My (M23) girlfriend (F22) and our parents went to a trivia night together last night. Her parents brought a lot of food, which was very welcome and appreciated by everyone at the table. There were other drinks and some snacks that were available to all guests, but her parents brought enough to have a whole meal, of which I ate more than my fair share. It was overall a good night, and our parents get along very well together when we all go out.
Skip to the end of the night, and her parents are deliberating on how much food they have leftover and what to do with it. Her mom offers me a leftover charcuterie platter, which I accept gladly. However, she continues to offer me other food items that we either do not want or that my girlfriend and I do not have the fridge space for. I first try to decline politely, but her mom keeps persisting and trying to compromise with us to take it. It seemed very clear to me that she was trying to avoid taking anything home with her, which I understand, but we simply couldn’t take more than what I had already accepted or I knew we wouldn’t eat some of the things she offered. She continues to prod, and even starts to hand the items to my girlfriend after I said no.
I get visibly frustrated, but I bring up the fact that we have limited fridge space and that we are already taking that food (and some other food items from the silent auction) home with us, so we cannot take any more. She tries to compromise by taking the food out of the container and placing it in the dishes we already have. She tells us that she brought the extra food with the intention of giving it to us afterwards, which she never told us about before.
I sternly say, “I said no, please respect that.” Everyone gets quiet and looks at me uncomfortably. My dad comes up to me and says, “it’s a gift, you should accept it politely.” In my opinion, it felt disrespectful, because it seemed more like she was trying to force me to take food that she didn’t know what to do with after I said we couldn’t take it. It was also strange, because although I understand the sentiment of giving away food to her daughter and her boyfriend, it was an absurd amount of food to expect us to take with us. I didn’t want to start an argument so I just took it, and had to throw a good amount of it away. AITA?
You said no. She kept pushing. That’s on her. People love to frame forced generosity as kindness, but if someone’s “gift” becomes your problem to solve, it’s just dumping unwanted things. You didn’t snap, you just set a boundary.
What was your girlfriend saying while this was going on?
NTA – I have a similar situation with my parents in law so I completely relate. I have the feeling they do not understand the meaning of the word ‘no’ and my husband is now the same.
But I want to set a precedent that I will not just accept anything from them because they don’t understand the word ‘no’ – which is what you are doing here and I think it is the right thing to do in the long run.
In my experience you have to consistently and patiently keep saying ‘no Thankyou, no Thankyou, no Thankyou….’
This is a good example of the difference between being right (you can refuse stuff, you didn’t have the room) and being polite and a likeable human.
If you spoke to her mom like that I’m assuming now everyone no only thinks YTA but are also rude as hell. She might have been misguided or a bit pushy but to describe her a disrespectful is completely over the top.
What was rude though? “I said no, please respect that” isn’t rude. I don’t understand why so many people are acting like he cussed her out?
You ended up arguing about it and throwing it out later, when you had the option of *not* arguing about it, and throwing it out later. 🤷♂️
I agree she was pushy and presumptuous, but…
I think taking home a bit of extra food and throwing it out is such a trivial burden that it wasn’t worth making everyone else in the room uncomfortable by “sternly” refusing it.
Listen to your dad.
YTA
“ I said no, please respect that.” YTA for speaking to your mother in law in such an authoritative, disrespectful manner. Lucky you have such a gentlemanly father, he undid a lot of your damage.
“ It seemed very clear to me that she was trying to avoid taking anything home with her” because if she did take it home she would just end up binning it, so she was trying to palm it onto us in the hope that we wouldn’t bin it. This is an annoying, but common, situation. You are supposed to just take the food, force a smile, force a “thank you”, and then go home and bin it. Your dad understands this very well. However, you were clueless on this because YTA.
NTA – you were so polite in refusing the food knowing that it would just go to waste, but you still took some. You said no. No means no in any situation, and it was rude of the parents to be so pushy about it after the number of times you said no.
YTA. Why did you have to end a pleasant night on such a sour note. You clearly embarrassed your Dad who thought he raised you better.
Soft YTA. Young people and very old people tend to drift towards a similar behaviour pattern of stubbornly focusing on being right.
Learn to take other people’s feelings into consideration and just take the food. Bin it if you can’t eat all of it.
Ick. I abhor the insistence that enforced social contracts (“I want to give a gift – I insist you accept and be grateful because it’s what I want) should outweight consent. “No, thank you” should ALWAYS be enough – anyone persisting against no meaning no deserves to be shamed. Consent matters in big things and little things – respect and normalise people being allowed to say no.
NTA people should respect boundaries. No means no. People that has a problem with that are the problem.. kindness is one thing, but manipulating someone into going back on their set boundaries is not kind at all. Your dad is probably your MIL’s age, and wanted you to “respect your elders,” but give someone an inch, and they will take a mile. If they’re disregarding your boundaries when they are small and you let them get away with it, it will grow into bigger things. For those saying, it’s such a small trivial thing, they’re right, but not in the way they’re directing it to you. When it was offered and you politely said no, that was small, she made it a big deal, you didn’t. Good for you standing up for yourself.
NTA, if she is pushy about food, what else will she be pushy about? She will know that you are a pushover if you give in. She should respect your answer
NTA
Next time simply say, that you have enough and don’t want it to go to waste. “sorry. I don’t take it. It doesn’t make sehnte to take it just to throw it away when we can’t eat it all.”
If they still insist, do exactly this. Take it and throw it away on the way home.