When I married my husband, I knew his mom and I were complete opposites. She is very old-school, frequently loud, and absolutely obsessed with eating steak. Conversely, I have been proudly vegan for nearly eight years—not aggressively preachy about it, but strictly meticulous about what gets cooked inside my personal kitchen.
Last month, she decided to come and stay with us for an entire week. Before she arrived, I clearly outlined my single, very firm rule. I told her, “You are absolutely welcome to eat whatever you want when we go out, but there must be no meat cooked in my house. My kitchen, my simple rule.”
She laughed at me and casually said, “Oh, we will see about that.” This dismissive comment should have been my first warning sign that she intended to ignore my wishes entirely.
On day two, I came home from work to the instantly recognizable, pungent smell of bacon. I found her calmly standing at my stove, openly frying it in my dedicated pan, using my wooden spoon.
When I confronted her, simply saying, “I explicitly asked you not to cook meat here,” she immediately rolled her eyes and dismissively said, “It’s just breakfast. You are entirely too sensitive about this.”
I immediately took the pan away, calmly dumped the offending bacon into the trash, and stated my final boundary: “If you cannot possibly respect my home, there is a comfortable hotel five minutes away.” She packed all her bags and left that very afternoon. Now his family claims I truly humiliated her and “chose food over family,” and my husband is openly mad. Am I really such a bad person for standing my ground?
