Being a guest has certain unspoken rules, but some guests feel entitled to rewrite them.

When one overbearing mother-in-law took it upon herself to rearrange more than just the décor, she unknowingly flushed away any goodwill she had left with her son-in-law.

The silent battle that followed would last for years, one subtle toilet paper roll sabotage at a time.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Overbearing MIL wants to guilt trip my wife and mess with our home? Absolutely not

My wife’s mother did something years ago that I haven’t forgiven her for, and I’m never letting this grudge die.

When my wife and I first met, her mother was used to being very involved in her life.

“Involved” was a nice way of putting it.

She had a key to her apartment (which quickly became our apartment).

She was used to seeing her at least once a week.

She was used to bossing my wife around like she was still a child, despite my wife being well into her late 20s.

But with some hard work, some of her craziness faded.

Alllll of that classic overbearing, codependent mother stuff was taken care of with a lot of therapy and hefty boundaries, which made life a lot easier for me — much to the dismay of my mother-in-law, who was no longer getting her way.

But a stubborn amount held on. It’s like she couldn’t help herself.

I noticed she started to make some comments about our home—how she hoped nothing would go wrong because she wouldn’t be able to come in and help us without a key anymore (lol).

Or how if she had been involved in choosing the colors for our apartment walls, they would match better.

Little rude, passive-aggressive things like that.

But one day, she really crossed the line in the eyes of her son-in-law.

The last straw for me, where I decided I really just couldn’t handle this passive-aggressive, entitled behavior, was when she came into our apartment while my wife and I were exhausted from a week of work and didn’t feel like entertaining.

She guilted my wife into hosting.

Then, she used our toilet and turned the orientation of the toilet paper.

What kind of self-important person comes into someone else’s home and changes their toilet paper orientation?

The heck?

So what did he do to retaliate?

So anyway, this was almost fifteen years ago, and every single time we were invited to their home after that (which was way too often), I changed every single toilet paper orientation in their house — all three bathrooms.

She’s never brought it up with either of us, and she’s never touched our toilet paper orientation ever again since that day.

But I’ll never stop.

He hopes it sends a clear message about boundaries.

I hope she knows it’s me and that she’s going to have to be fixing her toilet paper orientation for the rest of her days, as long as she wants to be a menace in my wife’s and my life.

To get through to his mother-in-law, he just had to speak in a language he knew she’d understand.

What did Reddit think?

This mother-in-law had some serious control issues.

This mischievous commenter plants an idea for another act of petty revenge.

Clearly there’s only one correct way to roll the toilet paper.

You know what they say: Pettiness begets more pettiness.

The mother-in-law learned a valuable lesson that perhaps some things are better left untouched.

The great toilet paper war rages on… a battles of wills with no end in sight.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.