This 34-year-old woman is engaged, and a few weeks ago, her fiancé’s father’s vehicle unfortunately broke down. Since she has two vehicles and doesn’t drive her SUV every day, she allowed her soon-to-be in-laws, who are both around 65-years-old, to borrow the SUV until their vehicle was fixed.
When she agreed to this arrangement, she was aware of the fact that it would take a few days for their vehicle’s repairs to be finished, so she tried to be patient. However, her future in-laws have now been borrowing her vehicle for three full weeks.
Even though she’s tried reaching out to them on three occasions to find out how much longer they need to use her car, they haven’t responded with a timeline of when she could expect her car back.
Understandably, it bothers her that her in-laws weren’t very appreciative of her kind gesture. They also didn’t bring up the idea of giving her money for the time they’ve been using her vehicle.
“My father-in-law is horribly cheap and stubborn, and I love him, but he’s been tinkering on his broken car at his leisure while continuing to borrow mine,” she said.
After a while, she inquired about how long he thought it would take for him to install the parts he needed to get his vehicle up and running again, and he only told her that he was in the process of fixing it, not providing any more information.
“He’s uncomfortable talking about anything related to money (aside from complaining about how expensive everything is), so I tried not to push the issue because I wanted to respect his boundaries,” she explained.
Finally, she reached the end of her patience and told her fiancé that he needed to contact his parents and demand they return her vehicle. She made it clear that he needed to express to them that this was not a request but a demand.
While she had another vehicle, she needed her SUV immediately to transport her dog. It didn’t make sense to her that she would need a specific reason why she wanted her own car returned to her.
This ordeal has caused her to feel like her in-laws don’t respect her and don’t seem to understand that despite her having a second vehicle, this doesn’t mean that she won’t eventually need her SUV back.
Now, she’s concerned that they made a huge mess of her vehicle since they don’t seem to prioritize taking care of their own belongings or even the belongings of others. For context, she added that they all live in an extremely expensive area of the United States, and she and her fiancé don’t make a lot of money.
Her fiancé, the youngest of his siblings, earns the highest income of all his family members. His parents, as well as all of his other family members, are white, and his entire family works full-time jobs.
In her opinion, her in-laws should have asked her fiancé if they could borrow his vehicle, considering that he is their son, instead of asking her.
Her fiancé got a hold of his parents and informed them they needed to give back her car. Luckily, this did the trick, and her in-laws expressed how sorry they were that they’d borrowed her vehicle for so long. She was relieved that she didn’t have to take drastic action, like taking back her car without them knowing or contacting the police.
“I accept some level of responsibility for not putting my foot down sooner and being too nice to people taking advantage of that,” she shared.
From now on, her fiancé will take the initiative to help his parents, and she will set clear boundaries on what type of behavior she is willing to accept from them.
What would you have done if you had been in her shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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