Turns out, three’s a crowd — especially when your husband invites your mother-in-law to crash your anniversary trip.
A 32-year-old woman recently vented her frustration on a Reddit thread titled “Am I Overreacting” after her husband unexpectedly invited his mother along on what was intended to be a romantic anniversary weekend getaway.
"We rarely get time alone because we both work full-time and have two little kids," the anonymous woman wrote, according to People, as the original post has since been removed by the thread’s moderators. "I was beyond excited: spa, wine tasting, nice dinners."
But that excitement quickly faded when she arrived at their rental home and was greeted by her mother-in-law.
"Apparently, he thought it would be a 'nice surprise' since she 'never gets out much' and could watch the kids while we 'went out,'" she wrote. "Except…she came with us to the dinners, on the vineyard tour, and even slept in the room next to us."
The woman told her husband that she felt the trip was completely hijacked and was so upset on the last night that she slept in the guest room.
Now, her husband is angry, accusing the woman of being ungrateful and dramatic, insisting his mom "just wanted to spend time with us."
"Am I overreacting for being furious that my anniversary trip turned into a family vacation?" she asked at the end of her post.
The woman’s dilemma garnered hundreds of responses, as many users debated whether it was even real or if it was written with AI due to a lack of details, including where the kids slept during the trip.
The most-liked response to the post reads, “This is a case where you are probably under-reacting.”
“Respectfully, if your husband cannot understand your point of view, and thinks you are being ‘ungrateful and dramatic,’ then you might want to ask him to go into couples therapy with you. Because his reaction is incredibly disrespectful, indeed, belittling, in my view,” a user wrote.
They continued: “In my personal opinion, your husband has absolutely no self-awareness -- by that I mean, at least in this particular instance, he did not give one iota of thought to how you might feel, think, or react to what I personally regard as his ridiculous idea to bring his mother along. If you don't mind me asking, is this a common behavior for him in your marriage?”
The original poster updated her response once other users launched into a debate over the story’s legitimacy.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is… over the course of the last 60+ years of my own life, I have seen this sort of scenario unfold dozens of times, "in real life,’” they wrote.
“The circumstances may have been slightly different, but the theme is always the same: one partner who has absolutely no regard for the thoughts and feelings of the other partner, and then goes onto dismiss that other partner as “ungrateful and dramatic,” “insecure,” “overreacting,” etc. if they dare complain. In that sense, this is an instructional / cautionary tale of sorts. And whether it was produced by “artificial intelligence” or not is therefore irrelevant in my opinion. Regards.”
