Families come in many shapes and sizes, and the best part is that they stick together through thick and thin. Every family goes through a bad phase at some point. It doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly disagreement or a passionate brawl, what matters is how it’s handled. At times you can’t ignore the situation and you need to speak out. This is what the woman did when her MIL’s behaviour wasn’t expectable.
Source: Reddit
My husband had a serious injury weeks ago. He’s bed ridden and his family come to see him everyday. MIL keeps “drilling” what I need to do to make my husband comfortable but does nothing to help. Just visits everyday and sits around expecting to be fed and entertained. Sometimes BIL, his wife & kids join them and turn the house into a mess.
Yesterday MIL, her husband and son came again. They checked on my husband then went to sit in the living room for hours. I served them coffee and croissants. Hours later my husband threw up again (2nd time). I had to take care of changing his clothes and cleaning the sheets to avoid infections. I was exhausted, I came downstairs and MIL looked at me and asked “hey where’s our dinner?”.
I was shocked that after seeing me go up and downstairs many times and cleaning and bringing new sheets and running the washing machine that she’d expect me to prepare dinner. I’d already eaten a sandwich at 6 and yogurt (I have problems with my stomach and stress and pregnancy made it worse, I’m 4 months in)
I pointed at the kitchen and told her to help herself out. She gave me a look then said she didn’t expect me to ask her to cook dinner at my house. I said I didn’t expect her to ask ME to cook dinner while I’m taking care of her son. She started arguing about the way I spoke about my husband saying as his partner, this is the least I could do and called me unhinged for throwing in her face that I’m helping my husband.
She got her husband involved asking what his thoughts were on me, making guests go hungry and forcing them to cook themselves when this supposed to be my duty as a host/home owner. FIL said they could order food and call it a day and yelled at my younger BIL to stop playing on his phone and order food but MIL got mad and lashed out criticizing me saying I wasn’t up to the challenge of taking care of my home and my guests like an adult.
I lost it on her and told them to leave since she kept yelling disrupting my husband’s sleep. She left after saying she felt sorry for her son and grandbaby with an “aggressive wife and a mother like me”.
She told everyone and my older BIL said he understood I’d a lot on my plate but lectured me about how I should have respect for his mom who was a guest. Repeatedly saying if that was his wife she wouldn’t have acted this way. And that I shouldn’t use taking care of my husband against them. He asked me to apologize but I didn’t.
How would you deal with the situation in this woman’s position?
