Her Inlaws Always Criticized Her In German, Not Realizing She Could Understand. Now That She Revealed Her Fluency, They’re Mad She Let Them Badmouth Her For So Long.

Michael Levanduski

2 months ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

When you move closer to your in-laws you expect that you will be spending more time with them.

What would you do if your in-laws were speaking negatively about you in their native tongue, which they didn’t know you understood?

That is what this wife experienced, so she put her in-laws in their place, but now they are upset with her.

Check it out.

AITA for not telling my husband’s family that I speak their language?

My husband Peter (29 m) and I (27 f) have been married for about three years.

We have one child together and I was pregnant with our second.

I’m western Canadian while he is from Germany.

That is nice that they will be closer to family.

We lived in Canada for a long time, but because of inflation moving back to Germany seemed like a better option for us.

We bought a nice house in Hannover where Peter is from.

The day after our flights to Germany we all visited Peter’s family.

This was the second time I have seen them (the first was at our wedding).

They greeted us and brought us inside of the house, fussing over my son.

We had dinner, and soon we left the house, wanting to settle into our new home.

We visited Peter’s family often for the next few months.

How rude.

But I had started to realize that they would sometimes speak about me in German.

They would make rude comments on my hair and makeup, question my fashion choices, and overall were just very unkind to me.

They also said mean things about my pregnant belly which I was already insecure about.

I ended up talking to my husband about this.

I told him that I didn’t like the way that they were treating me.

I said that I hated how my every choice was judged.

He told me that he would talk to his family.

Good! Problem solved?

The next time that we went to his parents house, there were no more mean comments.

For about three months it was like nothing ever happened.

I gave birth to a perfect baby girl that we named Lilith.

Peter’s family was very upset when they heard the name.

If you didn’t know, Lilith means “ghost” or “of the night.”

We didn’t pick this name because of its meaning, but because it is a name that every girl in my family has had for many years.

My middle name is Lilith, along with my moms, my grandma’s, and even my great grandma’s.

For a while I didn’t visit my in-laws.

I didn’t want to hear them talk about how I shouldn’t have named my daughter Lilith.

But yesterday we saw them again.

It was my mother-in-law’s birthday.

As soon as we showed up things started to go badly.

Why would the Mother-in-Law be upset? Selfish?

Everybody wanted to hold Lilith which made my MIL upset because people weren’t paying attention to her and made me overwhelmed.

I didn’t want people holding her.

I was going through a pretty bad postpartum depression and it was still pretty early to see people.

I let people look at her, but declined when anyone asked to hold her.

During dinner I heard my SIL talking to my MIL in German.

I heard her complaining about how she couldn’t hold my baby.

My SIL even had the audacity to call me, and I quote, “a fat ugly hokey addict.”

Way to stand up for yourself!

I turned to my SIL and MIL and told them off in German.

I basically said that I have always known what they have said about me, but calling me names was the last straw.

It is weird that this would have never come up before.

I also mentioned how I have known German for almost my whole life.

The table instantly blew up.

People were yelling at me because apparently this was all my fault.

I left with Peter and we haven’t talked to them since.

AITH?

I’m not sure why you would keep the fact that you speak their language a secret, but they were extremely rude regardless.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

Make it make sense.