Fathers-in-Law That Turned Their Children’s Lives into Complete Nightmares

Some fathers love to control their kids by telling them which schools to attend, who they should hang out with and what they should spend their time doing. Hearing your father’s opinions is just a normal part of life for most people.

But some people not only have to worry about the opinions of their fathers, but also their fathers-in-law. Marrying into a family can be difficult enough when your father-in-law doesn’t want to control your choices in any way.

These real-life stories were shared by people who soon found out that the new father in their life had some strange opinions, wanted to control his children and grandchildren, or just wanted to speak his mind on some pretty awful topics.

My Father-in-Law Has a Crush on My Sister

My father-in-law is “making the moves” on my sister, and it’s making all of us very uncomfortable. So, I’m a 24-year-old female. My sister is 35 and my father-in-law is 49. He’s never been a great dad to my husband.

He was terrible towards him when he was a child, and he walked out on them when my husband was about 13 years old. He chose his new wife over his family.

He’s made an effort to have a relationship again with my husband over the last few years, and they now have a much better relationship as adults. In September, our only child was stillborn, and at the funeral, my father-in-law met all of my family members for the first time.

That’s when things took a turn for the disgusting. Since then, he’s been constantly chatting to my sister. They both have mental health problems and she likes to “fix” people.

Apparently, he took this to mean that she was interested in him romantically. He’s been commenting on all of her Facebook posts, and he now messages her daily and makes inappropriate comments to her. Things like how beautiful she looks and how if they were together he’d spoil her with gifts.

He’ll share memes that are a bit vulgar and tag my sister in them. He got intoxicated a couple of weeks ago and made a big Facebook post about her. He then messaged her, telling her how he feels about her. She 100% does not feel the same way about him.

She told him this a couple of times now, but he hasn’t relented. My husband hasn’t done anything or talked to him about it, and I’m getting close to talking to him about it myself.

We’re just concerned that he’s going to pull the “everyone’s ganging up on me” card and leave my husband’s life again. But he’s making my sister really uncomfortable, and it’s causing some serious tension between me and my husband.

He can’t seem to take no for an answer and I don’t want things to be difficult between them. We’ll be having a major family gathering soon, as well as all the other family occasions in between and after, and I just don’t know what to do about this.

Story credit: Reddit / Cherry1996blossom

He Ruined Our Vacation

We were just on a family vacation—until my father-in-law ruined the whole thing in an instant. He just lost his temper at his four-year-old grandson because he ruined his drawing. He then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and caused our family holiday to be cut short.

Yes, as pathetic as it sounds, we’re all on holiday and my ridiculous father-in-law was sitting on the floor drawing on paper when his bubbly four-year-old grandson came over and playfully drew over his drawing.

My father-in-law is an artist and takes his drawing very seriously. Fine, I get that this incident must have sucked for him. But instead of seeing that the kid is four years old and dampening his response, he completely flew off his rocker, both literally and figuratively.

After yelling and swearing at his grandson, he did the same to his son (i.e. the father of the grandson). He was yelling at him because he allegedly wasn’t disciplining his son. In reality, he was, but my father-in-law didn’t have the mental capacity to see that.

To give some context, there’s my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my wife, my two-year-old daughter, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, and their son and daughter. That was everyone who is on this trip.

The nine of us are all sharing a holiday house, and it’s literally been awesome up till now. The kids absolutely love it, and all but one of the adults are smitten watching the grandchildren, children, nieces, and nephews having a blast.

One of them was having such a blast that he decided to play a trick on granddad, and ruin his drawing! It’s only a drawing, right? Annoying, but kids innocently do that kind of thing all the time, right? His parents are normal responsible parents, and he’s not a bratty kid.

Yet my father-in-law has a big chip on his shoulder about how kids are raised, and how his children and their partners (me included) are all doing everything wrong.

We do this holiday getaway every year, and when our daughter was only a few months old, we had to leave early because my fragile father-in-law couldn’t handle our daughter crying as we were trying to get her to sleep.

We were clearly bad parents and we needed to get her out of bed and put her down again later. It was a big blowout with lots of yelling and swearing.

There’s one common denominator in all this, and it’s my father-in-law. He claims that at the age of 62, he’s too old to change, and that getting angry is a part of who he is. He has severe anxiety issues and sleep problems, but hates medication.

For a brief period when he was on Prozac, it was the calmest time I’ve ever experienced in my life. Honestly, I wish I could just punch him in the face, but I know that this would just be a bad idea for everyone involved. I want what’s best for my daughter and wife.

But when he’s talking at the top of his lungs, not letting anyone else talk, ranting, raving, swearing, cutting other people off, and then yelling “LISTEN TO ME, DON’T INTERRUPT ME!” when someone has the audacity to respond, I secretly dream of walking up to him and punching him as hard as I can.

I’m trying my best to remain calm, but holy cow, what a handful he is to deal with! Story credit: Reddit /Pretty_Amazing

I Hope I Did the Right Thing

This is a story about my future father-in-law. We had Christmas at my fiancé’s grandmother’s house on Sunday. My fiancé and I moved out on our own this spring into an apartment and it’s been a wonderful experience so far. However, we don’t have very much disposable income now.

Due to that, we only got Christmas cards with gift cards for everyone in his family. Now, I didn’t hear the comment, but apparently, when my fiancé was handing his dad his card, my father-in-law said under his breath, “I guess the real gift must be in the mail.”

My future husband heard this, and flat out said that we don’t have a lot of money. We had considered not doing gifts at all, and that’s the thanks we get for still trying to provide something nice?

I didn’t know about this comment and as soon as we left, I ordered a gift basket online to be delivered to his parents’ house because I personally felt I hadn’t done enough.

When my future husband informed me yesterday of this comment, that, combined with all of their other transgressions, made me want to cancel the gift basket because I don’t think they deserve it now.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to cancel the order or to change the address. Well, whatever. I hope they feel like the idiots that they are when they receive it. I hope what I did was the right thing.

Story credit: Reddit /tireddepressed

I’m Not Afraid of Him Anymore

Sooooo, I have a huge number of stories about this monstrosity of a man that I call my father-in-law. I really didn’t expect to have many more new ones at this point, but life is full of surprises. Some back story is that this man has been awful towards me and mistreated me for many years.

Never physically, mostly in the form of extreme name-calling. Some of the other things he’s done to me have included gaslighting, making me feel guilty for completely normal things, blaming me for his lack of relationship with my son, etc. It goes on and on.

Some more backstory is that I was pregnant with twins until January—when tragedy struck. They were stillborn. My husband and I were heartbroken, and are still trying to grieve and move past this.

Anyways, this morning I was at my computer working from home, making my to-do list and relishing the fact that I lost another pound on the scale, when suddenly a Facebook message comes through from my father-in-law.

Now, this is weird because we’re not friends on Facebook, even though we have sent messages to one another in the distant, distant past. Also, I don’t really use Facebook anymore. I haven’t for years at this point. But nevertheless, this man apparently somehow found out about my babies dying.

He sent me a message so disturbing, it’s impossible to forget. It said: “Doesn’t karma suck? The worst part is you still have a lot more coming!” Word for word. I was fuming—but, only for a few minutes.

It was like a PTSD response or something, because my adrenaline was running, my hands were shaking, I was afraid, the whole nine yards. But then I realized that this guy is just sad. He’s sick and hateful.

He doesn’t love my son (his grandson), he loves his possessions and he hates me for taking one of his possessions (i.e. my son) away from him when we moved out of state. He never even asked how my son is doing after losing his baby brother and sister. Sick, sick, sick.

So, I made up a plan for revenge. I came to the decision to post on Facebook for the first time in like four years. I told all of those friends about the babies, the tragic loss, and finished off with the beautiful message my father-in-law sent me this morning.

Behavior like this cannot live in the sunlight. 

It thrives in the shadows. I was afraid of him for years, but I’m not afraid of him anymore! He doesn’t have anything to take from me. He doesn’t hold any power over me.

I’m already getting messages from his family telling me how disgusting he is. I’m sure he’s heard about my post by now.

Public shaming for the win! In addition, my son is going to be 14 years old this month. He’s old enough now to hear the truth about his grandfather. So, if he wants to hear about it, I will tell him. If he doesn’t, I’ll respect that. My response to my father-in-law?

“My son will know who his grandfather is. He loved those babies too.” So, good luck to my father-in-law in trying to have a relationship with my son any time soon.

Does he not realize that my son actually loves me and our family? What a doofus. I’m sure he doesn’t even realize that my son isn’t a sweet six-year-old anymore and that he’s capable of having his own thoughts and opinions now.

Story credit: Reddit /gimmecoffee722