Juggling things as an adult can feel like a nightmare at times.

When you’ve got a job, a house to take care of, and relationships to maintain, it can feel like you barely have any time for yourself – or to get other things done.

It’s suffocating, especially around the holiday season when those responsibilities and obligations continue to mount up.

The woman in this story is desperately trying to juggle everything, whilst also carving out some quality time to spend with her new husband.

But her mother-in-law has other ideas.

Read on to find out how things started to go sour between them.

AITA for not being willing to give up one of our free days to see my in-laws?

This morning, my mother-in-law sent me a very long text about meeting up with her, my father-, brother- and sister-in-law, and my niece on Monday for an event they are volunteering at for their church, that my partner is an ex-member of.

I very politely told her we appreciated the invite but already had plans to volunteer at another event that is linked to my partner’s work.

She then asked me to pick a different date in December for my partner and I to come up for dinner then, since we will not be attending the event.

But the couple already had a lot on in the coming weeks.

My partner works a job that is very much not a 9-5. He works a very strange schedule with long hours. This makes planning time with family – and each other – difficult.

For the entire month of December, we only have six days that we are both not busy.

Also, we got married three months ago, and this is our first Christmas season being married. It is also the first Christmas season for our niece (sister-in-law’s child who is about six months old). Because of our niece we chose to spend Christmas Day with his family.

They are also throwing a family “party” (the party is just my mother-, father-, brother-, and sister-in-law, our niece, and us) earlier in the month that we will be going to. We live about an hour’s drive away from my in-laws.

She decided to tackle this situation as a team with her husband.

I called my husband to discuss how he wanted to handle this. He was not able to text her back himself as he was working and cannot answer texts at work.

He said to politely tell her that we are very busy and that we want to spend the little free time we have together just the two of us. We stayed on the phone while I texted her. The conversation went as follows:

Mother-in-law: What day can you come over dinner before Christmas? We want to be able to spend some time with you this month.

Me: Unfortunately we are super busy this month and at this point there’s only a couple of days where we are both free and we want to be able to spend some time this holiday season just the two of us.

Her: You can’t spare two hours in a whole month? 🙁

Yikes! Let’s see how this woman and her husband responded to his mom’s guilt-tripping.

Needless to say, my husband didn’t like that and told me to send the next text as follows so she couldn’t claim I ignored her, but would hopefully contact him.

Me: I think you should discuss this more with your son. It’s more than just two hours for us. It’s almost two hours of just driving there and back.

We do try to see you guys at least once a month, and next month we are coming down for the party and coming on Christmas Day. We do our best to be fair and see you guys and my family equally while still trying to spend some time together just the two of us.

Her: See you on the 19th. Don’t forget our picture. (We are meeting before the party to take a family photo with Santa at the mall).

This whole situation has left her feeling conflicted.

Am I in the wrong here?

I feel like I make sure we see my husband’s family pretty frequently. We saw them twice in November, and will see them twice in December as well. But with the holidays I wonder if maybe my husband and I should sacrifice one more day to spend time with them?

But at the same time, I’m only seeing my family once this month, so that seems unfair.

AITA?

This is the classic example of a mother being territorial about her grown-up kids’ time, and making the kids feel terrible about having time to themselves.

She needs to understand that it isn’t just two hours – they have to give up basically a whole day in order to visit with his family.

And they don’t have many of those precious days to spare.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit thought about this.

This person thought that she’d done everything right.

While others believed that her mother-in-law hadn’t done much wrong either.

But this Redditor thought that this woman should leave the correspondence to her husband.

It’s difficult to respond when other people’s emotions are at play, and you’re being made to feel like the bad guy.

But part of being an adult is learning that you’re allowed to say no to things, you’re allowed to disappoint others, and – most importantly – you’re allowed to put yourself and your relationship first.

All this shouldn’t be on her though, it would definitely help if her husband were to take up the mantle of communication with his mom.

He can handle her nonsense.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.