The Worst Monster-In-Law Horror Stories!
Congratulations! You’ve found someone with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. Unfortunately, they come with a horrible nightmare of a parent. That’s the situation these unlucky people found themselves in, and now they’ve shared their stories with the world via Reddit and Buzzfeed. Let’s sort the sordid tales into categories and look at the most common types of monsters-in–law.
The Possessive Puppet Master
This flavor of in-law sees their child as purely an extension of themselves rather than a person in their own right. Even once their son or daughter is a grown adult capable of making their own decisions, the Puppet Master will want to control them.
From homes to friendships to the decision to have children, no aspect of adult life is too personal for the Possessive Puppet Master not to meddle in.
Money for grandkids!
A person going under the name Bisexualdw posted this horrifying story on Reddit. “My mother-in-law (MIL) is obsessed with having grandkids and is in complete denial that my husband and I aren’t planning on having any. Last time she visited, she stole one of my birth control pills, I guess thinking that I wouldn’t notice,” they wrote.
“And he’s not even her only kid! He’s just the only boy, so his sister’s kids wouldn’t matter. She recently said she’d pay me $30,000 to have a kid. I say raise it to $100,000 and get back to me.”
Taking over the house
Other Possessive Puppet Masters act like their child’s house is their own and come and go as they please. That’s what happened to Buzzfeed contributor jessieelsons when she was in hospital giving birth to her third child.
“My mother-in-law proceeded to attempt to re-decorate my house,” she said. “She brought art from her house and hung it on my walls and removed some of my art that I had hanging. I came home with a newborn to see her thrift-store crap hanging on my walls. I was furious.”
Hideous
A similar thing happened to Mrsmarik, who told her story on Reddit. She and her husband went on holiday and when they got back, “Our living room had been totally rearranged. Then I walked through to the kitchen/dining room. There was a new, hideous dining room table where our old one used to be. Then I went to our bedroom. It too had been rearranged! I was livid.”
“So there we were, at 2:00 a.m., rearranging our whole house back to normal. And that was not the worst part. I cannot stress enough how literal I am when I say that we went on to find that every single shelf, cupboard and drawer in the house had been gone through and reorganized as well.” Absolute nightmare.
Calling the exes
The mother-in-law of Buzzfeed contributor awwshucks wants to control her kid’s life so badly that she even started trying to hook him up with his exes. What in the world?
"My MIL keeps in regular contact with several of my husband’s exes through Facebook and will call them with updates, despite him telling her to stop. She even tried to reunite my husband with one particular ex who had cheated on him,” she wrote.
Ear piercing
Some Possessive Puppet Masters extend their possessiveness to their grandchildren. Take this story from Reddit’s AITA forum for a horrifying example. “[Mother-in-law] started pestering me about getting my daughter’s ears pierced from a few days after she was born,” the OP wrote. “I made it clear that I would not be doing that, and that I’d be waiting until she’s old enough to ask for it herself.”
But guess what: the mother-in-law went to an ear-piercing place and got the baby’s ears done herself. “[My daughter] was crying in pain, and I actually took her to the doctor to get their advice on whether or not to take them out (our family doctor removed them as they were clearly bothering her),” the appalled contributor wrote.
Getting the police involved
Reddit users were totally shocked at that one, and some even suggested taking the fight to the ear-piercing shop. “I would personally find out where they had them done and not only leave a review saying that they’ll pierce a baby without parental consent, but report the shop to whatever governing body they report to. Piercing a baby without parental consent is not okay,” wrote one person.
The OP was mostly concerned about her mother-in-law, though. “My worry is that [my MIL will] do the same thing again, and to be frank, she’s lost my trust entirely,” they wrote. “I also told her that if she had a problem with that, I’d report what she did to the police.”
Constant war
Some monsters-in-law act like they’re the parents of the grandchildren and the actual mother doesn’t matter. “If I'm doing something, she will hover over my shoulder and keep asking for my child. Or if she has him and he cries, she won’t give him back when I ask. She ignores me,” a Redditor called zztg1 wrote.
“She has called my son my husband’s name by “accident,” and acts like I’m supposed to just hand him over every second. She also tells me what he likes best as if he’s not my child. My husband advises me to speak up, but I feel like I’m at constant war. If I’m alone with her, she’ll do it more openly, but in front of him she acts innocent. If I try to say something, she acts like I’m crazy.”
Wearing the ring?
Here’s a particularly creepy story about a possessive mother-in-law and a promise ring, told on Reddit by a user named melissareyna23. Her MIL asked to see the promise ring “in a super-high-pitched voice,” and immediately put it on.
It didn’t fit her, though, barely going on her pinky. “It was funny to me that my ring fits me but doesn’t even fit her pinky, because she’s always called me big behind my back,” she wrote.
Trying to ruin the wedding
Buzzfeeder apettersen submitted this shocking story about a monster-in-law acting out before the wedding. “My MIL ruined my hand-made wedding invitations by cutting them to pieces and gluing them to little girl birthday invitations,” they wrote.
“I told her that, although I appreciated her effort, it did not match my theme and she needed to use the actual invitations. That caused WWIII. She told her whole family we canceled our wedding and threw a family reunion the same day. Seven years later, still no apology.” Yikes.
Divorce instigator
The mother-in-law of HuffPost reader Meagan played a part in the divorce. “When my ex told her he wanted to divorce me, rather than express sadness or concern, she just said, ‘Oh, honey it’s okay.’ There was no suggestion to try and make it work.”
“She told me her son probably wanted to end things because I decided to go back to school and not simply work a job I hated. She was definitely not ready to let go of the control she had over him. She didn't understand the concept of a man leaving his father and mother to make his own family.”
The Boundary-Obliterator
But the Possessive Puppet Master isn’t the only type of bad in-law. Let us introduce you to the Boundary-Obliterator. This person simply does not understand why they’re not involved in every single personal aspect of their children’s lives.
They also believe that their children should be involved in every aspect of their lives, too. They’ll happily share the grossest, most intimate details without even an inkling of why it’s inappropriate.
Butt pictures
Here’s a particularly creepy one from roo12357 on Reddit. “My boyfriend and I do triathlons (which involve tight spandex shorts). His mother came to watch one of our races, and after the race, I looked through her photos and found one of my butt, zoomed-in, centered, and clearly intentional.”
“I figured my boyfriend had taken her camera and snapped that picture, which is strange enough on your mother’s camera. When I asked him about it, his mother, completely unashamed, explained that she had taken the photo because she liked my butt and wanted to show her husband and friends in the ‘old country.’”
Quota of kisses
Sometimes a father-in-law (FIL) can do this sort of thing, too, and that’s even creepier. A Reddit user called WickedHello wrote of her FIL, “Whenever we women in the family are greeting him, he always demands a kiss on the cheek. He holds his cheek out and awkwardly taps it with his finger until we comply.”
“Just the other day, he told [sister-in-law] and me (after he'd insulted my pajamas, naturally) that we weren't meeting our ‘quota’ of kisses and that we needed to catch up. YUCK!”
Gross story
Want further evidence of the phenomenon? Well, here’s a particularly gross story from Buzzfeed contributor Binlylikenobodyswatching. They said, “My husband and I went to visit my MIL at her house.”
“She had moved into my hubby’s old room and was showing us the changes she made. We sat on the bed to talk to her and, I kid you not, she said, “You know what I did in this bed? I masturbated.” Why did she feel they needed to know?
Rooting through the underwear drawer
Imagine your mother-in-law going through your stuff? That’s what happened to a Reddit user named Karnishkah on Reddit. “I have a clean room but she goes through ALL my drawers, socks, underwear, bras — you name it she has gone through it,” she wrote.
“She also goes through all my suitcases where I store personal items (in my closet). I didn’t lock it because who in their right mind would go through other people’s suitcases in their closets?”
Inviting herself in
A HuffPost reader called Heather submitted this story to the website. "When I was married, my in-laws lived a couple of blocks away. On multiple occasions, my ex-MIL would walk their dog and let herself into our house using the electronic code without calling first.”
“Thankfully, she never walked in on us in a compromising position, but shouldn't she have called before walking in? What's worse, my ex refused to change the code so she would stop.” Maybe that’s one of the reasons he’s the ex?
Unwanted touching
And Boundary-Obliterators can get even worse when grandkids come into the picture. “During pregnancy, she would rub/talk to my belly (after finding similar posts about this, it bothers me so much that I didn’t blatantly tell her not to touch me) even when I wasn’t showing,” wrote an anonymous person on Reddit.
“I would walk away, move seats, put my arms crossed over my stomach. Every kind of hint to get her to stop. Nothing worked. Every visit, it was, ‘Hello, sweet baby!’ and hold her hands on me until he would kick (which he never did with her, haha).”
The Passive-Aggressive Poisoner
The Passive-Aggressive Poisoner is a person who just oozes nastiness. Nothing is ever good enough for them and they’ll always say so. They don’t care one bit about the feelings of the people they’re criticizing.
Unfortunately, a particularly unpleasant Passive-Aggressive Poisoner can be bad enough to ruin relationships in some cases. They’re deeply cruel people who seemingly take pleasure in other’s pain.
Nasty Facebook comments
Here’s one horrible Poisoner story. "After I married her son, she posted a bunch of my wedding pictures with nasty comments. Things like, ‘The cake, which no one ate,’ ‘The whole family, plus the bride,’” wrote bingobangobongo on Buzzfeed.
They went on, “‘This is the only picture of the original 6 (her and her kids).’ She was also mad that my photographer didn’t know that she was my flower girl’s grandmother. She posted all of it publicly on Facebook.”
The pecking order
A HuffPost reader shared this story of a passive-aggressive monster-in-law who insisted on being called “Mrs. [surname]” by her prospective daughter-in-law, but didn’t insist on this for any of the other children-in-law.”
“When we sat down to talk it out, what I thought would be an airing of griefs and reconciliation turned into a huge, heated argument. She finally screamed at me that I needed to ‘respect the pecking order of the human race!’” The marriage, alas, ended in divorce.
A letter
A Redditor with the username DD211205 posted this story on one of the many Reddit threads about nightmare mothers-in-law. “My MIL wrote her son a letter a week before we got married telling him to think very carefully about what he was doing, as he needed to be sure he was marrying someone he loved and trusted.”
“She later walked out of our wedding in tears, drove home (seven hours away!) without saying anything to anyone, and then followed that up by emailing me saying she didn’t know what husband (her son) saw in me.”
Just plain rude
A Redditor called deedee22 had problems with her mother-in-law right from the beginning. “I got engaged and showed her my gorgeous engagement ring, ‘Well that’s cute.’ While we were planning the wedding it was always ‘If you guys get married.’”
Things didn’t get any better when they did actually tie the knot. “Every time I see her at a family gathering: ‘Oh are you guys still married?’” The passive aggression, it’s just too much!
Hung up on the ex
A woman called Tiffany submitted this story to HuffPost, “My ex-husband was married prior to marrying me. His mother kept their wedding pictures on her living room walls. When asked why, her response was, ‘We knew her before you and she will always be a part of this family. Isn’t she beautiful?’”
“During our marriage, the ex-MIL also made sure that her son’s ex-wife attended family functions where we were present as well. Needless to say, he remarried again after I divorced him. Third time’s the charm, right?”
Body-shaming
Some mothers-in-law use weight-gain to passive-aggressively torment the women who dare to marry into the family. “Shortly after my engagement, I had to send my ring in to be resized because it was a little too big,” wrote penguin444 on Reddit.
“My [mother-in-law] asked me where my ring was, and I said it was being resized because it was half a size too big. She said, ‘Why make it smaller! You’ll get fatter anyways, and it’ll fit fine!'”
Christmas crumminess
The mother-in-law of HuffPost reader Deborah went so far as to insult her religion. “My ex mother-in-law really wanted her holiday traditions to take root in our home. Even though I was Jewish, she gifted me with a steady stream of craptastic Santa statuettes, tree ornaments and Rudolph tea towels.”
“When I asked why, she told me that it was ‘the woman's job to make the home,’ adding that I shouldn’t mind the Christmas themes because ‘Santa wasn’t religious’ and ‘Besides, you’re not, like, a serious Jew.’”
The Greedy Gremlin
Onto the Greedy Gremlin. This particular genre of monster-in-law cares about one thing and one thing only: money. They’ll happily defraud their loved ones to keep themselves well-stocked with the good things in life.
The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” clearly never entered the minds of these people. Don’t get yourself involved with a Greedy Gremlin unless you want to find your happiness secondary to their lust for cash.
Leaving a receipt
Here’s a great example: a mother who cleaned her daughter-in-law’s carpet after her waters broke on it… and then asked for the money back. “My MIL had left a receipt and note stuck to the fridge, saying that she had cleaned my bedroom carpet and wanted to be reimbursed,” Unlikely-Visitor wrote on Reddit.
“She had also taken it upon herself to clean the rest of the house while she was at it, and all in all, would like a day's pay at $25/hour + $200 worth of products.” Imagine dealing with that after having just given birth!
A little upset
The couple ended up leaving her a note which read, “We noticed your note and receipt on the fridge, and are a little upset you took it upon yourself to, 1. Snoop through the house, as neither of us had told you about (my name’s) waters breaking in the bedroom; 2. Go out and buy hundreds of dollars worth of cleaning products; and then 3. Charging us for your time and the aforementioned products.”
“We would also like to ask where these cleaning products are, as if we are paying for them, we would certainly like to get our money's worth.” That was a well-deserved telling-off, and Reddit thought so too. “The kindness of one’s heart doesn’t come with a price tag,” one commenter wrote.
Lying about debt
A Reddit user called hazelk posted this story about a fraudulent mother-in-law. “My now-ex and I had been saving up to take a long road trip together. About a week before we were set to leave, he tells me that his mom spent hours crying to him about how much debt she has and that she may have to add a second mortgage to the house, sell precious family heirlooms, etc.”
“So, being a good son, he decided to give her most of his road trip money. I was understanding and we agreed to put the trip on hold so he could save more. A few days later, I visited his mom and she showed me this huge elaborate ceramic water fountain she had bought the day before for her garden.”
“Graciously”
This one was contributed by Buzzfeed user briannah4dbb1595d. “We found out that my MIL had a credit card in my husband’s name that she opened when he was 18. When we confronted her about it (because it had a $3,000 balance) she lied and said it was his debt from college that she was graciously paying off to help him out.”
“I looked online at the statements and the previous purchases that were from boutiques in her home town. She also told me she wasn’t sure how the whole ordeal affected me at all considering it was in his name and not mine. It very easily could have kept us from getting a loan to buy a house.” This is identity theft, which is illegal.
Billing for gifts
Here’s a horrible one contributed by an anonymous Buzzfeeder. “My mother-in-law did not want to go to our wedding because it was out of town, and she said it was too expensive. The next week, she bought herself a large flat-screen TV. My husband wasn’t really talking to her after that, so when he got something in the mail from her, he thought it might be a wedding card or a letter of apology.”
“Nope. It was a bill with an itemized list of charges. Things like library book fines and items she told him were gifts but now wanted to be paid for. The nice final touch was a sticker, that she probably got off one of her own bills, that said ‘overdue.’”
The manilla envelope
And fathers-in-law do this too. “Shortly after my husband and I got married, my father-in-law presented me with a large manilla envelope. The envelope was obviously well used and quite full of papers.”
“He proceeded to tell me that the envelope contained all of the receipts for all of the expenses associated with raising my husband, i.e. his son. It was an invoice, so to speak, and he wanted to be reimbursed for the money that he had spent over the years.”
Profiting from a tragedy
Here’s another downright awful one from Buzzfeed, written by an anonymous person whose husband had passed away. “He had a structured settlement that was still active. When that settlement of $50,000 was paid out, it went to my mother-in-law, since she was the beneficiary. The settlement was set up when he was two,” this person wrote.
“My husband and I have four children. Our house was foreclosed on because of lack of funds. My mother-in-law decided that she deserved the money more than our children did. The kids never saw a penny of that money, even though she said that she had set up college funds for them. Then, she disappeared from their lives. Needless to say, there are no college funds.”
The Actively Dangerous
Arguably the worst in-law of all, the Actively Dangerous parent-in-law just plain does not care about safety. They’re always in the right, after all, and so they couldn’t possibly cause harm to their children or grandchildren.
Wrong! Stories of the Actively Dangerous may send a serious chill down your spine as you consider just how easily their obnoxious behavior could have led to an actual tragedy.
Bad gun safety
This story, from a Reddit user called ThoseArentCarrots, is horrific. “My father-in-law is a big Second Amendment enthusiast. One year at a family Christmas party, he surprised his girlfriend with a piece and a box of bullets as a present. The cartridge was in the weapon at the time. He openly said that he had loaded it before the party, and he casually mentioned that he had forgotten whether the safety was on or not.”
“His girlfriend then proceeds to wave that thing around the room, and even points it at my father-in-law’s chest as a ‘joke.’ My father-in-law thinks this is all hilarious. The girl clearly didn’t understand the danger of what she was doing. I was absolutely terrified.”
“Phobia”
Did the father-in-law come to realize how dangerous his behavior was? Nope. “When I brought this matter up, my father-in-law and the entire rest of my wife’s family started to make fun of me for having a ‘phobia’ of guns,” wrote the Redditor.
“They likened my concerns to a fear of dogs, and told me that I was just being silly and childish. We packed up and left, and now the family thinks we are the ones responsible for ruining Christmas.”
Stealing life-giving drugs
Another shocking story of an in-law putting someone’s life in danger comes from Redditor FredDaniel. His MIL believed that the chemo drugs he was taking for his cancer were “poison” and insisted he use herbal treatments.
That’s wild enough in itself, but then one day the chemo drugs were missing and it was obvious the mother-in-law had stolen them. Lucky FredDaniel was able to get more, but an outright crime had been committed against him.
Never again
Many Redditors commented that he should press charges against her, and FredDaniels did say that his wife had ensured the mother-in-law would “never set her foot in our house again.” But alas, we’ll never know for sure what happened after that.
That’s the problem with viral stories about terrible in-laws… we never get to find out what happens after the curtain falls, so to speak. But hey, at least we’re all taught valuable lessons about what to look out for!