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Episode: Armchair Anonymous: Mother-in-Law

Author: Armchair Umbrella
Duration: 00:46:50

Episode Shownotes

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us a crazy story about their mother-in-law.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App,

Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In this episode of "Armchair Anonymous: Mother-in-Law," Dax and Monica dive into various humorous yet complex mother-in-law dynamics as shared by their audience, affectionately known as Armcherries. Discussions encompass a range of topics, including embarrassing incidents involving social media blunders, eccentric behaviors, causing confusion in familial dynamics, and the emotional challenges posed during significant life events like weddings and pregnancy announcements. Ultimately, the episode explores the nuances of navigating these often tumultuous relationships with honesty and humor.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Armchair Anonymous: Mother-in-Law) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_09
Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous.

00:00:16 Speaker_09
I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. This is Crazy Mother-in-Law Stories.

00:00:23 Speaker_07
Whoa.

00:00:24 Speaker_09
Yes.

00:00:25 Speaker_07
I don't have one.

00:00:26 Speaker_09
You don't have one, yeah.

00:00:28 Speaker_07
So, I can't relate and I can't say after listening that I'm sad I don't have one.

00:00:33 Speaker_09
Okay, well, I guess that's the question. Not having one, do you think it made you less interested in the stories?

00:00:38 Speaker_07
No, I was just as interested, but it was cautionary tale.

00:00:41 Speaker_09
Yeah, because I love horrible bosses stories, and I don't have a horrible boss.

00:00:45 Speaker_07
True. Also, Father-in-Law 2, I think I'm a lone wolf now.

00:00:50 Speaker_09
Because?

00:00:50 Speaker_07
Because of these episodes.

00:00:53 Speaker_09
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. That's a fair warning.

00:01:01 Speaker_07
Or it's a reality. Look, it's the reality of life. Dive right in.

00:01:05 Speaker_09
It's a lottery. You hit the jackpot or, well, it's probably neutral more than anything else.

00:01:10 Speaker_07
Yet nobody loves their mother-in-law more than the kid loves their mom. You know what I mean?

00:01:16 Speaker_09
It's a uniquely weird dynamic.

00:01:18 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:01:19 Speaker_09
Yeah.

00:01:20 Speaker_07
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.

00:01:30 Speaker_09
Well, I don't know. I don't know about that because I've been around them before and I'm just a pig in shit and you can be annoyed while I'm actually happy. So it could be, and then you could resent your husband.

00:01:46 Speaker_07
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, but they just, you know, it's the way it goes. This is life. You can't expect it.

00:01:59 Speaker_09
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. I mean, that was it.

00:02:11 Speaker_09
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. In the same way that arranged marriages work better, like they kind of are more successful.

00:02:24 Speaker_07
Yeah, but that's different from not having parents.

00:02:27 Speaker_09
Like if it's your only option, you probably go like, well, fuck, I got to get with the program.

00:02:31 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:02:32 Speaker_09
As opposed to, I still got my parents and these ones are not.

00:02:35 Speaker_07
I don't know. This is a tough.

00:02:38 Speaker_09
This is a tough one. Don't listen. Please don't listen to crazy mother-in-laws. We are supported by Audible. Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Audible's curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best in audio entertainment.

00:02:57 Speaker_09
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00:03:06 Speaker_07
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00:03:15 Speaker_09
Well, there's so many good ones on the list.

00:03:17 Speaker_07
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00:03:19 Speaker_09
I love Audible, I swear by Audible. I can't wait to listen to the Orwell 1984 off this list. I'm also doing Flea's autobiography right now, which I'm obsessed with. I can't get enough Audible in my life, every night.

00:03:31 Speaker_09
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00:03:43 Speaker_09
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00:04:47 Speaker_01
Come and go Good times, take them slow My life, I had them both But one thing, you gotta know I'ma keep on shining

00:05:05 Speaker_03
Hi.

00:05:06 Speaker_09
Hello. Is this Heidi?

00:05:08 Speaker_03
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.

00:05:25 Speaker_03
No, she's a good one.

00:05:27 Speaker_09
Do we want a fake name for you?

00:05:28 Speaker_03
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.

00:05:44 Speaker_09
Well, if that was your first complaint, the first article submitted to evidence was that she hates podcasts. Right, right, right, right, right.

00:05:51 Speaker_03
Okay.

00:05:51 Speaker_09
Okay.

00:05:52 Speaker_03
So mother-in-law's I last year was very pregnant. I gave birth in January of this year.

00:05:58 Speaker_09
Congrats.

00:06:00 Speaker_03
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.

00:06:09 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:06:09 Speaker_03
My only complaint was that I am a very type A person, and I hadn't slept in a while.

00:06:16 Speaker_03
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.

00:06:29 Speaker_03
Not a big deal at social media, but there was some little person inside of me saying, we need to investigate. I talked to my husband and he gave her a call.

00:06:38 Speaker_03
So both sets of parents, we were lucky enough to have them at the hospital when the baby was born.

00:06:43 Speaker_03
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.

00:06:54 Speaker_03
So that way they're 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,

00:07:05 Speaker_03
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.

00:07:17 Speaker_03
We really just meant like the first 24 hours, please, this is your debut to let everyone know that you have a grand baby. You know, got off the phone, told me about that. I had honestly kind of forgotten about it.

00:07:26 Speaker_03
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.

00:07:35 Speaker_03
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.

00:07:48 Speaker_03
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 wake up.

00:07:57 Speaker_03
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.

00:08:13 Speaker_04
Oh, no.

00:08:15 Speaker_03
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.

00:08:23 Speaker_03
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.

00:08:34 Speaker_03
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.

00:08:47 Speaker_03
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.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
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 tasteful nude that was something that I would be proud to show my husband's friends and family.

00:09:17 Speaker_03
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.

00:09:32 Speaker_03
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.

00:09:42 Speaker_03
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.

00:09:58 Speaker_03
Oh, my God.

00:09:59 Speaker_09
You're not being censored. We're censoring my wife's breasts.

00:10:03 Speaker_03
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.

00:10:17 Speaker_03
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.

00:10:23 Speaker_03
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's just, there's Heidi. He ended up hanging up. I wish I could say that there was like some sort of resolution.

00:10:36 Speaker_03
I don't think she knows. I even know that this happened to this day. 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.

00:10:53 Speaker_09
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.

00:11:07 Speaker_03
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 knew.

00:11:21 Speaker_09
Not everyone had seen your breasts. Yeah.

00:11:24 Speaker_03
Right. That's crazy.

00:11:25 Speaker_09
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.

00:11:34 Speaker_03
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.

00:11:46 Speaker_09
A razor sharp focus.

00:11:49 Speaker_03
Oh, mother-in-law.

00:11:50 Speaker_09
Oh, God bless mother-in-laws.

00:11:52 Speaker_03
Thank you all so much for having me. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I have been an arm cherry since literally day one, very sim. But I happened to hear about what a podcast was the same week that you all launched the Valentine's episode.

00:12:10 Speaker_03
And so I decided I would try and give yours a chance and I've listened to every single episode since.

00:12:16 Speaker_09
Oh my gosh.

00:12:17 Speaker_07
That's so nice.

00:12:18 Speaker_03
and I was wondering is it okay if I show you?

00:12:20 Speaker_09
Yes, we would love to see you. We love babies. Come here.

00:12:25 Speaker_03
That's a cute one. This is Giovanni. He turned nine months yesterday. Oh, happy birthday.

00:12:32 Speaker_09
He has yummy pudding on his belly.

00:12:34 Speaker_03
He's a chunky guy. He's nine months. These are 18 month clothes.

00:12:37 Speaker_04
Good for him.

00:12:40 Speaker_03
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 DC. and meet Auntie Anne of Auntie Anne's Pretzels. Oh! Oh!

00:12:56 Speaker_03
Something is weird in my simulation.

00:12:58 Speaker_09
You should buy a lottery ticket today.

00:12:59 Speaker_03
That's what my husband said.

00:13:01 Speaker_09
Yeah, let's get into that Powerball. Let's see if we can't also accumulate $600 million today. Well, lovely meeting you, Heidi.

00:13:09 Speaker_06
Yes, thanks for chatting.

00:13:10 Speaker_09
Thank you for telling us that story. All right, take care. Bye.

00:13:12 Speaker_06
Bye.

00:13:16 Speaker_05
Hi.

00:13:16 Speaker_09
Hi, what should we call you? Did you already pick out a name?

00:13:18 Speaker_05
I debated, and my name's pretty basic, so I'm gonna just go with it. Okay. It's Emily. Okay. There's a million of us.

00:13:24 Speaker_09
I've met more than one.

00:13:26 Speaker_05
I figure we'll be safe that way.

00:13:27 Speaker_09
Okay, great.

00:13:29 Speaker_05
Everyone else I'll change names for.

00:13:30 Speaker_07
We do like knowing that you thought about doing a fake name, though, because that generally means it's juicy.

00:13:36 Speaker_09
Yeah, that's usually a good sign.

00:13:38 Speaker_05
It's definitely not one that I'm hoping she ever hears and circles back on us. That would not be ideal. I can't wait to hear it. Okay, so I have to give a little context. My husband was a dad at 16. When we met, he already had a six-year-old.

00:13:56 Speaker_05
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.

00:14:05 Speaker_09
He must be a real stud if you were like, oh yeah.

00:14:09 Speaker_05
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.

00:14:19 Speaker_05
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, supportive and a good mom. He didn't want me to beat her though.

00:14:32 Speaker_08
Oh, okay.

00:14:33 Speaker_05
He was nervous. He has eight siblings.

00:14:37 Speaker_04
Oh, wow.

00:14:38 Speaker_05
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?

00:14:50 Speaker_09
Whoa, okay.

00:14:51 Speaker_05
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. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's odd.

00:15:05 Speaker_05
These were things that I thought were odd, but she was living off the land, homesteading. Also, this is Florida.

00:15:11 Speaker_04
Okay, yeah.

00:15:12 Speaker_05
She's a Tanya type. Funnily enough, that's the name I'm gonna use for my oldest daughter. Okay. But yeah, so she was a little bit eccentric, but then there were other things that were harder for me to swallow. Her house was scary.

00:15:25 Speaker_05
There were flies everywhere. My oldest still doesn't eat strawberry jam because she thought it had flies in it. And when you turn on the kitchen lights, all the cockroaches came. So it's dirty as hell. Yes.

00:15:40 Speaker_05
Well, she used vinegar to clean because that's natural. Okay. But here's the icing on the cake. She had a composting toilet.

00:15:49 Speaker_09
What? How does a composting toilet function?

00:15:52 Speaker_05
At her house, it was basically like a Lowe's bucket that people went in the bathroom and threw mulch on. No. Yes. She had the kids emptying it.

00:16:05 Speaker_09
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?

00:16:18 Speaker_05
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.

00:16:43 Speaker_09
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00:17:02 Speaker_09
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00:17:17 Speaker_07
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00:17:31 Speaker_09
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00:19:32 Speaker_05
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.

00:19:48 Speaker_05
that when they used to get her back, she would be smelly, no diapers were changed.

00:19:52 Speaker_05
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 that's hard for me to fathom.

00:20:02 Speaker_05
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.

00:20:14 Speaker_09
He just loves her because she's got a flush toilet.

00:20:18 Speaker_05
He's like, I'm not marrying her, I'm marrying you. And he put a toilet in, a real toilet, while I was there so that I could actually go to the bathroom there, because I used to have to go all the way to Target. Oh my God. Where the ducks were.

00:20:31 Speaker_07
So much action's happening at that Target.

00:20:33 Speaker_05
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.

00:20:47 Speaker_05
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.

00:21:04 Speaker_05
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 Tonya, our daughter, to have some stability and some safety and security.

00:21:16 Speaker_05
And this was a chance for his mom to be grandma.

00:21:19 Speaker_09
Instead of mom.

00:21:20 Speaker_05
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.

00:21:29 Speaker_05
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.

00:21:40 Speaker_05
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.

00:21:52 Speaker_05
And when he confronted his mom, her answer was, you'd only be upset if you still had feelings for her.

00:21:56 Speaker_09
proved her point.

00:21:58 Speaker_05
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.

00:22:10 Speaker_05
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.

00:22:19 Speaker_09
I'm back in the picture.

00:22:20 Speaker_05
Yeah. And on Tanya's birthday, the next day, suddenly her bio mom called. She hadn't seen her in years. And then within a few weeks, we got notified that bio mom was coming for a visit.

00:22:32 Speaker_05
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 Tonya. We're not really on great terms with my husband's mom right now.

00:22:43 Speaker_05
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 Tonya. That evening rolled around and she didn't bring her home. Oh boy. And we're like, where are you? Where is she?

00:22:57 Speaker_05
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.

00:23:09 Speaker_05
We had to have the police intervene. 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.

00:23:19 Speaker_09
Grandparents rights.

00:23:21 Speaker_05
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.

00:23:31 Speaker_05
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?

00:23:46 Speaker_09
Wow, they went for it.

00:23:47 Speaker_05
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.

00:23:59 Speaker_09
And I'm sure you're swimming in cash right now. You're young as hell and you have kids coming. Yeah.

00:24:03 Speaker_05
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.

00:24:15 Speaker_05
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.

00:24:25 Speaker_09
Well, you almost got to be grateful she went so nuclear so that you were justified. Yeah. That's a big blessing.

00:24:30 Speaker_07
Yeah. You don't have to worry if you made a mistake. You did not.

00:24:33 Speaker_05
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.

00:24:45 Speaker_05
And ultimately my husband's super hot, so it was worth it.

00:24:49 Speaker_09
You got three beautiful kids.

00:24:50 Speaker_05
We love that. Three beautiful daughters. It's all worth it. It just was a wild ride. Yeah.

00:24:56 Speaker_09
And also good for him. If that's half your genetics and you avoid that, that's an accomplishment.

00:25:00 Speaker_05
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.

00:25:07 Speaker_09
Yeah. She didn't want to lose control over him. She sounds like someone that would own a chimp. This is what they want. They want a child that doesn't grow up.

00:25:14 Speaker_05
She had two emus when I was there, a cow, a goat, all sorts of birds. A chimp is right up her alley.

00:25:21 Speaker_09
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 chimp. Well, I'm glad it all worked out for you.

00:25:28 Speaker_05
Thank you.

00:25:29 Speaker_09
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.

00:25:33 Speaker_05
Got my beautiful kids and we're good to go.

00:25:36 Speaker_09
Okay, good. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

00:25:40 Speaker_07
Hello.

00:25:41 Speaker_06
You look so familiar. I don't know why.

00:25:44 Speaker_09
Who do people tell you you look like?

00:25:45 Speaker_06
I've been told Florence Pugh one time, but I would be lucky if that was real. I can see that.

00:25:50 Speaker_09
Yeah. She's okay to look at, Florence Pugh.

00:25:53 Speaker_06
She's beautiful.

00:25:54 Speaker_09
I'm also watching something right now, though, that you look like. We'll get it. It'll simmer in. Kylie, where are you?

00:26:01 Speaker_06
I'm in Dayton, Ohio.

00:26:03 Speaker_09
There we go. Home of Chappelle.

00:26:05 Speaker_06
Yes.

00:26:06 Speaker_09
Home of van hunt.

00:26:07 Speaker_06
John legend. John legend, baby. You got a lot of good ones.

00:26:11 Speaker_09
Soulful.

00:26:11 Speaker_06
And right by theater point and King's island.

00:26:15 Speaker_09
Yeah. You look a little young to have a mother-in-law.

00:26:18 Speaker_06
Yes. So this is actually a story about an ex-boyfriend's mom. So this was a couple of years ago.

00:26:23 Speaker_09
And that's totally fine.

00:26:24 Speaker_06
That counts.

00:26:25 Speaker_09
Yeah, that definitely counts. Well, please set the stage for us.

00:26:28 Speaker_06
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.

00:26:39 Speaker_06
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. or dating a mama's boy. This literally could be that story. That show is crazy.

00:26:52 Speaker_09
Oh, I gotta see that.

00:26:53 Speaker_06
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.

00:27:00 Speaker_09
Well, and it's kind of endearing. You go like, oh, this person loves their mom. They're probably gonna be nice to ladies.

00:27:05 Speaker_06
Dax is like, it's endearing, right?

00:27:07 Speaker_09
Yeah, right? I love my mom. She's here.

00:27:09 Speaker_06
In the beginning, it might've 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.

00:27:20 Speaker_06
And every time he was out to eat with me, she would call crying. Like we would have to take her food to her house afterwards. Or we will just invite her with us. So like we didn't go out very often because we were in college and we were poor.

00:27:33 Speaker_06
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.

00:27:41 Speaker_06
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.

00:27:53 Speaker_06
So when I lost both my jobs, I was like, I don't know what we're gonna 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.

00:28:05 Speaker_09
Home cooked meals, laundry will be done.

00:28:07 Speaker_06
You would think, 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.

00:28:19 Speaker_06
I was losing weight and I was super weak and I could not figure out what was wrong with me.

00:28:23 Speaker_09
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.

00:28:29 Speaker_06
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.

00:28:40 Speaker_06
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.

00:28:48 Speaker_06
So I came back after that two weeks at my mom's house and started getting sick again. like almost immediately was really sick.

00:28:56 Speaker_09
This is fucking nuts.

00:28:57 Speaker_06
I know.

00:28:58 Speaker_09
Is boyfriend getting sick?

00:29:00 Speaker_06
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.

00:29:11 Speaker_06
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.

00:29:23 Speaker_06
It's just like a gastrointestinal allergy. No EpiPen, just because again, there's no anaphylaxis, but it was an issue for everything else.

00:29:32 Speaker_06
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.

00:29:41 Speaker_06
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 peanut butter. Oh my god.

00:29:54 Speaker_06
She was putting nut oils in the food and like grinding up peanuts and almonds and putting them in the food that we were eating. No! It was insane.

00:30:03 Speaker_09
Wait, how did you find this out?

00:30:05 Speaker_06
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?

00:30:17 Speaker_06
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 admitted it fully, never apologized, never said anything.

00:30:29 Speaker_06
And she said she was poisoning me because I took her son away from her. Stop it. She said those words.

00:30:34 Speaker_09
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.

00:30:45 Speaker_06
No. It was the intentional using a food processor to powder. Holy shit.

00:30:52 Speaker_09
This is evil.

00:30:53 Speaker_06
It was insane. And I was like, we live here. I haven't taken him anywhere.

00:30:57 Speaker_09
I brought him back. In fact, I returned him.

00:30:59 Speaker_06
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.

00:31:07 Speaker_09
Oh, I hope they're married.

00:31:09 Speaker_06
Poisoning is just her way.

00:31:11 Speaker_09
That's her way of saying she loves me.

00:31:12 Speaker_06
God.

00:31:13 Speaker_09
Too much.

00:31:14 Speaker_06
Sick. So I moved out very shortly after that and he came with me.

00:31:18 Speaker_09
Oh, he did.

00:31:20 Speaker_06
Are you married 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.

00:31:34 Speaker_06
Fully admitted it. Never apologized.

00:31:36 Speaker_09
Did it cross your mind? I wonder if that's illegal.

00:31:39 Speaker_06
It's definitely poisoning someone.

00:31:40 Speaker_09
Well, if it's lethal, for sure. But diarrhea? Is there a criminal offense like giving a stranger diarrhea?

00:31:47 Speaker_06
Putting laxatives in their foods, kind of, right?

00:31:49 Speaker_09
Yeah, or visine.

00:31:50 Speaker_06
I don't know. A danger to your well-being.

00:31:53 Speaker_09
What was her tone when she admitted it? Like, titties, baby.

00:31:57 Speaker_06
You're very nonchalant. No one talks like that.

00:32:00 Speaker_09
Yeah, Ma Nan Sheila.

00:32:02 Speaker_06
Oh, yeah. She did.

00:32:03 Speaker_09
She said, tough titties.

00:32:06 Speaker_06
She just kind of looked at me and kind of shrugged it off casually, like, oh yeah, I did that.

00:32:10 Speaker_09
Also, Ma Nan Sheila poisoned people.

00:32:12 Speaker_06
No, I know.

00:32:13 Speaker_09
It's perfect.

00:32:14 Speaker_07
I mean, no wonder she got divorced. This husband, oh my God.

00:32:19 Speaker_09
Probably had diarrhea for years.

00:32:20 Speaker_07
He weighed six pounds.

00:32:24 Speaker_06
Yeah, it was crazy. He 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.

00:32:34 Speaker_09
Yeah, he blows. Have you had any updates on him?

00:32:36 Speaker_06
He still lives with his mom, and it's been four years. They deserve each other.

00:32:41 Speaker_07
I hope they get married. Yeah, me too. I hope they'll live happily ever after. Honestly.

00:32:45 Speaker_06
I don't think they would think anyone is good enough for them the way that they are good for each other. Ew, it's so gross. It was so weird.

00:32:51 Speaker_06
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.

00:33:01 Speaker_09
You gave me a great plan in case I don't like one of the girls' boyfriends. I just gotta find out what they're allergic to and turn it into a powder.

00:33:09 Speaker_07
Yeah, but then you'll probably eat it and you'll accidentally also get sick. I'll die. You're also allergic to everything.

00:33:15 Speaker_09
Hoisted by my own batard. 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 lives. You can't do that to yourself.

00:33:25 Speaker_09
You can carry diapers around for Michael.

00:33:27 Speaker_07
Yeah, but then they're like, Dad, you have diarrhea all the time. Shut up.

00:33:30 Speaker_09
We're not talking about me. We're talking about Michael.

00:33:32 Speaker_07
But you always have diarrhea. You're always talking about it. You call it on us.

00:33:36 Speaker_09
You're thinking of Aunt Monica. She's the one with diarrhea all the time. I fixed my diarrhea when I stopped eating gluten.

00:33:41 Speaker_07
Oh my God.

00:33:43 Speaker_09
That is fucking wild. You have a very good attitude about it. If a girlfriend's dad told me, yeah, yeah, I was poisoning you, I would punch him.

00:33:50 Speaker_07
I know, I know.

00:33:51 Speaker_09
You had a great reaction.

00:33:53 Speaker_07
I know you saying, I didn't steal him from you is like the last thing I would be thinking is like trying to assure her that you didn't, you didn't do something wrong.

00:34:02 Speaker_09
Oh, oh, we're poisoning each other. Okay.

00:34:04 Speaker_07
Now I know you want to play poison.

00:34:08 Speaker_06
I can play. 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.

00:34:22 Speaker_06
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.

00:34:32 Speaker_09
Well, can I ask you a very personal question?

00:34:34 Speaker_06
Sure.

00:34:34 Speaker_09
Was dad a mama's boy?

00:34:36 Speaker_06
My dad? No. So it wasn't even like a pattern thing.

00:34:40 Speaker_08
Yeah.

00:34:40 Speaker_06
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.

00:34:47 Speaker_07
No, it takes time to learn these things about yourself.

00:34:50 Speaker_09
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.

00:34:56 Speaker_07
Yeah. Ooh, that was a great story.

00:34:58 Speaker_09
Yeah, I liked that a lot.

00:34:59 Speaker_07
Thank you for sharing it. Have a great rest of your day. Yeah, you too. Bye, it was nice to meet you. Bye.

00:35:04 Speaker_09
Yeah, nice meeting you, take care. We are supported by BetterHelp. There are so many things to love about December. It's holiday season.

00:35:21 Speaker_09
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00:35:27 Speaker_09
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00:35:36 Speaker_07
Therapy is essential to me during the holidays especially because I generally am going home.

00:35:44 Speaker_09
Right, yes.

00:35:45 Speaker_07
And I need sort of some stability. And guidance. And guidance to stay nice.

00:35:52 Speaker_09
Well, if you've ever been considering starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's completely online, so it's easy to integrate into your schedule. BetterHelp is flexible, too. It's easy to book or move appointments on their platform.

00:36:05 Speaker_09
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00:36:20 Speaker_09
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00:36:33 Speaker_09
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00:37:40 Speaker_09
Okay, this is great, because people may remember a while back, you and I have debated which is better, acetaminophen or ibuprofen. We sure have. So, for me, particularly headaches, I gotta go Tylenol.

00:37:52 Speaker_07
Yep.

00:37:52 Speaker_09
But I do like Motrin for muscle pain.

00:37:55 Speaker_07
I like Motrin.

00:37:55 Speaker_09
Yeah, you won't even play. What about for headaches, though?

00:38:00 Speaker_07
I mean, I'm Motrin.

00:38:02 Speaker_09
You're Team Motrin.

00:38:03 Speaker_07
I'm just Team Motrin. Stop trying to make me who I'm not.

00:38:05 Speaker_09
The gods have intervened, and we have a perfect solution. Motrin and Tylenol have finally settled the great debate by teaming up and introducing Motrin Dual Action with...

00:38:17 Speaker_07
Oh, they did this for us to save our relationship.

00:38:19 Speaker_09
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00:38:33 Speaker_09
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00:38:45 Speaker_09
Buy Tylenol, Motrin, and Motrin Dual Action with Tylenol on Amazon or at a store near you. Use product only as directed. Hello. How are you, Nicholas?

00:39:05 Speaker_02
Good. How are you?

00:39:07 Speaker_09
Good. You have quite a collection of, you hang your t-shirts.

00:39:10 Speaker_02
I do.

00:39:11 Speaker_09
And is your garage spotless and organized?

00:39:13 Speaker_02
Never.

00:39:14 Speaker_09
Oh, okay. So it's just the wardrobe.

00:39:16 Speaker_02
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.

00:39:27 Speaker_02
She comes to your house and you have a crooked painting or a picture or something that's gonna get straightened right out. She's on it.

00:39:33 Speaker_09
Where are you at in the country, Nicholas?

00:39:34 Speaker_02
I live about an hour north of Seattle, so Washington State.

00:39:37 Speaker_09
Okay. All right, set the stage.

00:39:39 Speaker_07
So this organized wife of yours has a mother you're gonna be speaking of.

00:39:43 Speaker_02
She definitely does. She has quite the family. The mother's 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.

00:39:57 Speaker_09
Yeah. It's rare that someone's crazy acutely. It's generally a kind of a chronic condition.

00:40:02 Speaker_02
Yeah. A hundred 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 when we were about 22.

00:40:12 Speaker_02
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 a baby.

00:40:25 Speaker_02
And the reason why that matters is because my brother married my wife's sister.

00:40:29 Speaker_09
Boom! 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 Yola's sister.

00:40:39 Speaker_02
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, God, do they share a father? Same dad.

00:40:49 Speaker_02
There's four kids total among three different women that we know of that does keep her off of Ancestry.com and other other things like that, just in case.

00:40:57 Speaker_02
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.

00:41:05 Speaker_02
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.

00:41:15 Speaker_07
Right. Even though it's not her child.

00:41:16 Speaker_02
It's only her child when it's convenient. Yeah, she sees. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys trying to outnumber them? Exactly. Yeah.

00:41:23 Speaker_02
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.

00:41:31 Speaker_02
We found out the week of my brother and wife 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.

00:41:42 Speaker_02
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.

00:41:52 Speaker_02
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.

00:42:01 Speaker_09
Ooh. I'm jealous.

00:42:02 Speaker_02
He was the best. We spent so much time with him and it was very sudden and we did not know 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.

00:42:13 Speaker_02
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.

00:42:24 Speaker_02
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.

00:42:37 Speaker_02
It was kind of like, hey, how you doing? We're still doing our thing. Also trying to pay attention to wedding coordinator. Nothing that would be crazy for any of us, but for someone who is unstable, it's very offensive.

00:42:48 Speaker_02
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.

00:42:58 Speaker_09
And is it safe to assume that she is no longer with the father of these two, or are they?

00:43:03 Speaker_02
That's like a whole nother thing. 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. They were roommates at that time.

00:43:15 Speaker_02
And then shortly after this, they end up separating. So they're no longer together.

00:43:19 Speaker_02
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.

00:43:31 Speaker_02
That second class citizen quote comes up often.

00:43:34 Speaker_09
Well, we're hearing her story. She feels like a second class citizen.

00:43:37 Speaker_02
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.

00:43:46 Speaker_02
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?

00:43:54 Speaker_02
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.

00:44:01 Speaker_02
Not necessarily for the pregnancy, but for whatever reason she wants a list of how she was mistreated. We decided let's go get breakfast at this place near where she lives.

00:44:10 Speaker_02
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,

00:44:20 Speaker_09
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.

00:44:25 Speaker_02
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.

00:44:34 Speaker_02
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.

00:44:49 Speaker_02
Some of it's just her augmented truth of what had happened during specific events over the last, at least two years.

00:44:55 Speaker_09
I think it's also worth remembering out loud that that wasn't your wedding. You didn't design the seating chart. This is your brother and her at one time, stepdaughters wedding. You're like telling the wrong people.

00:45:08 Speaker_02
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.

00:45:20 Speaker_02
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, okay, now's the time to share with her the news.

00:45:34 Speaker_02
And what I remember the moment and we differ on this is that

00:45:37 Speaker_02
I physically kind of reached to block her hands from her purse because she wants to pull out a onesie that we had bought for her that says, what happens to grandma's house stays at grandma's house. My kids have never been to grandma's house.

00:45:51 Speaker_02
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?

00:46:03 Speaker_04
Oh, my God.

00:46:05 Speaker_02
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.

00:46:14 Speaker_08
Oh, OK. OK.

00:46:16 Speaker_02
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 gonna do this anymore. Maybe this isn't worth all of the extra effort.

00:46:25 Speaker_02
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 off the phone with my mom.

00:46:35 Speaker_02
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. Yeah.

00:46:45 Speaker_02
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.

00:46:56 Speaker_09
Well, you think you learn pretty quickly. It's not helping.

00:47:00 Speaker_02
Exactly. That was all before telling her we're having a baby. And so after that, I was like, you know what?

00:47:04 Speaker_02
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.

00:47:12 Speaker_02
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 Brett's.

00:47:27 Speaker_09
What was the vibe of the threats?

00:47:29 Speaker_02
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.

00:47:37 Speaker_09
Yeah, yeah.

00:47:37 Speaker_02
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.

00:47:45 Speaker_07
It's the second time this has come up. This is crazy.

00:47:49 Speaker_02
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?

00:47:56 Speaker_02
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.

00:48:05 Speaker_02
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.

00:48:14 Speaker_02
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. Oh, my God.

00:48:22 Speaker_08
Yay.

00:48:22 Speaker_02
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.

00:48:33 Speaker_02
She gives her statement on theme with the organization in the closet. She has a binder full of every voicemail ever left, all transcribed.

00:48:41 Speaker_09
She's the wrong person to threaten.

00:48:43 Speaker_02
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.

00:48:53 Speaker_02
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.

00:49:02 Speaker_09
I bet it would be hard to contain a smile if I were you at that point.

00:49:06 Speaker_02
A hundred percent.

00:49:07 Speaker_07
But you don't feel alone. Now somebody else sees how crazy this is.

00:49:10 Speaker_02
Not just somebody else, but somebody else outside of our bubble. Yes, exactly.

00:49:14 Speaker_09
And a judge.

00:49:15 Speaker_02
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.

00:49:27 Speaker_02
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. Whatever makes you happy.

00:49:34 Speaker_07
That's correct. That's the correct thing for a husband to say. I'll do whatever you want.

00:49:38 Speaker_02
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 a good delivery and that there's no pain with home birth or something crazy.

00:49:54 Speaker_02
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.

00:50:04 Speaker_02
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.

00:50:12 Speaker_09
Memorable.

00:50:12 Speaker_02
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.

00:50:24 Speaker_02
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.

00:50:34 Speaker_02
Even to this day, we had moved in the last two years and we've seen her drive by our new house.

00:50:38 Speaker_07
Oh my God. Yeah.

00:50:39 Speaker_02
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. So, we get a phone call shortly after my son was born because my wife would go on walks around the neighborhood.

00:50:50 Speaker_02
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.

00:51:00 Speaker_02
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.

00:51:13 Speaker_02
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.

00:51:23 Speaker_02
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, OK, let me get a doctor and let them decide what they want to tell you. Doctor gets on the phone.

00:51:32 Speaker_02
I tell her the whole thing again. And the doctor goes, OK, there was never a heart attack. She has heartburn and gas. She's going home shortly.

00:51:38 Speaker_09
She's farting.

00:51:40 Speaker_02
Yes. That was a dodge 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.

00:51:56 Speaker_02
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.

00:52:05 Speaker_09
filed her own no contact form against both of them.

00:52:09 Speaker_02
We got a major apology from her later saying like, that was not OK, but I've never in my life been so fed up with a patient before that I had to leave the room.

00:52:16 Speaker_07
Holy shit. That's validating.

00:52:19 Speaker_02
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.

00:52:29 Speaker_09
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.

00:52:40 Speaker_09
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.

00:52:52 Speaker_09
It's like these two things we both do on both sides. 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.

00:53:04 Speaker_07
And she's unstable. I mean, it's just hard when people are unstable.

00:53:07 Speaker_09
Yeah, it's hard to argue with.

00:53:09 Speaker_07
They say a crazy man can't out crazy crazy.

00:53:12 Speaker_09
Is that a new saying?

00:53:14 Speaker_07
Some people say that. I like that.

00:53:15 Speaker_09
You can't out crazy crazy. You can't fight crazy with crazy.

00:53:18 Speaker_07
That's one version.

00:53:19 Speaker_09
Does it make your wife sad or is she at peace with that?

00:53:22 Speaker_02
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 of a father-in-law story. I'll probably write back in. He's never met our kids and he has no interest in that.

00:53:34 Speaker_02
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.

00:53:44 Speaker_09
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.

00:53:52 Speaker_09
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.

00:54:02 Speaker_09
A lot of folks don't make that decision.

00:54:04 Speaker_07
Regardless of whether, you know, I can't really add this person in my life. It's still a loss.

00:54:09 Speaker_09
Although not for you, because it's not your mother.

00:54:11 Speaker_02
As nice as it is for me, it is heartbreaking for my kids. And all we've told them is just like Grammys hasn't been nice to your mom.

00:54:16 Speaker_02
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.

00:54:23 Speaker_02
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.

00:54:31 Speaker_07
Yeah, that's great.

00:54:32 Speaker_02
Like you said, you can't go crazy, crazy.

00:54:36 Speaker_07
Well, thank you for sharing that.

00:54:38 Speaker_09
Yeah, Nicholas, that was great. And sorry to your wife. It's so unfortunate. All right. Well, nice meeting you. Take care. Whoa.

00:54:47 Speaker_07
Whoa. That's a lot to deal with. That's a lot to handle.

00:54:50 Speaker_09
A lot to deal with, a lot to handle. Yeah. It's so stressful.

00:54:53 Speaker_07
Yeah, it is.

00:54:54 Speaker_09
Okay. I love you.

00:54:55 Speaker_07
Love you.

00:54:57 Speaker_02
Do you wanna sing a tune or something? Or a theme song? Oh. Okay, great.

00:55:02 Speaker_08
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, rhyme-ish.

00:55:24 Speaker_09
Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

00:55:38 Speaker_09
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

00:55:45 Speaker_00
They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

00:56:01 Speaker_00
When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, There were many questions surrounding his death.

00:56:09 Speaker_00
The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry.

00:56:21 Speaker_00
But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

00:56:32 Speaker_00
Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.