Armchair Anonymous: Mother-in-Law
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. This is Crazy Mother-in-Law Stories. Whoa. Yes. I don't have one. You don't have one, yeah. So...

I can't relate, and I can't say after listening that I'm sad I don't have one. Okay, well, I guess that's the question. Not having one, do you think it made you less interested in the stories? No, I was just as interested, but it was cautionary tale. Yeah, because I love horrible bosses' stories, and I don't have a horrible boss. True. Also, father-in-laws, too. I think I'm a lone wolf now. Because? Because of these episodes.

Oh, you're never going to get married after hearing these. So this is for you a cautionary tale. So I guess maybe if you want to get married, don't listen to this.

Or it's a reality. Look, it's the reality of life. Dive right in. It's a lottery. You hit the jackpot or well, it's probably neutral more than anything else. Yet nobody loves their mother-in-law more than the kid loves their mom. You know what I mean? It's a uniquely weird dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. Like as much as I love my parents so much and I do think they're great and I think they'd be a great mother-in-law and father-in-law.

My husband isn't going to like them as much as I do. Well, I don't know. I don't know about that. Interesting. Because...

I've been around them before, and I'm just a pig in shit. They're good to be. You can be annoyed while I'm actually happy. Then you could resent your husband. Okay, I'm going to take back the word like. Love. They're not going to love my parents as much as I do. They might like them more. Good distinction. It's just the way it goes. This is life. You can't expect it. It's primal.

It does make you think about, though, how most of mankind operated where someone completely left their family group and went and joined another family. And then that was it. You might see them at a festival once a year. But you left, and now this is your new family. It probably worked better then.

Why? In the same way that arranged marriages work better. Like they kind of are more successful. Yeah, but that's different from not having parents. Like if it's your only option, you probably go like, well, fuck, I got to get with the program. Yeah. As opposed to, I still got my parents and these ones are not. I don't know. This is a tough. This is a tough one. Don't listen. Please don't listen to crazy mother-in-laws.

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Hello. Is this Heidi? Oh, hi.

You know, a lot of people, when they got on here, say they can't believe it's real until they see you. And I never understood that until this exact moment. I was convinced that some hacker named Emma really had me fooled for 48 hours. No, she's a good one. Do we want a fake name for you? No, we don't want a fake name. I've actually gone back and forth with that a lot for the last 24 hours.

I have faith that my armchair community is not going to throw me under the bus because I don't think my mother-in-law is aware of podcasts. Okay. Well, that was your first complaint. The first article submitted to Evidence was that she hates podcasts. Right, right, right, right, right. Okay.

Okay. Okay, so mother-in-laws. I, last year, was very pregnant. I gave birth in January of this year. Congrats. Oh, thank you. This is my husband and I's first baby. Baby boy, born in January. We were doing great as new parents who knew nothing of what they were doing. Yeah.

My only complaint was that I am a very type A person and I hadn't slept in a while. And so it was about a week after giving birth. And I noticed that my mother-in-law, who is usually very active on social media, hadn't posted anything about the baby being born. And I should have just let it go. Not a big deal at social media, but there was some little person inside of me saying, we need to investigate. So...

I talked to my husband and he gave her a call. So both sets of parents, we were lucky enough to have them at the hospital when the baby was born. And

He had mentioned to everyone who are loving to take a lot of photos with their cell phone cameras, like, please don't post anything on social media until we've had a chance to tell our friends and family so that that way they're not finding out on Facebook that he's been born. So again, it had been over a week at this point. And so when he called to check in about why she hadn't posted, she said, well,

well, like I know you had said at the hospital that this was something that you didn't want us doing. And I just feel like I've been put in Facebook jail. And my husband was like, well, I'm so sorry for the miscommunication. We really just meant like the first 24 hours, please. This is your debut to let everyone know that you have a grandbaby. You know, got off the phone, told me about that. I had honestly kind of forgotten about it. And later that evening, my husband encouraged me to like, go take a nap.

That first week you are awake with them, like especially as the mom feeding every two hours schedule. And so I had not gotten more than I'm not exaggerating, probably 45 minutes of sleep at a time for like that full week. And so he was like, we've got milk stored up. Go put on one of your podcasts. Go to sleep. So I wake up two hours later. I had put my phone on airplane mode so that no one could wake me up. I was like, I'm going to mentally rest. And I'm

I wake up, I turn it off like airplane mode and I have texts and missed calls from my sister and my best friend saying, Heidi, I don't know how to tell you this, but your mother-in-law has posted a topless photo of you on her Facebook. Oh no.

I was like, surely this is a nightmare. This is like, I'm hallucinating. Like I officially lost the amount of sleep where like I am crossed over to the other side. So I run downstairs and I tell my husband, she didn't mean to do this, but

This is the situation that we're in. Please call her. Please have her take this down immediately. And I was like, and don't tell her that I know about it. I don't want to embarrass her. Honestly, at this point, I was very calm about everything. Like we all make mistakes. I was feeling very maternal about the whole thing. And so he calls and lets her know.

We love the photos you've posted. Unfortunately, you slipped one in there. It was one of those nice video montages that your Apple phone will like create for you. And the second slide with really nice classical music to it was just me completely bare breast. Oh, God. I was a double A before this experience. I am now like a triple D. It's insane. My nipples were massive. And this wasn't like a taste.

A respectful nude that was something that I would be proud to show my husband's friends and family. This was like I'm staring off into the abyss, looking like I've questioned every life decision at this point and exhausted. No makeup, hair a mess. I don't even recognize myself. And her response is, there's no way I've done that.

And he's like, no, you did. And I need you to go on Facebook right now and take it down. So hangs up the phone. I'm like refreshing her page over and over and over again. And sure enough, 30 seconds later, it's gone. And again, it's funny at this point, we all make mistakes. And she ends up calling back five minutes later. I'm assuming to apologize. And when my husband picks up the phone,

She is very defensive. Like, I can't believe I'm being censored like this. Oh my God. You're not being censored. We're censoring my wife's breasts. He's starting to get defensive, like on my behalf. I'm starting to get angry. And then the line...

look, I'm going to be honest. I've sent that video to all of my friends and all of our family and no one has said anything about it. And in my head, I'm like, well, of course they haven't said anything about it. They're trying to figure out how to tell you what they've just seen. So in my head, I'm just picturing like my husband's uncle sitting there opening up this lovely video of the new baby in the family. And it just, there's Heidi. Yeah.

He ended up hanging up. I wish I could say that there was like some sort of resolution. I don't think she knows. I even know that this happened to this day. We had no apology in true mom fashion, but it did get taken down. I can laugh about it now. And knowing that it brought me to you guys, it makes the pill a little easier to swallow. Yeah.

It's hard for me not to fill in some blanks about that reaction. It does remind me that narcissists, whenever they fuck up, they're a victim. The fact that she was immediately a victim of doing that is a little triggering for me. I think that that is what was triggering for me too, because your autonomy when you have a baby, my body wasn't my own. I didn't recognize myself. The one thing I could hold on to is that there were some intimate parts of myself that

only I do. Not everyone had seen your breasts. Right. That's crazy. I was going to chalk it up to like, oh, you got to love these seniors and how unsophisticated they are with technology. But then the response that just really nullifies that grace. The video also, I wish I could say that it was cinematic genius, but it was a lot of blurry photos. Like I wish that one was just a little blurrier, but that one was Chris. A razor sharp focus. Oh,

Oh, mother-in-law. Oh, God bless mother-in-laws. Thank you all so much for having me. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I have been an armchairie since literally day one. Very sim. But I happened to hear about what a podcast was the same week that you all launched the podcast.

And so I decided I would try and give yours a chance. And I've listened to every single episode since. Oh, my gosh. So nice. And I was wondering, is it OK if I show you? Yes, we would love to see you. We love babies. Come here.

Oh, it's a cute one. This is Giovanni. He turned nine months yesterday. Oh, happy birthday. He has yummy pudding on his belly. He's a chunky guy. He's nine months. These are 18-month clothes. Good for him. But I also wanted to tell you, in true Sim fashion, it was really, really funny to get the email from...

Emma, because I also got an invitation this evening to drive up to D.C. and meet Auntie Anne of Auntie Anne's Pretzels. Oh, oh, something is weird in my simulation. You should buy a lottery ticket today. That's what my husband said. Yeah, let's get into that Powerball. Let's see if we can't also accumulate six hundred million dollars today. Well, lovely meeting you, Heidi. Thank you for telling us that story. All right. Take care. Bye. Bye.

Hi. Hi, what should we call you? Did you already pick out a name? I debated. And my name's pretty basic, so I'm going to just go with it. It's Emily. Okay. There's a million of us. I've met more than one. I figure we'll be safe that way. Okay, great. Everyone else I'll change names for. We do like knowing that you thought about doing a fake name, though, because that generally means it's juicy. Yeah, that's usually a good sign. It's definitely not one that I'm hoping she ever hears and circles back on us. Yeah.

That would not be ideal. I can't wait to hear it. Okay, so let's give a little context. My husband was a dad at 16. When we met, he already had a six-year-old. I'm two years older than him, but we were babies. He was 22, about to turn 23. I was 24, about to turn 25. There was a six-year-old in the mix. It was a lot. He must be a real stud if you're like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

He's gorgeous. Oh, exciting. It excuses all the stuff I went through and makes sense why I turned a blind eye to the red flags. At 22, most guys would be out on their own or maybe not living with their mom. But he was because he had a six-year-old and she was helping. So she was, from what I gathered,

and a good mom. He didn't want me to beat her, though. Oh, okay. He was nervous. He has eight siblings. Oh, wow. A little bit scattered around. So there were red flags when I first met her. But they're like funny red flags, quirky things. Like she used to steal baby ducks from their mom behind Target and then sell them. What? Okay. Wait, real ducks? Real live baby ducks? Oh, my God. On like the black market?

On like Facebook, I think. She used to hatch baby chicks in a room off her kitchen. Okay. Interesting. Okay. These were things that I thought were odd, but she was living off the land, homesteading. Also, this is Florida. Okay. Yeah. She's a Tanya type. Funnily enough, that's the name I'm going to use for my oldest daughter. Okay. But yeah, so she was a little bit...

But then there were other things that were harder for me to swallow. Her house was scary. There were flies everywhere. Oh, no. My oldest still doesn't eat strawberry jam because she thought it had flies in it. Oh. And when you turn on the kitchen lights, all the cockroaches scare her. Oh. So it was dirty as hell. Yes. Well, she used vinegar to clean because that's natural. Yeah. Okay. But here's the icing on the cake. She had a composting toilet. Oh.

- How does composting toilet function? - At her house, it was basically like a Lowe's bucket that people went in the bathroom and threw mulch on. - No. - No. - Whoa. - Yes. She had the kids emptying it.

She's like living in the 1800s. She's using vinegar and selling wildlife. Now, really quick, what was her day-to-day demeanor? Like, if you had met her out at Chili's, would you have been able to guess that all this madness was happening or no? Not exactly. And that's an interesting part about her because she plays the hero.

often and plays the savior often. So she talks a big game about being like this great human being, but she also has other things happening that I learned.

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So when I got to know her, she was telling me all about Tanya's biological mom, who was not really in the picture, but she was telling me horrible things. She was telling me that this woman had neglected Tanya, that she probably abused her, that when they used to get her back, she would be smelly, no diapers were changed. So painting a really negative picture, which...

Wasn't hard for me to imagine just because this woman already wasn't in her daughter's life. So yeah, that's hard for me to fathom. But she also would talk about my husband's dad and stepmom. And she would say awful things about them. Said that he was in the relationship for the money. As soon as he could, he would get out of the relationship. He just loves her because she's got a flush toilet. Yeah, no kidding. I was like, I'm not marrying her. I'm marrying you. And he put a toilet in, a real toilet. Yeah.

while I was there so that I could actually go to the bathroom there 'cause I used to have to go all the way to Target. - Oh my God. - Jesus. - Where the ducks were? So much action's happening at that Target. - I know, a lot happening at that Target. That's all background. That's all before the craziness really.

And when I met my husband's daughter, I fell as in love with her as I had with him. There was no question about it. I was in. So we got married pretty quick. I'm happy to play nice about a lot of things. Like when she told me that there was no autism in China because they don't do vaccinations. She told me that.

My husband had gotten SIDS as a baby from vaccines. And if you know what SIDS is, you know that makes no sense. But I tried not to confront her about things. But when we got married, we wanted Tanya, our daughter, to have some stability and some safety and security. And this was a chance for his mom to be grandma again.

Instead of mom. This is the sweet spot. You get to be the fun one. You get to take a step back and just be grandma. Turns out that's not what she wanted at all. She wanted Tanya desperately. She started pulling some weird tricks where Tanya would be sleeping over with her. And when she got back to us, she would be telling us stories about the sleepover. And things weren't adding up. Like, one of the times, my husband's ex-girlfriend...

had also spent the night. But we were mad because this confused our six-year-old. And he was like, that isn't really appropriate. And when he confronted his mom, her answer was, you'd only be upset if you still had feelings for her. Proved her point. We distanced ourselves a little bit. They were still seeing each other, but not as much. And we just tried to set some boundaries. But the shit hit the fan because...

We found out the day before Tanya's seventh birthday that I was having twins. When we called his mom to tell her, her response was, you're going to need me. Not congratulations, not I'm so happy for you, nothing. I'm back in the picture. Yeah. And on Tanya's birthday the next day, suddenly her bio mom called. What?

She hadn't seen her in years. And then within a few weeks, we got notified that my mom was coming for a visit. We kind of suspected that my husband's mom was involved in getting her down there. We were honest with her. We're like, we're glad you're coming to see Tanya. We're not really on great terms with my husband's mom right now. So we're trying to kind of keep her out of being the middleman on this. It was all well and good. She came, she picked up Tanya. That evening rolled around and she didn't bring her home. Oh boy.

And we're like, where are you? Where is she? And she's like, I'm going to stay the night with your mom. She's really upset. Didn't give us a lot of information. Just kept her there. So the next morning, we go to the school and wait. No show. So they've basically kidnapped her at this point. We had to have the police intervene. Mm.

The police had to go knock on the door and force them to bring her because they were not cooperating. Within days, we got served papers. Grandparents' rights? Yes. Tanya's mom was suing us for custody in New Jersey, and my husband's mom was suing us for custody in Florida. Oh, my God. Wow.

The icing on the cake was they also called DCF on us and said that we were forcing Tanya to exercise, locking her in her room, and threatening to kill her. Oh, my God. What the fuck?

Wow, they went for it. They went for it. And the cops would show up for like well child checkups. We had DCF come to the house. Just ridiculously stressful. We were not abusing our daughter. We ended up having to lawyer up. And I'm sure you're swimming in cash right now.

You're young as hell and you have kids coming. Yeah. Pregnant with twins. We met working at a cafe. Thankfully, we found a badass lawyer. She put them in their place immediately. Thankfully, my parents were actually in town visiting when DCF came for their home visit. So they were able to see none of it added up. They were able to see how happy she was and adjusted. A warm family surrounding her. So ultimately, that got dropped as well.

Well, you almost got to be grateful she went so nuclear so that you were justified. Yeah, that's a big blessing. Yeah, you don't have to worry if you made a mistake. You did not. Oh, yeah. We all still deal with the traumas from it. My husband has some PTSD. My daughter has some PTSD. It's a good lesson in narcissistic personality disorder and a good lesson in how to set boundaries. And ultimately, my husband's super hot, so it was worth

it. You got three beautiful kids. We love that. Three beautiful daughters. It's all worth it. It just was a wild ride. Yeah. And also good for him. If that's half your genetics and you avoid that, that's an accomplishment. Yeah. He wanted to make it clear. He knew something wasn't right growing up. He knew he had to get out, but

anytime he tried to growing up. Yeah, she didn't want to lose control over him. She sounds like someone that would own a chimp. Yeah. Because this is what they want. They want a child that doesn't grow up. She had two emus when I was there. A cow, a goat, all sorts of birds. A chimp is right up her alley. Ha ha ha.

If she can get her hands on 80 grand, I think they're pricey. Luckily, a lot of people are priced out of owning a chip. Well, I'm glad it all worked out for you. Thank you. It's so nice to meet you. And I'm sorry you went through that. And I'm happy for you that it all worked out. Got my beautiful kids and we're good to go. Okay, good. Have a great day. We'll take care. Bye-bye. Bye.

Hello. You look so familiar. I don't know why. Who do people tell you you look like? I've been told Florence Pugh one time, but I would be lucky if that was real. I can see that. Yeah. She's okay to look at, Florence Pugh. She's beautiful. I'm also watching something right now.

though that you look like we'll get it it'll simmer in Kylie where are you I'm in Dayton Ohio there we go Homa Chappelle yes Homa Van Hunt John Legend John Legend baby you got a lot of good ones Soulful and right by Cedar Point in Kings Island fuck yeah you look a

little young to have a mother-in-law. Yes. So this is actually a story about an ex-boyfriend's mom. So this was a couple of years ago. And that's totally fine. Yeah, that counts. Yeah, that definitely counts. Well, please set the stage for us. Absolutely. So I met this guy when I started college. It's a smaller college around Dayton. And we started dating as soon as I got there my freshman year. He lived near the college, but like not on campus. And his mom lived a couple of streets away from him. So we would see her a lot. I don't know if you've ever watched the show

I'm married to a mama's boy dating a mama's boy. This literally could be that story. That shows crazy. Oh, I got to see that. Yeah. He was a mama's boy through and through. And that should have been my first red flag. But at the time I was like 18 and really stupid and didn't care. Well, and it's kind of endearing. You go like, oh, this person loves their mom. They're probably gonna be nice to ladies. Dax is like, it's endearing, right?

Yeah, right. I love my mom. She's here. In the beginning, it might have been nice. It just ended up not being that way. So as we got more serious and I moved in with him, she got way more possessive of him to the point where they shared location. And every time he was out to eat with me, she would call crying. So like we would have to take her food to her house afterward. Or we would just invite her with us. So like we didn't go out very often because we were in college and we were poor. But like when we did, we had to take his mom.

Was she a single mom? Yes. Her husband and her had just gotten divorced like a year prior. So it was very fresh. So during COVID, this is like two years later, I got laid off from two jobs. I was working 50 hours a week because I wanted to graduate with no debt. But because of that, I was also paying for both of our rents.

So when I lost both of my jobs, I was like, I don't know what we're going to do. So his mom very graciously was like, you can come and stay with me. And I was a little more apprehensive. He was like, yeah, let's do this. And so we did it. Home cooked meals, laundry will be done. You would think. Yeah. But that's kind of where we're going. So we would rotate cooking. And I noticed very quickly that I just started feeling really sick.

I was having the liquid shits like all of the time. I was losing weight and I was super weak and I could not figure out what was wrong with me. And really quick, when you took turns cooking, I thought you and your boyfriend, but you're saying mother-in-law and you took turns. Yeah, he never did anything. He was a mama's boy. He would never be allowed to do anything.

So I lost 15 pounds in two months. So I went to visit my mom. I was there for two weeks and I was feeling a little better. I kind of just thought that the sickness that I was having was a lingering side effect of COVID because at the time, like we really didn't know what COVID encompassed. So I came back after that two weeks at my mom's house and started getting sick again, like almost immediately was really sick. This is fucked.

- Fucking nuts. - I know. - Is boyfriend getting sick? - No, and every time I tell him, he's like, "You know, I think you just need to go to the doctor. We're just chalking this up to COVID." So it was like a couple of weeks later, I am just distraught. Like I can't do this anymore. It's making it hard to work. It's making it hard to go to class. My mom was like, "Well, have you been avoiding the foods that you're allergic to?" And I was like, "Yeah." When I was 18, I got diagnosed with a nut allergy. It just like came out of nowhere. It's just like a gastrointestinal allergy.

No EpiPen, just because again, there's no anaphylaxis, but it was an issue for everything else. So

This is when I started to put the pieces together because she knew I had a nut allergy and she knew that it wasn't like an anaphylactic nut allergy. I had found out that instead of using my peanut butter, because I use like a special brand of peanut butter that doesn't have nuts. She was using real peanut butter when she made brownies and telling me that it was fake. Oh my God. She was putting nut oils in the

No!

That is insane. Wait, how did you find this out? I confronted her. I was like, hey, I've been getting really sick and no one can figure out why. Is there any possibility that there could be trace or cross contaminants with the nuts that you guys eat or the peanut butter you guys eat? And that's when she was like, well, I'm going to be honest. I haven't been using that and I haven't been catering to your dietary restrictions. And she

She admitted it fully. Never apologized. Never said anything. And she said she was poisoning me because I took her son away from her. Stop it. She said those words. She said that. I'm attempting benefit of the doubt where I go like she thinks all these young people think they have allergies and they don't. And she's going to prove it. But no, no, no. No. It was the intentional using a food processor to powder. Holy shit.

Shit. This is evil. It was insane. And I was like, we live here. I haven't taken him anywhere. I brought him back. In fact, I returned him. What did he say? That's where it gets worse. He didn't care. He was like, oh, she's going through a lot since her divorce. So that's probably just like her way of. Oh, I hope they're married. Poisoning is just her way. That's her way of saying she loves me. God. Too much. Sick. So I moved out very shortly after that. And he came with me.

Oh, he did. Are you mean to him? Oh, God, no. Okay. Oh, my God. I was going to have some scolding. Yeah, I stayed with him for like a full year after that. I just didn't eat at his mom's house afterward. And I didn't go over there very often. But it was insane. Fully admitted it. Never apologized. Did it cross your mind? I wonder if that's illegal. It's definitely poisoning someone.

Well, if it's lethal for sure, but diarrhea. Is there a criminal offense like giving a stranger diarrhea? Putting laxatives in their foods kind of, right? Yeah. Or I don't know, a danger to your well-being. What was her tone when she admitted it? Like tough titties, baby. You're very nonchalant. No one talks like that. Yeah. Ma non Sheila. Oh,

She did. She said tough titties. She just kind of looked at me and kind of shrugged it off casually. Like, oh yeah, I did that. Also, Ma Nan Sheila poisoned people. No, I know. It's perfect. I mean, no wonder she got divorced. This husband, oh my God. He probably had diarrhea for years. He weighed six pounds. Yeah, it was crazy. She just did not care at all that she had done it.

And neither did he. That is a great story. I can't believe he didn't care. He sucks. Yeah, he blows. Have you had any updates on him? He still lives with his mom and...

It's been four years. They deserve each other. I hope they get married. Yeah, me too. I hope they live happily ever after. Honestly. I don't think they would think anyone is good enough for them the way they are for each other. Ew, it's so gross. It was so weird. You should definitely look at that show, though. I married a mom's boy because that's 100% what this whole situation felt like. I was the third wheel the whole time in this relationship. And we were together for like three years. You gave me a great plan in case I don't like one of the girl's boyfriends. I just got to find out what they're allergic to. Oh.

Turn it into a powder. Yeah, but then you'll probably eat it and you'll accidentally also get sick. I'll die. You're also allergic to everything. Hoisted by my own petard. I'll have to say to the girls, I'm like, I love Michael. He is a great guy. But baby, you can't live with someone who's got diarrhea every day for the rest of their life. You can't do that to yourself. You can't carry diapers around for Michael. Yeah, but then they're like, Dad, you have diarrhea all the time. Shut up. We're not talking about me. We're talking about Michael. But you always have diarrhea. You're always talking about it. You call it homophobic.

You're thinking of Aunt Monica. She's the one with diarrhea all the time. I fix my diarrhea when I stop eating gluten. Oh, my God. That is fucking wild. You have a very good attitude about it. If like a girlfriend's dad told me, yeah, yeah, I was poisoning you, I would punch him. I know.

I know. You had a great reaction. I know. You saying I didn't steal him from you is like the last thing I would be thinking. It's like trying to assure her that you didn't do something wrong. I'm like, oh, we're poisoning each other. Okay. Now I know. Let's fucking party. You want to play poison? I can play poison, bitch. You yet of titties. Oh.

I'm like a people pleaser to the core. So I was just trying to figure out how I could get around this without it being super awkward and uncomfortable for everybody for the remainder of our relationship. Because at that time, I really thought that was it. And then obviously, thank God. Blessing in disguise. You should not have been with him. It should have also not taken me another year to figure that out. Well, can I ask you a very personal question? Sure. Was dad a mama's boy? My dad? No. So it wasn't even like a pattern thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm in counseling school now. So like looking back at all of these things, I'm like, man, there was something wrong with me there. No, it takes time to learn these things about yourself. By the way, that's the gift of being a counselor is you know what that's like and you can be nonjudgmental about people going through that stuff. That was a great story. I liked that a lot. Thank you for sharing it. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, you too. Bye. It was nice to meet you. Yeah, nice meeting you. Take care.

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Hello. How are you, Nicholas? Good. How are you? Good. You have quite a collection of... You hang your t-shirts. I do. And is your garage spotless and organized? Never. Oh, okay. So it's just the wardrobe. Yeah, this looks very nice. I do appreciate a hung t-shirt and all of my apparel to be hung for the most part except for pants.

Maybe the condition that my wife has also helps with that. She's a big fan of order. She comes to your house and you have a crooked painting or a picture or something that's going to get straightened right out. She's on it. Where are you at in the country, Nicholas? I live about an hour north of Seattle. So Washington state. Okay. All right.

Set the stage. This organized wife of yours has a mother you're going to be speaking of. She definitely does. She has quite the family. The mother is the tip of the iceberg, I guess. So I have many, many stories that I could probably share that would fit this bill, as I assume everyone who you talk to today probably has many stories. Yeah, it's rare that someone's crazy acutely. It's

It's generally kind of a chronic condition. Yeah, 100 percent for this. We kind of go back to the beginning. My wife and I, we met in high school, but we started dating after high school in 2008. We got married in 2010. We were about 22. And while that has its own list of drama that came with it, kind of the real unhinging of my wife's mother happened when actually my brother was getting married. And when we had found out that we were having sex,

A baby. And the reason why that matters is because my brother married my wife's sister. Whoa! Okay, you know what's great about this? So that's what my grandparents did. And I always thought it was the coolest thing. My Papa Bob's brother married my Grandma Yolis' sister. Yeah, and it works. So it's my wife's half-sister, so there's at least some sort of separation there. So fortunately for my brother, he doesn't have to deal with my mother-in-law.

Oh, gotcha. They share a father. Same dad. There's four kids total among three different women that we know of. That does keep her off of Ancestry.com and other things like that, just in case. So that was the start of what really set my wife's mother off was just that my brother and I, we had infiltrated their family in some way.

Yeah. And now not only did I steal my wife from her mother, but now I've let my brother into this and now he has stolen another child from this family. Right. Even though it's not her child. It's only her child when it's convenient. Yeah. She sees me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are trying to outnumber them. Exactly. Yeah. It's weird that we're brother and marrying sisters, brothers and whatever, but it's all still legal and fine and all those good things. Yeah.

We found out the week of my brother and wife's sister's wedding that we were going to have a baby and we didn't want to steal any of that thunder. So we decided, you know, let's not tell anyone. Let's just wait until after the wedding. That way, the congratulations on the day of are all going towards my brother and his new wife.

So on the rehearsal wedding the day before, we had found out that, for lack of better terms, my grandfather had passed away. He was like the grandfather type in my life. He was the guy that helped me with my first transmission swap, engine swap, doing anything automotive related. He was the guy. He had a big four car shop. Ooh,

I'm jealous. He was the best. We spent so much time with him and it was very sudden and we did not know that it was going to happen. So the day of the wedding, everyone's kind of head down doing their wedding things, trying to be as upbeat about things as they can. My wife, she informs her mom when she arrives. She says, hey, just so you know, their grandfather died last night. It was very sudden. So everyone's kind of in a somber mood just so you can kind of be sensitive to what's going on.

She already believes that my family has somehow brainwashed my wife. So that's lingering in the background as we start moving forward with this day. From there, she's mad at my parents because they didn't greet her with these warm, open arms. It was kind of like, hey, how you doing? We're still doing our thing. Also trying to pay attention to a wedding coordinator. Nothing that would be crazy for any of us. But for someone who is unstable, it's very offensive.

So then she found out that she was seated in the second row of the ceremony. So again, she's not the mother of the bride. She was there during some childhood stuff, but not till late. And is it safe to assume that she is no longer with the father of these two archbishop?

Or are they? That's like a whole nother thing. Okay. Yeah. They lived in the same house, but he lived in the basement in his weird dungeon that no one was allowed in. And she lived on the main floor. Okay. Okay. They were roommates at that time. And then shortly after this, they ended up separating. So they're no longer together. So once she found out that she was seated in the second row, so disrespectfully, she made a nice scene for the room to let us all know that she was being treated poorly. And in her words, a second class citizen.

- Okay, okay. - That second class citizen quote comes up often. - Well, we're hearing her story. She feels like a second class citizen. - Yes, she storms out, she leaves. We don't know if she's coming to the wedding or not. Fortunately, she doesn't, which is great. You know, we all have a good time at the wedding. We all go home, everyone's happy.

A couple of days go by and my wife decides, hey, we got to talk to my mom and let her know we're having a baby. But how do we want to do this? As 22 year olds, we're trying to figure out how do we manipulate the situation so she doesn't freak out and just yell at us? Because that's what's coming. And not necessarily for the pregnancy, but for

whatever reason she wants to list of how she was mistreated. So we decided let's go get breakfast at this place near where she lives. It's like this little small cafe and we'll get breakfast there because no one's going to scream at us in public. She'll have to put on a face because she likes to come across as being someone who is well-to-do and

This is a scene in the movie where you got to meet the killer, but you want to meet them in public so they can't do the killing in public. When she first walks in, she thinks we're there to commiserate about how she was mistreated at the wedding. We kind of explained to her that, hey, you know, we're not here to talk about the wedding. We want to talk about something else. So before we could even break the news to her, she pulls out a yellow legal pad and she starts rifling off her grievances.

Like it's a Costanza airing of grievances. Yeah. It's one thing after the other. She's talking in circles. Some of it's made up. Some of it's just her augmented truth of what had happened during specific events over the last at least two years. I think it's also worth remembering out loud that it wasn't your wedding. You didn't design the seating chart. This is your brother and her wedding.

at one time stepdaughter's wedding. You're like telling the wrong people. Exactly. And that's kind of what we were trying to do is just say, we're not part of this. You can deal with them if you'd like trying to bring down the hysteria that's unfolding. But that only feeds the flames and she's getting louder. The whole restaurant is quiet and just watching this woman on her knees, half standing like in a booth. Finally, after she reads through her list, she gets through all of her grievances. My wife decides, OK, now's the time to

Uh-huh.

My kids have never been to grandma's house. So that didn't work out. Whatever happens there, she's alone. But anyway, so she whips out the onesie. My mother-in-law proceeds to rip the onesie out of her hand. She's shouting, oh, well, isn't that great?

Oh my God. She shouts across the restaurant for the server to bring her a box for her food that had just arrived. She knew I was paying for the meal. And so she wasn't going to leave without that food. She was leaving. Oh, okay. Okay. So she loads up, leaves. And that was a pivotal moment in our relationship with her where we're like, okay, maybe we're not going to do this anymore.

Maybe this isn't worth all of the extra effort. And so that's when the harassment from her mom kind of started. Prior, it was more like I would come home from work, my wife would be crying and I'd be like, what happened? Well, I just got to phone up with my mom. She's mad that I haven't visited her in a day or since the weekend. In those moments, I would tell her mom like, hey, you can't call her just to make her cry.

and trying to be in between the two of them, which nowadays, you know, if there's ever anything with her mom, it's not something I dismiss and say, like, you deal with it on your own. It's more of like, I don't want to get in between it. So where it looks like I'm blocking that relationship. Well, I think you learn pretty quickly. It's not helping.

Exactly. That was all before telling her we're having a baby. And so after that, I was like, you know what, I shouldn't be the one doing that anymore. Because it's just another excuse for her to say that I'm holding you captive or that my family has you locked away in this tower somewhere. So this is when she proceeds to nonstop call my phone, my wife's phone, our work, my parents, she's sending texts from random numbers, she's sending letters from

zip codes that are not near us to my parents and to us with threats. What was the vibe of the threats? A majority of what she would send to my parents would be, how could you do this to my daughter? Like, you're keeping her from me, even though we didn't live with my parents or anything. Like, they weren't doing anything. Yeah, yeah. They were just really nice and helpful to us when we were first buried. But then what turned for us was she would start to mention her grandmother rights. Oh.

This is the second time this has come up. This is crazy. Maybe it's a thing then because where I was working, I had someone nearby who was a lawyer. It just freaked me out. I was like, what does that mean? Could she try to take our kid? Because that was kind of the implication from some of the letters and texts and phone calls we get from her is that you guys are having a baby, but you won't be able to keep that baby from me. That was terrifying. And so this person that we knew who was a lawyer was like, you guys should just

try to go get a no contact order that'll give you at least a year for her to legally not be allowed to. I mean, first of all, like harassing enough at work. And I worked in the food industry at the time. So like we had to unplug the phone to the restaurant because it would just not stop ring. So we decided to go down that path. And so my wife, she did all of the submissions. I didn't want to be the one who was petitioning for a no contact order against my mother-in-law.

six months pregnant. We go to court. She gives her statement on theme with the organization in the closet. She has a binder full of every voicemail ever left, all transcribed. She's the wrong person to threaten. Yes. Every document has been photocopied. We have like witness statements on things. We gave all that

to the judge. So she's going through her thing saying, I don't know what's going on, but she won't leave us alone. Essentially, her mom gets up there and then proceeds to talk in circles. Eventually, she's screaming at the judge because the judge isn't doing what she wants her to do. That's not going over well. I bet it would be hard to contain a smile if I were you at that point. A hundred percent. But you don't feel alone. Now somebody else sees how crazy this is. Not just somebody else, but somebody else outside of our bubble. Yes, exactly.

And a judge. Yeah. So one of her big statements, so she had somehow found out, I don't know, through social media, through other people who knew us, that my wife wanted to have a home birth. That's what she wanted. For me, she's the one having the kid. I'm just there to, what do you want me to do? You want to have the baby at home? Fine. You want to have the baby underwater? I don't care. Right. That's correct. That's the correct thing for a husband to say.

I'll do whatever you want. Her big thing was she thought that my mother in particular, through her brainwashing tactics, had convinced my wife that a home birth was the only way to have like a good delivery and that there's no pain with home birth or something crazy. And in reality...

So I have a younger sister and an older brother. My mom had all three of us in a hospital. She had epidurals with my brother and my sister, and she did not have an epidural with me. And to this day, like last weekend, we were at their house for family dinner like we do every weekend. And she always brings up how big my head was. Sharp, sharp, memorable. She would not be the one necessarily advocating for the home birth. Right. Even the judge is like, that has nothing to do with why we're here. We were granted that no contact order.

The no contact order for a year was like a sigh of relief. If she violates it, we can call the police. They'll have her arrested. And then it's legal trouble for her. We moved and we just would start spotting her mom's car near where we had moved to. She should have had no idea where we had moved to. Even to this day, we had moved in the last two years and we've seen her drive by our new house. Oh my God. Yeah, we probably haven't spoken to her in four years at this point now. She's always kind of keeping tabs on where we are. Yeah. Ugh.

So we get a phone call shortly after my son was born because my wife would go on walks around the neighborhood. So six months later, we're only halfway through this no contact order. It's one of her mom's friends saying, hey, your mom had a heart attack. She's in the hospital. You guys need to get down there as soon as possible. She's in critical condition. Initially, we're like, okay, let's take a step back and think about this. Part of me is like, well, if this is true, we can't just let this go. But also, if she's just

trying to get us to show up, I wouldn't put that past her. Yeah, a little test. We would be the ones in violation of the no contact order. So even if we go see her, she won't get in trouble for that. We would. So we call the hospital first. And there, as I'm sure you know, they're not very forthcoming. Well, I'm asking a nurse, we just need to know because of X, Y, Z, kind of lay out the situation, no contact order. And she goes, okay, let me get a doctor and let them decide what they want to tell you. Doctor gets on the phone.

I tell her the whole thing again. And the doctor goes, okay, there was never a heart attack. She has heartburn and gas. She's going home shortly. She's farting. Yes.

That was a dodged bullet. Part of the no contact order, if we did want to try to resume relationship, was to seek counseling, which we had done. I had been a part of it at times. I had not been a part of it at times. They've done counseling kind of off and on for years after that. Even those sessions would get a little wild. There's one session where the counselor just left.

Oh my God. Filed her own no contact form against both of them. We got a major apology from her later saying like, that was not okay, but I've never in my life been so fed up with a patient before that I had to leave the room. Holy shit. That's validating. Yeah. There's been some wild things that have happened over the years since then for sure. Like I said, I could go on. That was our first year of marriage. Our first kid, our first no contact order. Lots of firsts.

Well, congratulations. So many for her. Wow. Okay. So here's what's sad, I think. Kids are pieces of shit because they refuse to acknowledge their parents are human beings. That's what we do as kids. But then what parents do, which is bullshit...

Is they refuse to acknowledge that the child is an adult and a real person. So it's like they keep treating everything like it's cute or they don't know what they're doing or they know better. It's like these two things we both do on both sides. Yeah. And what's heartbreaking is what's obvious is she's dying to be in her daughter's life and she's doing everything possible to ensure that won't happen. And she's unstable. I mean, it's just hard when people are unstable.

Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to argue with a crazy man. Can't out crazy. Crazy. Is that a new saying? Some people say that. I like that. You can't out crazy. You can't fight crazy with crazy. That's one version. Does it make your wife sad or is she at peace with that? She kind of goes back and forth. We have a 10 year old daughter and a 12 year old son and her dad is a whole nother story. The father-in-law story. I'll probably write back in. Oh,

he's never met our kids and he has no interest in that. I guess I just don't know how you get to that point where you choose to be right in your mind over having that relationship with your children and your grandchildren. I know. I know. I've had this exact moment with my kids where I've realized in the moment, okay, one of us has to change for this to be a good relationship. And I realized,

Oh, my dad had that same realization probably. But he's like, yeah, I got to change this kid. But, you know, I was like, yeah, it's not going to be her. It's not going to be a little kid. It's going to be me. I've got to adjust. A lot of folks don't make that decision. It's sad, though, regardless of whether you know, I can't really have this person in my life. It's still a loss. Although not for you because it's not your mother.

as nice it isn't for me it is heartbreaking for my kids and all we've told them is just like grammy's hasn't been nice to your mom and until she can choose to make good choices with your mom and work out whatever issues they have she's not going to be coming around but we really hope that she decides to make the necessary changes and steps to have that good relationship so you guys can have a relationship with her yeah that's great like you said you can't out crazy crazy thank you for

sharing that. Yeah, Nicholas, that was great. And sorry to your wife. So unfortunate. All right. Well, nice meeting you. Take care. Whoa. Whoa. That's a lot to deal with. That's a lot to handle. A lot to deal with, a lot to handle. Yeah. It's so stressful. Okay. I love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? I don't know.

Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, a rindish. On the fly, a rindish. Enjoy. Enjoy.

Hey, Armcherrys, quick question for you. Have you ever stopped to wonder who came up with

We'll be right back.

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