He Doesn’t Respect My Boundaries
My father-in-law is a major boundary stomper—so I came up with a disturbing nickname for him. I like to call him “Creepo” for short. He literally thinks that our rules don’t apply to him.
And since I recently had a baby, that’s about to become a much bigger problem than it already has been. Not long ago, my sister-in-law moved to a country in Europe to live with a family there as part of a program.
So a few days prior, my husband and I visited our hometown to see her for a very informal goodbye party. This was all on very short notice. At that point, my husband and I had only a few weekends left to spend alone together before the baby came, because of our work schedules.
We had been planning on getting seriously caught up with one another during this weekend, since we knew that we were running out of time.
Being informed at the last minute about my sister-in-law leaving the country in the middle of the following week threw a wrench into our plans, but we realized that the appropriate thing to do was to go and spend some time with her and send her off with a nice goodbye.
We knew that this was going to be the last time we could see her before she moved away for the year. The sudden nature of this whole thing was due to a serious lack of planning on my mother-in-law’s part.
The whole ordeal had been thrown together kind of haphazardly. And in case you can’t already tell, I was pretty irritated that we had to drop our intimate plans for that weekend. Not because of having to say goodbye to my sister-in-law, though.
I knew that saying goodbye to her was really important to my husband, and it was important to me too to an extent. In fact, I’m really glad that we did make the choice to spend some time with her before she left.
I never even gave that part a second thought. No, the reason that I was irritated was that we were not aware that this was going to be happening until literally the morning of.
And we had spent literally every single other weekend in our hometown, which is two hours away, leading up to that point since late July because “faaaamily.”
So this was going to be our special weekend together, but we had to suddenly change the plans out of nowhere, which fully could have been prevented. The whole thing was just really annoying, that’s all.
But, as a result of this incident, I made it very clear to my husband that from here until the baby is born, we’re done sacrificing our precious alone time because “faaamily.” That was no longer going to be a valid reason to change our plans.
We had to get ready for the life we have ahead, and I wanted to enjoy what little time we had left as a twosome. I said that from now on, someone would have to be seriously hurt or in the process of losing their life for us to give up another weekend together. My husband agreed entirely.
So, anyway, we go to visit his family despite being annoyed. When we get there, we’re all sitting in the kitchen and politely talking, when my father-in-law randomly walks in and says to me, “Hey, are you gonna let me have access to your husband some time during October to go to the local shooting contest?”
For context, in a town about an hour away from where the in-laws live, they have an annual gun show where the biggest attraction is going to watch people shoot from gigantic machines. We live in the south, so it’s a pretty big deal here.
It’s not really my husband’s thing, but he’s trying to do his part to better his relationship with his dad. I look at my husband, who without missing a beat says, “As long as it’s a weekend, I won’t be available.” Creepo looks at me.
So I explain that our time together is limited, and that therefore if it’s a weekend we both are off work, then it’s off-limits for the time being. Creepo was not happy, and I think this was the beginning of him treating me differently.
A few days later, we were crib shopping. To make a long story short, Creepo basically forced his way into buying a crib for us even after we declined his offer multiple times.
Nevertheless, he just called us up one day and informed us that he had found a version of the crib we wanted secondhand at half the price, and that he had bought it for us.
We then didn’t hear anything about it for several days, until we finally brought it up and asked Creepo what was happening with the crib. He said: “Oh, it’s in the back of my daughter’s car. I’m going to bring it down one day and help you set it up. Then we can finish the nursery and go shopping for more baby stuff.”
That’s when I lost it. I almost started crying right then and there. Setting up the baby’s crib and nursery is something that my husband and I had always talked about doing alone together.
It has always been a very special dream to us that we would prepare for the baby together, on our own. My own mom has really been wanting to come help, but understands and respects that we want it to be between me and my husband.
Nevertheless, Creepo continued trying to strong-arm his and wife’s way into the process by holding the crib back and promising us more “gifts” in exchange for letting them help.
Keep in mind, by “gifts” he really means extra stuff that we don’t need. And if they get their way but we’ve told my mom no, it’s going to seriously hurt her feelings, aside from angering me to no end.
I reiterated our desire to save that time for me and my husband. Creepo claimed to understand. Later on, I heard my mother-in-law still talking about coming to help set up the nursery. She had just gotten home, so I explained to her that we were going to reserve our remaining weekends alone and why.
I told her twice, right in front of Creepo. Then, as we were leaving about ten minutes later, Creepo started talking again—and I couldn’t believe what he said. He told me: “Let us know what day works for you for us to come down. We can help get things set up and then go shopping for baby stuff.”
Umm, what the heck had I already explained to you four times that day?! I calmly explained it one more time. I remind him that, as expressed earlier, we really want to keep as much of that time as possible between me and my husband. He wasn’t listening.
He wasn’t even doing a serious job of pretending to listen. My husband goes over to talk to him in private. He decides that he’s going to invite them to see the nursery one weekend that I’m working, but he explains that we want to set the crib up together on our own at a separate time.
Once again, he reiterates that they can bring the crib down, but will not be helping with the setup of the nursery or crib at all. We did not leave the encounter with very high confidence that this boundary would be respected.
My mother-in-law then started asking questions about the registry—i.e., fishing for more items that they could buy us to show everyone else at the baby shower up next week, even though they already bought us the crib.
Out of nowhere, Creepo then brought up video baby monitors. My husband mentioned that they were not always safe, as some connect to Wi-Fi and could be easily hacked into. So, without missing a beat, Creepo responds: “You mean I could check in on my grandbaby any time I want to?!?”
I must have looked terrified, because he immediately tried to laugh it off as a joke. Then, surprisingly, my mother-in-law said very sarcastically, after a brief silence, “Yeah, that’s not weird at all…” Creepo also looooves to buy us junk. Seriously.
He thinks it makes himself seem important or some such nonsense. He often finds random junk at yard sales and thrift stores that he thinks my husband just has to have, and he makes the whole thing into this dramatic show of affection whenever he gives it to him.
We had told him more than a few times that we were trying to get rid of things before the baby arrived, so we really didn’t want him to buy us anything else. That request obviously went unheeded.
A few nights later, we received a sled (“for my grandbaby!”), a glue machine (“one of those that can melt plastic, yours is nicer than mine!”), and a bunch of tools that he had apparently intended to have gifted to my husband months ago, but we never were given them.
These tools included an ax. How did everything but the sled make it home with us? Creepo had literally hidden all of the items in the backseat of my husband’s car without telling him. I found it all as we were leaving, and made my husband at least leave the sled there.
Creepo briefly argued about this, but eventually did reluctantly concede. We were going to have a serious sit-down conversation with him about materialism and not buying things for us or the baby without coordinating with us first.
We were very hopeful about the results that it would yield, and were prepared to give it our all. But then something else happened that completely changed our plans of how to deal with this guy.
He licked my daughter. Now, I haven’t really mentioned this yet, but it probably won’t be surprising to you after some of the things you’ve already read about him. Creepo is one of those dudes that just gives you a really weird vibe when you talk to him.
Like, the kind of guy you see and just know that you don’t want to be touched by him or alone with him. I instinctively recoil any time that he hugs me or tries to put his hand on my shoulder. He was very inappropriate with my husband when he was a young child, has a thing for the barely legal girls.
We have lots of instances of him being creepy in general, but he’s a typical Married Christian Man and in a professional career, so he’s totally normal and it’s all innocent as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
Here’s how the licking incident went down. My mother-in-law’s parents were in town from a state far away. They rarely get to see our newborn daughter, so we were visiting them at the in-laws’ house. When we arrived, my husband was holding our daughter and everyone was fawning over her.
The kitchen was full of cousins, siblings, grandparents, etc. My mother-in-law was doing her annoying baby voice as close to my daughter’s face as she could, and Creepo shoved his way in between his wife and my daughter.
He squeaked in this super high-pitched baby voice, “Hi, baby!” And he freaking licked her hand. Not even like a “normal” lick (as if there’s a normal way to lick your granddaughter??). He flicked his tongue over her hand.
You know the highly inappropriate and immature hand gesture where you flick your tongue between your fingers? That’s how he licked her hand. My husband instantly recoiled with a horrified look, and I immediately perked up. Me: “Don’t lick her.”
My husband (pulling farther away as Creepo continues to be in her face): “Yeah, for a lot of reasons.” My mother-in-law (She didn’t hear what I said): “What?” Me: “I said, don’t lick her.” My mother-in-law (looking repulsed): “You licked her? Why in the world would you lick her?”
Creepo: “Oh, not really, it wasn’t…” He trailed off because he didn’t have anything to justify how freaking creepy he was being. My mother-in-law looked over at me. I nodded and made a face that indicated, “Yes, he really did.” Creepo then slipped out of the room. Everything kind of resumed after that.
I kept a close eye on everything Creepo did when he was near my daughter. We don’t let him hold her unless I’m right there. Even then, probably not.
Unfortunately, my sister doesn’t know that we limit any kind of contact between my daughter and Creepo, so she passed my daughter off to him when I was out of the room.
When I found out, I went looking for them. He had her in the backyard, even though everyone was inside the house. He was just walking around with her and whispering in her ear. It was as creepy as you can possibly imagine.
My husband took her and brought her inside, and she didn’t leave my sight at all for the rest of the night. My husband and I had previously agreed not to let Creepo hold her if we could help it, and he definitely would not have unsupervised time with her.
Now, no one is going to get unsupervised time with her with the in-laws, except the sister-in-laws. They know that he’s as creepy as heck, and they help us keep him away from the baby. Creepo is never holding her again as far as I can help it.
If he asks why, I will gladly say that it’s because he freaking licked my baby when she was nine months old. I’m still absolutely disgusted by that. After that incident, we think that he apparently started to sense that something was up and that we were actively trying to keep him away from the baby.
A few weeks later, my parents had us and my in-laws over for the Labor Day weekend. Creepo held my daughter one time while I watched very closely. Maybe even angrily, as my mom passed her off. She doesn’t know the deal, though, so I can’t be mad at her.
My mom insisted on doing bath time with the baby in the kitchen sink, and Creepo tried to watch. I carefully blocked his view with my body and made sure that he saw nothing.
So basically, Creepo is fully aware that we don’t want him near our kid, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. Thankfully, he hasn’t tried too hard to hold or touch her the last couple of times we’ve seen him—but the ordeal isn’t over yet.
Creepo texted my husband out of the blue and said, “I’m in your city for a meeting. I will come to your apartment after it’s done.” Excuse me? No warning, no invitation from us, yet you think you’re just welcome to pop on by whenever you want?
My husband responded by saying that we were planning to be in his town soon and that we would just meet him then. No response, but we knew he had read the message. After two hours, we still hadn’t heard anything back.
We were in the process of getting dressed and ready to leave, but were getting food when the doorbell rang. I turned around and angrily whispered to my husband, “I told you he’d show up!”
I grabbed my daughter from her walker and we went upstairs while my husband opened the door. My husband told Creepo that we were getting ready to go to town and that he had texted him earlier and knew he’d seen it.
“You’re going out of town?” says Creepo. My husband says, “No, we said we had errands to run and would visit you soon.” Creepo makes up some excuse about how he must have opened the message but he didn’t read it, blah blah blah. We agreed to meet him downtown for dinner.
Once my husband and I were ready to leave, I brought my daughter downstairs. Creepo was standing there in the lobby waiting for us. “Oh, hi Creepo. I thought we said we’d meet you in town?” The passive aggression may have been dripping from my voice.
“We had some miscommunication, apparently,” he replied. “Apparently,” said my husband. I kept my daughter with me at all times and continued getting her snacks and water ready for the outing.
I kept my responses very short and matter of fact while we decided where to eat. Then I whisked past Creepo and buckled my daughter into her car seat. Thankfully, he drove separately.
He’s an awful driver and I’m not exaggerating when I say that he nearly caused three wrecks on the way. Always because he weaves in and out of traffic without a turn signal, and only sometimes bothers to check his mirrors.
We got to the restaurant and brought my daughter inside in the car seat carrier. We never unbuckled her, which seemed to be a good choice. The weirdest he got with her was tickling her feet and up her leg, then tickling her thigh right under the cuff of her shorts.
He stopped right as I opened my mouth to tell him to, and didn’t try touching her again. The whole meal was kind of tense and awkward. He knew we didn’t want to be around him.
He kept talking about wanting to buy us things or give us money “because I love you guys” and “I remember how hard it is just starting out.” We’ve lived on our own for eight years at this point and have been doing really well for ourselves.
He mentioned how we have my sister-in-law babysitting for us one day a week for this month and told us he has “three months of paid vacation saved up, so if there’s ever an emergency and you need me to help out…” I cut him off right there.
“Thankfully our jobs are flexible and we could take care of any emergency.” Of course, he was “just saying if you ever need me…in an emergency…” We basically just gray rocked it from then on. My husband later said, “Him watching her alone would be an emergency.”
We finished eating and my husband said that we needed to go run errands now. We thanked him for the meal, which he insisted on paying for, and then we left. He said, “I love you guys so much,” and my husband replied with a cheerful, “Yeah! Drive safe!”
Creepo was supposed to be back in town a few days later for the same activity, but my husband and I agreed on radio silence as the only appropriate course of action towards him.
No texts or responses, and we wouldn’t answer the door except to tell him to leave if he showed up unannounced. I told my husband, who agrees, that he’s neither invited nor welcome in our house any longer. But still, he’s crept back into our lives.
Despite our lack of responses, Creepo has been texting us non-stop ever since his last visit. I’m sure soon we’ll have to have conversations with my family about what’s going on. My husband’s sisters are very well aware and behind us on everything.
My sister already knows and my parents are definitely suspicious. The plan, for now, is to find a therapist to help us determine the best plan of action for working through the issues. I have a couple I’m going to call this week.
In the midst of all this, we were just enjoying a lazy Sunday with our daughter and watching Lord of the Rings, which I had never seen. I know, I know, we’re fixing that. By this point, Creepo’s daily texts had gotten significantly weirder.
They started off as guilt-trippy: “I love you so much, I’m sorry about the licking! Tell me I’m good!” type things. Then, he started sending us random memes, with random “How are you doing??” texts sprinkled in.
He also sent a daily “I love you” text, as well as some random stuff about a few of my husband’s various interests. My husband didn’t reply to any of it at any point. So this continued to go on for about a month.
Finally, my husband and I decided that we needed to sit down with a counselor and get an action plan together. This could not continue to go unaddressed. The therapist is hoping, as am I, that my husband and I will be able to start to do some individual trauma therapy.
He knows he needs it, but he wants to get through this “crisis” portion first, which the therapist is also in agreement with. Our first session went well. My husband got a whole lot out in the open and we decided that we would compose a text message to Creepo and his wife together to send.
So we did that the following day. My husband and I sat down and spent a good long while deciding exactly what to say. We slept on it, and finally sent it out the next day. We were pretty to the point with it.
We made note of the fact that while they had messaged us repeatedly, neither of them had ever asked what was wrong, despite the fact that there are clearly problems.
We said that due to the previous issues we have had, Creepo is no longer allowed to hold our daughter. We told them that we were setting boundaries that they would need to respect, including no touching us, no constant messages or calls, no showing up uninvited, etc.
About 45 minutes after we sent this message, Creepo replied with, “I love you.” We also got a reply from my mother-in-law four hours later, basically ignoring anything we said about Creepo or boundaries and attempting to be diplomatic and act like they’d been “giving us our space.”
We didn’t hear from either of them for a while after that. My husband and I didn’t, at least. Apparently, based on what we’ve been told, my mother-in-law spent the whole day we sent the text message walking around crying and trying to ask my sister-in-law what was wrong, who just ignored her.
Creepo finally made his next move a few days later. We heard about it when one of my sister-in-laws texted my husband. Apparently, Creepo had been texting her over and over again trying to get information about what was going on with us.
You know, instead of asking me or my husband any questions directly or trying to clarify anything. My sister-in-law hasn’t given them any information, so in a weird attempt to get her to talk, my father-in-law made his most terrifying claim yet.
Creepo has said that he has gotten a copy of all her text messages from her phone provider and read through them, so he already knows everything. Excuse me while I explode from laughter! First of all, the only way to get text messages from their carrier like that is with a warrant.
Second of all, if he knew everything, he wouldn’t be continuing to press her for information. So either he was thinking my sister-in-law would fall for this ridiculous bluff and spill her guts out to him, or there’s the remote possibility that he has installed some sort of keylogger or app on her phone to spy on her with.
She attends a boarding school, so she’s not at home for him to be able to sort through her messages the old-fashioned way.
So what we’ve gathered is that instead of actually wanting to figure out “what’s going on,” even though we’ve laid it out pretty darn clearly, they’re trying to drill my husband’s siblings for information and trying to keep them from talking to him with this threat of “we know everything you’re saying, so you might as well talk openly to me about it.”
For a while, we didn’t say another word to Creepo or my mother-in-law after sending that initial text message. They were not asking us questions or requesting information in any way, so there was no need for us to contact them.
When we held a party for our daughter, our therapist recommended inviting the in-laws but reiterating our boundaries to them a few days before the event.
If I have ever been as angry in my life as I was after what happened next, it’s been a heck of a long time. I’m having a hard time staying focused enough to write this next part, but I need to get it out. When Creepo came to the party, things got ugly very fast.
We played nice leading up to the event, because we wanted to see my husband’s siblings and extended family and didn’t want to have any further issues. But we made clear to my husband’s parents that if they did not respect our boundaries, then we would not be talking to them.
It’s important to note that when my husband was in college, he liked to smoke weed pretty regularly. Now that his older sister is in college and his younger sister is in high school at a boarding school, they’ve both had some experiences with it as well.
My husband and I are pro-legalization and don’t care to discuss the specifics with people as the topic comes up, but we do not live in a state where its usage is permitted. Neither for medicinal or recreational purposes.
We don’t keep it in the house, and I don’t smoke, but my husband will from time to time on the rare occasion that he’s out with friends who are doing it. So, onto why I’m seething. Maybe some of you can already see where this is going.
The night after the party, my mother-in-law and Creepo apparently hated seeing that we were still on good terms with my husband’s siblings, so they started trying to badmouth us to them. As she was getting ready to come to our place, Creepo comes up to the younger sister-in-law.
Creepo: “You know your brother thinks he knows a lot, right?” My sister-in-law did not know how to react. Creepo: “He thinks it’s okay to smoke weed. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it. So if you go over there and he offers you any, you’d better tell me.”
Again, my sister-in-law was dumbfounded and didn’t know how to react or what to say. But the most disturbing part was yet to come. Creepo continued and said: “Because it’s very dangerous and we’d have to take that baby away from them if they were using substances like that.”
Are you freaking kidding me? I can’t remember a time in my entire life when I’ve ever been so angry that I was shaking uncontrollably, but that night I was. I saw red. How dare he threaten my child!
How dare he, the man that inappropriately touched my husband as a young child, the man that licked and inappropriately touched my infant child now, threaten to take my child away from me because my husband used to enjoy weed on occasion and because of the fairly moderate political views that he happens to hold.
How. Freaking. Dare. He. At that point, any remaining doubt I had about my relationship with this man was gone forever. I knew that I was absolutely done with him, and he could not be redeemed. I swore that I would never speak to Creepo or my mother-in-law again.
I swore that neither one of them would ever get to see my daughter again until she is fully grown and old enough to make that decision for herself. This incident also sparked another fear. It made me start to worry that they might have been planning something.
Like they were looking for any excuse to call Child Protective Services on us, or that they were planning to file for some kind of grandparents’ rights against us. Or maybe both. So now, at that point, I was incredibly angry, and I couldn’t help but be scared.
We had no reason to worry: there were no substances in our house. We never even so much as threatened to spank our daughter. We have a well-stocked fridge and pantry. Our house is “lived-in” but clean. Anything dangerous is well out of our daughter’s reach.
She’s up to date on all doctor’s visits and shots. She has plenty of clean clothes, plenty of diapers, and is absolutely spoiled rotten with toys. Plus, she’s a wonderful, happy kid. She walks around singing, she adores me and my husband, and she’s incredibly smart and observant.
It’s obvious that this child is well taken care of. But he had threatened my child and he is an attorney. And we could not currently afford an attorney by any stretch of the imagination, should he have decided to pursue any type of court action. I was at a complete loss about what to do.
Do we just keep going like we were beforehand, send a letter detailing our issues, and basically say, “You’re out of our lives. See ya, bye!”?
Would it be worth calling Child Protective Services preemptively ourselves to do a home visit and have it documented that our daughter is obviously well-taken care of, to protect us in the event that they make some kind of bogus report in the future?
Or is that just overreacting and possibly inviting unnecessary and unwanted attention? Do we truly have anything serious to worry about here other than this blatant crossing of a giant red line? These are all the questions that we couldn’t stop asking ourselves.
As you can imagine, we were being tormented by this veiled threat that Creepo had made. He knew what he was doing, and there was no way either one of us could ever respect him again.
You don’t get to take advantage of my husband for years, try to groom my daughter to accept the same treatment, and then turn around and threaten to have her taken away because you’re annoyed that we called you out on your totally inappropriate and unacceptable behavior.
If my Mama Bear instinct wasn’t out before, it was certainly bearing its teeth by this point. After days of going back and forth about what to do about this, we finally emailed our no-contact letter to his parents.
It was written by my husband and detailed all of the terrible behaviors that he went through as a child and how Creepo behaved with our daughter, and that neither of them will get a chance to hurt our children the same way they hurt him back in the day.
Did y’all catch that? I said children. As in plural. As in…. we’re expecting number two this winter!! We are very excited and can’t wait to have all of this drama with Creepo and his wife behind us so that we can move on and enjoy our new family member very soon! Yeah, I’m not that naive.
I know an extinction burst is coming, but this letter means it’s closer to being behind us, too. We decided not to tell Creepo and his wife about the new baby at all, but I’m sure they’ll find out eventually. Our families live in a very small, very gossipy town.
We’re also moving soon, and of course, we’re not giving our new address to the in-laws. I’m wondering if that’s going to have any negative issues for whoever lives here after us, but we’ll see what happens.
Anyway, since we sent the letter, Creepo and his wife have continued to be their usual weird selves. My husband’s sisters both still live at home and keep us in the loop, though their mother has been trying to control any and all of their communication.
The in-laws have basically been walking around, moping and randomly faux apologizing to them about how “I never isolated you as kids,” or “I’m sorry if you didn’t like it when I held you down and tickled you and you repeatedly told me to stop,” or “I’m sorry I was such a bad parent.”
As in: Tell me I’m good. Tell me I’m good. Ad nauseum. Now, my husband also has family that lives outside of the country, but they come to our hometown to visit every so often.
They had never met our daughter, and we were on perfectly good terms with them, so we tried to make plans when they were in town recently.
We were having trouble syncing up our schedules. Then, when we finally made plans with them, we made a chilling discovery. We were informed by the sister-in-laws that Creepo and his wife were camping out all day at the house where we had been invited to join them.
Apparently, they were insisting on one of them going with anyone who left that might run into us, and the other staying behind to try and catch us. They tried really hard to get us to walk into a trap. Since we were aware of this plan, we declined to play into it.
I actually told the visiting relatives that we knew that my husband’s parents were there and that we weren’t comfortable coming over, so we’d make other plans another day. The next day, we made other arrangements to see them for lunch.
We fully expected to see Creepo and his wife there, waiting to ambush us. Just in case that happened, we brought multiple printed copies along with us of the letter that my husband had written to them, so that the cousins would be fully aware of what the issue was exactly.
We felt this was necessary, since these cousins seem to think we all just need to get together and “resolve this problem.”
They also seem to think that we’re simply mad that Creepo offered us money, not that he inappropriately touched my husband and then tried to groom our daughter into accepting the same behavior.
So we’re ready, willing, and able to set them straight if they had been planning something. Thankfully, when the lunch visit finally happened, Creepo and his wife weren’t there.
It went great! We really enjoyed catching up with everyone. Our daughter absolutely LOVED playing with her cousins, and we got to share the news about little one number two. It was overall quite a positive experience.
Then, at the end of the get-together, one of the cousins came over to warn us that Creepo and his wife suddenly texted that they were on their way over for a surprise visit. My husband and I decided that we weren’t leaving on their terms, so we planned to just ignore them when they arrived.
By the way, it’s very important that I note here that my husband and I never gave any specific details to any family members except his siblings. Some had asked what this was all about, and we told them that there were things we preferred to keep private.
The visiting cousins knew that there was tension, but Creepo and his wife were saying that we were mad they offered us money. No one heard any details from us at all. I never so much as looked at Creepo the entire time we were there together, and neither did my husband.
This, despite the fact that Creepo intentionally sat across the room and pointedly stared at him the whole time, trying to get his attention. My mother-in-law followed me and my husband from room to room and kept trying to make conversation, but both of the cousins were tagging along so she was easy to ignore.
My daughter was exhausted at this point, Like, wailing because someone moved a blanket off of the floor that she was nowhere near. She started asking for “home.” So we said our goodbyes, and completely ignored Creepo and my mother-in-law.
And they finally accepted responsibility, hung their heads in shame, and never brought it up again. Hahahahahah. Yeah, freaking right! We were literally not even a quarter of the way home yet when we got a call from one of my sister-in-laws.
Apparently, as soon as we left, Creepo, his wife, the cousins, and a few other relatives in the area all stowed away in a room to talk about the “unpleasantness.” Creepo was basically trying to explain why the letter we sent was all wrong or a misunderstanding.
We weren’t sure if he was just describing it or what, but we knew that he and my mother-in-law were trying to “get ahead of” all of it.
We considered turning around and just having it out with them once and for all, but my husband said to just let them talk smack if they wanted to, as he was confident that we were in the right.
My husband decided that from this point on, if anyone asked what the letter had been about, then he would willingly tell the details, so Creepo and his wife could set the record straight for themselves if they so wished.
We decided that if he was going to refute everything my husband said, then we would set the record straight for ourselves the next day by sending out a similar letter to all involved parties.
So we got home and got another call from the sister-in-laws. They were panicking and afraid to go home that night. They still live with Creepo and their mother, and will be living with them at least until the fall.
Apparently, Creepo was very intoxicated and not speaking to them, only glaring at them incredibly angrily. We’d later come to find out that Creepo had forwarded the letter to all of the adults present and tried to go through it line by line to explain how it was “wrong” and just a “misunderstanding.”
I repeat, this man sent everyone the complete, exact letter that my husband had sent him. Which is very explicit and straightforward, and outlines the details of all the terrible things that he had done over the years. He and his wife went into this conversation half-cocked, prepared to do damage control.
Our best guess is that they thought we had already shared all of the details with everyone and they’d have to save face. Except we hadn’t said a word, just had a nice day with the family we never see. So they basically went in and spread all of the gory details themselves. Completely unprovoked.
In my husband’s very eloquent and well thought out words. Like seriously, he spent months drafting this letter, spending hours at a time tweaking every last word until he felt it was perfect. The visiting cousins tried to privately ask the sister-in-laws if they believed the allegations.
The sisters confirmed that they did, and then Creepo and his wife swept in to eavesdrop and control the conversation. The sisters told us they think that the cousins now fully believe my husband’s letter. The sisters left the room and are now headed back to stay the night with their grandparents and not at home.
They are seriously worried about what Creepo might do in his intoxicated state. They fear he could direct his anger at them, and I wouldn’t exactly put it past him. Though I also don’t think he would immediately resort to something like that. So, yeah.
Basically, Creepo and his wife walked in assuming we’d told everyone all the dirty details, so they thought they’d get ahead of it and refute it all.
Of course, we hadn’t told anyone anything, so they really shot themselves in the foot by sharing my husband’s personal account in his exact words and his complete take on the entire situation.
Saved us from having to refute all of their lies after the fact. I’m sure we’ll get more updates in the future, but for the time being, we are hoping this was finally the last straw in this seemingly never-ending saga.
We’re also telling the sisters to keep us posted on whatever happens, because we are worried about them. Story credit: Reddit / justhereforjustno