These Horrible Dads Never Should Have Had Kids

A BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW

The decision to not have children is a valid one, as not everyone is cut out to be a parent. Some people may choose to remain child-free to pursue their career goals, while others may prefer to have furry companions instead. And some may feel that their personalities are better suited to being the fun aunt or uncle rather than a strict parent.

However, not all parents are good at their role, and some Reddit users have shared stories that are truly heart-wrenching about the worst fathers they’ve encountered. These stories can be quite difficult to read, so it’s best to prepare yourself emotionally before delving in. If you have kids of your own, these stories might be a poignant reminder of the importance of being a loving parent as not everyone was lucky enough to have a good dad. From frightening fathers-in-law to deranged dads, these are the worst of the worst.

AN UNHAPPY ENDING

When I was about five or six years old, I was very sick. Fever, vomiting, sweating, congestion; it was awful. There was some mix-up at the pharmacy, and they thought I was my father and gave him adult medication—basically, we got these giant horse pills.

Now, normal child medication for things like this are syrups and chewable stuff for obvious reasons. My dad comes home and tells me I have to take these medications. I have a hard time getting them down, almost choking a few times. That’s when he snapped.

My dad got frustrated and literally started shoving these huge pills down my sore throat with his angrily shaking fingers. I started crying, and my nose was stuffed so I could only breathe through my mouth.

I remember my dad’s wedding ring banging against my teeth, eyes watering, gasping for air while looking at my mom for help. Eventually, I coughed it back up, crying and my throat on fire.

I remember my mom demanding an apology from my dad, who just said, “Well, he’s going to have to learn to take pills like that sometime anyway” and stormed off. Darn. I haven’t thought about that story in 20+ years. Reddit: heyitsEnricoPallazzo

FINDING THE WAY TO GRANDMA’S HOUSE

My dad was notorious for the “rub dirt on it method” when I got hurt as a kid. When I was nine, I was in a nasty motorcycle accident out in the desert. I broke my fibula—like, the bone was protruding from my leg. My father’s response was chilling.

He didn’t want to end his desert trip early, so he told me just not to look at it and to keep trying to walk. I was in so much pain any time I would move that I would blackout. My brother was so concerned about it that he urged my dad to go home.

My dad finally gave in… but it didn’t stop there. At that point, he was so wasted that he let my 11-year-old brother drive us out of the desert. My brother hit so many bumps, and with each bump I would blackout then come up.

Once we got home, my dad then thought it would be best to sleep it off before going to the hospital. The next day, I was admitted and my dad was taken into custody by CPS. Reddit: Learninghowto_life

A QUICK FIX

My dad has bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. It didn’t really hit him until he was in his teens. He managed to mask the symptoms for years with substances, as did my mom—she’s a whole other can of worms.

My grandma is no longer able to take care of herself and function. She has two living sons, HJ (my dad) and Greedy Gambler (my uncle). Her oldest son passed from lung cancer in 2010 I believe. Her two remaining sons are both terrible people.

For the past 15 years, HJ has emotionally manipulated and harmed me. And I’ve been taking it because I truly believe that his mental illnesses are the reason that he is like this. Until one month ago. HJ called me after not speaking with me for months because he is now homeless. I told him Gram was sick. His reaction was devastating.

He said he didn’t care. He needed to stay in her condo and “I don’t care if she dies, but I’ll get the condo as part of my inheritance.” Y’all, I lost my mind. I called him a deranged, worthless substance user and I ordered him never to call me again. I hung up and blocked him on everything.

Two days later, a social worker from a hospital calls and wants to talk about him. I declined, but told her that he would work best in a permanent mental facility. She agreed, but informed me that HJ has declined all help.

I told her that I still wasn’t interested in ever talking to him again, and that was the end of it. I really do feel free now. I am content with the knowledge that my kids will never see him again. It’s been three years since. And they will never hear about him either.

Also, in case you are wondering, his nickname comes from the time when HJ thought he was Jesus for six months. Yea, he literally believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus. He even made a LinkedIn page for it. That’s why his nickname now is “Hypochondriac Jesus.”

Then, something happened that I knew was coming sooner or later. My grandma has dementia, so I have been getting her condo ready for a while now for when she passes. It’s finally ready to sell and everything has been replaced, including the carpet, showerheads, repaired appliances, etc. All of the furniture is out and it’s completely empty.

Cue HJ. He has been homeless for about a month now. He has refused all help from social workers and myself for the last 15 years. He was offered a room in a rehabilitation facility and a long-term facility and he refused both. So, in his genius, he decided to try and break into my grandma’s condo.

Which would have worked, except for one small detail… He couldn’t remember what unit he was supposed to be in, and so he broke into a random family’s home and scared the daylights out of the kids. He was thrown behind bars very quickly, where he remains to this day. Reddit: Xgirly789

A DOG’S LIFE

My father-in-law just told me he thinks he could fix my mental illness by “dominating me.” I was recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and I just started lithium. I’ve had several diagnoses over the years and have been on a bunch of SSRIs, done talk therapy, etc.

The bipolar diagnosis definitely explains the missing piece of the puzzle of my life. Anyway, my husband was talking to his parents recently and mentioned that I had been recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that it’s been pretty hard on everyone.

I’ve been in a manic phase recently and, with an 8.5-month-old baby, that comes out as a lot of anger. His mom contacted me right away saying that she loves me, is there for me, etc. Last night, my husband got a message from his dad—and when he read it, his jaw dropped.

It linked to a post by this idiot on Facebook describing how, in his opinion, women’s problems today are a rebellion against men not benevolently dominating them. My husband responds by calling the guy an idiot. And, of course, that’s where the fun begins.

It was all downhill from there. My father-in-law goes on a whole rant, talking about how the only way my husband can “fix” me is by “dominating” me. Apparently, bipolar is just a fancy way of saying I talk back? And the only way to fix that is for my husband to be an “alpha” and tell me what’s what.

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable plan for dealing with a diagnosed medical condition, right? For some background, I have a PhD in biological science and am a tenured track professor at a big R1 University. My husband stays home with our baby and is a nurse.

My father-in-law told us at our baby shower that this arrangement would never work because I would resent my husband and eventually cheat on him. He also sent lengthy messages with nonsense articles telling my husband not to vaccinate our newborn son.

Like dude, pay attention to your own mess of a life before you start dishing out advice to other people. Reddit: bugnerd87

DON’T WORRY, BE STUPID

This story sounds more and more bizarre to me the more I think about it. I am coming to realize that my father has changed from a great dad into a selfish, favorite-child-seeking jerk. I learned several years ago that I was just not in his “golden corral.”

I don’t know what I did to deserve this Little Matchgirl treatment, always looking in and never invited. I called my dad to wish him and his wife a happy Thanksgiving. In the course of the conversation, my dad let slip that my younger sister and her son from out of state would be staying with him over the long weekend.

Blah, blah, putting up Christmas lights, blah blah blah. Since I work full time and was off on Friday, I asked if I could come by and visit him, my sister, and my stepmom. Most importantly, I wanted to bring my two granddaughters, i.e. his great-granddaughters, to meet him and the family.

The girls are seven and almost four years old, respectively. He has not seen my kids for years. Dad says, sure, c’mon out. So I made plans to gather up the kids and make the 40-mile trek to his house. Well, I was in for a harsh surprise.

The next morning, I received a rather garbled text from my stepmom which I interpreted as, “Don’t come out. The dog won’t like it.” What the heck? So, I called the house. My dad answered and when I asked what’s up.

He confirmed that my younger sister’s dog is not a “people person,” and “might get upset” with too many people around. “We’ll make it another time,” he said. Uh, yeah. My sister’s freaking dog’s feelings are more important than finally meeting his great-grandchildren.

At that moment, I realized that I have been making all the effort with him and my sisters and that this effort is never, ever reciprocated. I think it’s time to be done and drop the rope. I’m just tired of being treated like the least of his acquaintances. Reddit: ohyoushiksagoddess

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

This little girl was just playing at the edge of the pool, happily minding her own business, when her dad ran up behind her, picked her up, and tossed her screaming as far as he could into the deep end of the pool while yelling “time to swim honey.”

At first, my dad and I (we both saw) didn’t react, because my dad has done this to me as a game after I learned to swim first. Then it took a dark turn. We started to notice that she was struggling to surface while her dad just watched. My dad nervously asked, “Can she swim?” To which the guy just shrugs and says, “She’ll figure it out.”

I have never seen my dad book it so fast to get into the water as I did that day. He quickly got the kid out of the water and then started screaming at the guy about what kind of idiot he was, while the girl was just bawling her eyes out.

I swear my dad was ready to deck the guy. This was back in the 1990s, so we didn’t have a cell phone to call the authorities, but we never saw them again after at the public pool.

It was the first time in my life I had seen insane parenting, and to this day freaks me out that some people will still do stuff like this. There are some wild parents out there. Reddit: Lark1987

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

This is the story of how my terrible father-in-law finally got called out on his nonsense. He always tries to make my wife and mother-in-law out to be the bad guys. A bit of backstory: My wife and I got married about six months ago.

Due to some unfortunate goings-on, we’ve been living with her parents while we get our life together. Her father has always had a few issues here and there, but tonight’s story took the cake. My mother-in-law is not very tech-savvy, and asked my wife to help her with a computer problem.

While my father-in-law has always dealt with these in the past, he tends to be very snarky and condescending when doing so. So when my mother-in-law asked my wife to help her, she was more than happy to oblige. My father-in-law was livid. He wanted to always be the one to fix the problems.

My wife, who is very non-confrontational, asked him to let her have some space and she would be more than happy to take care of it this time. For whatever reason, this did not sit well with him one bit.

He started calling her all sorts of nasty names—and then it took a disturbing turn. He eventually threatened to slap her. I was not present at the time, and I only found out about this later. I lost my mind when she told me about it afterward.

“How dare you think you’re going to threaten my wife? You will never, ever lay a single finger on her, do you hear me?” This of course escalated the situation even further. The funny part? My mother-in-law had our back the entire time, and even let loose a few shots of her own.

My father-in-law then starts trying to flip the blame back towards my wife. I kid you not, he says “If you weren’t so nasty, I wouldn’t have threatened you.” This, of course, caused more of a shouting match. Finally, my father-in-law says, “Then you two can just leave.”

We all began immediately laughing at him. My mother-in-law is the breadwinner of their house. My father-in-law can hardly be bothered to move from his chair, let alone pay for anything in the house. My mother-in-law tells him that we are staying right there and that there is not a thing he can do about it.

My wife is still understandably freaked out about the whole situation, and I imagine that I won’t be feeling much better when the adrenaline wears off. But I feel like it ended up being a small win. Plus, my mother-in-law is cool as can be! Reddit: JoJoMacXSC

IT’S THE LEAST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

Once my family was on a trip visiting a temple when I was in my pre-teens. The temple was quite famous for the monkeys, and we were advised not to interact with them mostly because they would take stuff from your hands.

We had finished our visit to the temple and were returning back when we saw a dozen monkeys just minding their business. Well, my dad somehow got this idea of greeting one of the monkeys. He said “hello” cheerfully to one of them and oh boy, that monkey got mad.

My dad had walked away before the monkey could lunge at him, so the angry monkey looked at me, since I was a bit behind my family members. I got scared and walked slowly, but the monkey started screaming at me and suddenly two more joined in the screaming.

I was half crying and half panicking at this point as they had literally ambushed me in the corner of the road. My parents then nonchalantly told me to just walk away from there, even though they could clearly see the three big monkeys obstructing any way of escape.

I just covered my head and prayed for anyone to help me. All the while, my parents calmly looked at me as if waiting for me to come out of it without a scratch. Fortunately, a stranger who was just passing by saw me and shooed away the monkeys. They ran away and I ran towards my family.

After that, the whole trip they made fun of me and even criticized me about how I could not just walk away from the monkeys. I was so angry at my whole family, but they made it seem like I should have known better to save myself. Reddit: Professional-Sand-16

SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW

For some background, I am a 41-year-old female and I have been with my husband Jay for 23 years, and married for 14. We have three children together. This happened a few years into our relationship. The crazy in-laws always had a tradition of doing Christmas on Christmas Eve.

Ever since they were little, Jay and his brothers would open their presents on Christmas Eve, stay up after midnight, and then sleep in on Christmas morning. My family always had the tradition of doing Christmas morning breakfast at my grandmother’s house next door to us, then doing lunch at my grandfather’s.

As soon as Jay and I started dating and he met my family, he wanted to be a part of all of our holidays, and he was. My in-laws didn’t like this—but the way they got back at us was demented. They started scheduling their holiday events to coincide with my family’s holiday times.

This particular Christmas, they changed our invitation to Christmas afternoon. We told them we would be at my grandfather’s until early afternoon, and then head their way for Christmas dinner.

As soon as we arrived at my grandfather’s, my father-in-law started blowing up Jay’s phone asking where we were. We eat, open presents, and are about to have dessert when he starts really going at it, saying they’re ready to eat and that everyone is waiting on us.

Jay is annoyed because we weren’t supposed to be at their house for a few more hours, but we decided to go ahead and leave to keep the peace. My grandfather would always walk us to our cars every time we left, and wave to us from the driveway until we were out of sight.

This particular time was no different, and I cried when we left because seeing him standing there like that broke my heart. I didn’t really want to leave his house. We arrived at the in-laws’ house to find dinner in no way anywhere near to being ready. In fact, we all just chit-chatted for a couple of hours until the actual Christmas activities began.

I can still picture my grandfather waving from the driveway. He passed unexpectedly not long after that, and we no longer had Christmas lunches to plan for. The in-laws then switched to wanting Christmas mornings, because of course, they did.

I wouldn’t budge on this though. As long as my grandmother is alive, she will have her Christmas pancake breakfast with her family. Reddit: mmorgan79

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE GONNA DO…

My father-in-law basically disowned me and my daughter. In a nutshell, he will not acknowledge our presence. It’s as if we do not exist. If we find ourselves in the same room as him and approach his direction, he immediately turns his back or moves seats.

After his latest episode of this behavior, my husband finally decided enough was enough and went full no contact with his dad. Since then, we have received phone calls from all over the world from extended members of my husband’s family.

Some of these people, we haven’t heard from in over five years. Most have been really respectful when he apologizes for them being caught in the middle of a bad situation. He says he is fine, however, he doesn’t want to discuss it further than to say that he and his father are having issues.

His uncle actually said they didn’t need to discuss it, as he grew up with the man and he knows how he is. Then he phoned my father! He doesn’t have my dad’s number, but they work in the same field so he was able to somehow trade favors with someone so that they would pass on my dad’s contact details.

My dad said he wasn’t getting involved but he would pass on the message that he had called for, but that was it. But want to know the part that blows my mind? I never blocked his number. I purposely left him in my phone unblocked in case of emergency. I know, silly me.

He has my number but he has never called, never messaged, never nothing. But he will speak to my dad?!?! This has just solidified to my hubby and I that he made the right decision by cutting his father off.

If he is phoning far-flung relatives around the world to pester my husband but he is so set on not acknowledging my existence, then so be it. The most hurtful thing is that I have never ever done anything to him.

I have always been polite, hugged him hello, made small talk, etc. I even tried to learn his home country’s language to form some kind of bond with him. My daughter loved him unconditionally even though she saw him so infrequently. She is still little and she has no idea what’s going on. But we are a mistake in his eyes.

He told my husband that his marriage to me, his having a child with me, and his buying a home with me were all mistakes. Every time I think about it, it burns like hand sanitizer on a paper cut. Reddit: PocketCollection

THE END OF AN ERA

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

That’s why I was a little taken aback by my father-in-law’s presumptuous antics. 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. Reddit: Permalink

GRABBING YOUR ATTENTION

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.

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! Reddit: Melphista

A MESSY SITUATION

My 24-year-old boyfriend and I have been together for seven years. I know his family quite well. I have never experienced this sort of inappropriate behavior from my father-in-law before, and I’m very shocked and unsure of what to do about it.

So a month ago, I went on a weekend trip to a cottage with my boyfriend’s family. My boyfriend has two older sisters with husbands and kids, as well as a younger brother, and of course, his parents, who had paid for the trip.

On the second day, when we returned from a long walk, everyone was quite tired, so we chilled and had some snacks. My boyfriend and father-in-law were sitting on a couch together, and I sat in a chair. At one point, I stood up and leaned over the table in front of their couch to grab some snacks, and I suddenly felt a smack on my butt.

I thought to myself: “What the heck? My boyfriend knows that I don’t like him doing things like this in public.” In private it’s fine, but why on earth would he do that right in front of members of his own family?

Even though I was confused, I did not want to be dramatic in front of everyone, so I just turned around and semi-jokingly said: “You’re not allowed to do that.” He then just kept silent and pointed at his father, who sat there grinning.

I was now very confused but still didn’t want to be dramatic. So, I tried keeping the joking tone while saying: “You surely aren’t allowed to do that either.” It was so uncomfortable—and then it got worse.

My father-in-law now almost braggingly said to my mother-in-law, who was also in the room but reading a book on her own: “I just smacked this girl’s butt and she thought it was her boyfriend!” My mother-in-law frowned and said: “Don’t smack her butt!”

But my father-in-law just continued to grin and said: “Well, it had the effect that I wanted it to have.” I found that sentence to be very weird and unpleasant. I didn’t know how to react to the situation because I wasn’t completely sure if this was some sort of family humor that I so far hadn’t been privy to.

I did not want to be the “prudish” outsider who ruined it either. Not knowing what to do with myself, I sat down on an empty couch and found something to read. Shortly after, my boyfriend went shopping with his mom, so I felt kind of abandoned.

I tried to keep myself away from my father-in-law as much as I could until they came back. So I went into another room to prepare some entertainment for the children that my boyfriend and I had promised to make.

When my boyfriend came home from the shopping, we took a walk. During this walk, I told him how I felt about the situation with his father. My boyfriend told me that in the moment, he had been too shocked to react, as he had never seen his father do anything like that before.

He added, though, that he was disgusted by the situation and wished that he had stood up for me. The incident was not mentioned for the rest of the weekend. After a month, I am still disgusted by the fact that my father-in-law did that to me. It felt objectifying and just wrong.

It turned a situation where I had previously felt very comfortable being completely myself around his family into one where I don’t even want to be around them at all. I’m very cautious whenever I walk by a sitting male person. This is even true within my own family.

I know that I have a big butt. It’s a family thing that we are all rather small around the waist but with large hips. And thus, I also get very self-conscious about my body type, and the last thing I want is for random people to start grabbing my butt without my consent.

This is my first and only serious relationship that I’ve ever had. I really don’t want it to get ruined by a completely uncalled-for incident like this. Reddit: Cortextrick

INVASION OF THE BABY SNATCHERS

I don’t typically take my daughter to my mother-in-law’s house for a few reasons, but mainly due to my father-in-law. He’s mentally hurtful to my mother-in-law and has been to his kids as well. Me and my significant other always knew he wouldn’t be around our child.

Today, my mother-in-law needed help with setting up a brand new TV. My father-in-law was at work for a few more hours, and it should typically only take a few minutes to set up, so I figured it would be okay.

I sat in the kitchen with my six-month-old baby to be out of the way while she was working on it with my husband. Then, my father-in-law gets home super early for some reason. I mostly ignore him and I’m about to subtly tell my partner that we need to leave.

That’s when my father-in-law walks over. He reaches out to pick up my baby, when my mother-in-law tells him to wash his hands, which are black with dirt. He tells her to screw off. I try to keep things calm, so I say, “We all have to wash our hands before touching her because of the pandemic. It’s just to keep her safe.”

His disturbing response made me see red. He then yells and swears at me before reaching out for my daughter’s face quite roughly. I pull her back in time and firmly say no. He then whacks me in the face while trying to push my head out of the way. I push him away with my free hand, so he grabs it and twists it.

I get him away and warn him that if he comes at me again I will do my best to hurt him. He then starts threatening me while my mother-in-law takes my baby out of my arms and then runs out of the room as quickly as possible. My father-in-law’s gaze is still focused directly on me.

I leave a minute later while he yells threats at me. He’s normally just verbally harmful, so no one expected this. I think he wasn’t used to being told no, as everyone else just backs down to his demands immediately. Of course, I’m never going near that house again. I just wanted to get this off of my chest.

When I got home that night, I reported the incident to the local authorities. He already had a history with them and other domestic issues, but I took everyone’s suggestion to make sure that there is a documented history of him having problems with me and my daughter, in case there are any further incidents down the road.

After my call to the authorities, he was actually apprehended and interviewed, but eventually released later that night. My bruise had faded by the time my appointment with the officers happened a few days later. And my mother-in-law didn’t want to serve as a witness, so there was no evidence for them to go on.

On the bright side, he has been ordered to stay away and I’m looking into an order that would legally keep him from me and my baby. Reddit: AmbieeBloo

A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

So I’ve been having zero contact with my in-laws for about seven months now, and I’m happy to report that it’s been the most drama-free seven months of my life. Over the last few months, I’ve really been ruminating and looking at past behavior and realizing how early on in our relationship their bad behavior towards me and others began.

One story, in particular, popped up for me, and it’s pretty hilarious that it has nothing to do with me. But I want to share it anyway because it perfectly showcases what kind of man my father-in-law is.

Also, it just goes to show that my in-laws are mean to everybody, including even themselves at times. Anyway, here goes with the story. Buckle up, it’s a doozy. My sister-in-law had just given birth and the whole family was at the hospital.

The whole time that we were waiting in the waiting room, my brother-in-law made it crystal clear to everyone that my sister-in-law did not want anyone in the delivery room other than herself, her mother, and her husband.

Even after she had the baby, she did not want anyone coming into the room that night and preferred to see everyone else the next day. Which is totally her right to decide. Nevertheless, an hour or two go by and my brother-in-law runs out and says, “The baby’s here! The baby’s here, and everyone’s doing great!”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, my father-in-law says, “Great, so can we go in there and see the baby?” My brother-in-law reiterates that no, he can’t, as per his wife’s very clear wishes to have this private time with her new baby.

My brother-in-law then turns to face the rest of the family to just give us the details about how much the baby weighed and what she looks like, blah blah blah. But while he was speaking, I was discreetly watching my father-in-law the whole time because I know what he is like.

Sure enough, the minute everyone’s backs were turned, he snuck away and walked straight into the delivery room so he could see his grandchild, because that’s how big of a head he has. You should have heard the screaming from that room.

It was a sound like I’ve never heard before or since in my entire life. One thing I can say about my sister-in-law is that she takes a whole lot less nonsense from people than I do.

After he got yelled at and came back from the delivery room, every single person in the family asked him what the heck he was thinking when she had specifically made her wishes clear to him before the actual delivery? And I said right in front of everyone, “Oh, that’s because he doesn’t care. He’s the most self-centered person I’ve ever met.”

And his daughter turned to me and said, “You know what? You are absolutely right. That is a perfect description of my father.” This story is just a tiny sample of the kind of behavior this man engages in every single day. Reddit: Scarlaymama0721

A BLESSING AND A CURSE

I recently dropped off my son for visitation with my ex and stayed for a minute. My nine-month-old son has started screaming in the last week, which is perfectly normal at his age. My ex’s father had surgery last week and I know he’s in pain, but then again he’s always been a little difficult.

Anyway, my son was screaming and my ex-father-in-law started making comments like “that’s unnecessary.” But I lost it when he said, “Stop that screaming or you’re gonna get your first spanking!” I was like “Oh, no you don’t!” I told my ex that I wasn’t leaving our son there and that I was taking him home.

I was like, “Look, I know you just had surgery but I know you didn’t just threaten to spank a nine-month-old. That’s a completely unacceptable thing to do.” I’m gonna let the judge in our case know why I’ll no longer be abiding by the order to split custody of our child with my ex.

I just can’t believe that anyone would seriously think it’s okay to spank an infant! I was madder than a bull in a china shop, and I still am if I’m being honest! His family has always been dysfunctional, but that was a new low. Reddit: gothmommy13

BABY, YOU’RE A FIREWORK

I’m a 19-year-old girl, and I’m my parents’ second child. I have three brothers who are 21, 13, and 7, plus a sister, who is 16. We grew up poor and our parents were often dependent on financial help from relatives, friends, etc. for raising us.

This is because even though my dad has a mediocre job and my mom doesn’t work, they just kept on popping out one kid after another. My parents are very religious and believe that children are a gift from God.

Personally, I think that’s total garbage. My parents’ reproductive choices wouldn’t bother me… if it hadn’t caused mine and my siblings’ lives to turn into a nightmare.

While growing up, we never had new clothes or toys, we had to accept handouts from family members who were better off. We never went out or did anything fun. To top it off, we were well aware that the rest of the family looked down on us for constantly asking for handouts.

Now, my older brother and I have managed to get into good colleges and are looking forward to a future that would be better than our parents’ lives. He and I were staying at our parents’ place for a while. One morning, my parents called all five of us into the living room.

Mom said she had great news. The smile that was forming on my face instantly fell when she said, “We’re pregnant!” I lost my temper. I asked them how they could be so stupid and irresponsible. Do they not have enough financial troubles already that they have to bring in another mouth to feed?

My older brother tried to calm me down, but I was livid. After a lifetime of scarcity because of my parents’ stupidity, they still hadn’t learned their lesson. I asked them how they planned to provide for the kid. My dad told me I would have to give up the money our great-uncle had left me.

He had left all five of us some money which only we could access when we turned 18. I said “Heck no!” That money would help pay for my college expenses. He called me selfish for not being there for my family. I told them if they couldn’t provide for the kid, they should get an abortion.

My mom started crying and called me a heartless monster. Dad told me he was disgusted with me. I told them there was no way I was going to pay for their stupidity and the ONLY thing I would be willing to pay for is a termination.

What I was really worried about was my siblings’ lives getting even worse. My older brother and I have escaped our parents’ clutches but the others, especially my younger sister, WILL be expected to help take care of this baby. No teenager deserves to have their adolescence ruined by diapers and a screaming baby.

I know what it’s like, as I had to go through that. It was expected of me to be an unpaid nanny to my younger brothers and sister. My older brother could go out with his friends and have fun, but I had to stay home and help give baths and feed the toddlers.

I decided to get some family members involved so they could talk some sense into my parents. I called my mom’s maternal cousin, who’s one of my favorite people and who is basically my aunt. When I told her that mom and dad were having another kid, she reacted with “WHAT? AGAIN??”

I told her everything and how they expected me to hand over my inheritance, and she said she was going to speak to my parents and told me not to sign over anything. I promised her I wouldn’t (of course I won’t).

I also called two of my first cousins, one of whom is an accountant, so she could explain to my parents how much of a financial liability this baby is going to be and try to convince them to either abort or give it up for adoption. I moved out of my parents’ home a few days ago.

I just can’t bear to listen to my mom’s nagging about how “this baby is a blessing” and that I “want to kill it.” I’ve moved into a friend’s house for minimal rent. My mom’s cousin paid them a visit about a week ago and tried to tell them they weren’t doing this child any favors by bringing it into a life of poverty.

My mom was very rude to my aunt and told her that “a woman who chose to remain barren will never understand a mother’s love.” My aunt never wanted kids nor had any, which is one of the reasons she’s my favorite.

My dad told her to get out. My aunt told me there was nothing she could do, but she did try. I didn’t blame her. The cousin tried to explain the economic impact this kid would have and my mom cried about how “everyone was trying to take away her baby.” The “intervention” didn’t do anything.

So now I’ve decided to cut contact with my parents, since I just can’t watch my family slide further and further into a hole. I’ll be maintaining contact with my sister (16) just to make sure my parents can’t brainwash her.

My older brother is going to stay in touch with all of them, which is a good thing as he can act as a link between me and the other siblings if my parents ever forbid them from talking to me. Otherwise, I’m done with these people. Reddit: DCholic_19

NOT A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR

About a month ago, my father-in-law got upset at us for not spending the night watching his daughter and take her to school in the morning, because I had a final exam at 7:00 in the morning the next day. He then proceeded to take money out of my boyfriend’s bank account, just to be a jerk.

Then asserted that my boyfriend should have made me take an Uber or take the bus to the exam rather than drive me, as we had previously agreed to. My father-in-law makes a point of saying that me getting to my final exam on time was not his priority.

Since then, I’ve made it a point not to go over to his house over the holidays. He didn’t have his daughter at his house until a few days ago, but at some point, while my boyfriend and I were out, his dad texted him and said he had another Christmas gift for him. We decided to swing by and pick it up.

While we were there, my father-in-law asked if my boyfriend wanted to go to the gym with him. Of course, my father-in-law asks if I’m willing to watch the kiddo while they go, saying they’ll be back in about 90 minutes.

I’d already talked at length to my boyfriend about how I felt about being roped into babysitting and then left indefinitely at the house while my father-in-law takes advantage of the situation.

My boyfriend confirms that they’re just going to have a quick workout and then come right back, so I agree. Additionally, my boyfriend’s younger brother was home from college as well, and also in the house, so ostensibly there was someone else there to take over when my boyfriend got back. Well, it turns out I was totally wrong.

His younger brother goes and grabs some Subway sandwiches for us, but then proceeds to head off to the computer room, leaving me alone with the little one. I don’t mind initially, until I overhear him on the phone with my father-in-law, telling him that he has dinner plans with his girlfriend. I’m immediately suspicious.

Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, the brother comes in and asks if it would be okay if I watch the little one while he and my father-in-law go grocery shopping? He knew straight up that I was not okay with it, but in my head, I knew that I was going to use this to drive my grievances home later on, so I said yes.

My boyfriend could hear the sheer disdain in my voice and tried to talk to me about it, but at that point, the little one was hovering around and I was not trying to argue about it in front of her. So I brush him off and tell him to just hurry up.

Little brother also takes the chance to go over to his girlfriend’s house. Fast forward. It’s 10:00 PM. My father-in-law and boyfriend get back. As we’re leaving, the little one jumps into my arms and pleads with me not to go.

The younger brother also tells my father-in-law that he did nothing while they were gone, and that I was handling the little one the entire time. I see my father-in-law make a face out of the corner of my eye. He’s clearly very pleased that his daughter and I get along, because it makes her look forward to coming over to his house.

My father-in-law at no point thanks me for staying an extra three hours to watch his daughter. The plan is moving along nicely. Flash forward to this morning. My father-in-law wants to go to a local amusement park for a fireworks show at around 6:00, and also wants to hit the gym with his sons before taking off for the event.

I’m super tired from the night before, which was my friend’s birthday, and I tell my boyfriend straight up that I don’t want to go, but that if his little brother’s girlfriend goes, then I would go as well so he wouldn’t be stuck alone with his father-in-law.

My boyfriend says not to worry about it, and that I should just stay home, rest, and enjoy my day. He leaves on that note. About four hours ago, my boyfriend sends me a text message saying that all of a sudden my father-in-law is telling him it’d be “okay” for him to break off from the family and go pick me up “if he wants.”

He says little brother’s girlfriend isn’t coming either and the little one is bugging him hard about me being there. My father-in-law was even willing to pay for my ticket and dinner. I knew exactly what to say to ruin his day. “Nope. Tell him I have other priorities for New Year’s Eve and the rest of the winter break.”

My boyfriend just messaged me saying that the little one has been sulking nonstop since my father-in-law told her that I wouldn’t be coming. Apparently, he promised her that I would be there without ever actually asking me if I wanted to come along with them for the night, and all she wants to do is go home and play with blocks.

She doesn’t want to stay for the fireworks because she’s “already seen them,” i.e. with me. My boyfriend is trying not to laugh the whole time that he’s hearing this. The moral of the story?

Don’t promise your little ones that someone will be going with them to an amusement park on New Year’s Eve without ever asking or inviting them first, then subtly trying to pressure their boyfriend into convincing them to come out when they don’t show up with him.

You do that, it’s pretty much on you if you are left stuck dealing with a sulking eight-year-old while your other kid tries not to lose his mind laughing. Reddit: larniebarney

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

My boyfriend’s grandpa physically attacked me during Thanksgiving. For some background, I’m a 28-year-old girl, and my partner is a 29-year-old guy. His grandpa is genuinely a terrible person, but my partner loves him for some reason.

In all honesty, it’s pretty much for no reason. This man is old, rude, and thinks it’s hilarious to upset people on purpose. His own family members usually bear most of the brunt of this bizarre habit of his. His own wife, as in my boyfriend’s grandma, cannot stand him.

Meanwhile, everyone else just ignores or enables him. Now, on to the story of what went down last night. We were all at his uncle’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, and at first, everything was going perfectly fine. We were all sitting on the couch, drinking a bit, and playing catch up with each other.

We had been there for maybe half an hour or so at the time when things started to get weird. So I’m sitting on the couch facing the fireplace. This is an open-concept room, so there is a table and chairs set against the back of the couch where his grandpa is holding court.

Everyone is apparently discussing my career behind my back at the table. I work for a newly developing industry that is still largely outside the mainstream, so people think it’s exciting. That’s when he started.

Grandpa grabs my ponytail from behind and starts jerking my head back and forth very forcefully while telling a few people about my job. I am panicking at this point. I am completely still thanks to my awesome fight, flight, or freeze response. My partner laughs until I grab his leg and panic yell at him to get him off of me.

He grabs his grandpa’s hand and pries his claws out of my hair. This whole ordeal takes maybe about three minutes or so from start to finish. I’m destroyed. The connotations of grabbing a woman by her hair are extremely unsettling and I’ve had issues with another male family member groping me in the past, so I start to shut down.

This man has just put his hands on me in an open and clearly negative way. I’m red, rashy, and quietly crying while also too physically frozen and shocked to move.

My partner asks me if I’m okay, but I’m too upset to respond besides saying “fine” and ducking my head away. Later in the car, he yells at me for overreacting because “it wasn’t really that bad.”

He claims that I’m making too big of a deal about it, and that this is just how his grandpa is. Then he yells at me some more, asking what I expected him to do. Then he asks if I want to press charges. How do I tell him that the thought of ever seeing his grandpa again makes me want to puke?

That he left me feeling vulnerable and made it worse by negating my feelings as I was sobbing in the car? We had to go back to that house for family pictures later that night and I cried the whole way over because I kept having panic attacks about his grandpa cornering me in the bathroom or something.

This is a big deal, right? I’m so hurt and uncomfortable, and my heart is racing just typing this all out. I literally just started crying again. Reddit: lifeishardforbri

JAGGED LITTLE PILL

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 wooden 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! Reddit: throwawaysanta123456

LOOK WHO CAME CRAWLING BACK

I started getting migraines back when I was around 11-12 years old, and I got a really bad one while I was up at my parents’ vacation house with a friend. We were watching a movie, and it started to hurt pretty badly.

I wanted to get some kind of chewable pain reliever, because I had a really intense fear of choking that made it difficult for me to swallow pills. My dad pulled out a bottle of these massive tablets of aspirin and says I can take these or suffer through the headache. I try to swallow them with water, but I literally couldn’t and spat them out.

Growing increasingly angry, my dad finally grabbed a marshmallow from our pantry and waved it in front of my face before he stuffed the two tablets in them. He then grabbed me by the head like it was a baseball and forced my jaw open, and stuffed the marshmallow/tablet lump down my throat, forcing me to swallow.

It hurt so bad and I was terrified I’d choke. I started to cry and then he screamed at me to shut up. My friend saw the whole thing and wouldn’t look at my dad for the rest of the trip. Reddit: nightalchemist

FIGHTING BACK

I’m gonna try to make a very long, messed up story short. My mom was the full time parent, always working more than two jobs at a time and taking care of more than four kids at all times.

The exact number depended on whether my father’s side of the family had moved in with us rent free or not at a given time. Our absent father was in and out of our lives after she got fed up with the mental, emotional and physical challenges he posed.

We see him once a year, if we’re lucky. He has never done any true parenting and as a grown woman, now with a child of my own, I refuse to let my son be put in the same heartbreaking situations where ‘G-Pop is coming’ and then never comes to get you no matter how many times they promise and swear they will.

Nope, you won’t get my son. Be present or be gone. We’re breaking generational curses over here and cutting off toxic and damaging energy. Family is step one. We do not acknowledge you for the effort that you never put in in the first place.

So no. I do not call, text, send smoke signals, or any of the other typical things that people do on Father’s Day. You did not play that role and, whenever it was time for you to, you disappeared for months and years at a time.

So, last year, my best friend and I cooked a four-course dinner for the fathers in our house: as in my husband and her fiancé. The men are happy as can be and putting it all over their social media as each course comes out.

My “father” goes on my husband’s page and says “I can’t even get a phone call but you getting whole seafood boils and steak? I guess you daddy now, huh?” I NEVER SAW THIS!

I walked in from my shift at work and got right to the evening plans that I had, catering to my husband because of how good a father he is. He shows me this message after I come home from work the next day. And I explain to him that I’d been getting mean-spirited text messages from my “father” since I woke up.

But there were more messages now. In the new round of messages, he literally threatened to come and end our lives. He called me out by name on his social media, and made it clear he was under the impression that my husband hits me and that I deserve it.

He’s clearly projecting now. He also kept that same energy when he rolled up to my door, and got it handed back to him. He demanded to know why he wasn’t invited over for Father’s Day. I said: “Because your grandson hasn’t seen you in months and you should spend some time with him if you actually want to be a part of this family.”

This made things worse. Apparently, I was being disrespectful for not feeding into his disgusting lifestyle. He added that he “never hit your mom, but I should have.” Sounds familiar, huh?

This was the line in the sand for me. NEVER bring my mother into your garbage. As soon as I said that, I let him know that he can have a relationship with my son but he and I no longer have anything left to discuss between us.

He made it clear that he wasn’t going to respect me or my family as an adult. Months later, I get a message from his sister, the only family member on his side that I still talk to every now and again. The message was basically saying that he was very sick and that none of his kids talking to him was making his health rapidly decline.

Meanwhile, my brothers don’t speak to him for similar reasons. This doesn’t work. I let her know that this was a grave he dug for himself. I added that when he’s ready to talk to me like the adult I am, apology in hand, then we may be able to move forward. That’s a big may.

But, one way or the other, I let her know that him sending her and his current girlfriend to talk to me on Messenger over and over again wasn’t the way to do it. A month after this conversation, he sends a distant cousin of mine to talk to me about it. I also rejected that one with just as much respect.

I guess that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He finally reached out to me himself like a month and a half ago with the following message: “I just be mad and want to have a relationship with my grandson. I miss you.” Not an apology. Not taking responsibility for any of the things he said to and about me and mine. Nothing.

I have long since moved across the country, bruh. I don’t know what you want from me at this point. Now, I suddenly get a message from him a few days ago about how his mom is sick and how she deserves to see and get to know her great-grandchild.

I’m at a loss for words at this point. I truly don’t know what to do. Like his side of the family has been verbally, spiritually, and mentally damaging to me in every possible way you can imagine, since we were kids.

I get that as people get older they want to repent and repair what they’ve done wrong, but I don’t know. I still don’t feel right about letting these people off the hook for everything they did to me during my formative years.

They gaslit the heck out of us growing up, and continued doing so to us as adults. At this point, my biggest concern is figuring out a way to say I’m extremely happy to not be around them for the rest of my life, without being unnecessarily disrespectful or rude. Reddit: MADDINK

SUFFERING BY COMPARISON

When my mom confronted my toxic dad, he threatened to remove me from his car insurance. For the usual short backstory, my father is manipulative, narcissistic, a cheater, and frequently makes threats to kick us out. My mother finally confronted my father the other night.

It started with her once again asking what his plans were for moving, and he threw out the usual excuses that he’s “trying” (which he’s not). He added that the two remaining apartments at a complex he was previously interested in are too expensive, blaming my mother for wanting him to pay her $400 a month in the divorce.

That’s all she’s asking for, plus the house, and she could drag him for a lot more. Angry, my mother then confronted him with all the evidence she has against him. She has tons of proof of his cheating. Russia and Latvia flight info. His secret bank account. His Russian code word translates to “wait.”

His height and weight measurements for some girl. The list goes on and on. She said his whole face and head turned bright red when she brought these things up. He completely shut down, but would occasionally say, “There’s nothing to say” and “It’s nothing.”

She went as far as to tell him that they could try and work it out if he would just admit to what he’s doing and why, adding that she doesn’t want to divorce, and he yelled that he does. He can’t handle confrontation when the person he’s verbally harassing fights back, so he ran away to the bedroom and wouldn’t talk to her anymore.

For the past two days now, he’s been moping around and barely eating. He won’t admit to a single thing, but she definitely struck a nerve with him. Well, now he’s acting like a cornered dog. He caught me yesterday while he was outside with the dog.

They were in the driveway near our cars and he knew I needed to get into mine. So he chose that as an opportunity to confront me about something very personal. We exchanged some words and I shut my car door in his face while he was still speaking.

He didn’t go inside and whine at my mom like he usually does, but I texted her about it. She confronted him, and he started threatening to take me off his car insurance amongst other things. She blew up at him and he left the house for a while.

My mother seems to finally be finding her backbone lately. I really think it’s at least in part because I broke down the other day and she realized how hurt I am from the garbage that he’s been doing to us for all these years.

I know it’s hard for her to stand up for herself and against him, but I’m proud of her for taking these steps. I feel like this situation is never going to end, but these recent events have given me some hope. I want to also add something that I found rather amusing from their fight.

My mother put her foot down and told my father that he has to start doing his own laundry. This man has never done his own laundry a day in his life. His mother did it for him until he met my mother in his twenties, and back then he flat-out told my mom that he has never and would never do laundry.

He’s always had a very old-fashioned point of view like that. Well, his response to being asked to do it for once was harsh, “Fine!” He sounded like a child on the verge of a tantrum. She does laundry on Tuesdays. So, let’s see how that goes! Reddit: SirMissMental

SINK OR SWIM

Back in the day, folks use to take their kids for a driving lesson at the Trinity River bottoms in Dallas—it’s basically a levee. The road is on the levee, and you can’t go left or right. My friend was an angry kid, so keep this in mind.

His dad takes said friend and his twin for their first driving lesson. His twin does GREAT. Their dad is ready to hand him car keys and go forth in life, let’s not consider stoplights, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles.

My friend, well, he keeps swerving, because he thinks he has to avoid the rocks on the levee trail, and it appears he’s veering off the road. His dad yells at him about how stupid he is and asks him why doesn’t he understand, his brother did great, all that. My friend, enraged at this point, wants revenge.

He says, “Screw it” and suddenly jumps out of the driver’s seat onto the road. The truck is still in drive, leaving his dad and twin in the middle and passenger seat of the truck, with the wheels not steered straight.

They start rolling down the levee, and all he heard was his dad screaming like a banshee, trying to slide into the driver part of the slick bench seat of the truck. My buddy never got another driving lesson from his dad again. Reddit: Fallen_Muppet

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

I was a lifeguard as a high schooler, and some parent was trying to “teach” their five-year-old child to swim and just threw him in the deep end. The parent thought the kid was fine because he wasn’t splashing around. It was much worse than that.

Instead, he was bobbing up and down with his arms going straight up, and straight out. That actually means they’re DROWNING. I had to jump in and grab the kid, who had swallowed significant amounts of water, and call an ambulance to check him out.

The parent didn’t want us to call the ambulance, but we told him it was either the ambulance or the authorities because what he did could be considered child endangerment. Dad was losing his mind screaming at me, a 17-year-old girl.

The owner of the pool saw this, and he (a former Navy dude) got up in the guy’s face. The parent was banned from the pool for life. To this day, I’m convinced the guy was completely wasted. Reddit: mrstruong

MAKING A CHANGE

My dad bought a new house after my parents divorced. Behind us were two kids close to me in age, and they used to screw with me every time I visited. One day, they hopped my dad’s fence, pushed me down, and stole my basketball.

When I told my dad, he decided to go talk to their parents to get my ball back. Oh wait…that’s what normal dads would do. My dad, a former pro boxer, made me fistfight both of them one at a time and “earn” my basketball back. To be fair, I had training before that incident.

Learning how to fight was nonnegotiable to him, and he had me learning how to fight before I even started school. I was also threatened with punishment if I allowed myself to be bullied. I fought them both one at a time.

I definitely won against the first kid, but by the time I fought the second, I was exhausted and he was not. In the combat sports world, we called that “the shark tank.” It’s brutal. Anyway, I was tired in the second fight so It didn’t go as well. If it were a sanctioned fight, it would have definitely been a draw.

Sadly, growing up with a redneck dad means that I have a tiny redneck living in my brain that not only doesn’t fear conflict, but embraces it. If someone hurts my family, wife, or friends, I become the avatar of toxic masculinity.

I’m in therapy dealing with it, and I’ve had a couple of relapses. Most recently against my wife’s co-worker harassing her and me deciding to threaten him at a company Christmas party. Not proud of that one. Reddit: Chingparr

CRYING OVER SPILLED MILK

So, I want to start by saying that I love my dad. He’s a stubborn emotional jerk, but I love him. I know he loves me, but he often is so focused on himself and his needs that he makes me distance myself from him. He had a rough childhood.

My grandfather is a verbally aggressive jerk and my grandmother is cold and passive-aggressive. They were very enmeshed with his life, but at the same time, it seemed to be only to control him and make sure he took care of my great-grandmother (i.e. his father’s mom) so that the family didn’t have to.

He was 100% taken advantage of. My dad took care of my great-grandmother for 14 years. Any time that he asked for a break or explained that his PTSD was getting worse, they would guilt him by saying “Fine, I guess we’ll tell Grandma that you’re breaking your promise.”

That “promise” was that he would take care of her so she could live out the rest of her life in her home like her husband did, and not have to end up in a retirement facility.

Eventually, my dad met my wonderful step-mother (who I consider my Mama), and she helped us get out of that house and not let us be manipulated by that family any longer.

She made us realize that we didn’t have the proper training to care for her and that my aunt, the trained nurse, should have been caring for my grandmother long ago or they should have hired a professional. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my family did a number on my dad.

And the consequences are that he is codependent, quick to misinterpret things and get defensive, and is only slightly a problematic person as a result of this trauma. I understand that it’s hard to break a cycle like this, so I’m starting with myself now that I have a five-month-old daughter.

Now, on to the main story of my post. My husband is deployed overseas and hasn’t met his daughter yet. So it’s just me caring for my child with the occasional help of my younger brother who lives with us, but mostly stays in his room.

My Mama and dad came to visit on their way to the other side of the country and were staying in their RV for about a week. My dad knows about my boundaries, and I wouldn’t say he pushes them as much as he questions or doubts them. But I finally stood up to him.

He was holding my daughter and was getting reckless with how he was playing with her. He was doing dangerous things like balancing her with one hand, almost dropping her where she could have hit the coffee table and laughing about it.

He must have seen the look on my face, because he says to me, almost challenging, “What?! If you don’t like it, take her back!” Normally in our family, we’d just be quiet and agreeable, back down and say “no, just be careful” because we don’t ever want to look like the bad guy under any circumstance.

And I maybe hesitated for half a second before reaching out my hands and taking her. My dad looked surprised, and my Mama later told me that she was proud of me because what he did was unacceptable. I was mostly worried about what she thought, because I get along so much better with her than I do with my father.

Thinking about the whole thing now, I’m proud of myself, to be honest. I don’t think anyone in my family has ever done anything like that before. But it needed to happen. And for anyone out there who is in a similar situation and constantly makes excuses for their parents’ bad behavior: I get it.

I’ve lived with the guilt of not wanting to make a fuss because of the hard life, mental issues, or whatever other reason your family members have for acting the way that they do. Reddit: CeramicHorses

THE GOOD FATHER

Okay, so my insane father-in-law has always been a bit creepy towards me, but I typically just brushed it off. He’s been a pretty good grandfather and loves my daughter deeply, to the point where he has stopped drinking and is working to give up the smokes so he can see her grow up.

This is huge, because he’s had a very serious drinking problem for pretty much most of his life. Overall, he spoils his granddaughter and puts her before even his wife, which I find hilarious because, frankly, she’s a raging lunatic.

Aside from general uncomfortableness around him, I’ve never actually had any problems with the guy. I’ve never really liked him that much because of how he’s treated my husband in the past, but I put those feelings aside and have always tried to remain neutral towards him. That was all about to change.

Now, my daughter recently turned a year old. I’ve been breastfeeding since she was born and have yet to wean her entirely, as I enjoy the bonding and I’ve read so many positive studies about the benefits of breastfeeding until at least two years of age.

I’ve always made it crystal clear that if it ever makes anyone uncomfortable, they can let me know and I will gladly cover myself up as best I can when feeding my daughter. Unless it’s in my own home, of course, in which case they can just get the heck out.

Everywhere I go, I try to cover myself as much as I can without overtly covering my daughter’s head, because she gets hot easily. So there has never been a time where anyone has seen anything that they weren’t supposed to.

For a year, I’ve been doing this on the regular, including breastfeeding at my father-in-law’s home during visits, and no one has ever said a peep about it. Then, sometime last month, my husband goes over for a visit without me, and suddenly it’s a big freaking deal.

My father-in-law actually said to my husband, “Tell your wife to keep her freaking breasts out of my face when she visits.” Of course, my husband was shocked and confused.

My father-in-law and his wife, who had previously been very vocally supportive of breastfeeding, both explained that they didn’t want me breastfeeding in their home anymore, and especially not around my father-in-law.

My husband pushed for more information because they had never expressed discomfort before and like…it’s been a whole year? It came out that apparently my father-in-law had been looking at my chest when I breastfed my daughter. His granddaughter. In front of his wife and kids.

I had just never noticed because he always played it off as admiring his granddaughter and calling her cute. Umm, what in the world?? I am repulsed and disgusted and feel violated in sooo many ways. And, as an added bonus, they all blame me for this situation!

My husband’s step-mom messaged my husband and said that I should have had more decency than to be exposing myself like that in front of someone’s husband. My husband and I are both floored, and he is clearly taking my side, but the family as a whole seems split.

Some say that I should be more discreet, and others are just as repulsed as me. Anyway, I just needed to get this off of my chest because I am so grossed out and uncomfortable over this whole situation. And I’m so angry that my literal father-in-law would be so disgusting as to play peeping tom on me when my baby daughter is RIGHT THERE.

To literally turn her eating into something inappropriate! Heck, I’m still so angry just thinking about it. A few people have suggested to me that I not allow any unsupervised contact between him and my daughter from now on, which is definitely the plan as of right now.

As a victim of childhood trauma myself, I am especially vigilant about the red flags and keeping my daughter safe. Under no circumstances will he ever be allowed alone with my child, if we even decide to visit them anymore. Reddit: Frostybliss

WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!

I used to work in a small chain of bookstores/stationery shops. We’d sell books, pens, paper, and so on. It was a quirky little store, straight out of a romantic love novella. This happened a few years ago and I’m reconstructing it from my memory.

This entitled mother walks into the store with her little girl. It’s rather early in the morning. The mom looks around and asks me if I could watch her child. Me: “Oh no, I’m terrible with children, sorry.” She tells me that it’s not for that long and I shouldn’t be such a fuss about it.

I still politely refuse. It’s not my job to watch children, and I’m afraid to do something wrong. What happens? She leaves the store, and who do I find hidden in the corner? The little girl who seems to be rather shy and fearful.

This happened back in a time before everyone had smartphones. The kid obviously didn’t have a mobile on her, and I suspected the mother also wouldn’t. Wasn’t too surprised that the girl didn’t know the number of their landline, either. I sigh. What are you gonna do?

If something happens to that kid while being in the store and you being the only present employee, you’re gonna have a bad time. I introduced myself, and asked her name. She told me it in full. Now this rang a bell. I had a good customer with the same surname.

It turns out that it’s her dad. I didn’t get paid enough to babysit. In fact, I didn’t even get paid enough to do my normal work. I call her dad at his workplace since we saved that number in our system.

The call went along those lines: Me: “Hi, it’s bookstore XY.” Him: “Oh hi, how’s it going? I don’t remember having any open orders.” Me: “Yeah, erm, look, listen, do you have a daughter?” Him, confused: “Yes why do you ask?”

When he finds out the story, he quickly apologizes for the woman’s behavior and tells me he’s gonna pick the kid up as soon as possible. While waiting for him, I picked up one of our sale books, which was a picture book from Disney.

The girl tries to read a little, I read a little. The dad arrives, and the girl runs to him and hugs him, crying that mommy was mean to her. The dad soothes her and thanks me for babysitting her.

He gives me a bottle of red and buys something small from the store. Him: “If the mom shows up again, could you not tell her that I picked up our daughter?” Me: “What. Why?” Him: “If you don’t feel like it you don’t need to.

It’s rather complicated and you already did so much for us.” He leaves. In the evening, the mother shows up. Just to point out—she dropped the girl off at about 09:00. It was 5:45. A whole freaking day.

Her: “Where’s my daughter?” This is where I get my revenge. Me: “Your WHAT?” Her: “My daughter. I dropped her in this store and you were here.” Me: “YOUR WHAT?”

Now she was on the edge. Thus I did what I thought was the smartest thing to do. Me: “A guy came into the store and picked her up. He seemed nice. Gave me some gifts for her.”

At this point I expected her to attack me, but she just left the store. A few weeks pass and the dad and girl come to the store, both happy to see me. The dad asks me if I’ve got a few minutes. An excuse not to work? Obviously I took the time for…customer service.

I gave the girl the same book we read the last time and had a talk with him. The whole story was a doozy. The mom and dad were in the middle of a divorce when she dropped the girl at our store. One of the reasons he wanted a divorce was because the mom “wasn’t nice” to the girl.

Now, in my country as a man it’s rather hard to get custody for your child. No matter what. So the mom dropping the girl in our store was a gift of the heavens. The dad took the daughter to his sister’s overnight, and the mom pretended that she was sleeping at one of her friend’s.

The dad wanted to call them just to ensure that she is fine. When he did and the friend didn’t know where the girl was (obviously), the dad faked panic and involved law enforcement. Meanwhile, the mom starts insisting that the friend must have kidnapped the girl.

The dad had proof of it being otherwise since he already called the authorities when he dropped his daughter at his sister’s house. In court, the dad apparently said something like, “She can have all she wants, even my vino collection. I just want to be with my daughter.”

The daughter ended up with him, with the mother paying alimony. When the mother dropped the daughter off at my store, she was shy, seemed small, and now she has such a big smile on her face and is curious about everything.

She seemed like a bird taking off to fly toward the sun. I absolutely hated my job, but situations like these make me a little bit nostalgic. Reddit: ProfessionalDish

CHOKED UP

I just had the strangest flashback. So I’m the youngest of three kids and growing up, my dad always told me that he had wanted more kids. He said that he had almost divorced my mother over the fact that she didn’t want any more kids after me, even though he was so willing to provide for us and blah blah blah.

Little did I know the crazy direction his complaints were about to go in… Well, when I was around 18 years old, my mum told me that she had actually been pregnant after me, but that she’d had a miscarriage. It was a bad one too.

She was pretty far along and she had to go to the hospital. This is where my knowledge gets hazy. My mum has always had reproductive issues and eventually had to have a hysterectomy. I have no idea if she personally didn’t want to have kids after that trauma or if she physically couldn’t.

But regardless, my dad always painted my mum as the selfish one who couldn’t bear to give up her luxurious existence for one more kid, and he made things out to be as if he was the only one who really wanted and loved us. Spoiler alert: that was all false.

Anyway, once my mother told me that, the next time my dad went on one of his rants about how he’d always wanted more kids, I stopped him and said that I thought he was being insensitive given that my mum had endured something so traumatic to her.

His response made me 100 times angrier. He said that I must have misheard and that I was wrong. He insisted that she’d never had a miscarriage, even though I remember exactly what my mum told me.

Anyways, years of such gaslighting from him was only the tip of the darn iceberg. I’m only now just beginning to come to terms with the idea that I may have been mistreated by him over the course of my childhood. Reddit: mountainatmygatess

THE OLD SWITCHAROO

My father-in-law and I do not have a good relationship. Last night, it finally escalated. He lives in our backyard still, but we mostly had a silent understanding that we would keep away from each other as much as possible to keep the peace and spare my wife any hardship.

I’d do my best to keep up with household chores and work, and he pays for our groceries in lieu of rent or anything else. The reason we have this arrangement is that he hasn’t been working on our property like he originally said he was going to do to earn his keep around here.

What pushed him over the edge last night was that two nights ago he bought dinner for all of us. I went and picked it up, but did not take his food out to him right away. My reasoning for this was because A) I genuinely thought he was going to come into the house and get it…

And B) I was on the phone with my wife trying to find out if she was going to be stuck in Seattle overnight in the middle of some chaos, because the curfew was blocking her path to the ferry terminal, so I was feeling rather anxious and distracted by that.

Last night, he came in fuming about his food not being delivered to him while it was still hot. I tried to explain to him the reasoning for why that happened and I sincerely apologized for the confusion. His reaction was truly horrifying.

At this point, he reached out and put me in a chokehold. I fought back and he wrestled me to the ground, continuing to attempt to choke me out before my wife came downstairs and broke us up. My neck is fine. There’s some light bruising and soreness, but it’ll heal.

I talked to my wife and told her that I’m willing to let this go this time, but if anything remotely close to this happens again, even so much as just a threatening voice, the authorities will be called on him. She said that was fine and that she would back me up if I ever felt that I needed to do that.

12 hours later, I’m anxious and shaken up. I already had to take my emergency anxiety medicine. And I’m finding it hard to concentrate on work today. I’ve already informed my closest friends of what happened and they all agree that I’m being too lenient and should have called the authorities on him right away. Reddit: otakureview

NEVER LOSE HOPE

So the relationship between myself, my boyfriend, and his father is, uh, precariously cordial at this point. My father-in-law uses the fact that he helps pay for my boyfriend’s truck, insurance, and phone bill to intimidate.

They he guilts him into spending inordinate amounts of time “helping the family,” which is usually just a guise to get my boyfriend to spend time around him because he has zero friends of his own.

More notably, he tries to lasso us into babysitting his elementary school-aged daughter, AKA my boyfriend’s half-sister, who he has limited visitation with. He wants us to do this so that he can go on dates or attempt to go to the gym.

Afterward, he got upset at us—and the way he lashed out was devastating. He emptied out my boyfriend’s bank account. This was all because we did not swing by at the drop of a hat to babysit for him the day before our finals last December.

After that incident, we took several steps to distance ourselves from him. We got a new bank account that he doesn’t know about or have access to. I started a new higher-paying job and I let him know that my schedule is no longer open to random babysitting requests at the last minute.

This resulted in him being left high and dry several times when he wanted me to help him with his little one. For the most part, he pulled back after this and things were okay for a while. I didn’t see the little one or my father-in-law until her birthday in May, and that was mainly because I actually wanted to see her.

She can be a little brat, but I can’t deny that I do care about the little goof. In June, though, we did agree to help him watch the little one in the mornings so that he could go to the gym, as he had her for the entire month.

He initially wanted us to do this for free, but I flat-out said that this wasn’t an option, given the gas per week that we’d be paying for in order to help him out. He agreed to fill up our tank once a week. We drive a truck, so this was actually a good deal for us. Plus, he also agreed to pay us $250 for our time each month.

At times, he took advantage of our generosity and wouldn’t return to the house until 2:00 in the afternoon, which was three hours past the previously agreed upon ending time. However, the biggest benefit that my boyfriend got out of this was that his relationship with the little one has made significant progress.

Her mom talks very badly about my boyfriend to her and it hurt him to have his little sister disdain him so blatantly. But by the end of June, she was excited to see him daily and to hang out with him by going to the pool, playing video games together, biking, etc.

During all of this, my father-in-law has been in a custody battle with his ex-wife, who is a major jerk for a variety of reasons. He initially just wanted more time with the little one and tried to settle out of court, but that didn’t happen.

So now they’ve been in and out of court on a constant basis for the last year or so at least. They’re reaching the finale though, with temporary custody orders scheduled to be made in the next month or so. This brings us to what he did last night. He made the most nonsensical proposal to my boyfriend while I was at work.

Prior to my boyfriend moving out of his father’s house and moving in with me, he managed to hook his father up with a fellow college student to rent out the extra room in their house too for an extra $400 a month.

After my boyfriend left, the student continued to rent from my father-in-law and has been doing so for about a year. We’ll call that student “A.”

My boyfriend and I were initially renting a room from a friend, but we recently moved into an apartment very close to our college campus that has a ton of amenities and locational benefits that will help us save even more money.

We have two other roommates, but they’re seldom here and it’s been wonderful having our own place so far. Yesterday night, however, my father-in-law told my boyfriend that he was worried that his ex-wife would try to use the fact that A was still living in father-in-law’s house to keep him from getting more time with her.

His master plan was to ask us to take A’s place in his house for $400 a month, and then he would give A $500 to take our room in our new apartment. Y’all. When my boyfriend told me about this, I had to stop myself from straight-up going off on the messenger.

Never mind that I pay $200 more than A does a month for our apartment, so there’s no telling if A would even be willing to pay the extra money. Not to mention the extra $500 wouldn’t do much for him in the long term. But that’s just the first problem.

On top of that, my father-in-law lives right off of a major road that has disgusting constant traffic, is further from our campus and my job and public transit, and has a much higher cost of living for groceries, gas, etc.

Even if I were comfortable moving into his house, which I’m not, we would not be saving any money because the extra gas and Lyft and Uber expenses would quickly eat through our entire budget.

On top of this, the bathroom attached to the room does not have a functional toilet. A uses the one downstairs, and my father-in-law has told A that if he wants the A/C lowered then he’d have to pay extra for it.

I can already tell you that I’d have to pay extra because the second floor gets unbearably hot during the summer, and I’m not going to sweat in my sleep every night. So effectively, he’s asking us to pay him $500-ish a month to live under his rules.

Now, the easiest thing to do in my humble opinion is to simply talk to A, explain the situation (which he already knows about to a good degree), and let him know that if the courts deem his presence an issue, he will be put on a 30-day notice to leave.

He rents month to month, and there is no signed lease. My boyfriend’s younger brother, who will also be attending our university, will be back from service training in the next few weeks, and he can stay in A’s room. Bam, problem solved.

However, my father-in-law doesn’t want to lose the $400 per month if he doesn’t have to by prematurely evicting A, hence spoiling his brilliant freaking workaround.

Despite my boyfriend trying to tell his dad that these ideas and schemes seem overly complicated, he refused to listen and instead asked if we could come over on Saturday morning to talk about it.

I am so ready to take him to task over all of this nonsense and let him know that not only is his plan convoluted and absurd, but that there is literally no net benefit for me or my boyfriend to go along with this.

Our entire life would be more expensive, more stressful, and more inconvenient. Trying to finish up our schooling while dealing with his incessant lectures and blatant time-wasting would not exactly be a walk in the park either.

We also highly suspect he’s pushing my boyfriend to do this because then he’ll have all his kids under the same roof again. And as I’ve stated before, this man has no friends, is lonely, and is obsessed with trying to force his idea of being a family onto his children.

He’s made multiple attempts and comments to my boyfriend about him moving back in, but each time my boyfriend shuts him down. He’s almost certainly not going to take our refusal well, but I really don’t care at this point. I’m not your daughter and you don’t pay squat for me.

I have zero obligation to put my own life into a more difficult position just to help you out, when you won’t even treat my boyfriend and me as adults with our own priorities and our own free will. Wish me luck, everyone! Hopefully, this meeting will put an end to this ridiculous saga once and for all. Reddit: larniebarney

EXPECTING SOMETHING

So this one actually has a somewhat happy ending. My father was always a yeller. He loved to go nuts on everyone, and scream and tower over my mother and me. He never physically hit me, but the mental and verbal mistreatment was always pretty darn rough.

It all came to a head during my junior year of college. I attended a university that was about two hours away from my hometown. My parents had ended up splitting up during my freshman year, and they were living apart at this point.

I would mostly spend breaks with my mother, for obvious reasons, but I kept trying to make things work between me and my dad. My mother decided to divorce him, which made my dad’s anger problems even worse. To the point that anything would make him go off.

Now, I was formally diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and PTSD during my university days. At the time of my junior year, I had just started taking antidepressants. They really messed with my energy levels, and I was tired all the time anyway.

Well, all of this leads up to say that at the end of one of my visits, it was my dad’s turn to drive me back to university. Now, we were meant to leave early in the afternoon. But I woke up feeling very sick. Both my mom and I let him know that I was not feeling well and would be late getting to his house.

I stayed in bed most of that day and was finally feeling well enough to travel by around 4:00 PM. So at that time, my mother packed me up, and drove me to my father’s house. That’s where things took a turn for the worse.

Now, when I got there, he was clearly very angry. So I did my usual stay quiet and scrunch up to stay small routine. I quickly grabbed my things that I’d left at his house and we started the drive back. About ten minutes away from the house, I realized that I had left my medication behind.

I asked my dad to turn back so I could get it. His reaction was truly vile. He started shouting full volume at me. His car, I should mention, was a two-seater convertible. It was a very small car and we were very close together.

So he’s shouting at me at the top of his lungs, gesturing in my face, and I’m just trying to keep it together. The second we make it back to his house, I get out of the car and slam the door. I honestly did not mean to slam it. My hands felt numb because I was that afraid. And in the scariest tone I ever heard, he called me a jerk.

I ran full tilt inside the house and locked myself in the bathroom. I was crying and having a panic attack. I refused to come out and he was banging on the door. I demanded to speak to my mother. He called her up.

I heard him speaking to her but the sound was muffled. He came back and said, “Your mother doesn’t want to deal with you! She isn’t coming to get you. So you better come out and get in the car. Now.”

Now, my mom has had her bad moments from time to time. And I was so panicked and upset that I didn’t question it. We drove back to my school and he dropped me off in front of my dorm. He took my bags out of his trunk, tossed them on the ground, and drove away.

I called my mom once I got inside and asked her why she hadn’t come to get me. That’s when I found out the devastating truth. She had no idea what I was talking about. Turns out my dad had never actually told her about the situation. She had no idea that I had been locked in the bathroom, nothing.

He had lied to me. And that was it. That was the final straw. I wrote my dad an email. It was long and I detailed every hurt and major issue that he had ever caused for me. But I ended it by telling him: Today I was terrified of you.

I believed that you would have hurt me or done even worse to me. And you lied to me to get your way. Something you have never done before. And something you promised you would never do. You broke that trust and now it is gone. I told him he needed serious counseling.

And he would never be allowed in my life again until he got help. I told him he would never walk me down the aisle at my wedding. That if I had children he would never see them. Not unless he changed. And really changed. Then I went full no contact.

For nine months, I didn’t call, text, or email him. Nothing whatsoever. If he tried to reach out, I ignored him. I was in therapy then and used that to help me deal with it. Nine months later, I was in a play at my university. It was a bit part, nothing special at all.

But my dad had seen it advertised on my university website and had noticed my name in the cast list. One night, after a show, I walked into the audience. I was going to go out with friends to eat. But I got an unexpected surprise.

My dad was there. He was holding flowers and gave them to me. I was speechless and a little afraid. But then my dad, on his own volition, apologized to me. He got choked up and was fighting back real tears. He said he was very sorry for what he did and that my words had hurt him.

But he also said that he had taken a step back and looked at his behavior, and he was horrified by what he had become. He told me that he decided that he loved me more than wanting to be “right.” He had sought out a therapist and had been in counseling for the past eight or nine months.

He didn’t force his company on me. He just apologized, told me that he was getting help, and told me that he would always answer any call or communication from me if I ever wanted to reach out. That was nearly ten years ago. I checked up on his claims, and he was telling the truth.

He and I had a couple of sessions together where I went and talked to his therapist with him. My dad has never tried to justify any of his past behavior or mistreatment. He never blamed me again. He had a darn good therapist and saw them for several years.

My fiancé and I are not going to be having children. But my dad will be walking me down the aisle at our wedding. My mom will be too. My dad has helped me move across the country. He has financially supported me and has talked me through anxiety attacks and depressive episodes.

He has learned to be patient and is kinder than I have ever dreamed possible. And it’s all because he decided that he loved me more than being right. That his love for me was more important than his anger.

So if you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me! My dad is one of the very rare problematic parents who actually became a good one through hard work and serious effort. And it was because he took a long hard look at himself and chose his daughter and love over rage. Reddit: AngelusLorelei

ALL OVER THE WORLD

I’m currently a little over five months pregnant and I haven’t gotten as much as a “how are you doing” from my dad. But my mom and dad still talk regularly even though they have been divorced for 14 years. And if my dad isn’t complaining about his current wife, he’s talking to her about how excited he is to be a grandfather.

Weird coming from a guy who literally doesn’t speak to me. In fact, on the rare occasions that our paths do cross, he treats me like I’m still 12 years old, so I’m not sure where he’s getting these ideas that he’s gonna be an active grandfather in my child’s life.

His wife also just gave birth, so at the age of 28, I’m a big sister…again. I called my dad to congratulate him on his new baby, and he said thank you. He was trying to make small talk about his new child.

Then the conversation turned to, “Oh, I can’t wait to babysit my first grandchild, take her to do activities that a parent would usually do, and for her to have play dates and sleepovers with her uncle,” basically parent-free visits.

I’d like for my child to know her young aunt and uncle, so I’m not opposed to play dates, but I told him over the phone that I’m not okay with unsupervised visits, so sleepovers would probably be a no. Also, you live an hour away, so it’s inconvenient for you to babysit. He just went silent and said we will see about that.

My father never made the effort to interact with me after my parents got divorced, didn’t try to get to know my husband, tried to make any milestone I had all about himself, and just doesn’t even know anything about who I am as a person.

So I don’t know if he’s going to try and treat my daughter as a do-over. To make matters more difficult, my mom keeps saying that I need to give my father another chance. Reddit: MapleIceQueen

HOLY MOLY

Background: My dad has some mental issues. While he has his moments of crazy, they often come from being raised by my horrible grandparents. I know that my dad has good intentions, but he doesn’t have a good concept of normal sometimes.

For reference, I am an adult and have been one for a while. Now, here comes the twisted story. My dad has a club that he attends and is very active in, made up of mostly older men united by a common hobby. They lost contact unexpectedly with one of their members for a week and were very concerned until he could be located.

This club’s solution was for everyone to voluntarily share their location via a location-sharing app. Keyword: voluntarily. But my dad now wants to make another group with the same app for just my immediate family to share our locations with each other at all times.

I do not want to do this, because when I was a young adult I fought very hard to not have to send them a check-in text every night. I know if I give my location, my dad will check it every night to make sure I got home, and if I am anywhere unusual or out later than he thinks I should be, he will text me about it.

I know because that’s exactly what he used to do and why I made this boundary in the first place. It also bothers me that instead of asking me if I’d be okay with doing that, he said “I am asking you to do this,” which with him really means “I am telling you to do this, but I’m trying to be polite about it.”

I see the point of knowing a family member’s location if they are on a trip somewhere and I voluntarily check in when I am traveling long distances. But I am an adult and I feel like my parents knowing my location all the time would be infantilizing.

They see it as being able to find me quickly if something really bad should happen to me. Am I being the jerk here by not wanting to install the app? Is there a middle ground where I can maintain my sense of privacy while still soothing my parents, and especially my dad’s fears?

Is there a polite way to maintain my boundary or am I being paranoid? Apparently, he tried to volunteer me to join the group, without my consent, even after my mother told him not to ask as she thought I’d say no.

When I did initially say no, things were rough. He first tried to argue, to which I said I wasn’t changing my mind, to which he claimed he wasn’t trying to change my mind.

If past behavior holds true, that will be the last I hear of it until the next new way of creepily stalking your family arrives on the scene. Thank you all for listening. Y’all are good people. Reddit: fluffycockatoo

CHECKING THINGS OUT

My father-in-law legitimately and literally thinks I am a witch of Satan out to take away his son’s soul. No, that description is not at all hyperbolic. Just to clarify a few things and set the scene: I’ve never met my father-in-law. He has a serious drinking problem.

My husband has had minimal contact with his father and hasn’t seen him in person in almost a decade. He is also ultra-religious. After their eight children were born and they were done having them, my father-in-law wanted to build a hut to put my mother-in-law in once a month when she had her period.

My in-laws are divorced now and I absolutely adore my mother-in-law. I feel sorry that she had to put up with a guy like that for so long. Now for the main story. My father-in-law gets intoxicated every Saturday night and spends some time posting on Facebook, as the Boomers do.

He usually uses this Facebook time to go on deranged tangents while adding anyone and everyone who comes up in his “People you may know” list without any real rhyme or reason. Apparently, I was one of those people that he added without actually knowing.

So he added me and eventually started adding my friends and family as they started to appear on his list. After a lot of messages from him, usually YouTube links to lousy rock songs that I never responded to, and several messages from people I knew asking who the hateful, ranting guy with my then-fiance’s last name was.

I finally asked him to please stop bothering my loved ones as it was strange. This is where he really went off the deep end. His response was, “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE. DELETE ME RIGHT NOW!”

It was at this point that I realized he didn’t even know I was engaged to his son and had added me at random by sheer coincidence. A light must have clicked on in his head because shortly after, he started posting Facebook statuses about things he only could have found out by looking at my personal Facebook timeline.

My feed started getting flooded with “NO WITCH IS MY GONNA MARRY MY SON!!!,” “MY SON IS UNDER AN EVIL SPELL CAST BY AN AGENT OF LUCIFER,” and “YOUR TAROT CARDS ARE GOING TO DRAG YOU TO ETERNAL PUNISHMENT!!!

WAKE UP!!!” A couple of weeks later, at a family function, my now sister-in-law mentioned to me that her dad had phoned her up in hysterics over the fact that his son was marrying one of those “feminist witches who doesn’t respect God.”

Apparently, he actually broke down crying while speaking about this. My sister-in-law said not to worry, that he’d eventually calm down, and that he’d disowned her more times than she can count.

My mother-in-law, who was present for the conversation, just stood there and rolled her eyes while listening to the story. He wasn’t invited to the wedding. Reddit: honeyloafsnoot

SLOW AND STEADY

I’m in the Balkans region of Europe. I’m 21 years old and female. My dad is 57 years old and male. He is also a narcissist with serious mommy issues. He doesn’t perform any parental duties, then gets upset at other people when they try to.

The first of these duty issues happened a very long time ago, but the two I’m about to write about happened within the last I wanna say three years or so. During my last year of high school, I noticed that my vision had been getting quite blurry. My head would hurt so much and so often.

I’d get the ache going above my eyebrows, in the middle of them and above my nose, and spread to the back of my head. My ears were ringing too from time to time. I thought it was anxiety paired with lots of stress and exhaustion.

I was in my last year of high school and there was tremendous pressure about keeping my grades up and graduating, and then getting into college. A friend of mine got a little annoyed that I was copying everything out of her notes during class. To be clear, this was not cheating on a test or anything like that.

I was simply in the back desk and could not see the writing on the darn blackboards. When I got home and complained constantly about it, all my dad did was yell at me to leave the laptop alone and spend less time on it.

That was a hard thing to do when I had countless essays and seminars to write and follow, as well as online tutorials on art to practice for the college I was planning on applying to. Months passed by and my vision got worse and worse.

Until one point when my left eye got severely infected. By this time, I had already finished high school, didn’t get into college, and was on a gap year. Yet again, he refused to take me to the doctors. That mistake almost cost me everything.

It wasn’t until my eye was literally fully red and bloody-like that he finally gave in. I didn’t leave the house for weeks and had to wear sunglasses even indoors because a small lamp with weak lighting bothered my eye so much.

Three incompetent doctors later, my eye worsened and my parents didn’t do a thing except try to turn the blame on me. My maternal grandparents got angry at this. My dad continued to not do a thing about it except yell at me, claim it was my fault, and stay away from me as if I was carrying the plague.

So my maternal grandfather took me to see an expensive private specialist. They had to pull lots of strings and connections to get an emergency term. The specialist took one look at me and literally gasped. She was annoyed at the incompetence of previous doctors and how they couldn’t diagnose conjunctivitis.

She told me I got to her in the last possible second and that I could have fully lost my vision if I’d waited any longer. After 13 days of the hardest antibiotics, along with dozens of creams and drops and whatnot, my eye finally healed.

I also mentioned the blurry vision and, as soon as my eye was healed, she found my diopter and hooked me up with good glasses. I was ready to come home all happy that I was gonna be able to see after the scare of a lifetime. But the worst was yet to come.

How did my dad react to the news? He screamed that I was embarrassing him and emasculating him by going to the doctor with my grandfather and acting like he can’t provide for me and his family. I calmly replied that I had been telling him for years about how I had weak vision and serious headaches.

His response? Getting into my face inches away and yelling that I was lying. Fun stuff. The second part was with my teeth. My teeth are fine. But I’m tiny, with a tiny jaw, and my teeth were a bit misplaced. Nothing much, they just couldn’t fit in the small jawline.

For years, I told my dad about this and waited for the money. He’d brush it off and just say, “We’ll do it later.” We never did. Again, my maternal grandparents came to the rescue. I spent half of 2019 and over half of 2020 (AKA the parts of it where we were actually able to go out) looking for a good orthodontist.

By pure chance, I learned that my mom’s childhood friend had opened a dentist’s office. We went there and booked the session for putting braces in. The discussion literally took just 20 minutes. My dad’s response? He refused to talk to me for days.

He kept whining about how I was bleeding my grandparents dry by getting them to buy me the braces and glasses. First of all, they have a special fund set aside for me. I’m not doing that, and I would never want to put them in that position.

But they keep telling me and reassuring me that they always have money for me on the side and that they’re very financially skilled in budgeting and all. My dad was so angry when I got braces that he didn’t even want to look at me or hear me talk about them.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still hurt. Yet another screaming match ensued about how he’s allegedly been begging me for years to go to the dentist, so literally the exact opposite of what really happened. He’s now staying away from the glasses and braces talk completely, any portion of it.

The other day, he had to take me to an emergency dental appointment because I thought my braces had broken. The wire on one side pulled out of the small orthodontic part.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what it’s called in English. In any event, I thought it was broken and panicked. On the way back from the hospital, my dad asked me why I never told him that I needed glasses or braces.

He also asked if my braces were okay and if I was happy he had gotten them for me. I just took a deep breath and shook my head. Narcissists really just hear what they wanna hear, and believe what they wanna believe. Don’t they? Reddit: timeb969

CHILD’S PLAY

I used to be a swim teacher in college teaching private lessons in people’s backyards. Generally, it was a lot of kids who had a fear of water because their parents hadn’t properly gained their trust before trying to get them to swim.

One kid, he was seven, I had to sit with him on the pool deck the whole first lesson and bring buckets of water to him. Apparently, his dad had dunked him multiple times in the pool and insisted that his son would just figure it out eventually because “that’s how he learned.”

The father was never home when I was there; the mom had me come while the dad was at work. Four weeks later, she had me come later in the afternoon so he could come home towards the end of the lesson. His dad saw his son swimming and cried happy tears. He had no idea I had been there three days a week for a month.

I still remember how each of my students clung to my arms and clawed at my neck in their first lessons. I never dunked or forced anyone out of their comfort zone. My lessons had to be customized for each student to keep it fun and relaxing. The trauma in their eyes was haunting, though. Reddit: torneen

A NIGHT ON THE TOWN

This just happened an hour ago. As an introduction, I’m currently in my second year of college. I study Early Childhood Education, also known as Preschool Education depending on where you’re from.

To those who don’t have any children or are unaware, I basically spend three years of basic studies learning about early childhood development (from conception until six years old) and all the ways in which I will teach children in kindergarten or any preschool facility.

In order to do that, I must know every single milestone and phase that kids go through, including their developmental stages, including sociology, psychology, and the pedagogy behind all of that.

I can’t really apply a method or compose a curriculum for kids of a certain age if neither one of those fit their milestones and developmental age, and if the kids lack the capacity to understand the activity we’re doing.

Maybe I’m taking it too seriously, but my job will consist of teaching and taking care of someone else’s really young child, so I’m trying to stay on top of my studies and methods while also providing the kids with good, educational time and safety.

Most people I describe this to view it as a pretty responsible and uncontroversial way to spend my time, right? Well, last year, my toxic dad decided to make a comment. He pays for my college, as it’s normal here for parents to pay. And while I was figuring out some things in relation to exams, he randomly started yelling at me.

He says I’m wasting his money and my time on this course. Why? He wholeheartedly believes that my college only teaches people how to change a stranger’s kid’s diaper, serve the kids lunch, and babysit. This comes out of the mouth of a man who’s never been a real parent to anyone.

Sure, he demanded to hold newborn baby me, tried feeding infant me with solids, and played with me a bit in my early childhood. He only did the fun bits. All of that stopped when I went to school.

Since then, it’s been only yelling, screaming, demeaning me, and throwing money at me for allowance. And he thinks that’s the way parenting works. His mommy taught him that men don’t parent, women do. It’s their place to be in the kitchen and be bedroom slaves—child-rearing subordinates that never talk until they’re talked to.

An hour ago, he got a call from an old high school friend. The friend inquired about us since he hasn’t seen us in years, but calls often. My dad first tried to answer with my current age. He usually misses it.

I’m 21 and he’ll always be off by a year. He said “20,” and got cut off by himself instantly switching to talk about his beloved 80-year-old mother who’s an equal piece of trash to him. He spoke about her for ten minutes. Then, he said that my mom was okay and working, then finally reverted back to talking about me.

“She’s studying some before-school child caring thing, some preschool caring. Yeah, maybe that, it’s called differently there. Can you believe that even exists? I had to ask her, do they really have a college course for babysitting!”

And his dumb self immediately busted into laughter. I was ready to rip off the 400-page book I’m preparing for my colloquium tomorrow. A man who has never parented thinks he knows what child care is.

A man who didn’t allow his child to be put in daycare for her own sake and who forced his wife to leave the said kid in his mother’s claws thinks he knows how daycares, kindergarten, and preschool function. I’m not supposed to be speechless, but I am enraged. Holy freaking cow! Reddit: timebomb969

DRINKING THE NIGHT AWAY

This is a story about a time when my dad was an entitled parent. It’s kinda long and detailed. If you’ve ever heard the song “Started From the Bottom” by Drake, you should know that my dad is a living testament to it.

He grew up very poor and in a bad neighborhood, but despite all the odds he was able to graduate high school, join the armed forces, get his Bachelor’s degree, retire as a Captain, and hold a number of high-paying management positions over the years.

Because of these experiences, he’s a firm believer in the principle of hard work, and he taught my sister and me to be respectful of others because we may end up walking through similar streets someday. But he goes overboard.

Paradoxically, my dad is also one of those annoying individuals who talks down to people that aren’t as accomplished as himself. He’s really good at belittling others on the sly. He also likes to believe that he is always the smartest person in the room and that nobody except himself offers anything of substance.

But sure enough, he gets on our case if we say something negative about someone else. Every single day, when he got home from work, he’d always tell stories of how he got to fire people or humiliate them.

At first, I thought the stories were funny and perfectly just. But over time, they started sounding more and more jerk-y, as if he was boasting about getting to mess with people’s lives. I honestly felt uncomfortable going out with him because he always gave people a hard time.

Didn’t have the exact items he wanted? He’ll talk to your manager. Things take longer than expected? You get an earful. Any mild inconvenience? Everyone is charged with a capital offense. He basically walked and talked as if the world owed him every single thing that he wanted.

One day, he pushed things too far. My family and I went out to eat at an IHOP on a Friday night. For the sake of the story, let’s pretend my name is “Slim.” I’m still in my work uniform when we go out. It had been a good day at work, which is kind of an important detail.

When we get in, the hostess says it would be about a 15 to 20-minute wait. My family is cool with it, and I’m cool with it. Not even ten minutes later, my dad tells the hostess that we’ve been waiting for 20 minutes and he demanded to know what was taking so long.

Seriously, Dad? You don’t see the 30 other families packed into the restaurant’s waiting area? Do you not hear the noise? I didn’t say anything, but my sister and I gave each other a knowing look. That “Dad’s about to start on that nonsense again” look.

The hostess, obviously having an already difficult night, maintains her customer service smile and tells him that it shouldn’t be much longer from now and will let us know immediately.

He stands against the wall. Five minutes later, a family pays for their meal and leaves, and we are directed to a table. My dad tells the server he doesn’t want to sit at that particular table and asks for a booth on the other side.

The hostess hesitates for a moment before telling him that the server responsible for that section has a huge party and that we may get a delay in service if we sit there. My dad tells her to put us there anyway. I notice a young man flying back and forth to the kitchen and his tables in our row.

I assumed this was our server. Sure enough, this man comes over, introduces himself, and takes our drink orders. Eight minutes later, we haven’t gotten our drinks. My dad flags him down and asks why our drinks haven’t come. Slightly reasonable, I say.

The server apologizes and gets our drinks. He returns, only to give us the wrong drinks. No big deal, honest mistake right? Nope, my dad is angry and sharply tells him to go re-do our drinks. The server asks what they were supposed to be once more.

I can see he’s a bit overwhelmed, so I just politely tell him what I wanted. That’s when my dad began to lose it. My dad tells him to write it down since he’s “too slow to remember.” Everyone looked at him in horror. Even the server was taken aback by this comment.

This didn’t seem to faze my dad, though. He returns with the drinks and takes our orders. My dad again tells him to write it down. My family is embarrassed and tries to lessen the hostility in any way possible. After the server leaves, my mom and sister berate my dad, telling him he’s embarrassing us.

Of course, my dad doubles down telling us “The customer is always right.” Some time passes and our food hasn’t arrived. I see the server running back and forth to the massive party in the neighboring room.

I think there were about 20 people in there, plus the three other families that he had to attend to in his section. To make sure he wasn’t leaving the rest of us out, he asked a fellow server to see if we wanted refills and the like.

The following interaction occurred. Fellow Server: “Hey, I’m Fellow Server. Just checking to make sure you’re all taken care of here. Can I get y’all any refills?” Dad: “Where’s our original server? Why couldn’t he come to do this himself?

Me, in my head: Again, are you freaking blind?? Fellow Server: “He’s currently bringing out food and drink orders to another party. I will assist him for the time being.” Dad: “That’s disrespectful! Why are they getting their food first? We’ve been waiting for ten minutes for our food. Where is it??”

Fellow Server: “Uhhhmm, I can go find out real quick. Give me a moment, sir.” Dad: “Hurry up!” Fellow Server raises an eyebrow and leaves. Me: “Dad, chill out. It’s clearly a busy night for them.” Dad: “Don’t back-sauce me, Slim. You don’t want to start with me.”

A few minutes pass, and our original server comes back with our food and apologizes for the wait. Original Server: “Hey everyone, I apologize for that wait. Taking care of a massive party, haha.” Dad: “That’s no excuse. We’ve been waiting!” Mom: *nudges Dad* “Hunny, stop.” Original Sever: “Terribly sorry about that sir, really.”

Our original server starts handing out the food. Dad: “Are you kidding me right now? My food is cold! We’ve been waiting ten minutes for our food to come. How long has our food been sitting out? It should be noted that my dad ordered something that really didn’t need to be served warm. Also, he only touched the plate.

Original Server: “I… I don’t think it’s been out too long, sir. We have a heating lamp that…” Dad: “Are you sweating?” Original Server: “Sir?” Dad: “You’re sweating everywhere!” Original Server: “I’ve been running back and forth. Not to mention the kitchen is hot.”

Dad: “I don’t want to hear excuses! You’re sweaty, and you’re getting it all over my food! Get me your manager, NOW!” Our jaws hit the floor. Our original server quietly goes for his manager. My dad, all angry-faced, starts talking about the “terrible” service and our “lazy, disgusting, and unprofessional” server.

Some people are looking over at us. My mom and sister looked like they wanted the earth to swallow them up. Meanwhile, I’m just boiling on the inside. Our original server comes back with the store manager.

Store Manager: “Hello everyone, is everything okay?” My dad proceeds to lay into the service and the server. Dad: “I have a number of things to say. Tonight I have had the worst service ever.” Off to a great start!

He continued: “My family and I have waited on drinks and they came out wrong. Our server gets another server to do HIS JOB for him because he’s too lazy to do it himself. When we get our food, our food is cold.

Apparently, we weren’t a priority for him. On top of that, he’s sweating in our food! That server has been a lazy, good-for-nothing, incompetent server the entire night and I’ve had it with him! I want our meals comped and this server needs to be fired!”

Store Manager: *wide-eyed* “Oh goodness… sorry about the trouble sir…” Our original server is standing next to the store manager throughout all of this, and he looks absolutely floored. He looked like he wanted to shed a tear.

Store Manager: “Here. I’ll take care of your meal, and here are some 30% off coupons.” But before he could continue with his offer, I decided that I had to do something. So, I cut him off. Me (standing up): “You know what, before all that, I need to say something.”

Me to Dad (paraphrasing): “I got to say, I’m impressed with how far you’re willing to go to be an absolute mega jerk at everyone’s expense. This entire night, and every other time we go out in public, whether it’s to eat or buy groceries, you make it your life’s mission to make everyone extremely uncomfortable.”

That got everyone’s attention. I continued: “What is it that makes you feel like you can do this? Is it the money you make? What about all that hot garbage you talk about humility and being respectful to everyone because we might end up walking similar streets?

Oh, it only applies to US, while you contradict everything you say? You’re absolutely disgraceful! How dare you embarrass yourself and your family with your abhorrent behavior!” Dad: “Are you cussing at me?” But I couldn’t stop there.

Me: “Shut up, I’m talking now! We’ve heard your voice all darn night. Lord knows I earned the right to speak! You see this uniform? You know I work at a restaurant too. You even told me to be careful when it comes to pretentious people. Yet here you are, behaving like one of them!

“This man has been running around doing his absolute best trying to make sure everyone is taken care of. He even recruited another server in order to make sure we were good and looked after. But if you’d take your head out your own behind, you’d understand that. But no. We didn’t even wait long for our food.

You’re acting like we’re the only people in the packed restaurant, and everyone’s watching you be a jerk about it! Yes, the man is sweating, but none of that sweat touched the food, as he brought it on a tray AWAY FROM HIS BODY!”

“We are sick and tired of you acting like a snobby arrogant idiot every time we go out somewhere. You’re not impressing anybody and no one wants to be seen with you!” I then did something that I kinda regret after my anger subsided.

Me (at the peak of my anger): “And your food… *pushes plate into his lap* …DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO BE WARMED UP, IT’S A FREAKING SALAD!” At this moment, I snap out of it. I realize that the entire restaurant has gone quiet.

The manager, the server, and everyone around us are looking at me, absolutely stunned. The big party was all eyes. My mom and sister looked like they turned to stone. My dad’s expression is something that has now been forever etched into my mind.

I was 6’2” tall at the time and was really non-confrontational and soft-spoken. So for me to get as loud and imposing as I had was an unfamiliar sight for my folks to see. My dad, with the plate of salad dumped in his lap, looked like he wanted to beat me behind, poop bricks, and crawl under the table all at once. It was unforgettable.

I wanted to drive my point home, so I dug into my wallet and pulled out $120 from the tips I had earned at work that night. I handed half of it to the store manager and told him not to comp the meal and that it was on me.

The other half, I gave to the original server and apologized for causing trouble. I looked at my family and told them I had lost my appetite and that I’ll be waiting in the car.

The restaurant was murmuring when I left, and I sat in the car trying to process what the heck I had just done. But what happened next was the most surprising part of all. We didn’t talk about it afterward, but this event seemed to have clicked something in my dad’s head, as I never again heard him give people unwarranted trouble again.

So yea, my dad was a flaming entitled jerk, but then I put him in his place and he changed his ways. And everyone clapped (just kidding). To end this, I wanted to add a proverb of sorts from the Netherlands. “A customer is king as long as they behave in a royal fashion.” Reddit: kittenx

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

My obnoxious father-in-law randomly decided to ask my husband if I had a drinking problem…because I had two glasses of something very light at dinner when he was here visiting and I had work the next morning. I know, I know, the horror!!

Maybe be concerned if you saw me more than once every few years and I had a true problem or if I was harming myself or other people by driving a vehicle afterward? But I’m a 32-year-old ADULT having a casual drink at my own darn dinner table.

I’m gonna enjoy my weekday drink and go to work the next morning completely unphased because two glasses of something very light doesn’t even get me at all tipsy.

It’s especially unfortunate, too, because this was the first time that we saw him in almost two years after an awful trip, and I was actually trying my hardest to give him a second chance. But nope. He really is a piece of trash human. Reddit: piekaylee

FIGHTING BACK

My wife and I had a name picked out for our daughter only a few months into the pregnancy. It resonated with us from the start. We did not tell anyone the name until after the baby was born. This is our first child.

Everyone seems to like the name, including my siblings, uncles, aunts, and my mother. It is a very pretty sounding and relatively unique name, at least where we live. There’s just one problem…

My dad absolutely hates the name for cultural reasons. He has always been quite objectively a narcissist, as well as emotionally manipulative and damaging. We are culturally Hindu, and the name has some Arabic and Islamic roots, which is a problem for my dad.

Ironically, the name also has many other roots, including Sanskrit (which is Hindu), as well as Basque and Japanese. None of those details matter to my dad, though. In his mind, he cannot stand that it is associated with another religion in any way.

Even though my wife and I are not particularly fond of the culture associated with the name, we really don’t care that the name may be associated with it historically. We just happen to love the name. My dad has been harassing me nonstop since we told him about this plan.

And, as you can imagine, this is the last thing we want to deal with, on top of the pressures and stresses of dealing with a newborn that we already have. All this went down about a day after the baby was born. He is saying he can’t sleep because he is so upset over the name.

He has called it a disgrace to our heritage and culture. He is now saying he won’t talk to me at all or be involved in our lives anymore until we change the name. Typical manipulation tactic.

I basically told him the name is our decision, we are not changing it, and we don’t want him involved at all if this is how he plans to behave. I also told him not to speak to anyone on my wife’s side of the family about this. I have not been getting my wife too involved in this because, again, this is the last thing I want on her mind.

I have learned to deal with his manipulation tactics, but the odds are that he won’t come around on this one. However, we made it clear that we are not willing to change the name. I asked a lot of people for their thoughts on this situation, and the clear unanimous response has been that I should cut my father off.

That is essentially what has since happened. He confirmed that he will no longer speak to me or be involved in my daughter’s life until I change the name. I simply said, “Okay.” He hasn’t spoken to us since and I have no intention of contacting him.

It is fairly easy to manage so far, since he doesn’t live in the same city as us and can’t visit anyway because of the strict restrictions here right now. He has done this before and usually caves within a few months.

He may reach out in a few months and, if he does, I will have to set some very strict boundaries for him that he is not allowed to cross, or else I will go full no contact with him and he will not get to see his granddaughter. Reddit: anonymous50002

NOT SEEING EYE TO EYE

A little background: My dad has had severe anger issues throughout my entire life. Because of this and how he’d take out his anger, I grew up to be scared of his temper. He’s a cool guy when he’s not mad, but he just gets super mad a lot.

Even now in my mid-20s, I’m scared of his temper. I was trained throughout my childhood to just keep quiet and keep my head down until he was done with his fit. However, my husband and I moved in with him a couple of months ago to save money so we could eventually buy a house for ourselves.

My dad can’t stand my husband though. That’s because my husband doesn’t act like I do, i.e. timid when my dad is around. So my dad hates him for that and will go out of his way to pick fights with him. My husband usually doesn’t argue back per se, he only tries to explain or defend himself. It’s honestly a terrifying situation.

I’ve been very bad at standing up for him before, because honestly I’m just terrified and my natural response is to shut down when in these situations. I know this makes me a bad wife, but I’ve been trying very hard to do better. I’m just so scared. We’re moving into an apartment in about a month.

It’s already lined up, and now we just have to wait for the previous tenants to move out. I also found out last week that I’m pregnant. My husband and I haven’t told anyone yet, and we don’t plan on doing so until we are past at least the 12-week mark. Now here’s what happened yesterday.

So for the past few days, my dad has been in a really bad mood practically all the time. Yesterday, he started yelling at my husband over something to do with the mail. I don’t really know what started it to be fully honest, but my dad was screaming at my husband at the top of his lungs.

My husband said he had had enough, and that he wasn’t going to stand for my dad treating him like that anymore. That just made things so much worse. It really set off my dad and he tried to get in his face to scream at him even louder.

I immediately stepped in between them and stayed there as a physical barrier to make sure nothing bad happened. And for the first time in my life, I stood up to my dad. I wish I could say it was a loud confrontation, full of righteous fury, just like in my most satisfying daydreams.

But I can’t. In a soft but audible voice, I stood there between them and told my dad he shouldn’t, and couldn’t, yell at my husband like that. I explained that there was no reason to yell at him and that what he was accusing my husband of was untrue.

He then tried to argue with me, turning the target of his yelling onto me, but I kept my head down and simply repeated myself. I repeated myself again and again as I sent my husband into another room to keep him out of the crossfire. My dad tried to argue, but I repeated myself until he retreated into his room.

I just sat there after they left. I was shaking so badly I couldn’t use my hands, trying desperately not to cry. My stomach has been in knots since then, and I’m a little worried about the baby. I’ve been feeling cramps since the argument.

I’m just glad that I’ve got an appointment in a couple of days. I think he tried to apologize to me afterward. He even offered to pay for an item that my husband and I have been saving up for. I told him we weren’t sure we were even going to get it anymore, and thanked him for the thought.

We’ve all just been kind of ignoring the whole incident since then, even though I’m still feeling so tense because of it. When I tell this story, I never know if I’m asking for advice, reassurance, or what.

But if you’ve read this far, I just want to say thank you for letting me get this off my chest. It’s been a wild ride, to say the least. Reddit: RainyDaysMakeMeSmile

BAD ROOMMATES

My father-in-law completely overstepped a line today and I need to vent about it. My husband wanted to go up with the kids for a long weekend to the in-laws who live 3 hours away on a remote horse breeding property.

For context, our kids are 15-month-old twins. Now, we couldn’t go up for the full three days because the night before I got a call letting me know that my grandmother and last living grandparent had passed.

She lived on the other side of the world with no family there, so we stayed behind to support my parents and let them have a day with the babies as a distraction while I looked at some funeral and estate issues on their behalf. Last little bit of backstory: I have OCD, depression, and anxiety.

I’m very open about it and very strict about my management of it. I have two different support teams, medication, a mothers’ support program, and a child programme so that my kids get two days of free childcare for two months so that I can apply for work and clean and recover with less chaos from the kids.

Okay, now that you know all that, here goes. So we come up to see the in-laws yesterday. Things seem okay at first—but it was just the calm before the storm.

We soon realize that nothing in their house is baby-proofed and the only thing they have for the kids are some un-mattressed portacots and some of the toys my husband and his sister had when they were infants.

My mother-in-law spent most of the first day just trying to force-feed my kids and tell them that they needed to eat more. At dinner, I ask if there’s anything I could get from the kitchen for them as I cook their meals at home so we didn’t bring any instant food up.

She says dinner will be ready in an hour and till then there’s nothing for them to have. Ten minutes later, my husband goes in desperately asking for just bread and butter or something so we can feed them before bath time.

She starts yelling at him and claiming that we’re pressuring her and that there’s nothing ready and they need to wait. Finally, she calms down and we can get the kids some food.

They get fed, and then my mother-in-law once again starts insisting that they’re still hungry, even when the boys are pushing the food out of their mouths. I take them away, bathe them, give them their bedtime story, and they get left to go to sleep like they always do at home.

I come to check on them five minutes later—and I couldn’t believe what I saw. My mother-in-law is in there feeding them bloody apple purée! Whatever. I let it go. But now we get to what just happened today.

You might have a hard time believing it. The boys woke up at 3:00 in the morning from pain and we couldn’t settle them until close to 5:00. Guess it was synchronized teething and growth spurts, yay twins! In the morning, my in-laws mention that the syringe we use to dole out pain medication sucks in air, so we should “be careful.”

My husband makes a light joke about their tone being a bit intense, and at that point, my father-in-law absolutely flips his lid. He yells at my husband, saying “When we’re OFFERING ADVICE (he wasn’t), we’re not insulting you! We have more than 30 years of experience with this stuff! You don’t like the tone? GET OVER IT!”

We were shocked, but let it go at first. However, I warned my husband that if his dad had another outburst like that, we were leaving. Afternoon: one of the kids bites me. He’s never done it before, but he leaves a mark.

I tell my father-in-law about this and, to my utter shock, he says: “You have to bite him back. It’s the only way to make it stop. We did it to your husband when he did that.” I calmly replied: “I’m not going to bite my infant child, thank you very much.” I should have seen the red flags right there.

Lunchtime comes. We take the boys out for a walk in very padded fur-lined onesies. Once we get back, I peel them off the kids and leave them in just their nappies because they were red-skinned underneath from being so warm.

My father-in-law comes over to “help feed them” and immediately says: “Dress him.” I reply: “It’s fine, it’s just for lunch.” He shouts: “Dress him now. He’s cold!” I say: “No he isn’t, it’s just for lunch.” He says: “He NEEDS to be BUNDLED UP!” I say: “Father-in-law, I would appreciate not being spoken to like that.”

He repeats: “DRESS HIM NOW!” I reply: “If this is really this big an issue, I’m more than happy to just leave.” At this point, my husband steps in. This now devolves into my father-in-law saying our routine for the kids “doesn’t work for anyone.” He also claimed that the kids are a disaster and that we don’t know what we’re doing.

At this point, I was seeing red. I tell him he sees the kids at most four times a year, so how the heck would he have any idea what my routine is like when they’re home in a place where their mother is RESPECTED and able to be their mother without people interfering.

My husband is physically holding me back at this point. I start packing up the car and loading up the kids while my mother-in-law is sobbing that she doesn’t want us to go. My father-in-law is then telling my husband that my depression is making me “dangerous” around my kids, and that I’m clearly not coping well or capable of handling this job.

I missed the rest because I was clicking in the kids’ seatbelts in the car, but my husband came out and told me that he had asked his father to apologize. I told him: “I don’t need a disingenuous apology.”

Nevertheless, my father-in-law quickly comes out and unemotionally states: “I’m sorry if I upset you with what I said, but if I think something needs to be said I will. At least we’ve cleared the air.” I scoffed and just walked back to my kids. I’m furious. I’ve never been so darn insulted in all my life.

And in the six years, I’ve been with my husband, I have always tried my hardest to be respectful when we visit his parents. I would help with the chores and the horses.

I would travel up to help my mother-in-law when she was super mentally ill and I was pregnant. I’ve already had my sister-in-law talk seriously smack to them about me because “my house isn’t clean enough to be up to her personal standards.”

And even after all that, my mother-in-law still had the gall to text us when we got home and argue that her husband was in the right, and that we should be more open to people trying to give us advice.

Like, as if she didn’t see the way he acted towards us? Yea, sorry but I’m not changing the way I live my life or raise my kids just because someone thinks I’m a bad parent when they see us four times a year at best and can’t even tell which twin is which. I’m done. Reddit: HouseWife93

DOCTOR’S ORDERS

My father-in-law got kicked out and still doesn’t understand why. This happened a few weeks ago now and I figured I’d post about it to kinda cope with the situation. So late September or early October, my father-in-law moved in with my husband, our two-year-old, and myself.

It went okay at first. My husband had told me that his dad wouldn’t use his substances in our house. I had grown up with someone who had a serious substance problem and I wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea that my child would be around something similar.

That and him keeping his room clean were the only rules that we had. He did good with those rules for the first week or so…and then things went south really fast. My father-in-law has always had a problem with me.

I didn’t graduate high school because my mental illness got to the point that I had to go to the hospital. I had “ugly” face piercings, and I took his baby boy away from him in his eyes. Just an entire list that any normal person would have gotten over at some point because I make my husband happy. He just couldn’t let it go.

For months, he would make sly comments under his breath about my parenting, about how the food I cooked wasn’t to his liking, or about how I only cleaned after my toddler went to bed.

I had told my husband for a while that I just wanted him gone. I had my problems with him. It’s not really a big deal, but to me it was, for Christmas 2019. He got my husband a $400 radio that he had put time and effort into looking for. Nothing for my child. And for me? He got me something that cost $3 at the dollar store.

He literally saw it two weeks later and just thought “This will be good.” It doesn’t matter, but he clearly just held his son in a higher regard than his grandson. I would say about a month ago, he blew up.

My toddler was being loud because he liked the cartoon that was on TV and my father-in-law got upset about this. He had been sleeping for the past four days at that point, and I was apparently the reason that his sleep was interrupted.

So he said “This is garbage, I’m trying to sleep. Make that freaking kid shut the heck up.” I blew. I told him to get his stuff and leave. I texted my husband to get him out or the kid and I wouldn’t be returning home.

My husband sided with me and kicked out his dad. Yeah, I may have been a jerk about the situation, but later that night we were looking for evidence for confirmation of my suspicion about him using illicit substances in our house.

Turns out I was right. He was not only making his substances in our house, but was also using when no one was home. I was enraged and saw red. I blocked him on all social media, and advised my husband to do the same. He hasn’t, because he wants his dad to get his stuff out of our house first.

So at this point, our house is ours again. Now, he is apparently still talking smack about me to people, and can’t seem to understand that it was his actions that made him homeless. This man literally does not take responsibility for his actions. He blames me for his actions, but I had the last laugh. Reddit: society_got_mexx

TRICK OR TREAT

Background: I’m 20 weeks pregnant, for starters. This past Friday, I went to the ER because I swell up horribly, and when I’m laying down I can’t breathe. They don’t know what is wrong with me, but they put me on bed rest for a week. And I’m now only allowed to lift 15 pounds for the rest of my pregnancy.

This is where the real story begins. I was sitting in the kitchen with my sister-in-law, waiting for my mother-in-law to finish changing so that I could take them to the tanning bed.

I’m just sitting in the lobby reading while I wait on them, and out of nowhere my father-in-law starts attacking us about how we’re lazy and how we never do anything. I cut him off because I can’t do anything right now. I tell him I’m on bed rest for the next week, and start struggling to breathe after the second sentence.

I then tell him that I can’t lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for the rest of my pregnancy. He completely ignores the first part, and says there are plenty of things I can do aside from lifting heavy stuff.

My sister-in-law and I both tell him that I’m on bed rest. He then starts tearing into my sister-in-law, because she’s allegedly lazy too. My sister-in-law has asthma, they won’t fix the air conditioner, and she’s been sick with food poisoning for the last three days.

She has been babysitting one of her parents’ coworkers’ kids every single day aside from that. She also does everything they ask of her. Her younger 14-year-old brother never gets called lazy or gets asked to do anything by them. He lays in bed all day, sleeping and playing video games.

When my father-in-law is done with his attacks on her, he jumps back onto me. So, I just walk out, telling him I’m following my doctor’s advice so that my baby will be born alive. Reddit: HiddenMeadows0524

BAD GRANDPA

So my husband and I flew to Florida for a short vacation and to see my step-son who had just moved down here a couple of months ago.

Since my husband’s mom also lives here and my husband’s birthday coincided with the visit, I decided that it might be nice if I treated the four of us and my mother-in-law’s long-term boyfriend out to a pretty fancy and not cheap dinner to celebrate the occasion.

We had a lovely dinner, successfully embarrassing my husband with a special birthday dessert complete with singing and all. When we were all finished, I clearly paid the check, as I had promised to do.

I did this despite my step-son trying to give me a $100 bill toward paying the check, which I appreciatively but absolutely rejected.  I was very touched by the gesture, but more mention it because the exchange was not subtle.

It was witnessed by everyone, so it was abundantly clear that I was the one paying the check and treating everyone to this lovely celebratory dinner. My husband then excused himself to go to the bathroom and we all started getting ready to leave the table, too.

Just then, my mother-in-law’s boyfriend says “Thank you guys!” Wait, guys?? Who does he mean by “guys”?  My husband wasn’t even present at this point, and I had obviously paid for everything myself. Guys? Okay, whatever. Don’t be so sensitive, right? But then, he dug in deeper.

We go to get our cars and as we are waiting for the valet to bring them around, my mother-in-law’s boyfriend goes over to my husband and thanks him directly, with a warm handshake, for buying him dinner!

My husband tries to tell him that it was all me, and that he didn’t have anything to do with it, but the boyfriend starts arguing: Oh, well yeah, but he knows it was really my husband and he appreciated it!!

What in the heck? I was standing right behind them, clearly hearing every word they were both saying. He didn’t say another word about it to me directly, even when my husband corrected him again, and even when I hugged him goodbye.

I know I should get over it, but I’m just annoyed and offended and insulted and feeling affronted on behalf of all women, and I’m hoping this rant gets me through it so I can stop thinking about it while I’m on vacation! Reddit: shiksagirl

GOING AWAY FOR A LONG TIME

This was a bad grandparent. So, I used to nanny two kids under three years old. The boy was very shy and cautious just by nature, and it took time for him to get used to new things and people.

His grandparents lived an hour away and would sometimes babysit. But of course, a two-year-old doesn’t really remember people they only see once every couple of months.

One day, the grandparents came over to babysit and brought a new kiddie pool. The boy had played in a kiddie pool as a baby the previous summer, but of course, he doesn’t remember that either, he’s two.

So the grandparents set up their gift, fill it with water, and I got the kids changed. I’d always stay an hour or so after the grandparents arrived to make sure the kids were comfortable with them first.

Grandpa was so excited for the little boy to see the gift… but the little boy wasn’t sure about it, because he’s basically never seen a pool before. I started getting him used to it, put his sister in, dipped my toes in, encouraged him to put his hand out and feel the water, etc.

It was taking time, but he was warming up. Well, grandpa ran out of patience. He grabbed the kid and just plopped him into the pool. The little boy immediately started panicking and crying, and then the grandpa started mocking him for crying about “a little water.”

I took the kiddo inside and told his parents what happened. Scaring the bejesus of a shy toddler is pretty bad, but mocking a baby for crying when he’s scared? That’s foul. Reddit: Permalink

CAREFUL WITH HIS WORDS

Recently, my dad was apprehended and taken to a secure hospital for mental health just before Christmas. He abandoned me as a baby and has five children who he doesn’t see.

He has been officially diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and is deteriorating fast with his newly developed case of dementia. The craziest part? He’ll never get out again.It’s clear that he will now spend the rest of his life in a secure unit.

My mother has now changed her name back to her maiden name to cut off any apparent connection to him. She is also changing all the bills into her own name. She is done with him forever. I am also done with him forever. And yet, there’s one thing that’s still bothering me.

I am starting to feel a pang of sadness for him. He is all alone, locked up, and no one wants to see him. Should I go and see him one last time? Or will it be too painful? My dad isn’t fully “gone” yet. But the social worker said he is deteriorating by the week now.

Oh yes, and it turns out my dear father fought my mother in court over maintenance for me and my brother. And because he paid for the best lawyers he could, he was ordered to pay 50 pence a week for us for our mother to take care of us while he didn’t have to.

As a result, my mother suffered for years and we lived in poverty. Meanwhile, he drove Jaguars and carried on with his fancy lifestyle. Reddit: SwordtoFlamethrower

COMING OF AGE

This is an old story, but I’m thinking about it a lot these days as I’m trying to process the downfall of my relationship with my father-in-law. My husband and I are currently in full no-contact mode with his family. I always knew that my father-in-law and his second wife were very conservative. I’m from the south and it happens.

My husband also warned me that his paternal grandmother in particular is extremely hateful towards certain minority groups. My extended family is from the Midwest and I always thought that people like her were just a made-up caricature of a Southern person.

Unfortunately, she is very real and has an unnecessary slur for every single person in the world who isn’t both white and Catholic. I started putting her in her place when she said slurs in front of me, and let her know that she is a hateful person.

The family just seemed uncomfortable during these moments, but never said anything. My father-in-law always swore that he wasn’t hateful like her. Yet, most times when I attended any kind of family function with them, the n-word slipped.

My father-in-law is very fond of telling a story involving his mother yelling the n-word at someone. Gross. My father-in-law tried to tell me that this is “just how she is,” and that I needed to accept it because she was old.

I reminded him that my own step-grandmother married an African-American man in the 1960s and is the same age as her, so age is not an excuse. I let them know that I expected them to be respectful during family gatherings and that I wouldn’t tolerate the continued use of insensitive slurs in front of me.

Christmas is a big deal for my in-laws and we used to always go over to my father-in-law’s place on Boxing Day. A few years ago, we were all sitting around after opening presents.

My father-in-law began to tell the dreaded n-word story. I got up in front of everyone, and visibly walked straight to the front door and walked out. I went to my mother’s house. My husband wasn’t in the room at the time and it took a full thirty minutes before anyone noticed that I was no longer in the house.

The kicker? My husband and I were supposed to accompany my father-in-law and the rest of the family on a vacation a week later. I told them that under no circumstances would I travel with them without a full apology for this incident.

My father-in-law came to my mother’s place the next day and “apologized,” though it was mostly rug sweeping. I will never forget the look in his eyes though, or the sneer on his face.

I know now that this was the beginning of the end of my relationship with him, because I actually held him accountable for his bad actions and I made him bother to apologize for being a hurtful, hateful human being.

I know now that this moment sparked his manipulation of my husband and attempt to break up my marriage. If someone swears up and down they aren’t hateful, but still use hateful words and laugh about it… then yea, they’re just hateful. Reddit: ThrowRAthrewmyloveaw

WHEN ONE DOOR OPENS, ANOTHER ONE CLOSES

My father has controlled me for 17 years and thinks I’ll keep contact after I turn 18. Here’s a bit of insight: My biological mom and biological dad divorced when I was around three or five years old. My mom remarried around that time and my dad remarried during my freshman year of high school.

My biological dad is very controlling, narcissistic, and emotionally manipulative. He has always been entitled and narcissistic. He loves to have control over anyone who he thinks is lesser than him. He’s had control over me, my brother, my mom, and my brother’s mom.

Although I would love to mention the awful things he’s done to my brother, this story is about how he’s treated me and my mom. My mom always told me it was a mistake that she married my dad. She would tell my stepdad that I would end up finding out how awful my dad is eventually.

She was right. My dad would control my mom. Who she saw, what she would wear, where she would go, and more. A couple of vivid stories that I remember involve times when my mom was wearing a tank top and she wanted to leave the house.

He told her to go and change and that she couldn’t wear that out of the house. He would also prevent her from going to church so that she wouldn’t meet any other men.  She ended up meeting my stepdad at work.

Growing up, I was kind of a daddy’s girl. I didn’t see my dad as evil until I got older. In middle school, I had a cat named Mr.Kittles. Mr. Kittles would run away often. One of the ways he got out was jumping a large white fence in the backyard. I was outside with my dad and Mr. Kittles one time and I saw him trying to jump the fence.

I grabbed a hold of him before he got over. My dad told me just to let the cat go because “he clearly didn’t want to be here.” My dad ended up taking him to the vet without a carrier, even though we had one, and I never saw him again. There were also times when he was blatantly offensive around me and even towards me.

I came out to my stepmom (his wife) one time and she immediately outed me to my dad even though I had specifically asked her not to. He was upset with me and banned me from having sleepovers with anyone, including the best friend I’d had for eight years at the time.

I cried for three days and my mental health was awful. I was later hospitalized because of my mental health and I told them he was emotionally harmful to me. He got mad at me for this, and told me not to call him that even though it was true.

Once, I bought a cropped hoodie and I was feeling confident about my stomach because I wasn’t as chubby then. He told me to never wear that at his house and never to bring it over again. I continue to wear a different crop hoodie that is oversized on me.

I posted a mental health positivity post on Twitter and mentioned my experience with depression. I mentioned an object that he had in the house, and the thoughts that I had whenever I saw it. In the post, I never specified what the object was.

Nevertheless, he found the post and told me to deactivate all of my social media accounts because “it made him look bad.” That was the first time I ever said no to him in my entire life. He told me not to post stuff like that because I’m still severely depressed and that it was a bad idea.

I’ve made so much progress and don’t consider myself to have major depression anymore. He insists that using social media will make me want to harm myself, even though I haven’t had any desire to do anything like that in many months, so it would be a very small chance that I’d ever want to again.

I’ve come such a long way. I wanted to stay home alone this weekend and my mom made me ask my dad for permission. I was terrified to say anything to him because his immediate answer would obviously be no. I have a car and a job, and I go to school for culinary, so I can easily make my own meals.

His reaction was so over the top and I know he’s going to yell at me when I go over next. Basically, he asked my mom if me saying alone was a joke to him because of my history with depression. Honestly, I’m much more depressed when I’m at my dad’s place than I am alone.

I’m absolutely miserable there. I’m 17 years old and he expects me to keep in contact with him every second of my life and see him constantly even after I turn 18. He told me I should continue to live with him when I go off to college.

I told him that that is not happening. He always tells me that I’m able to make my own choices, but what he really means is that I can make my own choices if it means I will “choose” to be with him. These stories aren’t even all of them. There’s so much more that he’s done and said.

So much he’s done to make me and my mom feel guilty in various ways at many different points in our lives. He has always had constant control of me and I’m now saving my own money to get my own things and live on my own. I’m done with him and I’m just waiting until I can finally escape for good. Reddit: LittleLion72

SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE IS UNWELL

Three years ago, my father-in-law decided that he wanted to bring over his new wife’s kids from another country. He barely made enough money to cover all of his own expenses, but the wife must have insisted on it.

Because my father-in-law and his wife didn’t make enough money to be sponsors on their own, they asked my husband if he could help. Except they lied up their behinds about the repercussions of being a sponsor and downplayed the seriousness and full extent of what they were asking him to do.

Luckily, my family had gone through the sponsorship process with my brother-in-law several years ago, so I saw right through their lies and warned my husband before it was too late.

I informed my husband about what responsibility he would actually be taking on, and he rightfully didn’t want to risk anything for two people that he had never even met in his life.

A few days ago, it was brought up in a conversation with my husband’s stepdad. He casually mentioned that my father-in-law and his wife had told my husband’s grandparents that it was all my fault that he wouldn’t help.

I probably would have cared a little back then, but now it just cracks me up at how entitled and delusional this guy can be. I’m so glad he has shown his true colors time and time again, because we can easily shut down his unreasonable requests for money or assistance now without hesitation or guilt.

I don’t mind being viewed as the bad guy, and luckily my husband will always prioritize our relationship over his family. It was a journey to get here, but here we are. Reddit: AiyahNoNoNo

THE ART OF THE CONCEAL

My future father-in-law is using my disease against me. I’m really stressed out and frustrated because my long-term boyfriend’s family is going to a wedding this weekend and I stated that I didn’t want to come along because I have multiple sclerosis.

Recently, some new studies came out about further complications that people in my condition can have an autoimmune disease if they are exposed to certain things at public gatherings. Plus, I think having a big wedding during a global health crisis isn’t a great idea, to begin with.

My future father-in-law is now holding it against me that I previously went to some political protests. I feel like my ability to self-govern my own health is being taken away from me. Like I should be able to make decisions on what I feel comfortable doing and no one else should have a say in that.

But nevertheless, my future father-in-law is trying to guilt-trip me into going to this indoor wedding. I got diagnosed with my condition earlier this year, in April, and it’s already hard enough having MS and other health problems.

So having someone that doesn’t understand what it’s like tell me the “right” and “wrong” ways to be sick, just makes me wanna slam my head against the wall in frustration.

My boyfriend is 100% supportive of me and is trying his best to explain the situation to his father. We’ve sent my future father-in-law a series of links to relevant articles and studies.

My boyfriend is a people pleaser and loves his family, so he doesn’t allow himself to be stern with them. As a result, I just come off as a jerk when I get involved. Usually, I don’t really give a hoot, but for some reason, he’s trying to use my own health against me really bothers me. Reddit: michaelakuntz

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

My dad is like a bull in a China shop when it comes to feelings, and I’m done coddling him. I’m going through a big, painful growth period and I’ve decided that I’m done living my life for other people. I’m very deeply taking stock of what it is that makes me happy and what I like instead of what I think others will approve of.

Also, I’m almost 30 freakin’ years old, so I’m really past the point when I should have already done this. As a symbol of my growth, I added on to an old tattoo. The tattoo is on my upper thigh and is only visible when I’m in shorts, shorter skirts, and dresses, or bathing suits.

Not that it matters. Because I love it and I decided that I wanted to add art to my body. I did a lot of research to find the right artist who specializes in exactly what I wanted, then went by myself to get it done. And the experience was very cathartic.

I didn’t tell my parents about the tattoo. Didn’t tell them what I planned on doing, or when it was done. And I only started wearing shorts around them once it was fully healed. I wasn’t afraid of their reactions, but I didn’t want them to try and talk me out of it.

I showed the tattoo to my mom a few days before I showed it to my dad. He saw it today and just goes “You got a new tattoo” and I said, well it’s the same one, I just added to it. And then he replied: “You know, you’re starting to look really promiscuous.”

I was able to just ignore that comment in the moment, but I felt really awful about it afterward. Because whatever I thought the reaction would be, I didn’t expect my dad to call me something like that.

I still love my tattoo, but I don’t think he’s realized yet that he has just added more padding to the wedge that was already there between us. Reddit: seinfeldon

YOUR MINI-ME

I work for the troops, which is semi-important to the story. My sister is going through the same training that I went through. With that said, I only get x amount of vacation days a month each month and, like most things, I can’t go into the negatives of accumulated days.

My sister is graduating from boot camp next week and wants me to go and attend the ceremony. One issue is that I’m getting married in March, and I’m taking a lot of vacation days for the celebration. But also, I want to be there for my sister on her big day.

But due to financial and vacation day issues, I can’t go to both the graduation and my wedding. I’m going back home for my wedding, which will be very expensive and time-consuming, so both are simply not possible.

Now, right after graduating, my sister will have to go to tech school (training class for her job) and she’ll be in training for at least two more months. And then more training at her first base.

The only time she’d be able to take a vacation during that time at all is two weeks in between her going from her tech school base to her first base. After that, she’s in training for at least six months straight. Here’s where my dad comes in…and makes everything a problem.

My dad wants me to reschedule the wedding so that I can go to the graduation, and so that she can go to the wedding. Ordinarily, this would make perfect sense, but everything is already paid for and booked and has been for a while now.

After I told my father about these issues, he said something so to “pull the veteran card to reschedule and get a refund.” Now, I barely even like asking for discounts at places, let alone doing something like this.

After I said I wouldn’t do that, he dug in even further. He started guilt-tripping me and saying I’m a bad brother because I wouldn’t reschedule my wedding so that my sister could go and so that I could go to her graduation.

He goes to these extremes every time he brings it up. I keep telling him that I can’t do anything about it and he makes the guilt-tripping even worse. I just don’t know what to do anymore. He’s had people in our family who are veterans yell at him, basically backing me up and saying the same thing, but he just basically ignores it.

I just want this to be done and over with because this has been stressing me out so badly that it’s affecting my personal and work life. It is putting my stress and anxiety through the roof. Reddit: Ryr42

DARWIN’S LOTTERY

My father-in-law is a jerk to our baby. A little backstory: my father-in-law hates me for no real reason. My husband suspects it is because I am not as submissive as he expects women to be.

My husband also says it is because I have an advanced degree, a good job, and I was well-established with my own home before I met my husband. He says this “intimidates” his dad.

In terms of how he treats me, he basically ignores me entirely, even when I talk directly to him. So I basically just don’t talk to him anymore, because what’s the point? I don’t particularly like how he treats my husband either. He makes him feel guilty for not spending time with him, but the man NEVER calls or comes to see us either.

The phone and roads work both ways. My husband’s mother, who lives 2,000 miles away, has visited us more than his dad, who is only a 40-minute drive away. Anyway, to get to the point, we had a baby six weeks ago.

His dad did come to visit us in the hospital, which was honestly a shock to me. I was exhausted, but I kept a smile on my face and tried to engage him. His reaction was chilling. He came in the door, didn’t even glance at the baby, sat in a chair, and watched football on the TV.

His wife even told him to look at the baby and hold her, to which he simply said “I’ve seen pictures” and went on watching football and talking about his fantasy league. He didn’t ask us anything about how the labor or delivery went, whether we needed anything, if she was healthy, or ANYTHING.

Just football. When he left, my husband got teary-eyed and said to the baby: “I’m sorry your grandpa is so rude, baby girl,” and I literally burst into tears. Granted, I had been up for nearly 40 hours at this point. But still.

There’s something else that really grinds my gears. He has nine other grandkids and he is not like this towards any of them. For example, he has posted to Facebook a photo of them holding them at all their births.

He posts photos of them all the time, brings them presents, etc. He dotes on them. But he is ambivalent and rude to our baby? Just because he doesn’t like me? She is a BABY! She has done nothing to deserve that. It’s heartbreaking.

I told my husband I was never going out of my way to see that man again and he agreed there was no point in putting in extra effort, but I know he is hurt. This was six weeks ago and I’m still so mad about it.

Every time my husband mentions him, I just see red. As if that wasn’t bad enough already, there is another part of the story that paints the picture even better. After she was born, our daughter had to stay in the hospital for an extra five days and was nearly admitted to the newborn ICU.

My Facebook is pretty small. I basically only have friends and close family members on there. So I had been using it to keep everyone updated, but not with the specific details. Just posts like “We are still in the hospital, but hope to be home soon. Thanks for everyone’s support.”

The man NEVER called his son the entire week to even see what was wrong, if she was home when she was coming home, etc. UGH! That jerk! Suffice it to say that I am very hurt by his actions and I definitely don’t want to associate with him anymore. Reddit: CardMath

BABYFACE

I was a lifeguard for four years in my teens. Long story short, parents expect the lifeguards to do their job for them. Either they just drop their kids off, or they don’t pay attention. So this was a city pool. We didn’t have too many terrible things, but we still saw our fair share of weird stuff.

This guy, who was probably in his late 20 or early 30s, dove headfirst into the very shallow kiddie pool. I saw it, blew the whistle, and gave him a head shake. He acknowledged, rubs his chest because he scraped it on the bottom, and I thought it was over with.

Five minutes later, he dives headfirst into the kiddie section of the pool again. I blow the whistle, call him over, and talk to him sternly about how I’m not reprimanding him for any other reason than that I don’t want to have to backboard him for a spinal.

The guy agrees, says it was stupid, apologizes, and walks away. Cue screw-up number three. The guy walks away from me and over to this six-foot water slide we have for the little kids. This is the cutest water slide, but it still towers over its primary users—two-year-olds.

Along his way to the slide, the guy scoops up what I assume is his son and puts him at the top of the slide, still standing up. This kid couldn’t be more than two or three years old and had floaties on and all.

The guy points at me and over the regular pool ruckus, I hear him yell, “See that lifeguard? He told me he wants you to jump off the side of the slide.” He then proceeds to point at the concrete. I see the kid’s knees buckle as he goes to jump, and my heart sinks like a rock to my stomach.

I immediately shoot out of my chair and yell “HEYYYY!”. Two things of note: First, as a guard, you’re never to stand on your tower unless you see someone in apparent danger. This is so other guards have a clear sign that something’s going down and know to pay attention and get help.

Second, I have a deep voice. A VERY deep voice. I’m usually quiet, but when I get angry, I utilize it to my advantage. As what one of my friends later described as “The Voice of God” echoes across the pool, the entire place falls quiet.

The guy immediately puts his son down on the ground and starts walking toward me. I call over my manager, explain it all, and she (not the brightest of managers) tells him he will be removed by the authorities after any other incidents. He apologizes, then goes on about his pool experience.

Two hours later, I’m in the five-foot section, which is the deepest aside from the 12-20-foot sections. The guy is walking along with his friends, sees me in the chair, and goes, “Watch this.” I’m still surprised he didn’t say “Hold my drink” instead.

He runs and dives in really deep. Screw up numero cuatro, reporting for duty. In front of his son, who was behind the legs of some other guy and peeks out after his dad submerges, the guy floats up to the surface of the pool—face down and unresponsive.

We had to evacuate the pool, stabilize, and backboard him. The guy kept entering his name into Darwin’s Lottery, and won. It was going to happen eventually, it was just a matter of time. Reddit: Bot_Kebn

DRIVING ME CRAZY

Lay back, buckle the heck up, get those popcorn packs ready, and tune into this new episode of “What is this 60-year-old baby crying about now?” Side note, I think this manchild needs a nickname, and I would be very open to your propositions and suggestions. Here’s the story.

My mom’s birthday is coming up. Per usual, my idiot dad forgot about it. Screw the fact that they’ve been married for more than 22 years, right? He forgets it every single year. His mommy’s? He recruits both my mom and myself FIFTEEN DAYS AHEAD OF TIME to find her a gift every year.

He throws some money at us, usually a fifth of the whole cost of whatever we need to buy. And then he always spits on every gift we select. Even though Grandma the Grinch is a piece of trash most times, she surprisingly likes her gifts more often than not. But that’s all besides the point, sorry.

Last year this jerk made my mom cry on her birthday. He started yelling and screaming at her before 6:00 in the morning. He was calling her names. I’d also had a huge fight with him just two days prior to that event.

So he turned around and called me a slur for lesbians. Why? I’m a 21-year-old female who happens to be bisexual, but nobody knows. He was mad because I’d never brought a boyfriend home for them to meet.

I’ve had two short relationships with two idiots who only thought about themselves and how to drag me into bed. They were also similar jerks to my father, so I ended things about a month into each relationship. I know, I really won the lottery in my picks.

Anyway, I stay away from dating now because of my dad, how he treated me, and being terrified of meeting someone similar. Plus, there’s a lot of baggage that comes from toxic, dysfunctional, and generally harmful parents and households.

This year, my mom got an offer from her parents. She and I would swing by their place for lunch on her birthday. My good grandma was insistent, but my mom wasn’t feeling it.

Instead, she suggested that she’d take out the four of us (as in me, my dad, my good grandma, and the Grinch) to a small restaurant here, less than a five-minute drive away. If everyone agreed, we would order ahead and organize it all somehow. My mom proposed it to my dad.

His response was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. He was lying down as usual. When he heard this suggestion, his legs went up in the air like a toddler kicking. He threw the remote down and started letting out the throatiest yell I have ever heard in my entire life. Screeching and all.

Poor him would have to go among people when the virus is still there, even though cases here have been going down for months. We have sanitizers, and masks are necessary at this restaurant.

Mind you, this is the same man who is “deathly afraid” of catching it, but he goes maskless to work. He drinks and eats ordered catering at work and also has drinking binge sessions with his boss. Don’t even ask.

This is also the same man who nearly tore my head off when I didn’t take and pass all my exams a month after the lockdown ended when I myself was terrified of getting sick. He also yelled at me when I got the flu amidst changing seasonal weather (e.g. severe rain and severe heat in August) because I went to university “to take exams.”

And then he had the gall to turn around and basically say screw me and my own health, while simultaneously lecturing me about how I’m exposing poor him and his mommy.

He had also literally just taken her to a church choir practice with more than 20 elderly people there from different backgrounds and social circles, all singing in close proximity and without masks…

He spent an unhealthy amount of time yelling and throwing tantrums. Like full-blown kiddy tantrums. It was scary at first—then it was just sad. Somehow, I think he’s actually regressing in his level of maturity.

His behavior here was similar to and looked like tantrums thrown by the young kids I used to work with. Now, as far as the birthday situation went, you might wanna ask if he tried reasoning with us or bringing up a new, alternate suggestion to the one he had such a problem with.

He had a new idea. Why shouldn’t my mom, whose birthday it was, spend yet another weekend in a row slaving away over a stove just so he could have a good lunch; not to mention giving his mommy a day off from preparing one for him.

That way, he can go back to laying down and watching TV later. I kid you not. That was his idea. So at that moment, I take a deep breath. And I say that would be a good idea! I ask if he has planned out a menu for this meal.

I remind him that he only has a couple of days to plan out the menu, buy the groceries, and make his own freaking lunch because the rest of us are planning on going to my good grandma’s house and his baby self will starving by himself.

His eyes widened like he was about to unleash like never before. He shouted: “I did more than enough!!” I said: “So you spent an awful lot of time gift-searching, right? Got her a gift and all?” He replied: “I did.” I asked: “Where is it?” He said: “I gave it to her.”

He then threw a small amount of money at her to cover the cost of a super cheap necklace she had ordered for herself. The same necklace he had taunted her about and brought up during a fight the previous weekend. I tell him that’s not really gift-giving, just being a lazy husband.

He then talked himself out the door, trying to justify to himself that he had done more than enough. I yelled back that I couldn’t wait to see and taste the meal course he was planning on preparing.

And I threw in his favorite saying: “WHAT’S FOR DESSERT? THERE BETTER BE SOME GOOD FREAKING DESSERT!” Aaaanyways, I can’t wait to see my grandparents this weekend and have a few hours away from this fool!

Ladies, gents, anyone in between, or whoever—Don’t ever marry a man who refused to cut the cord with his mommy. That’s my only wish. Not just for myself, but for everyone dating men. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Reddit: timebomb969

RING AROUND THE ROSIE

My dad decided to give me driving lessons when I was a teenager, which turned out to be a driving lesson, singular. He took me to the parking lot across the street from our house and had me tool around to get used to the steering and pedals for about 15 minutes.

Then, annoyed that I wasn’t catching on fast enough for his taste, he decided we should go on the actual road and I’d learn faster in a more challenging environment. Cue him barking orders to “Speed up, slow down, HIT THE BRAKES!” in an increasingly frustrated voice as I tooled along, terrified I was going to hit someone.

The culmination of our lesson came when he noticed we were low on gas, and told me to pull into the gas station. Keep in mind, my sum total of driving experience at this point was about 25 minutes, which did not include parallel parking.

I pulled into the gas station and came at the pump at something like a 30-degree angle. He grabbed the steering wheel to correct me and actually yelled at me, “JESUS CHRIST!! DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE?!” To which I said, “No! I don’t! You’re teaching me, remember?”

He drove back home silently. That was the end of dad’s driving lessons. I signed up with a driving school after that, and we were both much better for it. Reddit: SigourneyReaver

MONEY TALKS

I’m a 30-year-old female. I’ve written before about how my materialistic and crazy mom raised me to voluntarily endure torment as a child. But I wanted to finally start writing about my crazy dad.

I have not talked to either of them for the past three years, but it is my dad who I will make sure never ever meets my children or enters my life again. So to start off, I don’t remember large sections of my childhood.

But I do know that as a child, I worshipped my dad, who actually turned out to be the scummiest but most charismatic con man, deviant, and philanderer I’ve ever had the horrible pleasure of dealing with.

My mom favored my brother who looked like her, while I was favored by my father. And if you guessed that I must have been the spitting image of my dad, you win a cookie!

Anyway, here is the main story. When I was in 5th or 6th grade, and my brother was just starting first grade, my family and I were going back home from dinner at a restaurant. At this point in my life, my parents were physically and emotionally hurting each other pretty much every day.

My dad was also financially taking advantage of my mom who did not want to work and could barely speak English. I remember being in the back of the car with my brother, as the streetlights passed over me, trying not to get involved as they screamed at each other like insane people.

They didn’t give a darn if their altercations happened in front of my brother and me. It was a nightmare. I learned all the Korean bad words at a young age thanks to these experiences. I always tried to stop them when things got physical.

And it wasn’t unusual for my dad to grab my mom’s hair in the car while driving or for my mom to smack him as he drove. Suddenly, he pulled out a black little box and screamed that he had bought her a diamond ring, but he wasn’t going to give it to her anymore.

This nut then opened the window and chucked the box out, while my mom suddenly got quiet and started to cry. She begged him to turn around on the freeway so she could look for it.

My dad would always buy fancy gifts for my mom as a way of buying forgiveness from her for sleeping with other women. So I think that was what they were fighting about in the first place.

At this point, I just remember being in the backseat crying while we were parked on the side of the road, watching my mom on her hands and knees searching in the grass. He had thrown it out on the side of the freeway that was grassy.

My dad watched my mom while leaning on the car, chilling as if it was no big deal. When I tried to come out and help, he ordered me to stay in the car because it was dangerous. But there were barely any cars going by. I felt such a deep sadness for my mom.

It made me sad to know that she was so materialistic and did not respect herself to the point that she chose the ring over her dignity. I think she eventually found it, but it took a while.

That night, I realized my dad really was a monster inside. From then on, I would do everything in my power to not be like him. I also vowed to never place my happiness in materials or let my husband control me to the point that I lost my independence and identity.

This mindset led me to be labeled as the disobedient kid, as I actively worked to grow up against their values. I think I, unfortunately, lost a lot of respect for my parents at an early age. They never once apologized for the danger and trauma they put us through, which made me question and distrust them.

As I grew older, the tension between me and my parents skyrocketed as they lost more control of me and my life. During a fight with my dad, he claimed that my behavior and disobedience as an adult were due to me leaving home too early.

I left for university on scholarships and loans at the age of 18 and only returned for holidays if they bothered me enough.

Now that I think about what he said, I can see that he meant that I didn’t stay long enough for them to manipulate me into being under their control till the point where I became fully dependent on them and it was more difficult for me to escape. My dad thrived on control and reverence from others.

And once he felt like he lost control of me, his illusion of being the perfect family man became completely shattered. He cannot deal with that mentally. His mini-me grew up to have no respect for him or any interest in helping him keep up his illusion like she was born to do. Reddit: ConfoOsedBride

LITERALLY LIVING IN HIS DAD’S SHADOW

I’m a 21-year-old female. Today, I experienced rage like I never had before. A couple of days ago, my fiance was in a serious car crash that could have taken his life.

By what can only be described as some kind of miracle in the words of the paramedics who saw his car wreck, despite having had to literally crawl out of the wreck of his destroyed car while it was UPSIDE DOWN, he was physically unharmed minus some shoulder and neck pain.

However, he has been really emotionally affected by the incident, as it was the most terrifying and traumatic experience of his life by far. I have been supporting him through it as best I can and, up until now, so were his parents.

Until today, that is, when we were on the phone with both his parents. Literally out of the blue, his dad bluntly says, “I would really like it if I could sit down with both of you to look through your finances because I think you both are living way beyond your means.”

Umm, excuse me? Where in the world did that come from? He literally has no idea how we spend our money. Even the way he said it was extremely blunt and almost sounded aggressive.

My partner just said that we’d have to think about it. I sat there too furious to even speak initially. I guess he thinks that because me and my partner are going through some financial hardship he can just dictate to us what he thinks we should do about it.

I am so astounded by the rudeness of this. I am thinking about having my partner call him back tomorrow and asking him to apologize for what he said, but I’m honestly not even sure what I should be asking him to say. Ugh. I’m just so angry and insulted that I needed to vent.

My fiance’s parents live in a three-bedroom huge house with two cars, and a second holiday home, and never have to struggle for anything. Me and my partner both have low incomes, as most of our money goes to rent and we rely on a food charity to feed us.

They have no idea what we go through to make ends meet, yet they have the nerve to talk to us this way. My partner busts his butt at a full-time job, but it just doesn’t pay well enough sadly.

This is something that we struggle with every day, so it really angers me to think that this guy just wants to insert himself into a situation that doesn’t concern him and start snooping through our personal finances. Reddit: ChloetheRedditLurker

CLEANUP ON AISLE ONE

I taught first grade at a small private school. In my first year, I had the ultimate helicopter parent. He looked at everything and got on his child’s case about everything from his test scores to the quality of his homework.

He always had questions about the curriculum, my teaching methods, etc. The child was a bit of a precocious boy, very smart but already rebelling from being under his dad’s thumb all the time. The dad would want to come in and observe the student’s behavior.

Dad would volunteer in the classroom but would spend most of his time critiquing his son. He’d then want to have long conferences about his son’s behavior. I told him I thought his son acted out more when he was there and that I didn’t think he should be in the classroom anymore.

The dad’s solution was to install a camera in the classroom so he could observe him without actually being there. Obviously, that didn’t happen. I learned a lot about setting boundaries that year. Reddit: lpkitten

PUT HER THERE, PARTNER!

I was talking to my mom about how horrible and aggressive and scary and manipulative my father-in-law is, and how I’ve had to go no contact with him because he intentionally sets off my postpartum anxiety and gets in dumb arguments with me on the book of faces and then pretends to be nice to me when he sees me in person.

My mom then decided it was okay to tell me this story because she realized that I was no longer trying to have a cordial relationship with him any longer, and I promised her it couldn’t possibly make my feelings about him any different.

So my husband and I are part of a religion in which marriage ceremonies happen in a special place with a special ceremony, but only for members in “good standing.”

My husband and I had ruined our good standing through premarital intimacy (gasp), but waited (and abstained) the requisite time period to still get married in the “right” way in their eyes.

I knew that after my husband confessed his indiscretions that my father-in-law had called me some nasty names. That’s old news. What I didn’t know is that at my wedding, in the special place for good people, he decided to wait until after my husband and I were whisked away to sign paperwork.

And then call me a bunch more rude and offensive names. One of the workers who was there to help things run smoothly was making small talk and asked if they were so proud of their kids.

My parents replied in the affirmative, but my father-in-law just had to detail all my horrible actions and talk about how I had made their son into a bad man with my terrible womanly ways.

Because their son would never do something like that if it weren’t for me, of course. Even though he had been with others before me, but whatever. What an idiot. Reddit: elikalani

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS DOESN’T ALWAYS STAY THERE…

I have been living with my mom and her partner due to university shutdowns and losing my job. Due to them being in at-risk demographic groups, I haven’t had guests over and have been careful about meeting people out of the house.

My dad and I have a strained relationship but I still occasionally humor him and try to catch up. My dad is divorced from mom, and after trying to set up a meetup between him and myself, he was offended when I told him that guests are not allowed in the house for the time being.

He claims that he is not a guest because I am his daughter and my mom is his ex, therefore he can come in the house if he wants to. Umm, that’s not how this works? He then went on, like always, talking about how stupid this whole health crisis situation is, and how all of the statistics are just numbers.

Another thing I’d like to mention: my mom had the virus earlier this year and hasn’t felt the same ever since. She has asthma and went to the ER twice because she was having a hard time breathing.

It was so scary. I am at this point sick of his anti-science antics and entitled mindset. The first backpedal happened after I told him “I would hate to discuss numbers with you, given that we have already done that.

And my mom is considered one of those numbers, and is VERY MUCH at risk of becoming another one of those numbers. I want you to understand that just because you are Mom’s ex does not entitle you to come inside her house whenever you feel like it.”

He responded: “Just being called a guest makes me feel minimal, but I am sorry that I didn’t understand how stressful it was when your mom was sick. I am glad you were there for her. I just feel like an outcast sometimes, but that’s my issue, not yours.”

I also tried to explain to him that it isn’t anything fully personal, and gave the fact that my partner isn’t even able to visit as an example. He jumped on that word “partner” immediately and tried to correct me by saying “Partner? You mean Boyfriend.”

He is a very conservative, anti-liberal, anti-political correctness type of person. I once again went in and told him: “Are you seriously correcting me on what I should call my guy? Yeah, he’s my boyfriend, but he’s so MUCH MORE than that.

He’s my equal, my partner in everything I do, and my best friend. Boyfriend isn’t a word that adequately describes him in my view.” Again, he backpedaled: “I am glad he means so much to you. I hope I will meet him one day. Sorry for not understanding.”

Perhaps these aren’t the most juicy backpedals I’ve ever seen, but the fact that he didn’t blow up after I stood my ground is a huge win in my book. I am so sick of him politicizing my life, and seeing everything I say and do as an offense to him and his political leanings. I just can’t stay silent anymore. Guess he wasn’t expecting it. Reddit: WelleWelleWelle

THEY DON’T CALL HIM “THE TERRIBLE” FOR NOTHING!

I always assumed that the childhood memory I have of my dad dragging my mom around a hotel room floor by her hair was just a nightmare that I’d had. But apparently I was wrong, and it really did happen. I can’t recall a lot of the details behind my traumatic memories.

I just remember the specific act and overwhelming emotions I felt, but not the escalation, reason for the conflict, or how it all went down. This makes me question my memories and wonder if a frightening scene in my head was real or a nightmare, and it makes me insecure about my feelings towards my toxic parents.

I had night terrors often when I was a kid. I don’t really understand yet why I have blanks in my memories of things that I feel like I should remember, and are important to remember, you know?

For instance, I have a couple of specific traumatic images and scenes in my head from my first Las Vegas trip, which was all the way back when I was in middle school. The trip was with my parents, family, and parents’ friends. I don’t even remember all the faces of those who went with us.

But I do have flashbacks to this day, and remember the screaming. I also remember seeing my dad dragging my mom by her hair across the hotel room floor as she screamed and held her head up to help get relief from the tension in her scalp.

I really thought this was a nightmare and never brought it up to confirm it was reality until my dad abandoned my mom four years ago for one of his mistresses that I call ‘sugar granny.’

At one point, I was helping my mom get back on her feet. At the time, I had hoped that my dad was the only problem and that my mom was just an enabler. I was wrong, they were both bad.

But anyway, I brought up questionable memories I had of her and my dad’s relationship, and was disappointed but not surprised to learn that the scenarios in my head really did happen.

I learned the background behind some of these memories from my mom. For instance, the reason that my parents were fighting in Las Vegas was because my dad had hit a big bonus but decided to give most of his winnings to his female ‘friend’ who had come on the trip with us.

From that confirmation, a memory resurfaced of my mom crying and attacking my dad, grabbing his leg while sobbing on the floor, screaming “GIVE IT TO ME! WHY DID YOU GIVE IT TO HER?” repeatedly.

There is one other thing that still disturbs and confuses me though. When I asked my mom about the Vegas hair-pulling memory, she started laughing and said “I can’t believe you still remember that!!”

Her reaction seriously weirded me out and I didn’t know how to respond. She recalled the story I brought up as if it was a hilarious memory, not as something that probably traumatized the heck out of your kids and that you should probably apologize for.

I still don’t get what was so funny about that to her. Anyway, I am in a much better place now thanks to all of the love and support I have received from members of the public who have read about my story. I am forever grateful to them for letting me know that I’m not alone just when I need it most. Sending love your way. Reddit: ConfoOsedBride

SINGING IN THE BATHTUB

I moved across the country about a year and a half ago to be with my long-distance fiancé. He’s fantastic and really attentive to my needs. I have type two bipolar disorder with hypomania, but I lean depressive and chronic migraine.

Through all of that, he’s, all in all, a really amazing stand-up guy. When we discussed our plans for the future, we determined that economically it would be best to move in with his parents, since he lives near a big city on the west coast and my parents live in East Jesus nowhere in the northeast.

Also, I had recently finished grad school in Florida and he really didn’t want to move there. Ever since I moved in, my father-in-law, who I call “Ivan the Terrible,” has done nothing but make snarky comments about everything having to do with my existence.

He’s a total nut. He brought me in very sweetly the first night. I only met his parents briefly twice before and they seemed like nice enough people then. But the very next day, he made comments about how my stuff was “in the way.” He next insinuated that I’d never find a job with my degree.

After only a couple of months of job searching for something within my field, he suggested that I just give up and take a job at the local Walgreens instead. As chance would have it, I got a call back the very next day for three different positions.

It’s been incessant poking and prodding at me for not being good enough for his son, despite me never having done anything he can point to as “wrong” other than suffering from my chronic and mental illness.

His family started to notice the slips and call him on it, as he started to poke them too, particularly his little sister, who he also doesn’t care for. Things came to a head around Christmas this year, when his son-in-law began blatantly calling him out everytime he would say something nasty to her or me.

Ivan didn’t take kindly to that, and kept having massive meltdowns. After months of all of us now pointing out his nutty behavior, resulting in chaos and blowups, Ivan and my mother-in-law are headed for divorce.

They’re drawing up papers and figuring out logistics. In the meantime, my mother-in-law has asked us to cool it on calling out the behavior, since the most recent blowup resulted in Ivan threatening to take the house during the divorce.

He must have caught wind of the fact that we weren’t calling him out anymore, because the nutty behavior has turned back up tenfold. The mask is completely off and he now says whatever horrible things come to mind without hesitation. He also has a bad history with drinking and, after 13 years clean, has sadly picked up drinking again.

He’ll gaslight, scare, manipulate, name call, WHATEVER it takes to get under my skin because he knows I can’t do anything about it at this point. He’s always questioning the validity of my jobs, the degrees I hold, and even went so far as to pull my husband aside on a run and tell him to break up with me.

He said I was just another “project” for him to fix and that he could find someone better. Fast forward to last week. I work for a major cruise line and am one of the thousands of people being laid off in a couple of weeks.

I’m pretty bummed because I actually really liked my job. I was chilling on the front porch with my husband and his brother when Ivan invited himself to join us. He just blurted out “I need to check on the flowers” and then stuck around. Mmmm-hmm. Yep, sure.

I asked my fiancé if he had seen some dumb Tik Tok that I thought was funny and Ivan decided to stick his nose in and make the comment: “It’s okay if you haven’t, you’re working now and you’ll miss some of the pop culture stuff when that happens.”

He said that as if, first of all, I haven’t been working this entire time; and, second of all, as if I was talking to him at all. I completely blew my top and stormed upstairs, making sure to not break my promise to my mother-in-law and call him out as much as I wanted to.

After this culmination of things, I really don’t want to have him at my wedding. There are members of his side of the family that I’m happy to invite and I’ve gotten close with and I adore, but once the papers are signed and the 90 days go by to solidify them, I’m officially going no contact with Ivan.

My husband thinks he will too at this point. I hope I’m not being unreasonable, but he makes me feel like a crazy person. I can’t sleep, I barely eat. My mental health is deteriorating. I need to hear from people who have been in my shoes so that I know I’m not alone and that it gets better.

Or it doesn’t, but it at least gets easier, or more manageable, or I get stronger or something. Things got worse on Saturday when he started driving my mother-in-law crazy again. He woke her up early even though she was not a morning person.

He decided that before coffee was the time to discuss the finances of the divorce. They took their conversation outside for privacy, which totally makes sense, but Ivan has a tendency to block egresses and try to physically intimidate women to make them feel unsafe.

This is despite him being an average height of 5’8”. Maybe I should change his nickname to Napoleon! They finally agreed to wait on a mediator, but things were getting heated enough that, even outside, we could hear them inside.

We were getting nervous for my mother-in-law’s safety and asked my husband to open a window and keep an ear out for something suspicious. Obviously, once Ivan heard the window open, this threw him into full-on rage mode.

They pulled my husband into the conversation once they were done with their financial stuff and asked him if he was eavesdropping. He was honest and said “Yes, for my mother’s safety.”

Ivan went nuts and pulled the “Oh, woe is me! No one trusts me! Everyone has turned on me!” card, which exactly no one bought. Then, my sister-in-law went downstairs to try to de-escalate the conversation, which didn’t help because Ivan loves to stir the pot with her.

I decided it wasn’t my monkey, nor my circus, and took a nap because I knew that there was a rough afternoon ahead and that I’d be needing my energy. Of course, I was correct.

About a half hour later, my husband and his sister woke me up and tell me to pack a day bag, as we were getting out of there. I wasn’t showered or changed or anything for the day, not at all prepared.

I decided to try to brush my teeth and, lo and behold, Ivan decides he’s going to try to follow me into the bathroom. My sister-in-law came in with me to brush her teeth too, as it’s a dual vanity. She asked him if she could help him and he backed off.

When she finished, my husband came in and stayed with me in the bathroom while I finished getting ready. Meanwhile, the entire time I’m using the bathroom, Ivan is posted directly outside of it, sitting in a chair seemingly waiting. This threw me into a panic attack.

I didn’t know why I was being watched just trying to exist and do my daily routine. When asked by my sister-in-law what his problem was, he said that if my husband was allowed to eavesdrop, then he could too.

Once we were all finished in the bathroom, Ivan starts barking at all of us to “get the heck out” over and over again as we’re scrambling to collect whatever we could possibly need for the entire day. He also followed my sister-in-law into her room and puffed his chest at her when she tried to collect her belongings and leave.

When she walked into him trying to find a way out, he claimed she had attacked him. “She could have found a way around me and didn’t!” Umm, okay Ivan. We decided to stay at a family friend’s house while they were quarantined in Hawaii.

They got stuck on vacation there back in March in their condo and so they’re making the most of it. We basically ran for our lives. He made it a point to tell me that I knew nothing about the world, that my degree didn’t matter, and that I was a stupid idiot on my way out the door.

Haha, classic Ivan. Glad to know he never changes. We got to the house and tried to make a game plan. We called our friends, one of whom is a lawyer, and asked them for their advice. He told us to file with the authorities and start creating the paper trail.

We did and they offered a civil standby to get more of our things to stay in our friend’s house for longer if we needed to, or to remove him from the home for 24 hours. We decided on the civil standby since courts wouldn’t be open because of the holiday here, and we didn’t want to risk anything should he come back.

We got a few officers to come with us and, for the most part, Ivan behaved while they were there. Ivan also tried to argue that if we wanted to come back he could lock us out.

The officers, of course, straightened him out and told him, point blank, that we could literally break down the door if we wanted to since we were legitimate residents of the household. And since my mother-in-law is an equal owner of the house, he can’t evict any of us without her say. She’s the breadwinner and always has been, by the way.

Ivan has been unemployed since October of last year and never holds a job for more than a year to a year and a half. Unfortunately, in the hubbub, we weren’t able to find one of our three cats that were coming with us. I wasn’t going to trust that jerk with our cats, so we sent my husband back to see if he could find her.

And of course, he’s greeted by Ivan brandishing a golf club at the front door, telling him he can’t enter despite the officers literally having told him not even ten minutes earlier that he’s allowed to come in whenever he wants.

My husband begins recording the interaction. Our state is a one-party consent state, so as long as you tell them you’re recording you are allowed to. He then pushes past him with as little force as he possibly can.

Keep in mind, my husband is 6’3” and Ivan is, as you remember, 5’8”, so my husband has quite a bit of height and bulk on Ivan. He collects the cat and some important documents and leaves again.

My mother-in-law then gets a nasty text from Ivan who is screeching about how my husband is attacking him, breaking property, etc., Theatrics, hysterics, the entire nine yards.

We check in and when my husband explains and later shows us the video, we’re appalled at the lengths Ivan will go to make himself seem like a victim and just openly lie. We finally settle in for the night. All the cats are safe, and then my mother-in-law just gets bombarded with text messages, emails, phone calls, etc.

Ivan is just completely blowing up her phone and she is not answering at all. We finally get to Sunday. First, Ivan shows up to where we’re staying and decides he’s going to leave all the groceries that he doesn’t want on the front porch and trespass on this property, even though he’s been told that he’s not welcome.

We immediately call the authorities and file another report. We explain the situation and they take down all of the information, including his name and build, and look around the property for him so we feel safe going outside.

We asked for a civil standby to collect more important items, such as valuables, jewelry, and sentimental items. We also attempt to file a separate report with the authorities in the correct jurisdiction that we were staying in, with the new threatening text messages and video evidence we’ve collected.

But I guess the person on the phone didn’t relay that we wanted to both file another report and do the civil standby because the officers were only interested in aiding with the civil standby.

I stayed at our current house while my mother-in-law went grocery shopping and my husband and sister-in-law went and collected some more of our belongings. On Monday, Ivan decides he’s going to admit to everything.

He leaves my mother-in-law a message saying “I’ve taken most of the money out of our joint account and I will take the rest too if you do not talk to me.” Upon checking the bank records, turns out this was true. But the dummy did his calculations wrong and put them both in the red.

My mother-in-law is sorting it out with the bank now and they seem really helpful. Apparently, they see things like this all the time. Thankfully, besides that, yesterday was much more quiet.

We actually got to enjoy our day and even spent some time in a hot tub dreaming of what our life will be like once we’re all no contact with Ivan forever. So many people have reached out to see if we’re okay.

Even Ivan’s siblings have told us that they have our backs in all of this and that they feel terrible to see that he’s treating us this way. Ivan is losing all of his friends and even some of his family through his own actions and behaviors.

And to be completely honest, I don’t feel bad for him. It’s so weird being almost a third-party participant in all of this. Anyway, we’re planning on filing an order of protection to get him removed for 30 days so we can settle back into the house.

My mother-in-law is planning to file that the same day she files for divorce, which is tomorrow. So congrats to her for finally being a free woman! And after that, we can go before a judge and plead our case as to why he should be removed permanently.

Mostly, it makes no economic sense to displace four people and three cats versus one person who is on camera doing all kinds of questionable things. Wish us luck, and send us some love! I’ve had similar past trauma so this has been crazy for me. Reddit: ukulelecutie

MOVIN’ OUT

My father-in-law doesn’t seem to understand why his strange behavior is at all inappropriate. For some context, my mother-in-law and father-in-law only have one bathroom and the bathtub is a handicapped walk-in tub.

The first time our baby, who was only ten months at the time, spent the night at their place, I listed out his bath time on his schedule but told them that it wasn’t mandatory. At the time, I assumed they would bathe him in the kitchen sink like my parents usually do since their adult-sized tub isn’t an option.

When we went to pick him up, my father-in-law mentioned that for his bath he just took the baby into the shower with him when he took his own nightly shower. On the way home, I told my husband that this made me very uncomfortable.

Not because I think that my father-in-law would actively do anything inappropriate, but because it will normalize something that could make it easier for a predator to take advantage of my son further down the road.

I have worked closely for years with children who have been taken advantage of in those kinds of ways. I know how easy it can be for a child to be preyed upon when they aren’t expecting it.

And despite believing that my father-in-law would never harm my child, I still know that family is statistically more likely to be perpetrators, which makes me exceedingly cautious. My husband understood where I was coming from, but wanted to avoid confrontation with his father.

My father-in-law would probably take it as an accusation and freak out. We decided we would just decline to bring it up and instead, moving forward from now on, we would simply give the baby his baths at home in advance before taking him over there for the night.

I was skeptical about this plan but eventually agreed. This past Saturday, the baby (who is now 11 months old) spent the night with them again. As we had previously discussed, we bathed him beforehand and I left bathtime off of the schedule that we provided my in-laws with.

When we arrived, my father-in-law casually mentioned that at bath time he’d just jump in the shower with the baby again, and instead of addressing it outright (which I 100% know we should have done), my husband politely stated that we had already bathed him and that it wasn’t necessary.

It really felt weird to me that my father-in-law had brought it up to us so directly. I think it reminds him of when his sons were young and he views it as some kind of a bonding thing. I know that many parents bathe with their children. But he’s the grandparent, not the parent, and I truly feel that it’s inappropriate.

Unfortunately, he just doesn’t see it that way. Then, today we went over to his house for a surprise visit so that my sister-in-law could cut the baby’s hair. After she was done, my father-in-law offered to “hop in the shower with him to rinse the hair off.” I said no, as he was past due for a nap and a bottle.

My father-in-law said he’d be really quick. I said no because it would be hard to get the baby to go to sleep after. Then, as I was making the bottle, my father-in-law asked me if I was sure. It made me want to scream “Why do you want to be naked with my baby so badly????”

I genuinely think that he thought it would be helpful, but each time he asked my hackles raised a little higher. When we got in the car to come home, I told my husband that dancing around the issue was no longer an option, and that we would have to have a direct conversation with my father-in-law about the situation.

I insisted that we make clear to him that neither he nor any other family member should ever be in a state of undress with our child and that even if he’s in swimwear he should not be showering with our child.

So much inappropriate behavior occurs in showers. I will not run any risks of my child being outright or inadvertently groomed due to this man’s weird habits. My husband says he’s on board with this plan and we will talk to my father-in-law about it at the first available opportunity.

My husband also agreed to clearly state that this is a “written in stone” rule, and that if it is violated then he will no longer be able to have unsupervised access to our child. I’m just so thankful that he gets why this is non-negotiable to me.

I’m glad he is now on board for what will be a very uncomfortable conversation. Hopefully, it will all go well and that will be the end of this ridiculous saga once and for all. Reddit: KAndCompany

THREE FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

So, let me give some background here. When me and my boyfriend first got together, I lived with my dad and his partner. I paid rent every month and everything was included.

The only things I had to buy myself were the toiletries I would need.  I now live with my boyfriend and his parents. Let me just note, we don’t mind paying rent in the slightest. Now, let me start the story.

One day, me and my partner had been somewhere, and we were in the car on the way home. I was having a conversation with his mum, and we got onto the topic of me paying my dad rent, and she said “I’ve never taken any money for rent and I never will.

At the end of the day, they are my children and I won’t take money they have worked for and earned. As long as I’m able to work, pay the bills, and make sure there is food in the fridge, I will.”

Anyway, I ended up moving in with my boyfriend and his parents, and his dad started charging us rent at the start of the year without his mum knowing anything about it. She would have gone up the wall if she had known.

We just gave his dad the cash every month when he would take us shopping so that his wife wouldn’t find out. We buy our own food and everything we need ourselves, so essentially we pay to use the electricity. Then, this month, his dad wanted double what we would normally pay.

My boyfriend said he wasn’t willing to pay that much, and said that we only use the electricity because we buy everything we need. His dad didn’t like that answer, so they argued. His dad didn’t speak to him for two weeks after that.

So about seven months ago, me and my boyfriend started looking for our own place. I was having a conversation with my mother-in-law a couple of weeks ago, just me and her. She asked me how the house hunting was going. I told her that we hadn’t found anything suitable yet but we were still looking.

So she started saying there was no rush to move out and that we’re welcome to stay here as long as we like and all that good stuff. Then she asked if there was a specific reason we wanted to move out.

I said there’s no particular reason apart from the fact that we want our own space, we would like to start our own family, and the rest of the things you typically want as a couple. So she asked if it was because of anything she or my father-in-law had done or said to upset us.

Trying to assure her it wasn’t, I said, “NO DEFINITELY NOT, I’M SURE THEY’LL BE FRIENDS AGAIN SOON ENOUGH AND PLUS WE DON’T MIND PAYING RENT!” I didn’t even think about what I said until a minute or so later. And then it clicked on that she wouldn’t have even known they’d had an argument in the first place.

I mean why would she? She didn’t even know he was taking money from us. She asked me why they weren’t talking, and I told her they had an argument because my boyfriend thought my father-in-law was being unreasonable by asking for double what we were paying when we buy everything we need for ourselves.

So now the cat’s out of the bag. My mother-in-law point blank refuses to speak to my father-in-law and she made him sleep in the spare room for the last week. Meanwhile, my father-in-law has made it a point to not speak to me.

My mother-in-law is also mad, and won’t speak to my boyfriend because she’s angry that he hasn’t said anything to her before now. My mother-in-law is now angry at me too because I refuse and won’t let my boyfriend accept the rent money for the last eight months back.

And my father-in-law is mad at my boyfriend because my boyfriend told him to get a job and I accidentally told my mother-in-law about the whole paying rent thing.

My boyfriend finds it all hilarious and wants to get under my father-in-law’s skin even more by taking the money back from his mum. I said he better not or he’ll be sharing a bed with his dad. I really get along well with my mother-in-law and I’m still pretty civil with my father-in-law, even after everything that has happened.

I literally tell my mother-in-law everything, so as well as being angry at my boyfriend because he didn’t tell her, she’s even angrier at me because I hadn’t said anything to her until this point. What the heck do I do about this now? Reddit: Terri_Louise_Gracey1

SCARS LAST A LIFETIME

This one kid kept getting caught doing pot or having drugs with him in school. Then, his dad showed up to a meeting reeking of pot so badly that you could smell it in the hallway for like ten minutes after he walked through it.

The guy was actually high as a kite…at the superintendent’s hearing for his son’s drug charges! I also had a parent tell me it was my fault her 18-year-old got in trouble because I “should be watching him better!” He is in jail now and we joke that it was the officer’s fault for not watching him better!

Like, they didn’t deny he did anything wrong, just that anything he did wrong was the fault of the person who should be watching him—at 18 years old. One of my favorite inappropriate moments is when a kindergartener gave the class the finger and the parents came in to talk about this.

The dad was insistent his kid couldn’t have done this because he has gross and fine motor delays and is incapable of giving the finger. I told him he had to use both hands and hold all the other fingers down to do it.

His dad was like, “What, he did?! My son is resourceful! Damn if he doesn’t let that stop him!” Then sat with a smug grin on his face and nodded his head and I just burst out laughing.

Like, the dad was so proud his son found a way to do this that he completely forgot his kid stood up and waved the middle finger at everyone. Reddit: punkass_book_jockey8

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Dad threw me into a pool and I couldn’t and didn’t swim back up. He did it twice. The first time was when I was about six or seven. I recall it happening pretty vividly. The second time was after he had disappeared and reappeared in our lives. I was about 12 or 13 at that time.

I still haven’t learned to swim, and I’m now absolutely terrified of the water. If I can’t touch the floor, then I immediately go into a panic. I’m 30 years old now. Even worse, I’m a father now too and if my son was ever in trouble, my fear would make me fail in helping him.

It’s a constant nightmare that I think about. Like, it’s a recurring nightmare to wake up sometimes and feel like I’m drowning. I have looked into swim lessons so many times.

I keep making up excuses to avoid following through. At this point, I feel like I need to get help before I can learn to swim well enough to help anyone ever. Reddit: OGDuckDaddy

SAYING GOODBYE

Secondary school teacher here, and a new teacher at a new school. I have a year 11 student—junior—who hardly shows up to class, and when he does, he sits at the back with headphones and his patch jacket. The first few weeks, I encouraged him to try the work and he would constantly verbally torment me.

His rants revealed a lot—he thinks he’s stupid, will just fail anyway, etc. All of his past teachers told me that he’s a difficult student and I’d be lucky if he writes a sentence per class or if I don’t get yelled at that day.

A few weeks into term, I broke up a fight between him and some other students. Not even a few hours later, his dad comes running into the school grounds holding a baseball bat, looking for the kids his son got into a fight with.

He had to be taken away by law enforcement, and when I saw my student next, he had fresh bruises and a split lip. I don’t know how to give up, so I probed gently and he reveals his dad was coming in to “finish the job his son was too dumb and stupid to finish himself.” We’re halfway through the year now.

He’s finished and passed two assignments and is kicking butt with our current one which really showcases his strengths—he’s an amazing artist!! He has his bad days and still sits in the back with headphones on, but he hasn’t sworn at me in months and there haven’t been any bruises in a while. I have hope. Reddit: _letsmakea_scene

EMERGENCY MEETING

My husband and I were talking about my oldest son’s biological family today and this story came up. It’s only one of many with this awful man, but it is also one of the last we will ever have since it truly opened my eyes up to who he really is.

Back story: this was in October of 2014. My mom had both small and non-small cell lung cancer, and she had been taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital ICU. She told me I didn’t need to come, but soon after I got a call from the hospital saying it was urgent and that I needed to be there.

So I dropped everything and went. I don’t remember how my then-eight-year-old son got into the care of his grandfather, i.e. my father-in-law, that day. I may have called my ex and asked him to get our son. A

nyway, when I get to the hospital, the doctor tells me that it’s over and that we need to put her on morphine and to let her go over the weekend. This was a shock to me at 26 years old, having to handle this.

But the first thing I did was call my ex and ask him to get my son to the hospital as quickly as possible because my mom was not going to be around much longer.

Within an hour, they had intubated her and put her on life support. We never heard her voice again. Eventually, my idiot father-in-law shows up with my son. A full hour and a half after I had called. I was sitting in the hallway sobbing, and neither myself nor my son was allowed in the room at the moment.

So I hugged my boy and asked my father-in-law to just take him home. My mom was gone within ten days. So, fast forward about six weeks. My son and I are preparing to spend our very first Christmas without my mom.

Holidays were always hosted at my mom’s house. I get a text from my father-in-law saying that he would like to spend Christmas morning with my son, between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. I told him that this wouldn’t work for us, but 1:00 to 3:00 PM would be better. His reaction was truly deranged. He Flew. Off. The. Handle.

He tells me the afternoon doesn’t work for him because he’s driving to Temecula to see his wife’s family at 11:00 AM. Oh boy, a whole two-hour drive! So he insists that he HAS to see my son in the morning.  I say that I’m sorry, but that this won’t work for us and that we’ll have to find another time or day.

Now, this is after literally eight years of battling this man and being called every rotten name you can think of by him because I don’t let him have his way with my son. I’ve had it at this point. But, here is the quote that made me go from hating him to wishing he was no longer alive.

He told me: “I can’t believe you! You’re such a selfish witch always keeping your son away from us. He’s going to hate you when he’s older and realizes what a loser you are. You’re such a jerk you couldn’t even say thank you after I brought him to the hospital!”

Oh no, you did not. You took an hour and a half to get there and erased the opportunity for my son and mom to say goodbye to each other, and you expect me to thank you for that? And what normal, rational, or caring person would even expect a thank you while I was sobbing on the hallway floor in the ICU?!

I responded by calling him a lowlife and saying that I didn’t owe him anything and that if he wanted to see his grandson he’d have to coordinate that through his deadbeat son. I blocked him and he stayed blocked on everything of mine for nearly two years. Reddit: gimmecoffee722

GETTING DOWN AND DIRTY

Buckle up kiddies. This story is absolutely ridiculous. So, my boyfriend just had a talk with his parents about his dad’s behavior this morning. They flat-out admitted that they’ve been cold to me on purpose this whole time.

So, since I am getting the conversation secondhand, here were some of my FAVORITE highlights: A) They know they’ve been cold to me. So all the ignoring my greetings and being short with me that I thought I had picked up on? Intentional. Good to know. B) Apparently, they don’t feel like I’ve put in enough effort to get to know them??

Um, according to my boyfriend, when we started dating during our senior year of high school, his father-in-law admittedly had no desire to get to know me since I “wouldn’t be around for long, so what was the point?”

Like, how do you treat someone like that when you first meet them and then get all angry later when they’ve just kept to themselves in the time since?

I can remember multiple times when my boyfriend had told me about conversations where his dad told him to date, other girls, BEFORE he told him he would do anything to get him to break up with me.

So… you think I’m the cold one? Okay, and it just gets better from here. C) They liked how my boyfriend’s brother’s ex helped them out more than I did. Um, excuse me?

I can distinctly remember my father-in-law leaving the kitchen a mess on Thanksgiving last year, and just to be helpful, I went and did the dishes for them all by myself. Even after dinners that we have with them now, my boyfriend and I always clean up and do dishes together, so I don’t know where the heck they got that idea.

Also, my boyfriend’s brother’s ex was going around defaming him with false accusations. Like she’s a full-blown psycho, but my father-in-law still has a silly nostalgic love for her and the days when she had not yet gone crazy.

D) They want to just start over with a clean slate with me, after talking to my boyfriend like he’s my personal spokesperson. That’s freaking cute. An apology to him is not an apology to me. They have said so many nasty things and been so cold to me when I have been nothing but polite to them.

And they think by my boyfriend confronting them about their lousy behavior means the slate is just wiped clean? Um… no one asked my opinion on this. I told my boyfriend that while I appreciate that he spoke to his parents, in no uncertain terms am I just hunky-dory and okay with them now because they realized they’ve been bad.

Not only that, but I am disappointed that he would be manipulated into believing that it would be okay. So anyway, those were some of the fan favorites from the conversation.

There were so many others, but through the tears, while I was having this conversation relayed to me after the fact, those were the only ones that I could easily remember clearly. But before I go, I almost forgot this part, which completely blew my mind.

They genuinely want my boyfriend to go over their “house rules” with me since I keep breaking them. For the love of god almighty. I AM AN ADULT. No one needs to pander to me about how I should and should not behave. I’ve realized a few things after this experience.

I think my father-in-law has extremely controlling behavior that he has instilled in his family. He has clearly convinced all of them that he is the be-all and end-all of their existence. I didn’t think I wanted my boyfriend to have to go to see a counselor, until now.

Honestly, after this experience, I might make couples therapy a requirement before we consider getting married. Reddit: Unabashedlybecca

PLEASE AND THANK YOU

My father-in-law got super angry that I wouldn’t let him touch my baby daughter’s face without washing his hands first. I don’t typically take my daughter to my mother-in-law’s house for a few reasons, but mainly due to my father-in-law.

He’s mentally destructive to my mother-in-law and has been to his kids in the past as well. Me and my husband always knew he wouldn’t be around our child. Today, my mother-in-law needed help setting up a TV.

My father-in-law was at work for a few more hours and it was only going to take a few minutes, so I figured it would be okay to go over. I sat in the kitchen with my six-month-old baby, to be out of the way.

Unexpectedly, my father-in-law gets home super early for some reason. I mostly ignore him and I’m about to subtly tell my partner that we need to leave, when my father-in-law suddenly decides to start walking over to us.

He reaches out to my baby when my mother-in-law tells him to wash his hands, which are black with dirt. He tells her to screw off. I try to keep things calm, so I say “We all have to wash our hands before touching her because of health precautions. It’s just to keep her safe.”

He then yells and starts cursing at me. He ignores everything we all said and just reaches out for my daughter’s face quite roughly. I pull her back in time and firmly say no. He whacks me in the face while trying to push my head out of the way.

I push him away with my free hand, so he grabs it and starts to twist it intentionally. Now, he seriously crossed a line. I get him away and warn him that if he comes at me again I will do my best to physically hurt him.

He starts threatening me while my mother-in-law takes my baby out of my arms and then out of the room very quickly, while he is still focused on me. I leave a minute later while he continuously yells threats at me. He’s normally just verbally aggressive, so no one expected this physical escalation.

I think he wasn’t used to being told no, as everyone else just backs down around him immediately. Of course, I’m never going to go anywhere near that house again for as long as I live. And neither will my child. I just wanted to get this all off of my chest. Since the incident, I reported everything to the local authorities in my area.

As it turns out, he already has a history with them and domestic issues, but I took everyone’s suggestion to make sure that there is a recorded paper trail of the history with me and my daughter is concerned about him. I’m told that he was taken in and interviewed, but released later that same night.

My bruise had faded by the time my appointment with the officers happened days later and my mother-in-law didn’t want to be a witness, so there was no concrete evidence against him.

For the time being, he has been ordered to stay away from us, and I am actively and very seriously looking into obtaining an order that would officially keep him away from me and my baby forever. Reddit: AmbieeBloo

FOOD FIGHT

My father-in-law is offended by his nine-year-old granddaughter. He has been the bane of my existence our entire marriage, which is over 20 years old at this point. He’s one of the most self-absorbed, entitled, and selfish people I have ever met.

He’s the man who said he didn’t need a seeing-eye-dog because “I have my wife.” Yeah… One day, I went to drop off my youngest son at my in-laws’ place, which is a once-a-week thing. My youngest daughter, who is nine years old, said on the way over there, “I can’t wait to see Grandma and ask for a popsicle!”

We drive up and I send the kids in. I’ve been teaching all day and my feet are DONE IN, so I stay in the car and wave goodbye to everyone. A few minutes go by, and my mother-in-law comes out. We chat for a minute, then my daughter gets back in the car and we head out.

The next day, my husband gets this text from his father: “I want you to know that I am not happy with your daughter. When she came over this afternoon to help her brother bring his stuff in, the first thing she did before even acknowledging your mother or saying hello to her or giving her a hug was asking if she had a popsicle.”

It went on: “She ran by me without even acknowledging me or saying hello to me or hugging me and she just ran and got her popsicle. When she ran by me I said, ‘Well, hello to you, too,’ and when she came back then she finally hugged me. I want you to know I am not happy with her. I think she can be, and a lot of times is, a rude person.

She was rude to me and your mother today. I’m not mad at you. I just wanted you to know how your daughter acted today.” Seriously. SERIOUSLY? So much no. Was she rude? Yes. Was she “I’m a 24-year-old entitled adult who does not have to speak to anyone to get what I want” kind of rude?

Heck no. She was a “nine-year-old kid who is oblivious” kind of rude. Did she need to be called out on it? Sure. But did it deserve this type of response? Nope. Not even a little bit.

We sent back a response saying that we would deal with the manners issue but did not want our little girl being labeled as “rude” when she was simply being childish.

You know, because she’s a child?? My husband said, “She feels very comfortable at your house and so doesn’t feel the need to be extremely formal when she comes over there. Though if you would prefer that, we can teach them to be when they come over there.”

His response? “I don’t recall telling you that she is a rude person.” WHAT? Those were your EXACT WORDS. They are literally RIGHT THERE IN WRITING, in the very conversation we are still having!!

He did later say that he got his wife to read the message back for him and realized that he did say that. He apologized, which I really appreciated, but the fact is that this is what he really thinks. He said, “She’s more interested in getting something for herself than she is in being nice and polite to people like me and your mother.”

This is getting long, so I’ll wrap up with a couple more thoughts. What’s with the “your daughter” and “your mother” stuff? Why can’t he just say their names? I don’t understand what that’s supposed to be communicating.

And finally, the “I’m not mad at you, I just wanted you to know…” thing. Do you think I give a freaking flying flip whether you’re mad at me or not? I’m mad at YOU for the way you’ve spoken about my daughter!!

I mean, how does a person get to that age without realizing that this is not normal behavior? I don’t think I’m overreacting by being annoyed about this whole experience. Reddit: thepsychomama

AN INTERNATIONAL CASE

My father-in-law has a history of testing boundaries. He loves to talk about “corrupting” his grandchildren and telling them they don’t have to listen to their parents, etc. A few years ago, he fed my first child “little tastes” of food when he had explicitly been told not to because she was too young.

As a result, I now hover like a helicopter every time he, or pretty much anyone for that matter, holds my baby. We went to Christmas dinner at my sister-in-law’s house, and my father-in-law had my baby. I was trying to keep an eye on my two-year-old and also get a bite to eat for myself.

Somehow, I lost track of him and the baby at one point, and when I found them, they were in the kitchen. I am stressing out, so I figure the best route is direct. I point blank and ask him if he has fed my baby anything.

His reaction was SO awful. He snarks back with “What, are you gonna smell his breath to check?” I don’t like playing his games and I can’t be sure that he is teasing, so I take my baby back and return to my seat.

When I look up, my father-in-law is putting his coat on and screaming at me, “WELL, IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE A RUDE IDIOT LIKE THAT, YOU CAN JUST STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM MY HOUSE AND MY FAMILY!”

And he storms out. Obviously, this got everyone’s attention, so they ask what happened. Most people seemed to be a bit more on my side, but I don’t know how they really felt because he wasn’t actually around to influence them or make anyone feel the need to voice their support for him.

I did, however, get a lot of “He was just kidding, you know how he is” type things, as well as “I think both of you could have reacted better,” etc. Luckily, I have a wonderful husband, He doesn’t like that there was drama, but he actively has my back on this.

He spoke up in my defense immediately, and he privately spoke to his mother about it at the first available opportunity. He feels that his father has put us in a bad situation. When my father-in-law says or does things that we find inappropriate, especially regarding our children, my options are limited.

Speak up for me and risk disrespecting him, or let it go and let him get away with his nonsense. My husband thinks I probably did what was best for the situation. Most of his family lets his father do and say whatever he wants all the time.

My husband has always butted heads with his father, but their relationship has improved significantly since adulthood. We aren’t sure where this leaves us just yet. I’ve suggested accepting the ban on coming to his house, rather than a full no-contact situation.

We would still see each other at other family get-togethers, but my husband isn’t ready to go that far yet. He says we also won’t accept a rug sweep where everyone just pretends nothing happened, so we need to have some kind of sit-down discussion about the situation.

Sadly, knowing my father-in-law, an actual apology is completely out of the question, so we aren’t setting our bar very high. I think I’m going to request that this discussion take place at a neutral location. We’ll see how it goes. Reddit: farmfil

TRUCKSTOP

My father has secret post-it notes about traveling to other countries and randomly took out life insurance on my mother. My mom woke me up this morning to share her snoop findings since my dad was supposedly up at his parents’ place visiting because his father had just been in the hospital over the weekend.

It’s been probably three weeks now since my mother got the divorce paperwork and since he last mentioned finding an apartment.

They’re supposed to have a “simple” and quick divorce, where they both agree to the terms in the paperwork, but everyone thinks my mom is being too easy on him. She’s rethinking her decision to not get a lawyer after what she found out today.

She found a folder hiding underneath a bunch of stuff on his desk with a pile of post-it notes inside of it. There are so many, with so much random stuff written on them. His handwriting is really awful, too. It always has been, but this makes it difficult for us to decipher some of the stuff.

The really suspicious things come in the form of what seems to be usernames, the top one being a string of euphemisms for having big privates. Pretty disturbing stuff. There’s also a note about someone’s height and weight, in the form of centimeters and kilograms, like he has to keep track of… what they look like, I guess?

The worst part, I think, is the note where he has information about how many miles it would take to get from a town in Latvia to a town in Russia, and then how many miles and hours from Boston it would take to get to both of these places.

She also found bank receipts from last month for an account he must have opened for himself without telling her about it. Looks like he’s depositing his overtime money into it. Some of the other notes consisted of what seemed to be song names, bands that he wouldn’t usually listen to in a million years.

He’s a serious country music person and used to tell me when I was younger that the rock music I liked is the “devil’s music,” yet all of the bands referenced in his notes were rock bands.

One had nothing but the words “padaschdi” and “wait” written on it. From what I understand, “padaschdi” is just a translation of “wait.” But why write the same thing in two languages?

He also had another “I love you” written in Italian, with some other words above it that none of us have really been able to clearly decipher. These new findings all come after I learned on Christmas that he took out a life insurance policy on my mother after his secrets came out and they decided to divorce.

She also already had one, and he knows this! HOW SUSPICIOUS IS THAT? Our lives are starting to feel like an episode of a show on the detective channel, and I absolutely hate it. Reddit: SirMissMental

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

My father-in-law took my husband’s truck, screwing us over financially big time. He then tried to gift it to his grown child, my husband’s younger sister. My husband and I were living on our own, working full-time jobs, and adulting just fine until we conceived as planned.

But then things took a horrible turn. My body didn’t handle pregnancy too well and I was constantly sick, in and out of the hospital. My employer said I could take leave and come back when I was able to work my full shifts again, which was pretty darn cool of him!

Anyway, our truck starts messing up, big time, and with me not working, we didn’t have the funds to fix it. We were already full no contact with my husband’s horrible father because whilst we were staying there and he found out we were moving out on our own, he started becoming violent and hostile towards us.

He would walk past me and call me names like, “stupid witch,” “freaking loser,” dumb jerk.” Every single time he passed me, he muttered something derogatory in my direction. He also called my husband into his bedroom nightly to “scold” him and insult him. Calling him a “wuss,” a “complete idiot,” and so on and so forth.

So, we left the next day while he was at work. He comes home to find us gone and is absolutely FURIOUS! He goes totally nuts, blowing up my husband’s phone, calling everyone in the family and telling them I have “taken” his son from him, etc. Umm, okay psycho!

Well, back to the point of the story. Like I said, I was sick all the time and the truck just clunked out on us. Now, this is a 1992 Chevy 1500, and it was booted up. With the engine trouble, it clearly wasn’t worth very much.

So, a man my husband worked with offered to take it off our hands for $3,500! Great deal considering it was in pretty bad shape! Only problem? My father-in-law, even after my husband turned 18, never transferred the title to my husband’s name. Even though it was his truck.

So, we informed my father-in-law that we needed the title and are selling the truck. He threw a fit and said no we aren’t. He then refuses to transfer the title and comes and tows the truck, essentially swiping it from his son.

His intentions were to screw us over financially in the hopes that it would make his son leave me, whilst I was pregnant, and move back in with him. Now he succeeded in screwing us over financially, but that just made his son despise him even more. And as the years have passed, he just continues to make his son hate him.

Here we are nearly five years later, and we have been full no contact for over a year. And we plan to keep it that way. Oh yeah, and after he took the truck, he tried to give it to his youngest grown child as a graduation present, much like it was previously given to my husband as an 18th-birthday graduation present. Reddit: LydZardR2008

A LITTLE ACCIDENT

My boyfriend and I live in a small apartment side building on his mother’s property that she’s letting us live in. Before we had gotten the cats, we consulted with her and she said it was fine. She loves cats and adores ours.

My father-in-law, on the other hand, hates both cats and me. So we knew right from the start that there could be some issues ahead—but we didn’t know how bad it would get.

We had managed to keep it all a secret, until yesterday when we were cleaning out my father-in-law’s van so that they could go on a road trip for my mother-in-law, who has terminal cancer. My father-in-law asked my brother-in-law where the scratches on his chest came from.

Without thinking twice about it, he says our cat did it. No hate for my brother-in-law. It was an honest slip-up, and clearly not meant badly in any way. My father-in-law absolutely blew up. He started cussing my boyfriend out and telling him to get the cat out.

He literally said he would cut the cats’ heads off if we didn’t get rid of them. I slipped upstairs to hide our favorite cat since he only knew that we had one. Everyone was screaming. My father-in-law tried to hit my boyfriend, but the others stood in between them. All of this happened in the driveway, in broad daylight.

My brother-in-law offered to take the cats for protection and went to his house to get a carrier. While he was gone, my mother-in-law pleaded to my father-in-law to let us keep the cats. Bless her heart.

I hate that she was put in the middle of this on top of dealing with her illness. Whatever she said must have worked, because we are now allowed to have the cats.

The thing is, though, that we still don’t trust my father-in-law, and we need to install some kind of cheap surveillance camera or device somewhere in the apartment to make sure that nothing happens when we’re not around.

In our state, it’s a very serious offense to harm or kill someone’s pet. So if he or one of his employees breaks in to try and do anything, we want a video recording. Reddit: Permalink

I am a 21-year-old male. When I was six years old and in First Grade, I once accidentally pooped my pants because I was too shy to ask the teacher if I could use the restroom. When I did it, I came up with a plan like, “Okay, I am going to poop my pants and I’m going to try to make it through the rest of this school day.

Then when I get home, I’m going to dump my underwear in the trash.” However, this plan didn’t quite work out. Other kids knew I had pooped myself because they could see poop stains on my pants and I knew I was stinking.

My teacher called my mother about it, and my mother had to leave work early to come and get me. She escorted me to the bathroom, cleaned me up, and gave me a new pair of underwear. When I look back at this incident, I laugh.

Because it’s a funny story now that I’m all grown up. However, my father is still very negative about it. To this day, he often makes comments like, “I can’t believe you pooped your pants in school. What the heck is your problem? When you pooped your pants that day, I knew there was something off about you.”

I can’t believe he’s holding something against me that I did when I was SIX YEARS OLD! I pooped myself because I was too shy to ask the teacher if I could use the bathroom. However, I was only six. It was first grade.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only child who ever pooped or peed on themselves. He’s making me feel abnormal about something I did when I was a little kid. Reddit: DCT1997