While we all have our weird quirks, these families on the other hand have downright bizarre habits...
A Look Into The Light
“Not my SO anymore but my ex’s dad would lay out in a lawn chair in the backyard, dressed in jeans and a tshirt and listen to Iron Maiden with his straight from the 80’s boom box…and stare at the sun. Not the sky or clouds, the sun” Source
Bob, Is That You?!
“Above all, this: My S/O’s father refuses to have more than ONE light bulb on in the living room after dinner when it’s dark outside. We just sit there in this large room, barely able to see one another, with only one 15-watt bulb going in a lamp in the distance.
One time I got up and turned on another lamp so I could read something, and he got up immediately – without a word – and shut it off” Source
A Screaming Match
“Not so much weird, more annoying. They talk really loud, if someone wants to say something they have to talk louder than the others so it basically becomes a shouting competition. With the kids turning up the volume of the tv, which makes them scream louder. They also think it’s weird that they don’t have good hearing ability” Source
Money Mad
“Soooo weird about money. Thank God my wife doesn’t follow their lead.
If my in laws pick us up something from the store we need to pay them EXACTLY what it cost. $12.42, $16.81, etc. If it came to $12.81 and we have $13.00 total they WILL give us back the 19 cents.
Also, if we get stuff for them we receive the exact money in cash. $7.82, $11.41, etc.
Christmas? Yea, we all have to get as close as humanly possible to spending the exact amount on each other. If I spend $12 on my father in law and we were only supposed to spend $10 rest assured I’ll be getting $2 in the mail in the near future.
We have them over for dinner and we get a pizza, they will figure out how much their slices cost. So if the pie came to $12.50 and there were 8 slices and they have 4 total….yep we’re getting $6.24 from them. Doesn’t matter how much we insist on not taking money.
It’s comical at this point but still so weird” Source
A Control Freak
“My mother in law is weird enough about money but in a different way. She thinks we’re poor to the point that she feels like we can’t afford to feed her from our pantry. Guilty using our soap for a load of laundry. Guilty drinking our wine. So when she visits, she’ll pay for everything she uses. Except she doesn’t just replace the cost monetarily, she’ll just straight up go shopping for exactly what she plans on using the entire time she’s here. Plans on using the toilet? Have some super fancy toilet paper. She plans on having anything to eat in the house ever? She’ll go to the fancy organic grocery store and get exactly what super food she’s wild about this week. She wants to have coffee? She’ll get a particular brand and flavor of coffee and her gross sugar free liquid creamer, only to come to my home and be made severely uncomfortable by the fact that I don’t have a drip coffee machine, I have french press. And always have fresh cold brew. Doesn’t matter, she won’t have coffee anymore. Grandma wants tea? Don’t worry about the 20 varieties of carefully chosen tea I’ve amassed over time, better go out and get a big box of walmart brand black tea just in case. Then not even drink any. She takes one look in a full fridge and freezer cause we just went grocery shopping the day before she came in? Better go to Lowe’s.com while standing in the kitchen directly after the incident and order a new freezer for us. It’s ready for pick up!
To the untrained eye, it seems like generosity. But what it really is a way of her controlling our home to make it more like she would have done it. There is no middle ground. It’s either her way and right, or anyone else’s and wrong.
They’re SO WEIRD” Source
Poop Knives
“Poop knives. My sister’s husband’s family didn’t have plungers when they were growing up, they had poop knives. Each member of the family had his or her own knife. Pretty self-explanatory, clog toilet => stab dookie with knife => poop knife” Source
Downright Embarrassing
“When we go out to dinner, my GF’s mom ALWAYS asks to change tables. Sometimes she complains it’s too noisy, sometimes too cramped, etc. It gives me serious proximity embarrassment” Source
A Christmas Nightmare
“They have a song called “The Christmas song” that makes unwrapping presents at Christmas a very slow process.
Here’s what you do:
The youngest kid is in charge of getting presents from under the tree. The kid announces the receiver of the present, let’s call him Bob, and then the singing starts.
The song ends with “and an itty bitty present for Bob”, and now Bob can open his present. We all admire the present, and Bob thanks the giver.
And then we start over until all the presents have been opened. This usually takes what feels about three weeks” Source
Helpless And Selfish
“They didn’t drive. Not a single one of then except the girl I was dating. They always relied on other people for rides. Then, after you said no, they’d try to guilt trip you into it after complaining that cabs are expensive. It took about a month for me to realize that they did this to everyone they knew, and I could just say no. It was such a f—ing headache. Half the time my girlfriend was out running her family around. A bunch of manipulative f—s those people were. All hours of the night too! “So and so needs a ride to the hospital because he has a headache!”. Then call a f—ing ambulance. Oh, wait, you want me to run you to Wal Mart on the way back. “Hey, you have a truck, can you help us pick up a couch?”. Oh, now you want me to stop at 3 more places, but you can’t actually load anything because your gout is flaring up or whatever? Pieces of s—” Source
A Frugal Family
“I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for an appropriate place to tell this story…
My in-laws are crazy frugal. Like almost to the level of extreme cheapskate TV show frugal. Case in point:
When my now husband and I were still dating, his sister got married. For the reception, his parents bought stacks of plastic plates from Sam’s club. They weren’t the super thin ones, but they were one time use plastic plates. Not made to be reused.
Apparently, my MIL decided that it would be a waste to throw them away, she wanted to reuse them. But they didn’t tell the guests this for some reason, so people were (rightly) assuming they were disposable plates and putting them in the trash can. Half way through the reception, my MIL and FIL are digging through the trashcans to find the plates, pulling them out, and putting them in a plastic bin to take home and wash. I thought my husband was going to have a stroke.
At the end of the reception, while I was mopping the floor in my heels (since we were too cheap to pay the $100cleaning fee for the venue), my MIL and her sister were arguing about who was going to wash up all the plates. MIL won. She took them all home, washed them up, and still pulls them out for family events like Christmas and Thanksgiving. I refer to them as the “trashcan plates”.
When my husband and I got married a year or so later, she tried to give them to me to use at our reception, but thank God the venue had their own plates. I do my best to never eat off of the trashcan plates when we are at their house” Source
Wait…Who Are You?
“My wife’s family does this weird thing where they act like complete strangers to each other. They are really nice, good, honest people, but their level of familiarity with each other is non-existent. They don’t say they love each other, hug each other, or show real concern for each other’s well being. My family is part Italian, so we emote at the drop of a hat. My mother gets teary eyed whenever I leave after Sunday night dinner. I live 5 minutes away.
One of her sisters lives like 10 hours away. She came down for a week. When she got there, there was no excitement to see her or anything. When she left, it was the middle of the afternoon and everyone was home, she just said “okay, I’ll see y’all”. I think her dad nodded, but other than that nothing. We didn’t see her again for almost a year. Most people would think they hate her or something, but it’s completely natural to them.
So I make it a point to be really happy and excited when I see any of her family, even her dad who we see like three times a week. They all get a real kick out it and seem to enjoy that someone was actually looking forward to see them. I think I’m breaking them down, her dad will actually come to the door to say goodbye when we are leaving now, which weirds my wife out” Source
Next Time, Let The Machine Get it
“Call to complain that they aren’t called enough. Maybe if you were fun to talk to we would call more” Source
A Loading Problem
“Ok so everyone thinks their way is the only right way to load the dishwasher BUT my mother in law and husband seriously need loading lessons. SILVERWARE GOES IN THE APPROPRIATE SILVERWARE COMPARTMENTS NOT RANDOMLY STREWN ABOUT ON THE TOP RACK! Or somehow she wedges 3 forks in one silverware space (our dishwasher has spots for individual silverware pieces). And bowls/plates cannot be literally on top of each other. I have to end up rewashing everything” Source
A Gift Exchange
“My husbands family gathers around the Christmas tree and opens gifts one by one…and if you dont like your gift YOU GIVE IT BACK TO HIS MOM TO EXCHANGE IT. This was horrifying to me and my brother in law (SIL’s husband), we were used to opening ugly sweaters, smiling and saying thank you, all while planning the Goodwill run in our heads. While mortifying, she does it because she wants to buy exactly what you like while still having presents for you to open. At this point my SIL and husband almost never return stuff. Once I opened a pink shirt and took half a second to long to just say thank you to get out of the horrible tradition and my huaband said, without blinking “oh mom, CircusBread hates pink. You should do black or gray” AND HANDED IT BACK TO HER.
tl;dr my mother in law wants to get us the perfect Christmas gift so she accepts returns the day of” Source
An Unreasonable Request
“All the food is specifically someone’s food. Can I have some chips? No, those are my dad’s chips. Can I have a glass of oj? Nope, mom’s oj. It works for them, but seems completely selfish and unreasonable to me” Source
*Toes Curling
“Years ago, I had an ex who’s sister-in-law was an amateur opera singer.
Without fail, every time she was at the house she was corralled by the rest of the family into banging out an aria in front of everyone, a Capella.
To be fair, she was pretty good, but just standing in the living room belting this out in front of everyone, all cooing and clapping and whatnot…while I sit there, toes curling, counting the seconds till it stopped” Source
What Sorcery Is This?!
“They cut pizza….with scissors” Source
An Extended Stay
“They say that they’re coming up for a few days and then leave in a couple of months. An uncle came up, three weeks early, for a wedding August 15th and still hasn’t left. _I’m going nuts” _Source
Atta Girl
“It only happened once, but on the first Christmas morning I spent at my in-laws’ house my wife, her 2 sisters, and her mother had a contest to see who could deep throat a wine bottle the furthest.
My wife won” Source
A Plain Cruel Murder
“My mother in-law catches english house sparrows in live traps and then kills them by squeezing them really hard in a plastic bag until they suffocate. She says they’re invasive, nonnative species that need to be thinned out so other birds can thrive. I dont disagree with the theory but it’s weird as f— as said and done” Source
A Dramatic Exit
“I could go into details of the narcissism and general emotional abuse they purvey, but my wife’s mom fights with her husband about everything. She left Thanksgiving once because her husband said “quarter til 6” when it was actually “quarter after 6.” This resulted in my mother-in-law screaming, crying, and running out to her car to drive around for five or ten minutes. Then she sat in silence at dinner, which was fine with me.
What’s weirder about her is that she think she knows everything about everything, and she has a doctorate in education. For instance, pork must be cooked extra extra well done, even cured bacon, because you have like a 150% chance of getting trichinosis from eating anything less than 200 degree pork. Her parents were farmers back in the 1960s and at one point this was true. Today though, trichinosis is eliminated in developed countries except for wild animals, but she’ll never in a million years believe it” Source
Um, Excuse You?
“My girlfriend’s family just burps super loud anytime they have to. When I pointed out to my girlfriend that she and her family do it she had never even noticed. Like they burp the way I would if I was hanging out with my friends drinking beer on the weekend. We will be having a family dinner and then BUHHHHH, and then conversation continues. I should say I absolutely love her family and feel like I’m a part of it. The burping doesn’t even bother me. I just think it’s funny because no one ever acknowledges it” Source
Now That’s Weird
“They not only like each other, but they actively seek out opportunities to hang out together.
I don’t get it” Source
Happy Birthday!
“They sing happy birthday to Jesus on Christmas. They make a cake and everything. Apparently Jesus’ favorite cake is pineapple upside down cake”Source
It’s Not Gravy!
“Her dad calls sauce gravy. Pizza gravy. Spaghetti gravy. IT’S NOT F—ING GRAVY GREG” Source