Giving gifts can be a beautiful and rewarding experience if you know you're giving from the heart and the person receiving is genuinely grateful. Under other circumstances, however, it's not quite so joyful.
One woman took to Reddit to explain the predicament she found herself in with her mother-in-law. She explains that her mother-in-law is a real occasions person who likes to find reasons to celebrate in the everyday. Part of her way of celebrating is with presents, which is where things get tricky in a family as big as 15 people. Still, the woman tried to keep up and be thoughtful where she could on the couple's behalf.
Everything was fine until her mother-in-law decided to comment on the quality of her gifts. When the woman dismissed the whole thing as greedy and immature, her mother-in-law decided to take her side of the story to Facebook.
You can't help the family you marry into, and sometimes you don't want to make waves. One woman did just that when she started going along with her in-laws' over-the-top gift-giving policy.
"My in-laws are gift-crazy. Everyone gets a gift for every single birthday, life event, mini holiday, etc. Additionally, there are like 15 little kids between his siblings and they give gifts for like… every moment of their lives. Starting school year, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, end of school year, birthdays," she explained.
It's a big family, but the couple did what they could to play along.
"Two weeks ago one of the nieces turned 18. We sent a card," the original poster (OP) shared.
That sounds like an appropriate response to a birthday, but apparently it fell a little short.
"MIL called and started asking questions about if we were doing okay financially."
Obviously that threw OP for a loop, so she asked what was going on:
"She was like 'You're constantly talking about trips you're going on, you post all the pictures of all the fabric and yarn you buy, I'm just wondering why you can't send your nieces and nephews a measly $100 for their birthday and then some for Christmas? It's the least you could do.'"
"I was honestly shocked because what I was hearing was that we're expected to send $100 for every single holiday," OP noted.
"I asked her if that's what she meant, because that was a LOT of money, and she was like 'Well I don't see what the big deal is? They're your FAMILY.'"
This woman was really trying to avoid a bigger argument and tried to redirect her to her son.
"I started to say that maybe she should talk to my husband, but she was like 'Well I'm talking to you right now and quite frankly I don't understand this me-me-me attitude,'" she shared.
"At this point I was ready to just get off the phone, so I said 'You're getting angry at me because I didn't buy an ADULT a birthday present? You need to grow up and get over yourself. I'm done talking about this,'" OP revealed.
"I hung up and put my phone on silent."
"She took the whole mess to Facebook where she framed it as an innocent question."
Her mother-in-law asked her Facebook friends, "How would you feel if your son and daughter in law decided they no longer wanted to do simple things like send birthday presents and come visit for holidays? Would you feel heartbroken and abandoned to have them say 'Grow up and get over it?' When does a mother get over feeling rejected by her child?"
From that point, she kicked the whole mess over to her husband, who said he'd take care of it.
"When he got home, he said that he called her and she ripped into him. EVERYTHING came up — that we live on the other side of the country and don't visit, he never calls her, I'm 'cold' to everyone," OP shared.
"For the record, my family does like … occasional birthday or Christmas gifts. We stopped making a big fuss years ago. Also the 'trips' she makes a big deal out of? Those are camping trips we take to areas around our state."
Most Redditors were pretty outraged by the mother-in-law's behavior. One asked if OP got $100 from everyone for her/her spouse's occasions.
"And if they do, at what point do you say moving money around in $100 increments all year is stupid and just stop?" another person noted.
"We get handmade gifts from the little kids on occasion, and his sister always sends us one of those family newsletters with whatever gift she picked out for everyone that year (she gets stuff like fancy oils or soaps in bulk and gives them to everyone)," OP eventually shared.
"I think a few years ago one of the kids was really into knitting and sent a scarf she made."
Some people did argue that OP was out of line for telling her mother-in-law to "grow up and get over it." One commenter noted:
"Your husband's family makes a big deal about presents. Surely you knew this before the blowup. So it shouldn't have been a surprise to you that this would be an issue. Different families do things differently. It does not make them childish."
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