There’s nothing like a nosy relative with a spare key to ruin your sense of peace.

Imagine your mother-in-law kept demanding access to your home, even after barging in on you twice at your last place.

How would you handle it?

Would you trust her with a key again?

Or would you give her a fake copy and wait to see what she’d do with it?

In the following story, one wife finds herself in this predicament and opts for the latter, but it all blows up in her face.

Here’s how it played out.

AITA for giving my MIL a fake copy of my house key and “exposing” her on Christmas dinner?

I, F34, want to preface this by saying that I married my husband, M37, a year ago. His mom is snoopy and annoying.

She can’t help it; that is just how she is, as my dear in-laws say.

My husband and I purchased a new house recently, and my MIL kept pushing to get an emergency key.

She promised that she would only use it in an emergency, but given that she had an emergency key to our old apartment and walked in on us being intimate twice (but my husband didn’t think it was a big deal), I just couldn’t trust her.

As it turns out, she tried to use the key, but it didn’t work.

I sent her a fake key (after she kept pushing), and she looked smug when I hand-delivered it to her.

Days passed by, and at Christmas dinner, MIL angrily “called me out” because I gave her a fake copy of the house key.

She shamed me for doing this in front of everyone.

In my defense, I asked her how she found out, and she said it happened days ago when she came over at 4 while my husband and I were out.

I reminded her, “Didn’t you promise you wouldn’t use it unless there’s an emergency? So you tried to get in when there was no emergency, and you broke the promise you made to us!”

Now, her husband is upset and demands she apologize.

She looked red in the face, and the other family started staring. Some even laughed at her for the face she made.

She suddenly got up from her seat and rushed into the kitchen, where she had a huge meltdown so loud the next-door neighbors must’ve heard—literally.

I’ve never heard a 60+ year old woman throw a tantrum like that. Needless to say, dinner was awkward, and my husband and his sister were giving me looks.

My husband went off on me in the car and said I lied, manipulated, humiliated, and exposed his mom.

He said he wouldn’t have let me get away with it had he known.

We had an argument, and he is demanding that I apologize to his mom for my childish behavior and for ruining Christmas dinner for the whole family.

AITA?

Wow. It’s easy to see both sides of this, but the MIL did break her promise.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about the whole thing.

This person thinks her husband should stand up to his mother.

It sounds like this is exactly what happened.

For this reader, the mother deserved to be exposed.

As this person explains, they both owe her an apology.

She needs to rethink her marriage.

It almost seems like her husband cares more about his mother’s feelings than hers.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.