My husband and I travel together for work. I have to come home for some reason, though we don’t tell anyone I am coming back. I am sitting in my living room when I hear my front door unlock and open. My mother-in-law’s voice comes down the hall, but I can’t make out what she’s saying.

Me: “Hello?”

Mother-In-Law: “JESUS CHRIST!”

I meet her just inside the door, holding hands with a man who is not her husband. She drops his hand and stares at me.

Mother-In-Law: “What are you doing here?”

Me: “Well… this is my house. What are you doing here?”

Mother-In-Law: *Smiling* “Just making sure everything is okay. Since you’re supposed to be gone.”

Me: “We didn’t ask you to check in. Who is this?”

Mother-In-Law: “Don’t worry about it. We’re leaving.”

I called my husband later and described the man. He didn’t know who it was, so he called his dad. His dad knew who he was — the man [Mother-In-Law] swore she was not having an affair with.

When he filed for divorce and kicked her out, she tried to move in with us. According to her, the divorce was MY fault.

We changed the lock and got a video doorbell.

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Content Warning: Alcoholism, Violence

My husband has struggled with alcohol for a long time. For his thirtieth birthday, we invited some friends and family over for a dinner. Before anyone got there, I quietly asked him to be careful with his drinking; he agreed.

Everyone brought something to drink — a bottle of wine, a gallon of vodka, wine coolers — and each person demanded that [Husband] drink with them. After just two hours, he was so drunk he could hardly stand. Then, he got violent, broke a kitchen chair, and punched a hole in the wall.

Suddenly, everyone had somewhere else to be, except one of my male friends. My friend called the police, who came over immediately.

Officer #1: “How much did he have to drink?”

Me: “I don’t know. Everyone else was feeding him shots and—”

Officer #2: “Were you drinking?”

Me: “I had a hard lemonade a while ago, but when he started drinking faster, I stopped.”

Officer #2: *Not believing me* “Just one? Are you sure you’re not intoxicated and overreacting?”

Me: “Breathalyze me.”

The officers did not test either of us, but they did take my husband to the hospital at my friend’s insistence.

[Husband] called the next day to ask to come home.

Husband: “I don’t know why I’m here. The nurse said you called the cops because I was drinking.”

Me: “I called because you were violent and all of your friends and family left me to deal with it. [Friend] was the only one to stay, and I’m glad he did.”

Husband: “I don’t remember them leaving. Come get me and we can talk about this.”

Me: “Come get you? I’m ready to get divorced.”

Husband: “I’m sorry. Throw away the alcohol. I’m done with it. Please.”

I debated for about an hour but decided to go get him. I dumped all the alcohol in the house and picked him up at the hospital. [Officer #1] from the night before was there.

Officer #1: “I don’t believe you called her after she did that to you.”

I didn’t say anything.

Officer #1: “No smart comments today, huh? Good choice.”

When we got home, I told [Husband] about the events of the night. Then, he showed me some videos he took on his phone while he was in the hospital. This one was the two officers, a female nurse, and a male nurse.

Officer #1: “She was probably drunker than he is. He seems fine to me.”

Officer #2: “He’s talking; he’s coherent. I don’t know what her issue was.” *Directly to my husband* “You tell your woman she’s gotta calm down, man! We got other s*** to do!”

Male Nurse: “Well, his blood alcohol is .305, so that probably has something to do with it.”

Female Nurse: “Glad you brought him in. He could have died.”

He called a couple of his friends to apologize for his behavior. Those who held him responsible are still in our lives. Those who laughed it off, blamed me directly, or agreed with the officers and said I was overreacting are no longer a part of our lives.

I spoke with the local police force about the things the officers said in the video. Unfortunately, we live in a state where everyone has to consent to being recorded, and since they didn’t consent, the video was useless.

On the plus side, my husband celebrated three years of sobriety in March of 2022.

I am pregnant with my first child, and it is time to go have my first pregnancy appointment with my OB/GYN. I have been seeing her for a while and generally am very happy with her. She’s a nice older lady who never makes me feel rushed, but a downside to this is that she’s often running behind because she doesn’t rush the other patients, either.

Today, though, she is especially behind, and my husband and I are sitting in the waiting room two hours after the time when my appointment was supposed to start. I was already anxious because I have some health conditions that make me more likely to have complications, so I am eager to be checked out and make sure the pregnancy is healthy.

Eventually, we are finally shown to the exam room, which is not the biggest. There, we wait for another thirty minutes before the doctor arrives. At this point I am, I believe justifiably, on edge.

We have a brief discussion about the pregnancy and my health, and it’s determined that she needs to examine me. I go to get all set up in the stirrups, and at this point, I’m still covered.

Doctor: “Okay, [Husband], can you please stand over there behind [My Name]?” 

My husband does so.

Doctor: “Actually, could you move a little farther to your right?” 

My husband then squeezes even farther behind me and the exam table. But the doctor just keeps directing him this way around this cramped little exam room until he’s finally in a spot she’s happy with. She then turns around and starts adjusting things on the counter behind her.

I get confused when I see her start adjusting frames on the wall, and eventually, I figure it out. She’s rearranging anything that could be reflective so that my husband won’t see me once she lifts up the sheet that’s covering my nether regions.

Now it’s kind of funny, but at the time, two and a half hours after my appointment time, while I am incredibly anxious, it is irritating. I eventually get tired of her fiddling and exclaim:

Me: “Enough! He’s seen me naked before! H***, his involvement with my vagina is what made the need for this appointment in the first place!”

Doctor: *Taken aback* “Well, I was just looking out for your privacy.”

Me: “Look. Everyone in this room has seen my vagina multiple times. Can we just get on with the exam already?”

Doctor: “Yes, yes, of course. Apologies. I didn’t know you two were so… comfortable with each other.”

I still don’t know what she meant by that. Are there really couples at pregnancy appointments with an OB/GYN that would start pearl-clutching about their partner seeing them exposed?

Thankfully, the exam went well, and she was a great doctor through the rest of the pregnancy, though she did always act like she thought my husband was a bit odd.

My husband has a sensitive stomach, so I keep a sort of mental note of which products are safe for him and which give him entire nights of stomach cramps.

This conversation happens after I, after testing positive for a certain contagious illness, have come back from isolating at a family member’s house while they were on holiday.

Me: “I just did some groceries. I got some more cheese.”

Husband: “Man, I mostly lived on cheese this last week — so many cheese sandwiches and pasta with cheese. It was the easiest and fastest way to get some food in me after a long day, especially with you gone.”

Me: “I did see that. I’m surprised you got cheese from [Supermarket], though. I’ve been avoiding that like the plague for years, because you got cramps from it the last time we tried it.”

Husband: “…”

Me: “What?”

Husband: *In a small voice* “That would explain so much about this week.”

One hot summer, many years ago, my wife, five small children, and I were living in a small rental home that had no air conditioning. To make matters worse, all the bedrooms were on the second floor where it was even hotter. Temperatures were in the high nineties and above, and it didn’t cool down much at night. We opened all the windows and ran fans to make it nights bearable.

The house was on the main street in our small town and right next to the parking lot for a park. The house’s yard was surrounded by a chest-high concrete fence. On weekend nights, the teenagers and twenty-somethings would “drag Main”, driving up and down Main Street honking and calling to each other, and they would often congregate in that parking lot next to our home. And they weren’t particularly quiet as they talked loudly and gunned their engines.

One unbearably hot weekend night, it was 1:00 am and my wife and I were trying to sleep. Suddenly, the noises of the main draggers reached a crescendo pitch. My wife had had enough. Ignoring my advice to let it be, she marched down the stairs, out the front door, and across the lawn to the concrete fence next to the parking lot, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. She slammed her hands on the fence and yelled at the ten or so young people congregated there. This is basically what she said.

Wife: “Hey! I have had it! You are making too much noise, and if you wake up my baby, I will grab you by the ears, pull you into my house, and make you put that baby to sleep! Now be quiet!”

Without waiting for a reply, she marched back into the house, slamming the front door behind her. I peeked out a few minutes later and the parking lot was deserted. We never saw the main draggers again for the rest of the time that we lived there.