The Mystery Of The Mother In Law
Mother in laws have a special place in American popular culture. The mother in law is a figure that can inspire fear, trepidation, or downright contempt just about anywhere. The mother of your spouse has a complicated relationship in your life: they’ve dedicated their lives to protecting their precious children, and now, suddenly, you’re the most important person in their child’s life. It’s a precarious position. For one person, however, a long-standing feud between wife and mother in law became more than just a petty inconvenience. This story was posted on Reddit by a woman who we’ll call Stephanie.
Stephanie and her mother in law, Jill, got along OK in the beginning. There were a couple of red flags, though. Jill had really strong ideas about what a person could and couldn’t do with their bodies, and Stephanie strongly disagreed. Jill thought that tattoos and piercings of any kind were an abomination that directly contradicted the purity of the human body. Stephanie had a few of each, and really liked them, though she thought she was generally pretty reasonable on that front, with only a few mostly hidden tattoos and four piercings, two of which were ear piercings. Jill mostly just retaliated with passive aggression and snide remarks about the tattoos and piercings, which was fine with Stephanie, though not ideal. When Stephanie and her husband began searching for a place to live, however, things got a little more complicated.
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Gotta Live Somewhere
Jill told Stephanie that she and her husband would be moving into a new house fairly soon, so Stephanie and her husband Matt would be able to rent their old house for a few months until they were able to purchase it. Stephanie and Matt figured that this would be a pretty good deal since they could help out Jill and have a cheap place to live for a while. They might even get the house for cheaper than it was worth, which would be a big win!
Of course, the only problem is that when you rent a home from someone you still have to deal with a landlord. And while landlords and parents in law can both be a lot to handle on their own, each of them is a walk in the park compared to a combination of the two.
Jill decided that if Stephanie was to live in her old house, she was going to have to make some changes.
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Lifestyle Changes
Jill told Stephanie that included in the lease would be a clause that would prohibit Stephanie from wearing any piercings while living in the house.
“Fine,” Stephanie thought. “It’s only for a few months, who cares. I can live without it.”
Then a couple of months went by. Stephanie’s piercings were closing up, and she decided that it wouldn’t be a big deal if she at least started wearing earrings again. What could be the harm?
Well, when Jill saw that Stephanie had begun wearing her piercings again, she freaked out. Now, Matt had a soft spot for his momma, and had a bit of a bad habit of siding with her instead of his wife. So when Jill reacted to this little tiff by definitely closing the door on Stephanie and Matt’s purchasing the house, allowing them only to rent for an indefinite amount of time instead, Matt didn’t even tell Stephanie. But Matt was doing a lot more problematic things than that.
END OF PART 1
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