The Last Straw
My boyfriend and are a gay couple, and we’ve been together for four years now. Since gay marriage is illegal where we live, we won’t be able to get married but still, I have a mother-in-law. And quite a nasty one. When her son told her he’s gay, she didn’t believe him because, in her mind, gay men are feminine, fluttering their hands and speaking in high-pitched voices.
My boyfriend is masculine, so he doesn’t fit into her stereotypes and must be joking about being gay. When he brought me over to meet his mother, she realized it’s true after all and there was a scandal, a huge scandal. My mother-in-law didn’t talk to him for a few months, then she decided that she might as well get to know the person her son is together with. The first thing she asked me was what I do for a living and I told her I’m a police officer. As soon as I said it, she started laughing uncontrollably.
It looked as if she was having a seizure, she couldn’t stop laughing. My boyfriend and I, we couldn’t understand what was so funny about it and he was like, “Mom, what are you laughing about?” She calmed down and was like, ”You’re right, that’s actually not funny at all. Officers should be real, tough men. If fairies work there now, soon we won’t be able to go on a street, because criminals will bloom like crazy.” She looked at me again and said “I thought you were a hairdresser in the best-case scenario. Not an officer.” That’s actually nothing new for me. Many people have told me they would have never thought I’m an officer when they first met me.
I don’t know why, maybe because I look younger than I am (I’m 30). But they were nice about it, but my mother-in-law for some reason said it with a tint of evil in her voice. Ironically, that’s how my boyfriend and I met each other— He was partying, made a couple of stupid decisions that led to me detaining him, and it all kind of unfolded from there. But that’s not even the real story behind this post. It was just a bit of an introduction so that you’d understand what she’s like.
The real problem was that some renovation is going on right now in her house and she needed a place to stay for two weeks. She wanted to come and live with us, my husband and me, and we decided—why not? Let’s be good people, it’s just two weeks. Well, wrong. Before we kicked her out, she stayed with us for five days only and it was a nightmare. First, she didn’t respect the way we live. Of course, she didn’t have to go to bed when we go to bed, but she could at least behave quietly.
As soon as we turned off the lights in our room, she started running through the house like crazy, to the kitchen and back, to the bathroom and back. She wasn’t even trying to be quiet; it sounded as if she was deliberately thumping her feet on the floor. Honestly, an elephant in the house would have made less noise. Whenever we talked to her about it, she was like, “Well, what can I do if I’m hungry or need to use the bathroom? If you were tired, you would sleep, nothing would bother you.”
One night I got sick and tired of it because I had an early shift the next day. I came up to her and I said, “I think you have forgotten that I’m an officer and what you’re doing is an offense. It’s night time and you’re disturbing the peace. I’m giving you a warning now, but if you continue, I’m detaining you, and tomorrow we’re going to the station together and you’re facing charges.” She complained to my boyfriend that I was threatening her, but he didn’t defend her and I guess I scared her because noise at night was no longer an issue after that. She also had disgusting habits. She would never do dishes; she just put her dirty plate or cup in the sink and waited for us to wash it.
Or she would eat a candy, not finish it and just stick it onto something. We found candies stuck on the side of the table, windowsills, and sides of chairs all the time. She would cut her nails in the bathtub and just leave them there, and when you get inside the bath, you step right onto the nails with your bare feet. It’s simply disgusting. I don’t know if she does this in her own house too, I’ve only been there once but everything seemed clean. But the last straw happened just a few days ago. That’s when we were like—hit the road, mother-in-law. It was at night, and we were in our room and my boyfriend wanted to get intimate. At first, I didn’t feel comfortable with it, as his mother was just a few rooms away from us, but then I thought—it’s night, it’s late, she must be sleeping and we’ll be quiet.
And we were quiet, to hear us you’d have to literally press your ear against our door. Well, that’s what she was doing I guess, because the door suddenly swung open. She came inside, turned on the light, and started screaming, “What is going on in here, what are you doing, why are you naked, have you got no shame?! My son, I didn’t raise you like that!” I was like, what do you think is going on? Like, we’re in our house, we’re a couple, we’ve been together for four years, we love each other.
Do you really think we don’t ever sleep together? Are you that deluded? So the next day we told her to pack her bags and move out. My boyfriend gave her enough money for a hotel, where she can stay until her house is ready to live in again. We explained that we cannot live with her, because she obviously doesn’t know what “sanitary” means and doesn’t respect our privacy. She was wailing and crying loudly for what seemed like forever. My boyfriend even had to pack her bag for her because she was sitting on the sofa, refusing to move. If she had behaved like a normal human being, this could have been different but she is who she is and we cannot have her in our house for another week or we’ll go crazy. When she finally left, she looked at us so very hatefully. Story credit: Reddit / LimePopcorn