He Objectified Me
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, and I did not want to be the “prudish” outsider who ruined it. 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. Story credit: Reddit / Cortextrick