In-Law Nightmares
Unless we're really lucky, it's always going to be awkward with in-laws. But if we're really unlucky, then we get these monsters.
These mothers-in-law—and some fathers too—just couldn't let go of control, and people took to Reddit to show just what a nightmare they married into.
1. 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?
2. Beat Em At Their Own Game
You all, 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 volunteers who help her and bring her meals, sit and read with her, 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!
3. 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 patrol 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.
4. 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.
