'My in-laws exclude me from their family meals. AITA for doing the same?'
"My in-laws exclude me from their family meals. AITA for doing the same?"
Hi Everyone! I (30M) have been married to the wife (30F) for almost 3 yrs...2 yrs ago, I moved to the other side of the country (US) for wife's job. She and her family are from the Middle-East. Her sister lives in the next state over.
Each time they've visited, they go out as a family to dinner/brunch at a nice place without me. I expressed it made me uncomfortable and felt disrespectful especially considering they were staying here. This continued to happen with every visit. I expressed my increasing discomfort and anger with each occurrence.
Cue current visit. They are to be here in our home from Thursday-Tuesday. After work, at 7:45 I go out to the deck for a smoke and to decompress. 8:25PM MIL comes to the deck and tells me dinner reservation is at 8:30 and to get ready.
No one told me anything? I go upstairs and wife is getting ready in a room. I pop in and incredulously ask her why she didn't tell me about dinner?? Her response was:
"You could have asked, couldn't you?" I tell her this is incredibly rude. She said this is about FIL's birthday. I go to my desk for more work and ask wife to let me know when she's done getting ready.
SIL and wife both pass behind me while getting wife ready not saying a word. I then hear them go downstairs and the front door closing. I go downstairs and they're gone. I called wife 4 times. No answer.
I am seething. I drive to cool off and get a call from wife 20 min later. I go off about why she didn't say anything to me and about how they all ditched me and how this is extremely disrespectful. She says:
"Oh, okay! I'll tell them you said so."
They get back at 11:00 PM. SIL asks if I ate. I said yes even though I didn't. FIL looks at the TV and asks if I'm watching X. I curtly say yes. They say goodnight and go to bed.
Saturday morning, I go get breakfast. I took extra time bc I wanted to be anywhere away from them. I get a msg from FIL: "We are making brunch for everyone." Wife txtd asking where I am. I didn't reply.
FIL and MIL are in the kitchen saying brunch is ready and to please eat. I tell them "I ate." Before heading upstairs to my desk to game for the first time in months. Wife comes and says something but I can't hear her. 6:30 PM I go downstairs to heat up food. SIL is on the couch. Wife, MIL, and FIL walk downstairs. No one says anything to me. Wife is on the middle of the stairs when she yells:
"Is everyone stressed out and quiet because of that RUDE, boring, BUZZKILL!? Don't let that POS ruin your day." I respond:
"Oh, look. It's a talking garbage can. Hey Oscar!" SIL looks at me and throws up her hands. I continue to eat my sandwich as everyone leaves. Wife texts me that MIL is crying in the car because of how uncomfortable I made all of them.
They are all leaving, wife included. I said their leaving is completely fine by me and that they're the ones who showed the disrespect first. They are all leaving tomorrow morning to a lake resort for the remainder of their time. AITA?
Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:
LoveBeach8 said:
NTA. Your wife clearly disrespects you and puts her family way ahead of you. They all trick you, deceive you and enjoy it, whilst pretending to be dumb, like it's all your fault. They're gaslighting you. Separate. Pack your bags and go to a hotel. Get an attorney and file for divorce. You have been in a marriage of one person married to other people.
No-Ambition5170 said:
ESH. You are all poor communicators. You all sound like a sad bunch.
Marowo14 said:
YTA. So let me get this right, the family Told you when dinner is and you saw your wife getting ready. Instead of also getting ready with your wife, you went back to work.
You didn’t bother to put on nice clothes or shower, brush your teeth after smoking. Nothing? Didn’t wait and chat with your FIL for 5 minutes while people finished up. You went back to work. Yeah, you’re the ahole.
They told you when dinner was, you knew they were getting ready, yet you expect everyone to make sure you came with. Then you are rude to your family when they come back, miss brunch and have a massive attitude. I would be tired of you if I was your wife.
Standard_Pack_1076 said:
Good grief, YTA. You are told to be ready in five minutes for dinner, so you go and do more work in your home office and then get your panties all in a knot because they've left without you?! You must be tiresome to live with.
One-Speaker-6759 said:
So you’re upset your wife’s family doesn’t invite you to dinner… but instead of having a conversation about it - with the whole family - you behave like a literal child? And insult your wife in front of her middle eastern parents?
Of all the ways to handle the situation… this is what you chose? They’re at that lake resort drawing up divorce papers right now. I’m not condoning the way they treated you, but your response is equally trash. ESH.
My favorite part is that OP only replies to people that agree with him. I suspect this to be a chronic case of unreliable narrator. If you’re hosting, wouldn’t you take the initiative to establish plans…… as the uhhhhh….. host?
The next day OP came back and responded to some comments:
Okay, I've been reading down this response thread and definitely appreciate the YTA comments. I want to see these, I'm not looking for an echo chamber to absolve me. I can't respond to all the comments in this thread, so I'll try to get as much here as I can.
I think I said this in another response, but I had a particularly brutal day at work. I worked 9:45AM-7:45PM. That's not typical. Additionally, this is my first week off in 7 months, so I still had a lot of things to button up before I leave my laptop alone for the next week.
I don't want to give the impression that I'm a workaholic - I am not. I typically work 8-9 hours a day. Wife is typically in the office 8-10 hours a day and continues working at home and on the weekends.
My "Office" is an open room that's next to the master bedroom and next to one of the stairwells. When you go to the bedroom, you walk right behind my desk/chair. Wife came up to the bedroom a few times. The only time she spoke to me was to ask if I wanted something from the place they're ordering from lunch. I thanked her, but declined because I wasn't hungry.
I was on several calls and had a fire under my ass all day, so I wasn't paying attention to the time or what was going on downstairs. 7:45 PM is when I said enough is enough and logged off. Went downstairs and saw that everyone was gone. Drank some water, and went to the back deck for fresh air and to vape (Idk why I said smoke in the initial post).
I spent some time decompressing, went to check on my strawberries, and pull some weeds. Went back to sitting on the deck. MIL comes out and says to get ready for dinner. I asked when/where and she said the place (30 yards away from the house) and the reservation is at 8:30. I look at my phone and it's 8:25. I said okay, went into the house and went upstairs to change.
So, wife is REALLY bad with appointments/reservations. I observed at which stage she was in her getting ready and knew it would be at least another 30 minutes. I took this to mean that the 8:30 time wasn't the actual reservation time, just the time to get wife ready on time. They literally walked to the restaurant.
I obviously could have very easily met them in 30 seconds. I felt left out again and wasn't going to crash their dinner (I felt like that's what I would be doing). -Perhaps this is immature of me and the right thing to do was to just GO.
I acknowledge (and acknowledged to them this morning) that I should have gone downstairs and hung out with them instead of going to my desk for more work.
I do NOT think that I'm squarely NTA.
One of the comments talked about one person constantly shitting on the other person's ideas. Wife just wants to work. Anytime I suggest going somewhere, dinner, etc, she shuts it down. She does not like the city we live in and thinks there's nothing worth going to or seeing compared to the Metropolitan cities we each came from.