Would You Serve Your Father-In-Law To Keep The Peace?
People all grow up in different environments and households, with all kinds of parents. When two people decide to get married, part of that merging of lives means navigating each other’s birth families.
This woman’s father-in-law has very traditional ideas of what roles men and women will play in the household, and typically, she and her husband don’t really rock the boat too much if they can help it.
My husband and I (both 26) recently hosted a family dinner to announce our pregnancy, it’s important to add that my husband doesn’t have a close relationship with his father, but we keep him around because he still has 3 minor siblings that we love and care for.
My FIL is the type of person that still thinks women should serve men at dining times (like, he has to be served first because he’s the breadwinner and shit like that), we usually don’t care since we mostly ignore them, however this time my family was present and we consider he f**ked around and found out.
At a recent family dinner, though, things came to a head because OP served her own father, who was injured, but told her father in law he could make his own plate.
My dad is my favorite person in the world, my mom died when I was little and my dad took care of my older sister and I, they’re the only family I have left, at dinner, both my husband and I cooked things we knew both of our families would like, the first issue started when my FIL tried to sit at one of the heads of the table and my husband said no, he sad at one and I sat at the other, me with my father and sister to either side and him with his brothers, so m FIL was kinda in the middle and didn’t like it.
The second problem and the cause of all of this is that everyone was kinda serving themselves, however my dad has a damaged nerve on his right hand and he struggles when holding spoons/forks and such (my sister bought him a parkinson-frienly cutlery set that he brings around, but a big spoon for serving is still hard for him), so I offered to serve him his plate while my sister served him his drink and then we all sat to eat and chat.
Three or four minutes after that, my FIL asks out loud ”Is no one going to serve me my plate?” and my husband looks at him confused and says ”No, we don’t do that here??”
He left angry and insulted, and some people present thought she was rude.
and my MIL just gets up in a hurry and takes his plate but my FIL says no and that ”the hostess did it for her father, so she cand do it for me” and I say ”Yes, my father who has an injured hand, you’re fine”, he says that he won’t eat then and I just shrugged and said that he could starve and I didn’t cared.
He leaves with my MIL and while everyone agrees with me, my own father said that it was a disrespectful thing to say and I should apologize for the way I did it. So AITA??
Does Reddit agree? You know they’re dying to tell you!
The top comment agrees with OP – FIL f**ked around and found out.
No one was sticking up for the FIL, in fact.
This comment disagrees that keeping the peace was in order here.
They say stop worrying about saving space for s*xists.
This person had a pretty funny suggestion as far as making a point.
Y’all I don’t think I would have even been as nice as this woman.
Would you have?
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