We can't choose family. That goes for in-laws most of the time too. Dealing with those in-laws can be infinitely harder than dealing with our own families too. Mean, judgmental or just plain mental in-laws drives us insane, sometimes literally. Like one of the stories presented here from a woman who's in-laws were so mean to her, they almost drove her to the nut house.
These ten stories, curated from Reddit, are the craziest we could find about nasty in-laws and the poor people that have to deal with them. All posts have been edited for clarity.
A Stealth Mother In Law
“My mother-in-law believes heavily that doors should be unlocked all day so that family can come and go as they please, uninvited. My significant other, my housemate, and I don’t do that. She regularly tries to guilt us but whatever.
So, one day my girlfriend accidentally leaves her keys at her mother’s house. A week after they’re dropped off, I’m sitting in my pajamas in the morning watching TV when my mother-in-law just walks through the door.
She had taken the keys and made copies for herself before she returned the keys. We had to change the locks.”
Cheapskate Father In Law Is Mean And Nasty
“I’ve been dating my boyfriend for around four years now and living together for three. Although his dad isn’t technically my father-in-law, it’s close enough in my mind. His stepmother is just as bad.
My boyfriend had dropped me off at work in my car and he was going to run some errands before coming back to get me. I get a call two hours into my shift that he is waiting outside with his father and stepmother and he wouldn’t tell me why. I thought he had wrecked my car, so I asked my boss if I could leave early. His stepmother was driving her car and my boyfriend and his father were sitting in the back seat. I get into the front seat and as soon as I sit down his step mother turns to me plain faced and says, ‘Jane committed suicide.’ Jane is my boyfriend’s mother who I was very close with. I’m in shock, my boyfriend is sobbing in the back seat, and all I can hear is her saying, ‘You’re going to need to buckle your seat belt or else the beeping won’t stop.’
We drive to my boyfriend’s mother’s house straight from my work and find her will that had been left in her nightstand, along with a few other things, stated in her suicide note. We walk into the kitchen and my boyfriend’s father looks at him and says, ‘so you wanna know how she did it?’ My boyfriend just kind of nods. After his father tells him, my boyfriend punches the refrigerator. His father kind of scoffs and says,’Well THAT was unnecessary.’
We stayed the night at his father’s house and the next morning was filled with his father talking smack on his now deceased ex-wife.
My boyfriend inherited his mother’s house and about two months later we are having some bill problems since, well, we have never had to deal with a house payment. We were having to go through probate and between getting a deed of trust, cremation costs, and other random stuff, we were running a little short. On a Wednesday night, my boyfriend gets a call from his father letting him know that his cell phone payment is due; It’s around $30. My boyfriend tells his father that he doesn’t have the money at that moment but will on Friday. His father screams at him for a good half-hour about how he needs to get his life together and how horrible he is at budgeting his money and that the money had better be in his hand by the next day. My boyfriend was crying and just kept saying, ‘Ok. I know. I’m sorry,’ over and over again. I was so angry that I asked to borrow $30 from my parents and I drove over to his father’s house and handed it to him that night.
What ticked me off the most is that his father has a decent paying job, no house payment, no car payments, and no other children.
About 5 months later, our personal property taxes were due, something no one had really told us about. This emptied both of our savings accounts. Then the alternator on my boyfriend’s car went out. We were just going to fix it at a nearby shop, but my boyfriend wanted a second opinion so he asked his father to come look at it. Well, his father agreed that it was the alternator and then said he would tow my boyfriend home with a tow rope. Boyfriend said no, it’s raining and if need be, we have a friend with a car trailer. His father insisted saying that he had driven a whole 5 minutes out of his way and that it needed to be towed. So they tow it home and the tow rope ends up snapping, swings into the car narrowly missing my boyfriend’s head and then cracks the windshield. Boyfriend’s father says, ‘Huh, well that sucks,’ and makes some other comment about how my boyfriend can just get him a new one for Christmas, and then leaves.
The next day he calls us to tell us he had just bought a $6,000 lawn mower and he asks if we want to see it.”
Changing The Wedding Plans To Fit Their Needs
“Just as wedding preparations were going on, my in-laws decided to try to change what we had planned for a ceremony. Because we didn’t marry INSIDE a church, they threatened to not come to the wedding at all.
After that was resolved, my mother-in-law tried teaching me how to get what I want from my husband by using guilt trips and emotional manipulation. They’re SO religious and go to church daily – sometimes more than once a day, yet completely hypocritical. They will say they believe in one thing, turn around and do the opposite in a different situation. It’s irritating as all heck!”
She Can’t Handle The Meanest Mother In Law In The World
“I don’t even know how to handle my mother-in-law and how crazy she is.
My husband and I have been married for two and a half years. When we first started dating I asked to meet his mother, because family is very important to me and I have an extremely close relationship with my parents, so it seemed fitting to want to meet her. From the very first, she automatically told me that her son shouldn’t be dating me, because he is too good looking of a man to settle for me. She told me as soon as he left the room that he could have any woman he wanted and I am simply not thin and beautiful enough for him. My husband and I are extremely open and share everything so after we left he could tell something was wrong and so I told him everything she had said to me.
He is not close to his mother because she has a very strong addiction to prescription medications, so honestly she is not what you would call any mother of the year. We decided that it would be best if we just distanced ourselves from her since she had decided that we shouldn’t be together. We were planning on having a nice simple little wedding, but decided to go a different route and get married at the justice of the peace because his mother and his ex-wife were making life very difficult and we didn’t want them to ruin our day.
The day before our wedding was my birthday so we had agreed that we were just going to enjoy spending the day together and relax. For about 12 hours out of my birthday I kept getting texts from his mother saying that her son is an idiot if he marries me and that I am terrible person. Then she started getting extremely childish and started sending texts calling me a pig as well as saying that our house is a dump, and even went to the extreme of going on my Facebook page and commenting on pictures of her son and me together saying that she hopes he doesn’t marry me. She even went and told everyone that she can that her son doesn’t want kids and that I am going to push him into having them so that when we get divorced and I can get child support out of him.
After our honeymoon we posted photos from various places in California and she commented that we were the best looking gay couple and that I just look like an ugly man.
The topping on this cake of misery: two weeks ago we lost our baby just three months into my pregnancy. Now she is going around telling people that we are murdering babies because I miscarried. I don’t know how much more of this I can handle. I have never done anything to this woman, yet no matter what, she seems determined to make my life miserable in any way possible. It has come to a point that my husband and I have decided our children will never meet her so she can never make them as miserable as she tries to us. I think that it would be best for our kids if they never have to deal with her. She now claims that he stole her medication out of her house when he used to go visit her just so that she can tell people that he’s a substance addict. It’s ridiculous she is not only trying to ruin my name but also her sons.
I just don’t understand what could make a mother want to act this way towards her own son and his wife.”
She Gets The Ultimate Revenge On An Evil Woman!
“My mother-in-law HATES me with a passion. She has been nothing but vicious and cruel to me at every opportunity along the 22 years I have been married to her son. She is also a self-proclaimed Born Again Christian, so full of love and all that drivel…
Each Christmas the whole family (10-15 people at least, plus their guests) would get together and exchange gifts. Each year I would get the same themed gift from her. I am overweight, so she felt the need to emphasize it by doing things like giving me individually wrapped cans of Slim Fast, or a box of diet pills, or my favorite, one year she gave me one of those neoprene waist band things that are supposed to make you sweat like a goat until you have a slim waist.
Each year I would hand make a blanket or quilt for each person, and they would take me all year to create. My blankets and quilts sell for a very nice sum, so these aren’t thin, generic, throw away things, they are VERY well made and very high quality. One year, she went one step too far and bought me a single scratch off lottery ticket and said, ‘If you win, you can get that bariatric surgery where they cut your guts out and you can’t eat! Then your problems would go away!’ I was crushed. I scratched off the ticket and it was one of those joke $20,000 instant winners that was actually fake. She acted all excited and clapped her hands dancing around the room like an idiot, and I excused myself to another room and just cried for hours. I couldn’t believe one person, who claimed to be so religious and loving to all, could be so evil when I had never been anything but kind and polite to her.
That spring she was hospitalized with an awful allergic reaction where she broke out into hives the size of golf balls, boils, swollen face… the works. It turns out she had been cuddling with her neighbors cat and had never known she was deeply allergic to cat dander. For the next eight months, I spent at least an hour each day brushing and combing my six cats quite thoroughly, collected every single hair I could get my hands on, and spun the whole mess into the prettiest, and softest balls of yarn you ever saw.
That year I produced my finest matching hat, gloves, scarf, ear muffs, and shawl out of this gorgeous soft yarn and had it professionally gift wrapped and put under the tree. When everyone started opening gifts they all were amazed at the effort and skill that went into the set she had received from me, each person touched it and commented that it was so unusual to see such a set in cashmere, asking where I got it. I told them I made it from scratch, spun the yarn, produced each piece by hand, all from love for the woman that gave me the greatest joy in life by giving me my husband.
She was choked up and you could see it in her eyes she was rethinking her gift to me, which turned out to be a $10 gym membership to a month by month exercise outlet here in town. She gave me a great big hug and said thank you for such a gorgeous and thoughtful gift, put each piece on, and wore them all for the remainder of the day. Within a few hours her eyes began to swell, her skin became blotchy and she started to itch uncontrollably. I’ll never forget the year that she spent Christmas in the emergency room trying to figure out what she had eaten that could have given her such an allergic reaction, after all, the only thing SHE knew she was allergic to was cats, and none of the family had them.
I have been collecting fur from all of my friends, a groomer, and of course, my own cats for a year. I’m hoping to be able to get enough yarn spun by NEXT Christmas to make her a bed spread…
I regret nothing.”
Dumpy Father In Law Is A Hypocrite
“My husband and I have been married now for almost seven years. We have two beautiful kids together and are very happy. My in-laws are ALWAYS crazy, but I’ve learned to deal with them. My father-in-law is the worst one, though, by far.
Last night, my husband, my cousins-in-law and I were all telling past stories and my husband mentioned that when he told his dad that he was going to propose to me, his dad told him that he shouldn’t do it. Why, you ask? Because I was ‘overweight and that would cost you money for hospital bills.’
I kid you not! Of course, I was angry, but what can I do about it now, other than let it go? It’s been over eight years since my husband proposed.
The kicker is my father-in-law has always been the most unhealthy person I know. He smokes two packs a day, has diabetes because he doesn’t eat right and his belly is always sticking out from his shirt. He wears sweat pants ALL the time and he always has something physically wrong with him… but he was worried about me!”
Her Mother In Law Decided Their Decorating And Worse
“My ex mother-in-law did not like some of the things that were on our wedding registry, after she and my freaking mother had already made us change a bunch of stuff on it that they didn’t like. Since SHE changed some of it, my mom requested changes too! NOTHING on there was stuff I liked by the end. Then she bought similar items for my husband’s birthday just a couple months before the wedding. She didn’t like the couch pillows, so she bought different ones. She hated the throw rug, so she bought a different one of those too. That was too big for the space we had! She told me that if anyone had seen the ones we had selected in the house, they would think her son was gay because they weren’t masculine enough.
They had keys to our house, so sometimes I would buy stuff, only to see it replaced by things she liked more. My husband said she had always done that, and had always bought things that were like what he asked for but a cheaper or a different brand that she liked more. It was completely maddening and overstepped all kinds of boundaries I wanted to have in my home.”
This Crazy Mother In Law Has All Kinds Of Wacky Stories!
“Here are just a few things that my crazy mother-in-law has said and done over the years.
She said she gave birth to my son.
She has called me fat multiple times, in all but one of these times I weighed 110-115 lbs and I’m not short either. The other time I was pregnant and hadn’t gained any weight yet.
She said my son will turn into a (derogatory word for a gay man) if we put him in pink.
She said I’m not allowed to buy my son a purse even if he wants one.
She tells small lies ALL THE TIME to get her way.
She said I’m ridiculous because I won’t THROW AWAY my books that I’ve read and flat out interrupts me when I’m talking to my father in law about politics, because she seems to think that’s not appropriate talk for women.
She called me ‘thick’ (meaning stupid) for saying I could figure out how to check-in with the airline online myself and didn’t need my husband or hers to help.
She told me I’m weird for putting toys together for my son all by myself (following directions is hard), instead of waiting until a man is around to do it.
She said it’s too bad my husband didn’t like my best friend more than me.
She said no one thought my husband and I would make it. By ‘no one’ she meant her friends. Who we’ve still never met.
She drove me so crazy the second to last time she visited that I nearly bought a hotel room for myself and my son.
She threw holy water in my son’s face even though she knows we’re keeping religion away from him.
We caught her singing ‘Mary, Mary, Mary, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’ to him when he was a baby even though she knows we’re keeping religion away from him.
She constantly says bad things about one of her daughters, who is actually very smart, pretty, and awesome.
She refused to acknowledge that I didn’t change my name after we got married for several months.
When I was pregnant, I woke up from a realistic dream where I had a miscarriage. I was about 20 weeks along. She came in my room and saw me crying and having an anxiety attack, worried that I had the dream because my body knew it was happening. She said, ‘I had a dream I miscarried at 20 weeks. The baby died.’
She believes Obama was sent by the devil to imprint us all with the mark of the beast.
These are some of my favorite highlights. She has driven me nearly insane at times. We lived with her for about 10 months and I thought I was actually going to end up in a mental facility. BUT she has made tremendous improvements. She’s become way more open to my son being into feminine things (she even bought him a baby doll!). She has FINALLY shut up about religion around us. The last time she visited, she didn’t drive me nuts at all. She has always made sure we have everything we need. She loves my son with all her heart. She has told me I’m a daughter to her, and she backs that up with her actions. This list might make her sound horrible, but honestly she has been way more of a mother to me than my own mom and I love her very much. We’re just a lot different.”
Not What She Dreamed Of For A Mother In Law
“My mother-in-law comments that I’m fat all the time, and she passive aggressively constantly talks about how much she works out and everyone else’s weight. It is so hard to be around her because it makes me feel bad about myself.
She also addresses all mail to me with my husband’s last name when I didn’t change mine.
And she has the extreme religiousness and Republican thing going on, and thinks her own way of believing is the only way and judges everyone else for believing differently on both religion and politics.
We don’t have kids, but I see how she acts toward my sister-in-law and nephew and I feel so bad for them. She’s insanely controlling toward my father in law too, to the point where I barely know him because she doesn’t even let him get a word in conversation and she puts him down in front of us.
All I ever wanted was a second family via marriage and I ended up with this mother-in-law.”
A Lazy Brother In Law
“I’m a single uncle with two nephews, 7 and 3, and my brother-in-law is a stay at home dad. My sister is about half as bad as her husband, usually working together to get me to waste money on them, so I will keep my story to my brother in law and my nephews, Thing 1 (7) and Thing 2 (3).
Back when they were going through some financial difficulties and my parents were helping them out with bills, I was told not to give them money, my parents were better off to help them. Still, I felt the desire to help, so every Saturday I would take them out to a diner or a restaurant for lunch. It was a way to take a meal off their budget and let them have a good time. A while later, my sister got a much better job and things stabilized for them. They still liked to hang out on Saturdays and do a meal together. Sometimes, dependent on my paycheck, I will suggest Chick Fil A or some cheaper diner. The problem is that my brother-in-law steps in and describes how hard a week my sister has had and ‘we should do something nice for her.’ So I would upgrade where we went to a nicer place. When I asked my sister about her week she had no complaints about work. Turns out my entitled brother in law just wanted better food.
On a similar story, I own a Nintendo Switch that I allow my nephews to play. When Thing 1 started having behavior issues, I told him that if he got all good behavior marks at school for the week, he gets longer turns on the Switch. When he gets a bad mark, he loses the Switch for the whole weekend. After a couple weeks of not having a chance to play, he started getting better behavior marks. Well, I asked to see the sheet where the teacher wrote down his behavior and found out my brother-in-law had been lying to me and was covering for his son. The reason is that Thing 1 is easier to control if he’s distracted with games and he didn’t want an unpleasant Saturday. Now I have to check the sheet and not trust his word.
Last week, he got four bad marks in a row and was suspended for the Friday. Well sure, come on over and lets hang out, but Thing 1 doesn’t get to play any of my systems. They arrive and first thing that Thing 1 does is come up to me requesting one of the games he likes. I explained to him that the Switch is a reward for being good. In comes my entitled brother in law, who claims he ‘misunderstood’ and promised his boy he could play games if behaved in the morning. Of course, he’s behaved that morning, he got to skip school and was promised video games. I lay down the law and brother in law argues that he’s really trying to be good. He didn’t get to play though.
I think I’m supposed to just serve him and his family or something, and that my world should just revolve around him. I told him that if he ever covers for his son again and promises games to his kid when he didn’t earn them, then my brother in law would also be banned from the Switch, which is a shame because he loves playing video games. Part of me wants to share with them, but a cautious side of me feels I’m being taken advantage of.”