Time Out
My mother-in-law is a lunatic who believes I should have ended up with my brother-in-law. Rundown: My brother-in-law and I were friends in high school. He got a crush on me, and I didn’t reciprocate. He took it badly. In college, I started dating his older brother who also attended that college. I feel some blame can fall on me here because I knew how he felt and I ended up with his older brother, but that’s just how it goes at times.
I didn’t intend for it to happen. My brother-in-law told his mother a very different story. According to him, outings with me and my group of friends in high school were actually one-on-one dates. We were highly passionate, according to him. Basically, he told her we were the OTP of the world and we’d be together forever. We were NEVER together. Anyway, my mother-in-law accused me of a lot of things when I started dating my now-husband, but eventually had to step back because of how many people backed my version of events up.
Shockingly, the truth has witnesses. Years passed, my brother-in-law has always made me and my husband feel uncomfortable and so we don’t see him that much. We see my mother-in-law twice a month at most because she has supervised playtime with the kids. She even once asked my husband if he’d be open to “sharing” me with his brother at one point. It was a rough few years. The last visit with her ends up coinciding with my brother-in-law being there. We push on with formalities and my husband steps out for a smoke.
I was solo supervising the kids while my mother-in-law plays with them on the floor. My son is old enough to call my brother-in-law “Uncle,” while my daughter is still going through her first words. I get up for a few moments to leave the teacups in the kitchen, and I come back to an absolute horror show. I see my mother-in-law holding my daughter up to my brother-in-law and saying, “Say hi to daddy. Say hi to daddy.” Worst of all, he was playing along and making faces at her. The only reaction I had was to grab the kids and leave while they protested. I explained why we were rushing out to my husband and he was really upset.
He called his mother to find out what the heck she was up to, and she just got very defensive about me not hearing correctly. My husband lied and said he’d heard it as well, and she stuttered that she was just letting the children know the truth. Their daddy was my brother-in-law, and my husband was being stupid by not realizing I was cheating on him and being taken in by my charms so I could bag both brothers. We’re putting them both on a “time out” and she is not happy that her twice-monthly grandma visits are canceled for the next four months. Story credit: Reddit