My Father-In-Law Treated Me Like A Maid, Disrespected Me, Then Stole From Me. I Finally Called The Police On Him A Few Months Ago.

Happily in Love

I got married to my husband about 2 years ago. He’s the love of my life. He’s sweet, understanding and would do anything for me as I would for him. Being with him makes me feel like the luckiest and happiest girl alive.

We were also lucky to get a queue number for our BTO on the first try. However, our BTO took longer than expected due to the COVID-19 delay. As a result, we got married before we got our house. Despite this, my husband and I still wanted to live together, so we compromised and decided to souffle between my parents and his parents’ house on weekends. 

 When we were shuffling back and forth between our parents’ places, I realised that it was not very pleasant to be around my in-laws because they treated me less. For context, I’m not any “less than” my husband. We come from similar family backgrounds, and we’re both in the tech industry. In terms of career progression, I am doing very well at my job, and there are discussions for me to further progress up the corporate ladder. 

I Hate How His Family Treats Me

My husband’s family dynamics are a little different from mine, mainly because he spent most of his life without a mother. His mother had tragically passed away when he was seven in a traffic accident. Since then, he was raised in a single-parent household with two other siblings – a brother and a sister. I’m not sure how this impacted his family dynamics or if it had any impact on his family’s expectations of me. 

During a weekend over at my husband’s place, I noticed that my father-in-law was more aggressive in his tone and harsh in his words than normal. He started to raise concerns and nitpick over very small and petty issues, and most of these were misogynistic in nature. For example, he started asking me why I did not serve him and his family coffee whenever I was at his place. He was also unhappy that I did not wash my husband’s bowl after he was done with dinner. He even started to express this unhappiness by shouting and degrading me, fiercely ordering me to wash my husband’s bowl in front of him. For some reason, he was treating me as though I was a maid or a slave. 

It’s ironic because I see the way my father-in-law interacts with his daughter, his own flesh and blood. He doesn’t expect these things from her and she gets away with leaving her bowl in the kitchen and such. He doesn’t expect her to serve coffee or to be subservient to her husband. Yet, he expects that of me just because I “married into” this family. I did not marry into his family. I married my husband for my husband, not for his family. 

These dumb grievances of his started to target more idiotic issues, such as me not wearing gold at my wedding reception. Well, gold just doesn’t look that good on me, and it’s my wedding. I will wear what I feel pretty in. It’s almost like he’s just finding excuses to get angry at me.

I Called The Police When He Stole From Me.

Even though I felt so wronged and unjustified in these incidents, I just let it slide because I didn’t want to put my husband in a bad spot. I just held it in, gave some annoyed looks and walked away. I guess that was still too much for my father-in-law because he crossed the line. 

Since my husband and I were alternating between both parents’ places, I left some of my clothes over at this house for convenience. One night, I returned home from work and was looking through my closet for the next day’s clothes. I was confused as to why my closet looked so sparse, almost as if there were clothes missing. I looked through my outfits one by one and realised that someone had taken my clothes. These clothes aren’t just pajamas or everyday clothes. Some of them were expensive and my favourite dresses. I knew, deep in my heart, that my father-in-law had something to do with this.

I was livid. I have never felt so much anger in my life. I don’t know what took over me, but that rage led me to file a police report. Everyone knew that my father-in-law was the one responsible for throwing away my personal items; however, due to the lack of sufficient evidence, my father-in-law was not charged. 

Obviously, after the incident, we stopped interacting with my father-in-law as much as we could. I even filed a personal protection order (PPO) against him due to all the emotional distress he was causing me. I was adamant that I did not want to feel this anger and humiliation again. In response to my PPO, my father-in-law decided to file one against me as well. He filed a PPO against me by citing false incidents and accusations against me. My husband’s siblings stood as witnesses against me, acting as accomplices to my father-in-law’s lies.

I’m So Thankful For My Husband

Thankfully, I have a supportive husband, and he has been accommodating to me all this time that these incidents were happening. He stood witness in support of my PPO, and my father-in-law was enraged. The last interaction we had with him was filled with vulgarities and anger, threatening to disown my husband as his son. 

As a result of these incidents, we were completely cut off by my in-laws. We weren’t invited to my sister-in-law’s bangle ceremony or my brother-in-law’s wedding. I guess they decided that we’re dead to them, and honestly, I’m not upset about that because it probably means I won’t be seeing them again. 

The last piece of news we received was that my husband’s brother is now married and staying with my father-in-law. My heart fills with dread thinking about the poor girl my BIL married. I cannot stop thinking about the injustice that she is probably going through and how sad her family would be if they found out how she is being treated. Imagine marrying off your daughter just for her to be a slave to her new family. 

How’s your experience with toxic family members? What did you do about it?