At my mother-in-law\u2019s birthday dinner, she handed me a beautifully wrapped box in front of the whole family.
\nI smiled, thanked her, and opened it.
\nInside was a sweater.
\nIt was nice, but obviously several sizes too small.
\nBefore I could say anything, she smiled and said, \u201cI thought this might motivate you to get in shape.\u201d
\nThe table went completely silent.
\nI could feel my face burning.
\nI tried to laugh it off, but honestly, I wanted to disappear.
\nThen my husband reached over and took the sweater from my hands.
\nHe held it up, looked at his mother, and said, \u201cWow, Mom. This is actually perfect.\u201d
\nShe looked pleased.<\/p>\n
Then he added, \u201cFor you.\u201d
\nHer smile vanished.
\nHe calmly explained that if she thought giving someone clothes that didn\u2019t fit was acceptable, then she probably wouldn\u2019t mind receiving the same treatment.
\nNobody said a word.
\nHe handed the sweater back to her.
\nThen he turned to me and said, \u201cWe\u2019ll go pick out something you actually like tomorrow.\u201d
\nMy mother-in-law muttered that it had only been a joke.
\nMy husband replied, \u201cJokes are supposed to make everyone laugh.\u201d
\nThat ended the conversation.
\nI didn\u2019t need him to start a fight.
\nI just needed him to make it clear that humiliating me wasn\u2019t going to be tolerated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At my mother-in-law\u2019s birthday dinner, she handed me a beautifully wrapped box in front of the whole family. I smiled, thanked her, and opened it. Inside was a sweater. It was nice, but obviously several sizes too small. Before I could say anything, she smiled and said, \u201cI thought this might motivate you to get …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10291,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10289\/revisions\/10291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}