To my younger brother: $250,000, and an heirloom necklace to give to his wife if he ever marries. To my younger brother: a trust fund to pay for college. To me: $250,000, her jewelry box and its contents, her cookbooks and the contents of her kitchen, and a letter.
To my brother and my children, should we ever have any: a trust fund to pay for college. If we reach the age of 45 without children, the trust fund is to pay out our share of its remaining sum to us. This was followed by a notation that if anyone contests the will, they get nothing. So onto the “letter.” My grandmother looks over at me and says, "I'm sorry, I read the letter to you before I read the will, do you mind if I read it aloud?"
My stepmother is already hopping mad at this point, insisting that it's not fair, she's going to contest the will, that my great-grandmother wasn't in her right mind when she wrote it, etc. My great-grandmother's attorney was right there THE WHOLE TIME, just rolling his eyes. I gave my grandmother the go ahead, because about 20 years’ worth of vindication was about to go down.
While I don't have the letter here in front of me (it's in my safety deposit box in the bank) here's the gist of it: She is sorry she didn't tell me about the cancer, but she didn't want to worry me about something that is just a natural part of life. She is sorry that I drew the short straw when it came to parents, but she is very proud of me.
She said that my stepmother is a “homewrecker” and not to let her touch a cent of my money, no matter what my father says. That she hopes I'll use some of the money to get the mental health help that was denied me in childhood because my father is more concerned with his idiocy than his daughter's welfare. The rest was mostly life advice, and encouragement. Sorry, I'm crying a bit writing this, I really miss her.
You could have heard a PIN DROP in that room after my grandmother finished reading it. After a few minutes, my stepmother sputtered, "You can't let her DO that!!" My dad just grabbed her arm, and the two of them left. As soon as they were out of the door, my brother looked at me and said, "I'd high five you, but that seems crass."
The rest of my relatives started laughing. According to my little sister, my stepmother yelled a lot about how they needed to contest the will, and finally my father shut her up with, "I've divorced better women for less. That's enough." Which is a sick burn because my mom was his only other wife. My mom broke down in tears when we showed up with my great-grandma's attorney to handle paying off her bills and give her a fat check.
She then started full-on ugly crying when they told her a trust fund had been set up for my baby brother to pay for his college. She didn't realize my great-grandmother thought so highly of her, and the money wiped out all but a few credit card bills overnight. Plus, knowing she didn't need to save for my little brother to go to college made her life so much easier.
As for me, I got the mental health help I needed (and am still getting it). I used a significant portion of the money to pay for college once I was stable, got a nice job working from home, and used some more to move to southern California since I have Seasonal Depression and not having a real winter helps a lot. As far as I know, my stepmother is still a bitter spiteful witch who knows no one likes her.
My father and I have an agreement that we do not talk about her, and I do not have to ever see or speak to her or consider her existence in any way.
71. Caught In The Act
We have a nice security camera set up with the “ring doorbell” and a bunch of other connected cameras. My favorite new feature is the intercom. There can be a bit of a delay, but I can open the app on my phone to see what's happening live and then I can choose to talk through the speaker attached to it. Like a dutiful wife, I've been using it to scare the bejeezus out of my husband.
The best part is having saved footage of him almost dropping our groceries. Muah ha ha. He's been getting me back. It's good fun and it means we're both checking it often. I was secretly hoping to be able to use it on my awful mother-in-law—and yesterday I got my chance! I got an alert of movement on my phone when I was at work. I stepped out to somewhere I could have some privacy and I watched.
She was peeking through windows at the side of the house, where the kitchen is. She worked her way from left to right and looked through each window, then started looking through the windows in the front. I also saw her pull out her phone and use the flashlight to try to see in better. My husband and I have been drawing the curtains every morning to prevent just this, so she probably didn't see much.
First thing I did was text my husband: "Pleeeease let me have this!" He agreed in exchange for me making dinner. Fair. I started giggling as she moved closer to the front of the house, because I was so excited to freak her out. I had to think about taxes and trips to the dentist to stifle my laughter and sound serious enough for this to work.
Finally she was at the front door. I turned it on and said "INTRUDER. DETECTED. INTRUDER. DETECTED. COMMENCING COUNTDOWN. 60 SECONDS TO VACATE PROPERTY. INTRUDER. DETECTED. 55 SECONDS..." and so on. She wasn't around to hear much of it. She scampered off like a cat that wandered too close to an automatic sprinkler.
72. Grow A Spine
I have just annulled my marriage after a week. I tried. I really, really tried. His mother tried everything to get me away from her son, and she finally succeeded. Her son had a spine like jelly. If she told him to hurt me, I’m sure he would do it. But there was one final straw. So, I have a very crazy allergy against Latex. I react really badly to it.
We found out when I was a toddler. I was treated in the hospital for something and I went into shock after a nurse just touched me. Since then, I have a little sticker on my driver’s license and I wear an allergene necklace. I can literally perish from sniffing a glove. My ex mother-in-law knew this, because my ex-husband told her. Last week, after I got home from work, I was angry with my ex.
I can't remember why. Everything is really fuzzy right now. However, I went into bed early. I just bought this bed a month ago. When I laid into bed, it felt really comfy, but I could feel a small layer of plastic under my mattress. I assumed that this was normal, since it is a new bed, and I might have missed some plastic cover on the mattress. I didn't think about it much and went to sleep.
I woke up 17 hours later in the hospital. That’s when the disturbing truth emerged. My ex mother-in-law cut up 75 latex gloves to create a little layer under my duvet cover. I do not remember, but when my ex-husband went to bed several hours later, he found me white as a ghost, sweating and barely breathing. You know why I knew it was my mother-in-law?
Because she called me to brag about it. While I was in the hospital. She told me ex that she was afraid I would wet the bed, since I acted so childish. Remember, I am a 27-year-old woman. My ex, instead of going full no contact, said he was sorry about my behavior. He. Was. Sorry. I was in the hospital for a week. My ex visited me once…to make me apologize to his mother.
Instead, I got security and told everyone he is not allowed to be back in my room.
73. Make It Make Sense
My mother-in-law is a judgemental old bat who doesn't understand or like me, or really her son. In the past, she's expressed her opinions about every aspect of our lives being "strange" to her. I thought we had come to a nice point about jewelry, but apparently not. I only mildly care, because I'm pretty low contact with her at this point.
My husband is going to Florida by himself next weekend, and my mother-in-law is confused. Background: Because my father was tacky enough to die during the holiday season, without even considering her plans, I haven't seen her in months. My husband dealt with his family entirely during this time, and sheltered me from any comments she made after she told me that she wanted him to go to her stupid party instead of my father's funeral.
I've spent the last few months dealing with will and banking issues, as well as supporting my mom. My work has been super supportive and flexible, but still taken all my PTO and I'm doing a lot of "work from home" and catch up at weird hours/weekends, whatever. I cannot take a vacation right now. At the same time, we live in a winter place, and while this winter hasn't been the worst, my husband still wants/needs some sunshine, and I want a husband who isn't moping around with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
I have absolutely no spoons for him right now, so off to Florida he goes, while I will probably spend the weekend catching up on work. Usually we would take a week in March or a mini-break around now, but it won't work for us this year. All caught up? Great. So, we had dinner with them a few days ago, and my husband mentions this plan.
MIL: "…So you're leaving her by herself." Me: (foolishly thinks she cares that I clearly need a break as well, and/or to express some sort of concern for my well-being): "Well I wish I…" MIL: (voice rising)" How do you two even stay together?? This isn't even a real marriage! You have separate names and bank accounts and you won't have children and YOU DON'T EVEN WEAR HIS RING!!"
Me: ".....Nope." I got up, told them goodnight, and left the restaurant. I think she was sputtering something, but I honestly only heard buzzing. As I was waiting for a Lyft, my husband found me. His dad called, and he answered and said, "I'll call you guys in a few days. Keep her away from us until then." She hasn't reached out to me, and if she has to my husband he's keeping it to himself.
74. A Real Pain In The Neck
My oldest daughter is now five years old, and her biological father is no longer in the picture. I kicked him out of the house when she was about one and a half and he decided that meant his role as her father had ended. Not a problem. Things are way better now. My ex's mother is the mother-in-law in question. She had her knees replaced when she was about 50 and had complications.
She is now a paraplegic and has as many as 20 seizures a day. She is in very poor health, but her attitude is worse than her health by far. I have never met a more miserable woman, or someone who got so much joy out of making others feel bad. She is a witch. She said so many negative, ugly, horrible things about everyone around her, right to their faces, and laughed about it.
I always hated her, but back then I felt obligated to placate her. She was the "MY baby" type of mother-in-law with my daughter and it drove me nuts. After I broke up with my daughter’s father, he told her I wouldn't let him see his girl. That was a lie. She messaged me, freaking out that she was going to take me to court for grandparents’ rights.
I let her know the only contact I've had with her son is the messages I've been sending him asking him to visit. I told her I wasn't keeping my daughter from anyone. I would occasionally Skype her with my daughter so she could see her. Well, one day we are on Skype, and my daughter is playing with a giraffe toy. The toy somehow broke off at the neck, all while my mother-in-law is watching on Skype.
My daughter is in my lap so both of us are in her view of the webcam. She then laughs and says, "Wouldn't it be funny if your mommy's neck snapped like that?” I froze for a second, trying to comprehend what I just heard. When it clicked, I shut the laptop without saying a word. And that was the last time I ever talked to that woman. She's been blocked on everything since.
My daughter is now a big sister, and my youngest's father has been her father for as long as she can remember. Things are good, and we couldn't be happier.
75. Three’s Company
My boyfriend and are a gay couple, and we’ve been together for four years now. Since gay marriage is illegal where we live, we won’t be able to get married but still, I have a mother-in-law. And quite a nasty one. When her son told her he’s gay, she didn’t believe him because, in her mind, gay men are feminine, fluttering their hands and speaking in high-pitched voices.
My boyfriend is masculine, so he doesn’t fit into her stereotypes and must be joking about being gay. When he brought me over to meet his mother, she realized it’s true after all and there was a scandal, a huge scandal. My mother-in-law didn’t talk to him for a few months, then she decided that she might as well get to know the person her son is together with.
The first thing she asked me was what I do for a living and I told her I’m a police officer. As soon as I said it, she started laughing uncontrollably. It looked as if she was having a seizure, she couldn’t stop laughing. My boyfriend and I, we couldn’t understand what was so funny about it and he was like, “Mom, what are you laughing about?”
She calmed down and was like, ”You’re right, that’s actually not funny at all. Officers should be real, tough men. If fairies work there now, soon we won’t be able to go on a street, because criminals will bloom like crazy.” She looked at me again and said “I thought you were a hairdresser in the best-case scenario. Not an officer.” That’s actually nothing new for me.
Many people have told me they would have never thought I’m an officer when they first met me. I don’t know why, maybe because I look younger than I am (I’m 30). But they were nice about it, but my mother-in-law for some reason said it with a tint of evil in her voice. Ironically, that’s how my boyfriend and I met each other—he was partying, made a couple of stupid decisions that led to me detaining him, and it all kind of unfolded from there.
But that’s not even the real story behind this post. It was just a bit of an introduction so that you’d understand what she’s like. The real problem was that some renovation is going on right now in her house and she needed a place to stay for two weeks. She wanted to come and live with us, my husband and me, and we decided—why not?
Let’s be good people, it’s just two weeks. Well, wrong. Before we kicked her out, she stayed with us for five days only and it was a nightmare. First, she didn’t respect the way we live. Of course, she didn’t have to go to bed when we go to bed, but she could at least behave quietly. As soon as we turned off the lights in our room, she started running through the house like crazy, to the kitchen and back, to the bathroom and back.
She wasn’t even trying to be quiet; it sounded as if she was deliberately thumping her feet on the floor. Honestly, an elephant in the house would have made less noise. Whenever we talked to her about it, she was like, “Well, what can I do if I’m hungry or need to use the bathroom? If you were tired, you would sleep, nothing would bother you.”
One night I got sick and tired of it because I had an early shift the next day. I came up to her and I said, “I think you have forgotten that I’m an officer and what you’re doing is an offense. It’s night time and you’re disturbing the peace. I’m giving you a warning now, but if you continue, I’m detaining you, and tomorrow we’re going to the station together and you’re facing charges.”
She complained to my boyfriend that I was threatening her, but he didn’t defend her and I guess I scared her because noise at night was no longer an issue after that. She also had disgusting habits. She would never do dishes; she just put her dirty plate or cup in the sink and waited for us to wash it. Or she would eat a candy, not finish it and just stick it onto something.
We found candies stuck on the side of the table, windowsills, and sides of chairs all the time. She would cut her nails in the bathtub and just leave them there, and when you get inside the bath, you step right onto the nails with your bare feet. It’s simply disgusting. I don’t know if she does this in her own house too, I’ve only been there once but everything seemed clean. But the last straw happened just a few days ago.
That’s when we were like—hit the road, mother-in-law. It was at night, and we were in our room and my boyfriend wanted to get intimate. At first, I didn’t feel comfortable with it, as his mother was just a few rooms away from us, but then I thought—it’s night, it’s late, she must be sleeping and we’ll be quiet. And we were quiet, to hear us you’d have to literally press your ear against our door.
Well, that’s what she was doing I guess, because the door suddenly swung open. She came inside, turned on the light, and started screaming, “What is going on in here, what are you doing, why are you naked, have you got no shame?! My son, I didn’t raise you like that!” I was like, what do you think is going on? Like, we're in our house, we’re a couple, we’ve been together for four years, we love each other.
Do you really think we don’t ever sleep together? Are you that deluded? So the next day we told her to pack her bags and move out. My boyfriend gave her enough money for a hotel, where she can stay until her house is ready to live in again. We explained that we cannot live with her, because she obviously doesn’t know what “sanitary” means and doesn’t respect our privacy.
She was wailing and crying loudly for what seemed like forever. My boyfriend even had to pack her bag for her because she was sitting on the sofa, refusing to move. If she had behaved like a normal human being, this could have been different but she is who she is and we cannot have her in our house for another week or we’ll go crazy. When she finally left, she looked at us so very hatefully.
76. Irish Twins
My husband and I welcomed our daughter into the world 18 weeks ago. She’s a darling baby and really pretty easy as far as newborns go, except for one thing: she wasn’t a son. My in-laws were obsessed with the idea of us having a son, to the point that they denied she was a girl up until the moment she was born. Why? Because “the bloodline follows the father. If you don’t have a son, our family name will peter out, because your daughter will marry a man and carry on his bloodline. So girls don’t really count.”
The day they came to visit in the hospital, my in-laws asked when we would be trying for another baby. We kind of just laughed it off, but my mother-in-law got more insistent, straight up telling us, “You need to try for a boy!” Over the next month or two, the conversation about us having another baby sort of tapers off into little comments every now and again.
I had no problem ignoring them, and we’d already told them it wasn’t happening so I just let it run off my back. Around this time, my mother-in-law started coming over daily for a few hours, watching the baby for me so that I could sleep and she also occasionally cleaned up a bit for me. She’d be over unsupervised anywhere from 1-4 hours.
Fast forward to the present day. Two days ago now, my husband poured me a mixed drink, and when I brought the cup up to my lips, I got hit with this paranoid and panicked feeling. I immediately put the cup down and insisted we take a pregnancy test. Sure enough, it comes back positive. We wait until the next morning, take a digital test and again, positive.
Based on timing, I should have been about six weeks along. After getting over the initial shock, we were excited but confused. For several reasons, we hadn’t been able to get hormonal birth control, so we’d been using condoms and lube to make sure they didn’t tear. So we weren’t sure how we’d gotten pregnant, but we’re happy with the news.
We decided we wouldn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want another baby stampede from his family, but I’m incredibly close with my sister-in-law so I decided to tell her after swearing her to secrecy. When I told her, her eyes got wide and started to water. She asked if I was serious, and was I sure. I told her I know my husband and I are young (we’re in our early 20s), but between us we make more than enough to support another baby.
She then bursts into tears and starts to apologize over and over, meanwhile I sit there with my mouth hanging open and lost. She calms down a bit, and through her tears tells me that my mother-in-law has been poking holes in our condoms pretty much since we came home from the hospital. She claims my mother-in-law told her she did it, but she thought that she was just spouting nonsense because she was upset we didn’t have a boy. And suddenly everything clicked into place.
That’s why the condoms didn’t work even though we were careful with them. That’s why she’d always shoo me off to sleep while she was around. And that’s what she was doing when she was “cleaning” my house—snooping for our condoms. And she knew I wasn’t on birth control because I remember complaining to her about how my OB-GYN went on maternity leave and I wasn’t able to find another one that took my insurance at the time.
I’m so angry I don’t know what to do. I want to go right over to her house and tear her a new one so bad I can smell my tires burning in the blacktop. I’m also illogically angry at my sister-in-law for not telling me. How could you think this was a joke when she was so specific about everything she was going to do?! Why didn’t you warn me?
I would have put my condoms in my room. I’m livid with my mother-in-law. I’m pleased with this pregnancy, but it wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t even an accident; it was her meddling because she didn’t get the Golden Grandson she wanted. I don’t even know how to handle this. I want to scorch the earth but I also still don’t want his family knowing I’m pregnant.
Also, I’m not even 12 weeks yet so the risk of a miscarriage is still uncomfortably high. The only bright side of this whole thing is that it’s snatched my husband out of his mother’s fear, obligation, and guilt so violently he’s probably got whiplash. Personally, my pregnancy has soured a bit so I’m really trying to hang on to any happiness I have about the pregnancy left.
As it stands now, I have absolutely no one to turn to. My own parents are extremely horrible to the point of no contact, and I can’t post in my baby bump group anymore because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings who had difficulty conceiving or carrying.
77. The Wicked Witch Of Wall Street
Dear universe: I would like to surrender my superpower of "attracting crazy people." If an equivalent exchange is required and requests are permitted, I would like to instead have the superpower of "instantly identifying title, artist name, and release year of any song after hearing three seconds' worth of the track." Thank you for your time; I await your reply.
So, while I'm waiting to see if my superpower exchange goes through, here's a story about how my superpower exchange has not gone through. I innocently went to the drugstore to fill a prescription and this happened. While I'm sitting in the pharmacy waiting area, a young mother and an older woman are in the baby supplies aisle.
The young mom looks, frankly, like dung on a Triscuit. She's pasty, her hair is lank, she's wearing a profoundly rumpled set of scrub pants and shirt that aren't matched in color, has no jewelry aside from a wedding ring, and she has the exhausted, thousand-yard stare of someone for whom sleep is but a curious fusion of cruel joke and fond memory.
She's leaning on the push bar of the cart as if it's the only thing holding her upright. In the cart is a carseat with a baby in it, and the kid is engaged in intense fussing noises, punctuated about every 10 seconds by a wrenching hiccup. The older woman is flawless, turned out in a stylish emerald-green twinset, with slacks one shade darker.
Her hair is a 1940s-Rita-Hayworth cascade of glossy dark waves, not a strand out of place. She's wearing Louboutin pumps, diamond earrings, an array of tasteful rings on her manicured hands, a Panthère de Cartier-style gold and enamel leopard draping around her neck. Her makeup is camera-ready. And her peach-slicked lips are flapping nonstop, venting criticism.
"My son" should have picked someone who could keep herself put together better. "My son" should be taking care of these things. "My son" doesn't understand how much trouble it is to take time out of a busy day to do a run to the drugstore. "My son" ought to understand how important the business deal is that she's brokering. Also, she doesn't see why her daughter-in-law is breastfeeding when formula is so much easier to deal with.
Yes, of course, it's far easier to buy, store, transport, measure, mix, and prepare formula than it is to pop out a breast that literally dispenses infant sustenance by itself and feed the sprog at any time or place. She's apparently able to breathe through her skin, because I swear she didn't interrupt her rant for anything as mundane as respiration.
And this goes on for five solid minutes while the daughter-in-law stares at the shelves and, I suspect, daydreams about going temporarily deaf. As the baby's fussing ramps up, the mother-in-law stops abruptly, forcing the daughter-in-law to halt the cart suddenly to avoid plowing over her (I privately wished she would). The mother-in-law turns around to lean over the baby and coo in the most unbearably irritating voice...
MIL: "Aww, whassamatter, baaaaabyyyy?! Is Mama not doing anything to stop those terrible, teeeerrible hiccups?!?!" My eye spasms. My hands close into fists. And then my mouth opens by itself... "What in the heck do you expect her to do about the goddarn hiccups, lady? Throat-punch the baby?" The mother-in-law spins around with a look of shock, like no one has ever spoken to her that way in her life.
Quick overview: I'm wearing a cowboy hat, grey sweatpants, combat boots, and a T-shirt from The Mountain that depicts a cat and a Tarot spread. No makeup. No jewelry aside from my own wedding ring. On a scale of Scabies-Raddled Hobo to This Polished Woman, I am standing on an overpass in the rain holding a cardboard sign that reads "Please Help, God Bless."
The mother-in-law, in a tone that suggests she just found me stuck to the hot-rod-red bottom of her left pump: "What did you say?!" Me, constitutionally unable to stop myself from responding to that tone: "Are you this hard to be around all the time, or is it a special day?" MIL: "How dare you?!" Those three words feel like the key turned in the lock of the cage that keeps my inner witch hidden from the world.
Me: "How dare I? How dare you? I'm a complete stranger, and I can see that your daughter-in-law is exhausted. She needs support and rest. She doesn't need to be berated in public by the Wicked Witch of Wall Street." MIL, spluttering: "We're leaving!" Me, bit between my teeth and running free: "You don't have to leave with her. I'll drive you home."
The daughter-in-law dissolving quietly into tears: "YES. PLEASE. YES." And then I drive a sobbing young mother home in her own minivan. We leave the Wicked Witch of Wall Street screaming furiously on the sidewalk outside the drugstore to call herself a cab. The daughter-in-law tells me that the last month has been really bad.
The baby is going through a period of vast discontent; her husband got a promotion and is overseeing a major IT server migration at his job and has been working all kinds of weird hours (and the baby is a Daddy's boy, which probably explains the discontent); her sister, who normally helps out, flew to another state to help her own in-laws with a family emergency; her best friend, who also helps out, is down sick along with her own two young kids.
Her sister is due to come home Wednesday, but the daughter-in-law is flat out of supplies and thought she could handle just a quick ride to and from the drugstore with her mother-in-law. Mother-in-law is obnoxiously classist and materialistic as heck, but normally manageable. She's only gone full-bore witchface since the baby was born and her son got that promotion, because now her son and daughter are always so overwhelmed and "can't handle their own lives."
I'm planning to get myself a cab back to the store to get my car, but when I pull into her driveway, there's another car there. She gasps and says "My husband's home!" My first thought was that the mother-in-law must have called him at work and now he's going to chew his wife out for being mean to Mommy. The front door opens, and the husband comes jogging out.
I have to note here that he's a physical carbon copy of his mother with a Y chromosome. He's freaking beautiful. He rushes up to the van, opens the passenger door to ask his wife if she's okay, kisses her, says a hasty "thank you" to me, then goes to the back door to get the baby, who goes from fussing to happy giggly noises, because Daddy.
I stare at the guy for a moment, then turn to the daughter-in-law and say, "My God, you are so freaking lucky. He's Henry Cavill with Godiva-chocolate eyes." She smiles (first smile I'd seen on her) and happily says, "I know." Turns out, he'd gotten a screaming voicemail from his mother and is kind enough to play it for us. When I heard it, I nearly burst out laughing.
"YOUR SORRY WITCH OF A WIFE LEFT ME AT THE STORE AND DROVE OFF WITH A TOTAL STRANGER WHO INSULTED ME FOR SPEAKING MY MIND! SHE'S PROBABLY BEING KIDNAPPED AND MY GRANDSON WILL NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN! SHE'S HURTING MY GRANDSON, HE WON'T STOP CRYING! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!" I translate this as "I am a harpy and your wife abandoned me here for Satan to pick up at his infernal convenience, so you should go home and get her side of the story."
The pair of them also crack up laughing, which is an improvement over the daughter-in-law starting to cry again. I get a ride back to the drugstore from Henry Cavill's clone. Fortunately, his mother is gone, and I say "fortunately" because he spends the entire drive snarling "I can't believe she would do this. I can't believe it. She knows what's going on in our lives, and she treats her that way?”
“She thinks she won't tell me what really happened? She thinks I'll get mad at her on her say-so? She thinks I'll get mad at my tired-out wife who's just trying to hold the house together while I work? No. No, she's not getting away with that." I think if she'd still been there, he'd have torn her seventeen new ones and jammed a football cleat up each and every one.
Incidentally, he didn't just drop me off; he went in to get the stuff his wife hadn't been able to pick up because she was busy fleeing from her mother-in-law. So, how was YOUR day?
78. Don’t Mess With Grandma Privileges
So I just found out I’m pregnant, and am over the moon excited, as is my soon-to-be husband. We plan on announcing it at our wedding in a few weeks, after I reach the point where it’s unlikely for me to lose it. But we told our moms because if a miscarriage did happen, I would want the love and support from my mom. However, I felt guilty just telling her, so we told my mother-in-law too.
My mom had the reaction I wanted. Tears and kisses and belly rubs, the whole shebang. Then it took a dark turn. My mother-in-law stared at us and said, “Well what are you going to do?” Um, what do you mean what are we going to do? “There are no clinics around us.” Clinics for what? “To get rid of it!” Why would we get rid of it? “Well you very well can’t be pregnant before marriage. It’s embarrassing.”
Why is it embarrassing? Tons of people are happy and healthy with kids before marriage. “Well yeah, but it’s bad luck to get married while pregnant. You’ll be too fat for your dress.” It went on like that for a while before I got sick of it and left. My husband is furious that he wasn’t there to stop her, but guess who lost grandma privileges before she even became a grandma.
Pexels
79. I’m Not Who You Think I Am
I had a rather bad Memorial Day weekend. Long story short, I had a seizure and face-planted my bedroom door. After a fun ride to the hospital on a backboard and neck brace, a whole bunch of tests followed and I was admitted because as it turns out, my auto-immune condition isn’t quite being managed as well as I thought it was before now.
Day three and I feel well enough to walk around and even make a trip to the cafeteria downstairs to get something better than the standard hospital food. Now, I didn’t really have much in the way of clothing. My wife brought my favorite hoodie and clean underthings, but forgot pants of all things, so a really nice nurse scrounged up a pair of the hospital’s blue scrub pants for me.
So, I was happily free of the IV cart for the next few hours and decided to get some chocolate milk and maybe a tasty snack to treat myself and lift my spirits a bit. But it ended up being a rather sad, frustrating affair before I could even make it onto the elevator. I’m pretty slow walking but I’m just content to not be confined to bed or tangled in tubes, so I enjoy the sunlight and make friendly conversation with the day shift nurses as I pass by.
Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy. But all that happiness goes away as I make it to the waiting area and elevator lobby. A ~60-year-old woman with the sourest expression on her face steps off the elevator—like she sucked on a whole barrel of lemons type of sour, lips puckered up tighter than a cat’s butt sour. So I try to give her a wide berth, but Pucker Face isn’t having it.
She marches straight up to me and gets well into my personal space, then—assuming I’m a nurse because I’m in scrubs—starts demanding that I take her to her son’s room and give her an immediate run down of his medical ailments. The exchange is as follows between me and the pucker-faced wonder (let's call her PK): PK: Finally, one of you lazy people is going to take me to my son’s hospital room and explain to me my baby boy’s condition. I’m his mother after all and that wife of his just hasn’t been taking care of him as she should be.
Me: (thinking “The children’s hospital is next door”) ….what? PK: Oh, don’t play stupid—you’re not pretty enough for that. I know my son’s here and I want to see him right this instant. I think he was brought in on Friday. Me: (really confused and feeling bad for the kid) Uh, I don’t work here. PK: What do you mean you don’t work here? You have on scrubs in a hospital, you’re a nurse—NOW TAKE ME TO MY SON!
Me: (starting to get irritated and sassy) Dude, I’m not a nurse…not everyone who wears scrubs is a nurse. I just didn’t feel like going to the cafeteria in a gown with my butt flapping in the wind. PK: (waves hands as if that’s magically going to make me not being a nurse change in any way) You’re just using that as an excuse to not get in trouble for sucking at your job and being a little jerk.
Me: (holds up wrist—including the lovely bright red allergy band) Yeah, no. I’m not a nurse, I’m a patient and I really don’t have to be explaining this to you. Go find someone else who can help you, but you should probably not be such a witch about it. PK: (inching so close I put my hands up to push her back out of the four remaining inches of personal space) I will act however I want, and you better believe I’m going to get your butt fired. I want to speak to your supervisor. Such unprofessional behavior and talking back to a patient's family—your bedside manner is atrocious.
Me: (pointing to the growing crowd) The head nurse is that way, and for the last time I don’t work here…I’m a patient just like your son, and being a jerk to people, especially nurses, is a good way to get thrown out on your butt by security. So, you might want to tone it down. By this time a couple of real nurses come over. All of them have clear name badges and credentials on display as well as these little communication devices that are like Star Trek Communicators but look and perform a lot less cool.
The head nurse, who was so sweet just like all the ones I had during my stay, had taken on the scary resting witch face that would make me think twice. Still, it didn’t even scare crazy woman. She barges right up to the nurse and demands to be taken to her son, spouting off his name and date of birth to basically everyone on the floor and then demands that I be fired.
PK: Oh, and fire that witch—she’s completely incompetent and rude. Head Nurse (HN): (deadpans with a chill game I’m rather envious of) She doesn’t work here and I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from yelling and harassing people. This is a hospital and people are trying to heal and rest. PK: I understand, but this woman isn’t letting me see my son and he needs his mommy right now. She needs to be dealt with for being such a terrible, irresponsible nurse.
Me: But I’m not a nurse…..? HN: Again, she is not employed here. After going back and forth for several minutes, Pucker Face can’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that I don’t actually work at the hospital. She’s basically a broken record, calling for me to get fired like she’s forgotten why she’s here in the first place. Head Nurse is calm and has explained it as many different ways as she possibly can and is starting to rub her temples with what must be a nasty headache.
Finally after a couple of seconds of quiet, she turns to me. HN: Hey, you’re fired okay?” Me: …okay?... HN: (holding an elevator for me) Go on now, get on your way. I get on the elevator and head downstairs, incredibly grateful to be away from that monstrous woman, and go to collect my well-deserved prize and text my wife about the whole thing—she’ll find it hilarious. But the story doesn’t end there.
As it turns out, when they look up information for her son—who was actually two rooms down from mine—he specifically said his mother is on the list of people who absolutely under no circumstances could be allowed to visit. So, I watched her get dragged kicking, screaming, and biting through the hospital’s main lobby when I was returning from the cafeteria.
The chocolate milk and cookies were twice as tasty after that. Her son turned up that evening to apologize for his mother, since news of the crazy lady spread across the floor like wild fire. He and his family were really cool. They also have a restraining order against this crazy woman. Looks like we’re going to be physical therapy buddies now and we can swap crazy mom stories together.
80. Swing And A Miss
I just got married last Saturday and my husband and I decided to have dinner with our in-laws the Monday after. Big mistake. Still, we were still on the high of being married so we thought it was a good idea. My mother-in-law opened the door, and I’m in a sundress with my normal hair and makeup. She looks me up and down and says, “Wow...you sure looked much, much prettier 48 hours ago...”
To which I replied, “Geez, thanks. So did you!” My husband and father-in-law burst out laughing, and cue that awful scowl look mother-in-laws love to give and me feeling very satisfied with myself.
81. Can’t Buy Me Love
I’m not going to go into details about my condition, but I’m terminally ill. I might have months left or years, depending on how well I respond to the treatment, but the point is—I’m going to die, it might happen soon, and my mother-in-law thinks she has a say in this. I want all of my finances to be in order before I die, therefore I have written a will.
It includes all of those who are dear to me: my wife and daughter, my brother, and my parents. As strange as it might sound, mother-in-law obviously expected to be included as well. For what reason I don’t know, but she got very displeased when she heard her name isn’t in the will. I have decided to leave the majority of what I own to my daughter.
My wife and the rest of the family totally agree. I’m leaving something to everybody else as well, but most of it is going to my daughter. She’s just two years old now and I likely will not live to even see 35. It breaks my heart that I won’t get to see her grow up, so the least I can do is make sure that lack of money isn’t an obstacle for her to succeed in life.
It’s hard for young adults to start building their lives without financial support and the money I’m leaving her will be enough for her to study, go to college, and partly cover the expenses of buying real estate. It comforts me that when she’s an adult she’ll know her dad did think of her future. Well, my mother-in-law started to make a scene out of this.
She insisted that no one does this, that everything must be split equally between all family members and she’s a family too, so she should be included in the will. It made me mad as heck. Like, who is she to tell me what I can and cannot do with my money? You know, the money I earned and saved over the years? I could give it all to a homeless stranger if I wanted to, she has nothing to do with it at all.
She’s just the mother of my wife, literally no one to me. She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to leave her something. She said, “It’s pointless to leave so much money to a child! She’ll waste it all in parties and drinks when she’s old enough!” Well, I’m sure my wife and my parents will raise her right and teach her the value of money. My wife is an amazing woman and she’ll definitely put a lot of good qualities into our daughter.
She tried to get my parents on her side, trying to convince them they should all unite and protest to make me change the will. I said that I think the will and what I’ll leave to them is the least of my parents’ worries. They’re trying to accept the fact they’re going to lose their son. Leave them alone, money isn’t what they’re after at all.
My will is with my lawyer and will only be given to my family after my passing. I don’t keep it in my house so fortunately, my mother-in-law can’t get her hands on it. But she threatened us with courts and whatnot, claiming she’ll never let it go until she gets her share. We’re all distancing ourselves from her; everyone is going through a tough time already and we don’t need her negativity here.
No one, literally no one, has any complaints about the will but her. She’s acting as if there were millions on the table, which there’s not, I’m not that rich. I find it very hard to understand how dare she ask for something she never helped me to get. I have earned every cent I have by my own forces and she acts as if she put me into a pit of gold and expects me to throw the coins back at her.
And if she wants money so much, why not get her butt up and work.
82. A Helping Hand
So after WEEKS of waiting, planning, and co-ordinating with the bridal shop to get my wedding dress shipped to me, the shipping company emails me and lets me know the dress is here, and would be available for pickup yesterday. They requested a copy of my identification, just to help ease along the process and make pickup easier.
My awful mother has been worrying that “they’ve lost your dress” and “we’ll have to buy a whole new one.” I told her to relax, that I would grab it when I got off work, and that I would bring it home with me so she could stop by to come see it. I got to the shipping company, and when they couldn’t find my dress and told me it had already been collected, I burst into tears.
I’m sobbing to my fiancé, who is trying to work with the shipping person to figure it out. They’re confused. She matched the ID, she confirmed her name and date of birth, even where the item was coming from. They don’t know how this managed to happen, and are profusely apologizing, promising that they will work with the dress store to get a new dress.
Eventually, they decide to check the cameras and see who it was who collected it so a report could be filed. Ya’ll. YA’LL. SHE FREAKING WENT ON HER LUNCH BREAK WITH MY SISTER, PICKED UP MY DRESS, AND TOOK IT HOME WITHOUT EVEN TELLING ME. I drove straight to my mom’s house and demanded my dress. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She claims. But she forgot about a huge detail.
The freaking box is on the darned sofa behind her! But is that the worst part? Nooooo. THE DRESS ITSELF WAS THROWN ON HER BEDROOM FLOOR. She says she was just inspecting it to make sure it was ok after such a long shipping time, but I don’t care. She had no right. I’m so furious. The dress is ok, just rumpled, but the fact that she would have the audacity to even try such a thing...it’s mind boggling.
I’m officially password protecting everything related to the wedding now. If it even has a CHANCE of her interacting with it, it’s getting password protected.
83. Sealing The Deal
Let me just start by saying that my mother-in-law had my husband young. She then split from his father and remarried. My husband is now 26 and she was still trying to get pregnant with the new husband up until a few years ago. BEFORE SOMEONE JUDGES, I understand that she feels sensitive about not being able to conceive, however....
My husband and I have been together for six years. Prior to dating, he knew my ex and was aware that I never planned on having children and that this was a reason why my prior relationship ended. My husband also has been very clear about not wanting children. Does my mother-in-law respect this? No. Does she believe me when I say that WE made this decision together not to have children? No.
For years now, I have been disrespected and questioned by my mother-in-law’s family. Literally every time I have to spend time with them, I hear the following questions/statements: “When are you going to change your mind?” “What’s wrong with you?” “What are you going to have when you don’t have your career anymore?” Blah blah blah.
I have removed myself from group chats, I have asked politely to not talk about our choice not to have children, etc. Anyway, my husband made me get lunch with my mother-in-law, her husband, my sister-in-law, her children, and her fiancé. They told us lunch was at noon. Did my mother-in-law and her husband show up super late as normal?
Yes. They didn’t show up until 1:20. My sister-in-law and her family didn’t show up until 1:40, even though we told them we needed to leave at 2 pm as we had another commitment. So, I’m already fuming because well, they suck. Within two minutes of sitting down, my mother-in-law and her husband have the nerve to bother me about kids again. I ignored this comment...at first.
My mother-in-law then said something to me again when my husband was holding our niece. Without hesitation, I blurted, “Well, that’s going to be hard to do since he had a vasectomy four weeks ago.” Not realizing how loud I was, pretty much the whole restaurant turned around and stared at me. My mother-in-law and her husband stared at me as if I had just reached over and punctured my husband with my dinner knife.
My mother-in-law literally started tearing up, making it about her. Lunch was shortly over after this and we haven’t heard from her since. No regrets.
84. I’m Not Like The Other Girls
I’m fighting cancer. It’s an early stage, fortunately, so things should go well. Right now I’m going through chemo, which means I’m losing my hair. Today I got sick and tired of finding hair everywhere I go, so I decided to just shave it off and call it a day. It’s not so bad as I thought it would be, and I kind of like this look actually.
My husband is away for a job trip and will be back after a month or so, but my 20-year-old son has a few days off before he goes back to college and he’s staying in our house. My mother-in-law came over, saw me without hair, and her reaction was beyond cruel. She just burst into laughter. She was laughing aloud as if she just heard the funniest joke ever.
She was like, ”Oh my God, you look as if God was tipsy when he made a human! You look like a shaved egg! You look like an inmate who just got out after decades! Jesus, you look so silly!” Before I managed to say something, my son heard what she said and was like, “Shut your mouth before I do it for you. Look at your own mug in the mirror, like a scarecrow from the yard of a loony bin.”
My mother-in-law wasn’t expecting this, of course. She stopped laughing and pouted that he can’t talk to his grandma like that. She said that I’ll have to be ready for comments like this because people immediately will see I’m ill. My son was like, “Well, be careful, don’t kick the bucket yourself.” My mother-in-law said, "Oh honey, I’ll be fine! I have no family history of cancer so I don’t have to worry about that!"
Well, guess what, neither do I. In my entire family I’m the first person to have cancer. When I got sick, I tracked my family’s medical history as far as I could and from what I found, not one of my relatives has ever had cancer. Of course, I don’t wish it upon her, but her thinking is completely flawed. Yes, maybe it puts you at less risk of getting cancer than someone who has a history of it, but it doesn’t grant you immunity.
Cancer doesn’t discriminate. This is a nasty trait of my mother-in-law. Whenever she sees someone with a disability or someone who, because of a health condition, visually looks different than others, she often sneers and comments that this person must have done this or that to end up in that condition and it’s their own fault. Lovely person, right?
It has always seemed so weird to me because you don’t know what awaits you in the future. Today you’re healthy and tomorrow you might not be able to get out of bed. But she’s so sure she’s going to be fine at all times and that her health is the strongest of them all. It’s like diseases don’t exist to her, it’s just something that happens to everyone else, but now her.
Then she was like, "But really, wear a wig. You don’t want to walk around looking like a bald alien. You’re a woman after all." I told her that whether I wear a wig or not will be my choice, and her comments are highly inappropriate and I don’t have to tolerate it in my own house. She was like, “Jesus, stop being so dramatic. You know yourself people laugh at bald women. How about you just wear a wig and calm down?”
My son then said, “How about you get out of here? Be careful walking down the stairs, don’t bump your already stupid head into something.” I don’t really understand why it was it necessary to comment on anything about my hair. And if she absolutely had to, she could do so without being mean. I wish she appreciated being healthy, as that can change at any minute.
85. The Devil’s In The Details
At the beginning of this month, my significant other told his mom that we weren’t coming to Christmas. She was angry and argued, so he hung up. Last week she texted him: “Everyone is coming and dinner is at 6 pm. Please be early!” Him: “We’re not going.” She called him and screamed that he can’t change plans last minute.
All he said is that we never did and hung up again. Cue a flurry of texts that he promptly ignored. But that wasn’t even close to the end of it. Today she texted me: “Bring the deviled eggs, everyone is expecting them. Love you!” Ha, I’ve never made deviled eggs in my life. I told my partner and he texted his mom: “Again, for the third time, we’re not coming. We’ll send presents through the mail.”
MIL: “You’re disappointing everyone, you’ve clearly shown that you don’t care about your family and your niece’s first Christmas.” He didn’t respond so she then texted him later: “If you’re not coming have [me] drop off the deviled eggs.” He didn’t respond again. I’m not driving two hours there and back for your deviled eggs. Kiss my butt, crazy lady.
86. Face The Music
Basically, my mother-in-law and her sisters like to play this really raunchy song at every wedding they go to. Apparently, they’ve never been told no. Until now. I told my DJ that my mother-in-law and her sisters were not allowed to request songs, and then my husband came in and flat out banned the specific song. About halfway through the dance, though, they run up to the DJ booth and request the song.
Obviously he tells them no, so they come over to me and demand to know why I banned the song. I told them it wasn’t appropriate to play around kids, or my extremely religious grandmother, and they became livid. I ended up telling them I wasn’t going to argue at my wedding, and that if it was really that big of a deal we could fight about it in the morning.
Now, for the past week I’ve been getting texts about how horrible I am for what I did. I ended up telling them today that if they texted me again and the text didn’t include an apology, that they wouldn’t be welcome in our home again. I haven’t heard from any of them since, nor has my husband. Man, this isn’t the first issue I’ve had with her and I can tell it certainly won’t be the last!
87. You’re Not Welcome
My son is 4.5 weeks old. Immediate problems with my mother-in-law started mid-pregnancy. My wife and I had been trying to have kids for a while (two miscarriages last year). Needless to say, this pregnancy had been planned out from the start. Part of the plans were of course the delivery itself. My wife did not want anyone but me and her friend/photographer in there during the delivery.
The rest of the family would be given updates and allowed in after we had spent some bonding time with our son. It’s worth pointing out that the last part is hospital policy regardless, which we didn’t know at the time. We didn’t want people waiting in the lobby because I was not going to be out there dealing with their emotions and needs during the whole ordeal.
My singular concern was to be there with my wife and child. We had been telling friends and family this from an early stage of the pregnancy. Every single person we told had all unanimously said, “Okay, no problem.” Because why should it be a problem? Everybody, that is, except my mother-in-law. She would always say, “No, I’m going to be there, you can’t keep me away.”
We would resist, but as time went on it started becoming more and more heated. Mind you, this woman has a lifelong history of being controlling towards her children, so this isn’t new territory. The week my wife was due, it ramped up a notch. It all turned into actual arguments and all-out hostility. She began calling me a “sperm donor,” claiming this was all my attempt to shut her out, etc.
We started getting screenshots of messages from family members where she had started a complete smear campaign against me and was trying to turn her entire family against me. Even more confusingly, she had tried that with my own mother. So my wife ends up giving birth late at night with a surprise c-section, while our son ends up in the NICU for a couple of hours.
My wife was out of it, and I was trying to bounce between her and our son, all the while my mother-in-law was apparently going berserk because we weren’t dealing with her needs. Next thing we know, she shows up at the hospital in the middle of the night causing a scene. Security rightly stopped her at the entrance and didn’t allow her up.
My son and I had finally been reunited with my wife about 20 minutes prior to this. The hospital, as mentioned, doesn’t even allow calm rational visitors within this time. Let alone lunatics in the middle of the night ranting and raving in the ER lobby. So of course this was, once again, my fault. I set up the hospital regulations. Silly me.
It’s important to note that my wife had tried at every step to mitigate this disaster. Even so much as trying to talk her mother down WHILE SHE WAS IN LABOR, telling her to come around 8:00 in the morning so that she can bring her boyfriend and son. Not "Come back when I've finally rested from being in labor all night." Just "come at a reasonable time with the rest of your family."
So the attacks continued. We had a local private detective come in and we tried to get a restraining order, but the hospital is in a different county than where we live. They suggested contacting the PD where we live when we leave the hospital. You bet I called them within the hour of being home, but that department said they couldn’t do anything unless she actually broke the law.
But we’ve at least begun building a paper trail. One incident with hospital security, once with first PD, one with our local PD. Since then, we have had further attacks on our character, which my wife has fought back on as much as possible. All of these decisions were hers from the beginning and she has tried to correct my mother-in-law’s version wherever possible, yet the mother-in-law still uses it as an easy attack against me.
She has still not seen my son, and is currently not welcome around him. She will go behind bars if she so much as tries to come around my son at this stage. There have been enough written notices and contacts with law enforcement to give us the paper trail. After witnessing her mistreat her children for years, I will never let her around my child so long as she continues to act this way.
She will certainly never watch my child. There will be no unsupervised visits. I have zero regrets that she has never met her grandson. He has had so much quality time with his extended family. Everybody else has been so happy to meet him, and he is a very happy baby. He is missing nothing.
88. I’m The Mom Now
I bought brand new furniture and it was delivered today. After I put all the decor around the place, I cracked a cold one and sat in one of the nice chairs, put my feet up on the table, and relaxed. Suddenly, my mother-in-law says, “Did your mother teach you to put your feet on the table?” I said, “It’s my furniture and I’m the mom now.”
89. Of Two Minds
I'm a bi woman, but I'm in love with my male fiancé. My mother-in-law, having known about the bi thing since before we got together, is convinced I'll cheat on him with a woman, despite us being together for three years and me not so much as looking at another person in this time. About a month ago I met his cousin, a straight woman with a boyfriend.
You know when you meet someone and you immediately know you'll be friends? It was like that. We've seen each other twice since the initial meeting, one with my fiancé there and then the other day we went shopping and got coffee without him. She took a picture of the two of us sat on opposite sides of a table at Starbucks, posted it, and tagged me.
We were sitting opposite each other, weren't touching, we weren't even looking at each other in the picture. Tonight my fiancé then shows me a ridiculous message from his mother. "Honey, I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you have a right to know. [My name] has been unfaithful, and has betrayed you in the worst of ways. If you need me I'm here."
Then she sent the photo of me and the cousin. She tried to tell my fiancé that I am cheating on him with his straight, committed, female cousin. He replied with three cry-laughing emojis and a reminder that the woman was his cousin—on his father's side; his parents divorced so she might genuinely not have known the girl.
But instead of bowing out graciously with what little was left of her dignity, she doubled down. She responded, "I didn't want to have to do this but here" and then sent him a photo of me with an older blonde woman who she has never met. This was actually even more ridiculous. This woman was...drum roll please...my half-sister.
My fiancé thinks this is the funniest thing in the world and I have to agree. It’s not the first time she's done something like this, but definitely the funniest. My fiancé says jury's out on whether he's inviting her to the wedding or not because like I said, this isn't the first time she's done something like this. Then again, her antics do make really good stories...
90. The Last Straw
Unfortunately, my brother endured a lot of drama in his first marriage. My mother always tried to be supportive of his ex-wife but she was a daughter-in-law straight out of a nightmare. The marriage eventually fell apart when she abandoned their son at daycare and ran away to start a new life. The silver lining is my brother ended up with full custody of my nephew.
The straw that broke the camel's back for my mom was when the estranged daughter-in-law tried to kidnap their son and steal my brother's car. My mom was there to witness the whole thing, including frantically crashing the car into a light pole. Luckily nobody was hurt. My mother never forgave her for that and was active in making sure she never got custody of her son.
91. I Can’t Take It Anymore
My mother-in-law and I have a good relationship but she doesn’t get along with her other daughter-in-law. They tried to go to lunch a couple of times, but the conversation continued to come back to the daughter-in-law telling my mother-in-law how she could change her personality to be less annoying. Seriously. This lasted for a couple of months.
Finally, the daughter-in-law lost her temper and started screaming at our mother-in-law how she could no longer be part of this ruse. She said all her attempts at being friendly were pointless because our mother-in-law was too stupid. To this day they don't get along and family gatherings are always super uncomfortable.
92. Mind Your Manners
My mother-in-law is a self-proclaimed expert on etiquette. If they come over for dinner her first comments are critiques on the place settings. She tells my wife that she “should have Carly (her sister) teach you how to set a table." She stresses out everyone at the table and makes every dinner a formal affair with her instructions. It doesn't upset my wife as much as it does me, but it makes me furious.
She visibly gives preferential treatment to her other daughter more than my wife. Carly is divorced and working a dead-end job, yet her mom reminds us that she’s "leaving my antiques to Carly, she knows how to appreciate things like that." I know it hurts my wife, but she never admits it.
93. Nice Day For A White Wedding
I went to the wedding of a good friend of my partner’s this weekend. He is a lovely guy and his bride is a-mazing! We arrived at the church and were rather early, but no biggie. I had two small bottles of a fizzy drink mix with me since we knew we'd arrive pretty early because we had to drive three hours and left early enough, just in case we hit traffic.
So we sat outside the church. The weather was brilliant and we enjoyed the atmosphere. We had a hotel room for the night where the reception was going to be held which was right around the corner, but we couldn’t check in until later. Anyways, I'm a slow drinker with fizzy stuff because it tends to go to my head really quickly. I had maybe drank half of it when the other guests started to arrive.
At first, everything is great, but suddenly everyone just stops talking. I had to ask my partner what was going on because I’m quite short, and he tells me that the groom’s mother just showed up…in a white, lacy gown and a little veil thing in front of her face. Everyone was in shock. But oh man, the plot thickened from that point on.
The bridesmaids and maid of honor arrived before the bride and I pulled the maid of honor to the side and asked her if it was planned that the mother was wearing white. It wasn’t of course. The bride and mother of the groom had picked out a nice silvery dress beforehand. I asked her if she could do something about it, but she had no idea about what she could do.
I then asked her if she wanted me to do something about it, to which she answered YES PLEASE! So I handed my partner my purse, gathered all the shininess of my spine available and walked up to the mother and her husband, pretending to be quite tipsy already. I greeted the father of the groom, who looked severely uncomfortable next to his wife, and then it happened. When I went to greet the mother, I “stumbled” and the leftover content of my little bottle of fizzy drink just sloshed out of it and landed on her dress.
I, obviously, felt so, so bad. The shock of it sobered me up right away and I tried to make it better by rubbing on the stains with my hanky. Now, if you try to clean something with your hanky, do make sure that it’s a clean one and that you hadn't dropped it sometime beforehand because, well, it'll make things worse. To sum things up, the ceremony was delayed by 30 minutes because the mother had to go and change.
My partner had hiccups from laughing so hard. I was congratulated on my aim no less than 12 times. The mother hates me now but who cares. Everyone had a fantastic time, and the maid of honor wants to name her firstborn after me and hopes it'll have "balls of steel like me, no matter the gender." The bride and groom almost crushed me while hugging me the next morning at breakfast when they heard about what happened.
94. Daughter-In-Law-Disguise
I wish my son never met her. We lived on the other side of the country from them so we didn't have many visits but managed one or two a year. When we visited, the house was clean, the kids were cared for, and our daughter-in-law was fun to be around. However, once we left, life went back to "normal" for my son and grandkids.
She would say she was going to the store and would not come home for a few days. She did not clean, or cook. My son traveled for business and when he was gone she had many visitors in the house. He would come home to a trashed house, trashed car, trashed everything. She would put the kids to bed, then leave to party.
She kept the two oldest kids home from school when he traveled since she was too busy sleeping from partying all night to take them to school. As he was making plans to leave her and take the kids, our worst nightmare happened. She fatally injured the youngest child and is now awaiting trial. We had no idea how bad it was until it was too late.
95. Two For The Price Of One
This is a story about my brother's ex-wife. She did many terrible things during their marriage including instigating a fight with him over the phone, recording him getting mad, and then reporting him to the local authorities. At the end of the marriage, she stopped making payments on their house, and eventually, it was repossessed. They finally got divorced—but what she did next was the worst of all.
We were all shocked to learn she began dating our younger brother. They lasted for two years and we found out she would have secret dates at my mom’s house. Our brother told us after they broke up that she began giving him attention as young as sixteen years old. Our whole family is disgusted with her.
96. Mother-In-Law Detective
Our neighbor became a grandmother and was next-level excited. She began showing us pictures and planning how quickly she could get to her son and his family. She was constantly talking about how hard her daughter-in-law is trying to be a good first-time mom and how stressed out she is. They decide she should fly down two months later, and she secures the time off work.
We were really surprised when she was back home two weeks later and very unhappy. We didn’t want to pry but the whole story came out a couple of days later. When she finally told me, my jaw hit the floor. She had taken the baby out for a walk and realized she forgot baby wipes. She figures she’ll head home a little early and can leave again if the mom wants her to.
As soon as she arrives back in the house she, unfortunately, hears her daughter-in-law screaming a man’s name that was not her son’s from their bedroom. She decides to call her son at work, and he comes home two hours early from work, with the other man stumbling down the sidewalk half-dressed, and the daughter-in-law crying.
She tried to convince her husband it wasn’t what it looked like but our neighbor convinced her son to get a paternity test. She returned home furious and disappointed and her son began divorce proceedings. If she had never gone for the trip who knows how long her daughter-in-law would have kept the secret!
97. A Fresh Start
Due to reasons, my mother-in-law had to move in with my husband and I for a while. I'm South Asian, and my husband is white. Indian food is what I was raised eating and I love it to this day. Currently, I suddenly have a lot more time to cook than I did before. I stocked my kitchen with rice, different spices and whatever else I would need to make what I wanted.
My husband doesn't mind and enjoys the food. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, does not. She's never liked me. Some stuff she says includes, "What kind of people use their hands to eat? Just use a knife and spoon like normal people." My husband has stuck up for me on all those occasions before, but having to live with her 24/7 is wearing him down.
After she moved in, she immediately started complaining. "Why does that smell so strong? It'll cling to the walls. Stop that." Or, "God, are you really feeding my son that? Just eat normal American food." At first, I decided to stay quiet. My husband did try to talk to her once, but that fell on deaf ears. Like always. So I woke up yesterday morning and go downstairs.
I chat with my husband and mother-in-law for a while. Go into the kitchen, open my pantry, and there. Is. Nothing. My rice, spices, flour, everything has been cleaned out. I had a rice-dispensing machine that I got a few years back and that was missing too. I go to the fridge, and besides milk, bread, butter, jam, and eggs, there was nothing.
I get my husband and ask him what happened to the food. He looks in confusion until my mother-in-law pipes up and says that she threw everything out. When asked why, she simply says, "My child isn't used to eating your types of food. Just make him what Americans eat.” That made me so angry. She has this insane thing about not acknowledging that I am American, or when she does she tells people that I got my citizenship through marriage.
Wrong on all accounts. I was born here and so were the last four generations of my family. As a cherry on top, I go grocery shopping and they were out of stock on basically everything that I wanted. I come home and she still has the audacity to ask why I'm not cooking like I usually do. I’m seriously going to destroy this woman by the end of all this.
98. Walk It Off
So, I can't walk very long distances, can't climb stairs at all, and am mostly in my wheelchair. However, my mother-in-law doesn't believe I need my wheelchair. The following is a part of a conversation I had with her. MIL: Can you walk? Me: Yes, depending on how far I have to walk and how I'm feeling that day. MIL: So you can walk. Then what's up with the wheelchair?
It was my birthday last week, and she decided to throw me a party…on the deck of her house that's currently under renovation. We get there, and the front of her house is all torn up. There's no walkway, there's cement and rocks everywhere. It was all blocking the front door. Basically, even if you weren't in a wheelchair you wouldn't have been able to get into the house through the front door.
According to my mother-in-law, that wasn't a problem! Since the party was on the deck and you don't need to go through the house to get to the deck, all you need to do is go to the backyard and climb the stairs on to the deck. Easy right? Not. By the way, she had not told anyone that her house was under renovation, so we were all taken aback.
When my husband and I get to the backyard, my mother-in-law and my husband's siblings were all on the deck having food and drinks. There was no feasible way for me to get up there unless I was carried. I was ready to leave until my brothers-in-law started clearing the tables and chairs and bringing them down onto the grass. At this point, my mother-in-law was having a fit—"That's my deck furniture!" or "It'll get grass stains!"
In the end, they all effectively moved the stuff down. She was grumbling but put on a nice face for the rest of the party. Later on, I heard her complaining about why I didn't just climb the stairs since I could walk. She just doesn't get that a person can walk AND need a wheelchair at the same time. So, that basically sums up what a disaster that day was.
99. Blood Under The Bridge
My mother-in-law killed her grandchild, my daughter. She was two years old at the time. My husband and I let her babysit the baby while we were busy with job-related things. It was summertime and they were staying in the mother-in-law’s house that has a pond next to it. My daughter loved water; bath-time was her favorite time of day.
They were playing at the edge of the pond and then the mother-in-law remembered she had to take clothes out of the dryer, so she left a two-year-old alone next to the quite a large body of water. My daughter’s childlike curiosity plus her love of water resulted in her getting into the deep part of the pond and drowning. All because she considered clothes in the dryer an important enough reason to leave a toddler unsupervised.
When she realized what happened, she started to panic and call for help. Her neighbor heard her, they got into the pond and called an ambulance, but it was too late. Imagine what it’s like for a parent to come home to the person you trusted your child with and they tell you your child is gone. Somehow though, it got worse than all that.
Throughout it all, she was begging us not to involve the authorities into this. She kept repeating it was an accident and she “doesn’t know how it could have happened,” “was only gone for a moment,” ”feels even worse than we do” and “calling the authorities won’t bring her back.” We did call them, of course, and she was charged with negligence and sentenced to three years behind bars, which, in my opinion, was too light of a punishment.
Now recently she was released, and my husband was the first person she looked for contact with. He never once visited her while she was behind bars. It doesn’t matter that she served her sentence, neither I or my husband will ever forgive her for this. Besides, she hasn’t asked for forgiveness; all she gave us were excuses and more excuses.
In the courtroom, my husband told her she’s not his mother anymore and that he never wants to see her face again. Our marriage was damaged too, we were depressed, we fought a lot, and there were times when we were on the brink of divorce. We separated for a while, and I left for another country thinking that this was it for us. However, my husband came to look for me and we managed to save our family and continue our life together.
I couldn’t bring myself to have any more children for a long time but eventually, I got pregnant again and last summer we welcomed our son. He’s nine months old now. Obviously, we weren’t going to tell my mother-in-law we’re parents again, but then my nightmare happened. She saw us walking with a baby stroller and realized that once more she has a grandchild.
So she tried to get in the contact with my husband. First, she reproached him for not visiting her, cried about how hard it was for her to spend all those years behind bars, that she shouldn’t have been there because she’s too old for that, how could he do this to his own mother, how could he abandon her, etc. Then she was like, “But I saw you have a new baby, I’m so glad I have a grandchild again!”
Then she went on about is it a boy or a girl, when will she be able to see them and meet them because she wants to take care of them so much. My husband told her immediately that she doesn’t have anything, this is our child, and ours only. Our son doesn’t have a grandmother, we’ll be telling him this as he grows up, and he will never ever in a million years be anywhere around her.
We’re 100% on the same page about this. The loss of our daughter still hurts and we’re going to do everything we can to protect our son from her. Hdoesn’t need an irresponsible grandmother who would likely endanger his life just like she did with his sister. My mother-in-law was shocked to hear this and began to wail about us being so evil and cruel towards her, that we’re going to hold that against her forever even though she paid for it and we cannot be so heartless to prevent her from seeing her grandchild.
But what was she thinking? What was she hoping for? That we’re really going to let her around our baby? That we’ll ever trust her with babysitting again? Honestly, I’m not sure if I can leave my son with any babysitter. I don’t trust babysitters anymore, because if a grandmother can be careless enough to let a child perish, who knows what an unrelated person could do.
So my husband told her firmly that she’ll have no access to the baby and he doesn’t want to talk to her either so she should do something useful with her life and leave us alone. My mother-in-law wasn’t having it. That evening, she came to our house, asking to see her grandchild again. We didn’t let her come in, obviously, and she got mad, claiming that as a grandmother, she has rights to meet her grandchild.
We told her that she lost all her rights to our children when she let our daughter drown. If a trust is broken, it cannot be repaired and there are some things that just cannot be forgiven. She escalated it from that point. She told us that she’ll go to court and she’ll demand permission to meet the baby. I’m not sure if there is such a thing but if it’s true, I highly doubt she’ll get it considering her record.
If we need to go to court and prove she’s not the type of grandmother you should let around your child, we’ll do it. If she comes back again, we’ll call the authorities. If we need to leave this country and go live somewhere else just to be away from her, we’ll do it too. Nothing’s impossible. I’m amazed at her lack of shame. She knows very well she tore apart our lives three years ago.
No parent should bury their child, but we had to because of her, and now she comes to us as if she’s the best relative ever, as if nothing ever happened.
100. A Parting Gift
This morning I got a call from a funeral home letting me know that my mother-in-law’s body had been picked up, and they wanted to discuss the obituary as well as inquire about payment. There was just one problem. My mother-in-law is still very much alive and she certainly wouldn't have been sent to a funeral home four or five hours away from where she lives if she wasn't.
I tell them they have the wrong number, even though they used my maiden name—I have an extremely rare maiden name—and I previously lived in that town. The young man on the phone was apologetic and wished me a good day. Not even five minutes later, the number calls me again. This time it's a woman asking me if I was the daughter-in-law of my ex mother-in-law.
I said, "Not in the last 10 years." Turns out, my witch of an ex-mother-in-law, who honestly was a practicing witch but also just a witch of a woman, had known she was dying. So she decided to get a bizarre revenge. As one final “screw you,” she thought she would try to stick me with her funeral costs. Of course there's no legal recourse here, even though our state has that weird law where you legally have to take care of your parents if they aren't able to themselves.
But she's not my mother and I was never legally married to her son thanks to his shady officiant friend not filing our marriage license. From what I can gather, she pre-planned her funeral and told the funeral home that I was currently her daughter-in-law (again, I’m not) and would be covering all funeral costs. They apparently believed her, probably because she plays the victim so easily, and thought I helped her make the plans.
This is exactly what she did when I lived with her and my ex. I busted my butt working full time while she did nothing but spend all of her money at thrift stores and he worked 15-20 hours a week minimum wage. Now they're holding a body and have no idea what to do with it as they don't have contact information for my ex, and nor do I. I suggested they call the nursing home. But yeah, happy Friday to me.
101. One Gifted Lady
My fiancé’s mother is a single mother, and she is waayyy overly attached to my fiancé. She seems to think she is entitled to be a part of every aspect of my fiancé’s life and that she must always come first in all situations. For example, she was livid when we got engaged because we didn’t visit her first after the proposal. She pitched a fit that we had stopped by my parents’ first to show them the ring.
When we did arrive at her house, she was so angry that she ended up throwing a cake at us in her driveway. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She has made my life a nightmare since we got together, but it became much worse when I got pregnant. She has made numerous attempts to convince my fiancé to leave me because she doesn’t believe I am pregnant with his baby.
Her “proof” is that I was too fat, so I must be lying about the due date. This is just one of the many things she has done to hurt and embarrass me. We have limited our contact with her as a result, but she always seems to find a way to weasel back in. So, last week I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Both our families were not able to come to the hospital and will likely not be able to visit in person for a while.
My parents told me they planned to decorate the front of my house to welcome the baby home, and my mom said she had ordered a bunch of things off Etsy for the occasion. When I arrived home, I was surprised to see that there were no decorations. I didn’t think much of it and just assumed my family had run out of time. It wasn’t like them to forget, but I assumed there was a good explanation. Then I got a heart-stopping phone call.
My mom called me after I was settled and asked me how I liked the decorations and presents. I asked her what she was talking about and told her that there was nothing outside when I got home. My mom proceeded to text me several pictures of my house fully decorated in pink baby gear. I also noticed several wrapped presents on my porch in the picture.
They were also missing along with a large banner, balloon arrangements, and several other decorations. My mother told me one of the presents contained a little sweater knitted by my grandma that I wore as a baby. I had been looking forward to receiving this and passing it on to my daughter. I was extremely confused as we live in a rural area so porch pirates are not very common.
I asked my fiancé to check our security camera. He pulled up the footage and we were both shocked at what we saw. We saw his mother taking everything down and putting it all in her car. The footage was very clear and you can easily see her license plate in the video. My fiancé was livid and immediately called his mother. She tried to deny it at first but soon admitted what she had done.
She claimed she was angry that she was not given the opportunity to decorate our house herself. She said my family had insulted her by excluding her, and she began to cry about how horrible we are to her. My fiancé was not having it. He said she had one hour to bring everything back to our place or he would be calling the authorities.
She then laughed and said that she had already thrown everything into a donation bin and told us good luck finding it. My fiancé has already driven around to several donation bins in the area to check but hasn’t found anything yet. We now agree that she will have no contact with our child in the future. I am beyond done with her and I just hope this is all over.
102. 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.
103. It Just Looks Old
My husband’s mom is very ignorant and known to say really stupid things. Most recently, we were in Italy and she asked why they didn't just tear down the Colosseum because it looked so old. I was the definition of speechless. She wasn’t even physically there, she was just seeing it on social media! She doesn’t believe in leaving the United States because she thinks it is the best place, so she doesn’t need to see any other places. Honestly, everyone is probably better off that she stays where she is at!
104. 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.
105. Angling For An Invite
My mother-in-law threw a pie through my window on Thanksgiving because I would not let her in my house. She had attempted to ruin our wedding not one month prior to this and I was not dealing with her nonsense. We told her to leave and she threw a pie through my window, shattered it, and my dog cut her paw on the glass.
She wasn't invited to our house because she's Satan incarnate and for some reason she was shocked that we wouldn't let her in because she's “family.” We needed a $4200 window replacement since ours is an old 60s home with giant custom windows. And she wonders why we are not in contact.
106. Old Enough To Know Better?
I have three kids: a 15-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl, and a seven-year-old boy. My oldest has always been a cuddler, and that suits me fine because I am too. Recently my in-laws were over and we were all watching a movie together. It was a kid's movie, and so my 15-year-old was bored out of her mind and tired, so she started to snuggle up to me and go to sleep.
After the movie was over, we sent all the kids to bed and sat around chatting for a bit longer. There was a fair bit of drinking involved (I was sober though), and eventually, after a short silence, my father-in-law made a shocking criticism: He told me that it was inappropriate that I still cuddled with my daughter. I don't really know why he brought it up suddenly, but I was prepared to laugh it off and just assumed it was the drinking.
To my surprise, my wife and mother-in-law both agreed with him. I have a lot of respect for my in-laws, I get along with them great and I consider them closer than my own parents. Obviously, I'm quite fond of my wife as well, but I outright told them to screw off and then left them and went to bed. I've never spoken to any of them like that before, but it felt like the right thing to say in the moment.
They all want me to apologize for being so rude to them.
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