Girlfriend Intolerance

My brother’s girlfriend has always been somewhat chilly toward me. I’ve asked her and my brother why, but she won’t say and my brother says he doesn’t know, so I just keep things civilized when I have to see her and otherwise ignore her.

One year, my brother and his girlfriend offer to host our family’s Thanksgiving get-together, including cooking dinner. I am gluten-intolerant, so during the week before Thanksgiving, I remind my brother’s girlfriend of my dietary restrictions several times. When we sit down to eat, I ask her once more if anything contains gluten. She says no, so I dig in and enjoy everything.

About an hour later, it becomes clear that she lied, and I have to rush to the bathroom. When I finally get out, I confront her.

Me: “Hey, [Girlfriend], did anything have gluten in it?”

Girlfriend: “Yeah, the stuffing did. The gravy might have, too; I didn’t check.”

Me: “I told you about a hundred times that I’m gluten-intolerant! Why did you lie to me?”

Girlfriend: “Oh, please. Everyone knows that gluten intolerance is just a fad. You’ll be fine.”

I had to rush to the bathroom again at that point, which was the only thing that prevented me from attacking her physically. My husband and I decided to get a hotel room for that night instead of staying over with her and my brother. I spent most of the next day in the bathroom of our hotel room, and when I finally felt well enough to handle it, my husband and I made the drive home.

A few days later, I called my brother. I told him that I would still talk to him on the phone or on video calls, but I wanted absolutely nothing to do with his girlfriend. My brother informed me that he was actually in the process of breaking up with her, based on her attitude toward me. He admitted that she had always been spiteful toward several people in their lives, not just to me, but it took her basically knowingly poisoning me with absolutely no regrets to open his eyes to just how bad a person she was capable of being.