For most of us, sleepovers stopped at playing with a ouija board and making prank calls at your BFF’s house when you were a teen. Unfortunately for one woman, it’s not her bestie that's craving some light night time with her — it’s her mother-in-law. Yep, that’s right. Her MIL frequently requests that the woman and her husband have "sleepovers" at her house — for weeks at a time — and it’s starting to drive her nuts.
It’s not just the sleepovers that the woman minds — it’s the guilt trips that accompany them.
As the Original Poster explained in a post on Reddit's r/JustNOMIL forum, her MIL wants them to sleep over her house for weeks at a time “several times a year.”
“If Dear Husband doesn't say yes instantly, she'll remind him how she could die any second,” she explained. “His dad died terribly years ago, and she takes advantage of his trauma.”
Every time they sleep over, they have to ask permission if they want to go out “and I never get good sleep.”
To make matters worse, “We sleep in my DH's dusty old shrine of a bedroom that hasn't been touched since he moved out for university,” she added.
In fact, the whole family seems to think it’s the OP’s husband’s responsibility to stay over.
“DH's child nickname was ‘Walking Stick,’ because they tasked him to take care of them until they die,” she wrote.
It wasn’t always this bad, but ever since they moved three hours away, her MIL has been requesting these sleepovers more and more.
At this point, the wife is over it.
“I'm done with leaving my home for several weeks at a time,” she wrote. “And I'll stay at a hotel if it's more than a weekend.”
And if the two ever do have kids — ”my number of sleepovers will be 0 for health reasons,” she shared.
“Husband knows, he finds it hard to accept, but c'est la vie.”
Part of the problem is that her husband comes from a completely different culture than she does.
“In his country, parents are to be deeply respected,” she explained. “His family are also wonderful people, and I don't want to offend them, be rude, or create any tension. I really want to fit in.”
But now he’s asking HER to tell her MIL that they don’t want to do sleepovers anymore, and she’s sort of at a loss on how to approach it.
“I really need to choose my words carefully because she will play the victim card in front of everyone,” she explained. “Any suggestions?”
People in the comments section were pretty sure this was her husband's problem — not hers.
"He needs to talk to her. Not you," one person wrote.
"I would never ask my partner to do something with my side of the family that they didn't want to do," another commenter added. "If you don't want to go, then don't go. Your husband can make his own choice and y'all can go from there. In addition, it shouldn't be you who is talking to the MIL about this. Your husband needs to put on a big boy face and tell his Mom."
A third commenter put it this way: "Respect is a two-way street</a>; it's also doesn't mean to kowtow and kissing someone's a--. DH needs to set boundaries and remember he is not his mother's keeper. she is straight-up manipulating him into personal servitude."
Later in the thread, the OP toyed with staying home while her husband went to his mom's.
"I'm the only one having a problem here, and I'm more than happy to do the talking," she wrote. "He's always stood up for me before, but this is the only time where he asked me to talk to her and I volunteered."
But later she changed her mind.
"I'll just say it doesn't work for us and give no excuses," she wrote. "This shouldn't create any bad blood. I don't think I'll find a better answer than this …"
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