A man has detailed how he left vacation after his mother-in-law used his toothpaste – and the internet did not hold back in its reaction.
In a recent Reddit post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” subreddit, he explained that both he and his wife had been planning a family vacation to Venice for months and wanted to leave their 5-year-old daughter with his mother-in-law, but his mother-in-law wanted to come on the trip.
“My wife was very supportive of this idea, but I was more reluctant. My wife planned everything, booking the hotels and the restaurants,” he wrote on the platform.
However, his wife booked one hotel room with two queen beds instead of two separate rooms in order to keep an eye on their daughter.
Throughout the trip his mother-in-law was “constantly in his space” and needed to borrow all of his wife’s toiletries, which meant going through the married couple’s suitcase.
“My daughter likes to sit on our bed when me and my wife are gone to the city, and I come back to see that MIL was sitting on our bed too. It is very unhygienic to me and I don’t like that she was sitting on the bed that me and my wife share, as I am a very private person,” he continued in the Reddit post.
“She also rummaged through our suitcase looking for a hair tie, and it really irked me that she did so without asking me. I don’t like the thought of her looking through our stuff when we’re gone, so I locked it.”
The situation escalated when he noticed his mother-in-law forgot another item when preparing for the trip. “For the last few days, she’s been sharing the same toothpaste as me and my wife! I don’t like the thought of her putting her toothbrush close to (or even on) the toothpaste nozzle and I was ill the more I thought about it,” he wrote.
“I asked MIL if the only reason she came was to freeload off of me and my wife, as she didn’t pay for any of the expenses (hotel, amenities, food), only her own plane tickets. I said that I’ve asked her politely several times to stop using my wife’s stuff, especially because I share it with her and it’s very inappropriate.”
His mother-in-law told his wife causing an argument. The man became so upset over what happened that he changed his plane ticket to leave earlier and began ignoring his wife’s phone calls.
“My wife has called me several times afterwards, screaming at me and saying that our daughter is upset. I feel bad that our daughter was caught in the situation, but it was really not acceptable what my MIL did and I had to set some boundaries before it gets worse,” the post read.
“My wife has her own card and enough money to stay there. I’m not sure about her plans about staying or not. I’ve been ignoring her calls to take sometime for my own mental health.”
After posting, many people turned to the comments to explain that he was the one who overreacted and in the wrong after “ruining” his wife’s ideal vacation.
“Your wife books the wrong hotel room so your solution is to abandon her on her dream vacation, forcing her to care for your high-maintenance kindergartener on her own? Couldn’t you have booked a separate room for your MIL instead of abandoning your wife and child?” one comment read.
Another commenter agreed, writing, “Your complaints are that MIL was using your WIFE’s products *not your products, sharing toothpaste and sitting on a hotel bed (which more than you and your wife have used), all while she babysat for you so that you could have a romantic trip? Oh and MIL had to pay for her own plane tickets for the privilege. So in the end, you are talking about a few dollars worth of product, a few cents of toothpaste, some meals and 1/5 of a hotel room, but she was ‘using’ you.”
“And now you are ignoring your family after skipping the rest of the trip. I wouldn’t expect to be married for much longer.”