Lindsey Weedston
Before you jump to conclusions, know that this is another one of those “Am I the A–hole” entries with a headline that sounds really bad, but once you get into the details, you might find it’s more complex than it first appeared.
There’s no way to summarize this in one sentence to make it sound reasonable for someone to refuse to let their aging mother-in-law take a nap in one’s bed, but there’s a bit more going on here.
According to the woman who created the post, her mother-in-law moved in with her and her husband temporarily, while her own house is being renovated.
They, therefore, set up a whole guest room just for her, including a “bed with a frame, curtains, mounted TV, wardrobe,” and so on.
However, for whatever reason, their guest started taking naps in the homeowner’s bed and found that she really liked doing so.
OP sets the stage:
My husband’s mom moved in with us a week ago. The minute we were informed she was going to move in (temporarily til her house gets renovated) we’ve emptied a room specifically for her – it has everything. A bed with a frame, curtains, mounted TV, wardrobe etc. She was thrilled with it and loved it a lot.
OP gets to the crux of the matter:
One day I came home and found her in my bedroom sleeping in mine and my husband’s bed. I was confused but she told me she took a nap on the bed and lost track of time. Since then she started talking about how she loved the nap there and started hinting wanting to take maps in the bedroom from now on.
I kept ignoring her comments til my husband sat me down and told me that his mom really liked and “got used” to napping in our bedroom and we should just let her have her daily afternoon nap in the room. I said “absolutely not” and we started debating. I told him his mom is being ridiculous because she has a whole room upstairs where she should nap. He got upset and said that I was making his mom feel uncomfortable and unwelcome with this attitude. I said NO and refused to negotiate. He called me selfish and mean for saying no and preventing his mom from feeling comfortable at “his house” but I reminded him that I pay full mortgage for the house while he blows money over gadgets and consoles. He accused me of bringing old disagreements in this current conflict to use against him. I said no again and that he should stop pushing because I need the room for when I get home feeling exhausted from working on my feet from 6am.
He’s refusing to speak to me til I agree and let his mom have her nap in there. AITA for choosing this hill to die on as he says? Am I being difficult?.
This could be a simple case of a person preferring one type of bed to another — we all have our different mattress preferences, after all. However, it does seem a little bit greedy to expect someone to give up their own bed for you when they went to all that trouble to make up a whole room for your temporary stay.
In typical AITA fashion, however, it gets worse.
“I kept ignoring her comments til my husband sat me down and told me that his mom really liked and ‘got used’ to napping in our bedroom and we should just let her have her daily afternoon nap in the room. I said ‘absolutely not’ and we started debating. I told him his mom is being ridiculous because she has a whole room upstairs where she should nap. He got upset and said that I was making his mom feel uncomfortable and unwelcome with this attitude.”
That seems odd considering, again, that the mother-in-law was welcomed with a whole room to herself. For some people, a bedroom is a place of refuge and personal comfort that they choose to share only with those who are extremely close to them, if that. The OP’s comfort also matters, especially in her own home, but once again we seem to have a husband who only cares about his own mother’s needs.
Then it came out who’s actually doing the work for the couple to have a house, and why it’s particularly troublesome for the mother-in-law to be napping in OP’s bed at the time she was apparently choosing to take them — when the OP got home from work.
“He called me selfish and mean for saying no and preventing his mom from feeling comfortable at ‘his house’ but I reminded him that I pay the full mortgage for the house while he blows money over gadgets and consoles. He accused me of bringing old disagreements in this current conflict to use against him. I said no again and that he should stop pushing because I need the room for when I get home feeling exhausted from working on my feet from 6 am.”
OP reports that her husband is giving her the silent treatment over this to try and force her to relent and asks if she was being “difficult.” She also clarified in comments that her mother-in-law is perfectly healthy and has no trouble accessing the guest room.
So here we have a grown man who doesn’t contribute to the mortgage, spends his money on toys, still refers to it as ‘his house,’ and chooses his mother’s absolute comfort over his wife’s ability to rest after working on her feet all day. We may just have another case of a man who didn’t actually want a wife, but a second mother to take care of him and who throws tantrums when he doesn’t get his way like a big overgrown baby, and using sexist tropes while doing so.
This is why you can’t judge an AITA by its title. Commenters widely voted the OP to be “not the a–hole” and are suggesting that he is the problem in the relationship. Also, there’s a whole lot of wondering why any mother would prefer to sleep in the bed where her son definitely has sex with a lady on the regular.
