When we visit friends and family for the holidays, it’s inevitable that there will be an awkward moment or two at some point.

But between adults who care about one another, these awkward moments can easily be laughed off, and become another memory, and part of what it is to be intrinsically human.

However, when someone genuinely acts in a way that makes others uncomfortable – well that’s another issue altogether. And while most people are grateful and respectful when they attend another person’s holiday celebrations, others don’t seem to have got the memo.

That was exactly the case for the mother-in-law of the woman in this story, who wasn’t invited to Thanksgiving dinner but came anyway, bringing some quite disrespectful behavior along with her.

Read on to find out what happened here – and why she wasn’t invited in the first place.

AITA for making my mother-in-law uncomfortable and embarrassed during dinner?

This year, due to clashing schedules, we had Thanksgiving the day before.

My husband and I agreed that he wasn’t going to invite his mom due to past conflicts involving food – where she takes food before everyone (we feed the kids first in this household).

She then takes off with Tupperware of our food without even saying goodbye, and there have been multiple times there wasn’t much food left to go around after this.

She has food insecurities and hoards food, which is a real problem, by it is not my problem and shouldn’t be made to be mine either.

So, I take issue. Obviously. Because usually it’s me going hungry because I am always the last to eat here (family of six, four kids – I serve my kids and then my husband and then myself).

But her Thanksgiving dinner really did not go to plan.

Now, my husband did not invite his mother but she caught wind somehow and showed up. Neither me or my husband said anything because we didn’t want to cause an issue so no, we did not kick her out.

When dinner was done I called the kids over by saying “kids, food”.

My mother-in-law immediately jumped up from the couch to get to the front of the line and started attempting to dig in. I said “I’m sorry but are you a child? No? Go sit down and wait your turn.”

Her face went bright red and she went back to the couch and crossed her arms, mumbling under her breath. When I called the adults, she stayed planted on the couch and said something like “are you sure there’s even enough for me?” in a childish tone.

Yikes! Let’s see how this mom reacted to her mother-in-law’s attitude.

I didn’t react – I choose to ignore it.

She came up a while later, grabbed some food, wolfed it down her throat and then went to our cupboard for Tupperware. I asked what she thought she was doing and she said, “well Tom is at home, figured it would grab him a plate”.

I told her that her boyfriend that none of us have met is not our problem, and she is not taking our leftovers to feed him. She asked if she could take a plate for herself, so I said sure and exchanged the Tupperware she grabbed (one of our oversized ones) for a normal size container that would hold roughly two cans of soup.

She asked if I was serious and I said “dead serious” and walked off. She threw the Tupperware in my sink and walked out without saying anything.

Uh-oh. Let’s see if there were repercussions in the aftermath of this.

However, she did just call my husband and give him an ear-full about feeling “unwelcome” during the holidays, and stated that I was acting both immature and high and mighty.

She said that I embarrassed her in front of everyone (my entire family was there, roughly twelve adults and ten kids) and has demanded I apologize.

She was on speaker, so I calmly said that I would not apologize for making her follow the same rules as everyone else, and perhaps her own entitlement to other people’s food was the real issue here. That we didn’t spend $1000 for her to take $200 of it home with her, and she needed to take a step back and assess her behavior.

She hung up. But now my husband is radio silent and says he doesn’t want to talk about it and is giving me the cold shoulder.

AITA?

When you’re a guest in someone else’s home, there are certain things that you do – that you might not do in your own home – to be polite. Following their rules is an example of this.

If the kids eat first, the kids eat first. Grandma shouldn’t be digging in ahead of them.

Sure she seems to have some trauma around food scarcity that clearly needs dealing with. But it’s not the responsibility of her daughter-in-law to go hungry, just so she can take some leftovers home.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

Check that entitlement at the door!

While others called him out on his inaction too.

Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out just how inappropriately her mother-in-law was behaving.

Sure her mother-in-law might’ve felt embarrassed at being called out, but that implies that she is already somewhat ashamed of her behavior or thinks its wrong, and is hoping that nobody else notices.

If no one has called her out before, and just endured this unpleasant behavior, it must have come as something of a shock to her – but the fact that she responded in such a hostile manner says more about her than about the woman who confronted her.

She’s the one that should apologize.

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.