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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2025-06-21 04:04:01+00:00.
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Thr0wAwayFrisbee
AITAH for telling my FIL he can’t hump the floor at my house or in my presence
Originally posted to r/AmItheAsshole & OOP’s own page
Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU
TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual harassment, bullying, gaslighting
MOOD SPOILER: Infuriating
Original Post June 13, 2025
Crazy title and I wish it weren’t true but here we are. Unfortunately I’m asking because I’m possibly in a state of being gaslit OR i actually can’t take a joke and I can’t see it. My FIL (late 50s) is known for being VERY playful - goofy some would even say. Well him, my MIL (late 50s) and 3 sibling in-laws (20M & 27M28F-married couple) came to stay with my husband and I at our home (28F30M) and to see our new LO (7 months).
Well LO was put to bed and we were all in the living room area hanging out, doing stretches, just casually talking, when FIL decided it would be funny to start humping the ground out of no where. And unfortunately it was directly in front of me (not MIL). Mil and I looked at each other in shock while his children all laughed and chuckled. FIL made it clear that the gesture was meant for his wife despite it being directly in front of me (with eye contact) so we dropped it. The night passed, they left town, and after a few days of not being able to shake the image in my head, I decided to talk with my husband about how uncomfortable it made me ALONG WITH other sexual jokes he makes about us all being married and etc.
There’s been this big divide now on how I’m always ruining the fun, how it was “just a joke” and not a sexual gesture, and how I’ll always find a problem when my husbands family is in town. His family thinks this however, when I speak with my mom, sister, cousins, and anyone on my side of the world, they see his “joke(s)” and “gesture” as totally inappropriate. My FIL tried to make the point that I’ve done TikTok dances in his home with the other sibling in laws and my husband and he’s never felt uncomfortable because he knows they’re harmless and that it’s not fair for me to judge him about this vs knowing his intent (which was to just make a joke). My point is, even though I’m not on tiktok and I don’t post videos, everything I’ve done is postable, him slow stroking the ground is not.
My husband got mad at me for not seeing it as a joke and so did the other married siblings who were in the room that were raised by FIL.
So AITAH for saying that my FIL humping the floor in my home/presence made me uncomfortable and drawing that boundary.
I genuinely would appreciate feedback because I plan to have another conversation soon and I want to know that I’m coming into the conversation grounded in reality.
VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Outrageous_Rabbit842
Can your husband explain the joke… to you and his mother? Can FIL? Cause I don’t get it either. Just straight up gross
OOP
This is a good point and I’m wondering if I should actually ask to see what the response is.
~
Pristine-Local-8176
NTA. Your in laws are weird af for enabling this behavior. Your husband is weird for getting upset you didn’t “get the joke.” Wtf. His father made you uncomfortable. I’d be sick to my stomach if I saw my FIL do that. And your husband’s reaction is to get upset with you instead of address it with his dad? 👀 Gross. All around gross.
OOP
I agree that the whole family is weird, husband included. It definitely has made me wonder if something happened in the home that makes this seem normal.
Rare-Low-8945
Whyyyyyyy did you have a baby with someone before you examined these questionnnssss
OOP
This is my favorite question because NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS would I thought I needed to ask, does your dad hump floors and is this funny to you. Never. I’m just as shocked.
Truthfully what makes this even worse is that we’re a very religious community. He’s an elder/deacon in the church, we’re all church goers, worship leaders, musicians, all the things. So I had absolutely no reason to think this would’ve ever come up. Until it did.
mlachick
In my experience the devout Christians are some of the sickest sexual deviants, and calling them out gets you the creepy gaslighting that you’re experiencing.
Update June 14, 2025
ALL ABOARD FOR THE HOT-MESS EXPRESS!
Firstly, thank you to all of the responses. I genuinely appreciate the kind, blunt, informative, funny, and not so nice comments because truly I was looking for ALL perspectives.
It felt reassuring to see that majority (not all) of you felt like it was, in fact, inappropriate/ gross/ weird/ odd/ sick and especially having folks that aren’t like me (religious, jokesters, etc) still see the behavior as not the best.
This is a 24 hour update.
So the reason I followed up with my FIL/MIL wasn’t because my FIL never apologized- HE DID! Reluctantly but he did. I followed up with them because of one particular event that happened on the first phone call when my husband (yes although mad at me) told them that I was uncomfortable. My FIL’s immediate response to my husband (and I) saying I was uncomfortable was that he (FIL) was uncomfortable with the fact that I was uncomfortable and that this all made him feel bad because it’s not fair that I was uncomfortable. He apologized and truly it COULD HAVE stopped right there because truly he’s entitled to his feelings.
But it didn’t stop there. It got back to me that he was telling the other in-laws (siblings) how I couldn’t have fun, I ruin the fun when they’re around, he’s uncomfortable because I’m looking at him like that and that it hurts because I don’t know him better etc etc etc. stuff came up about the tiktok dances and how there was room for interpretation regarding them being inappropriate ETC.
Let me clear one thing up- imagine dances like milly rock, shoot, dougie, 2000’s hip hop. Imagine church dances that you see in African American culture (since we’re religious) like shouting, praising. THAT! There was no twerking, jiving, or jirating. There were maybe 6 (max 8) videos and HALF of them were religious oriented. Nothing seductive, fully clothed, very appropriate. And actually there hasn’t been a video of me dancing nor have I danced there in maybe the last 2-3 years. So let’s just place that there.
OKAY! Him feeling upset wasn’t a problem, it was the taking to the in-laws and word getting back to me and me being questioned about “why I can’t just enjoy the moments and the jokes”. It was the, “why can’t you be happy around them”. I explained that our beliefs and values don’t align to my brother in law (BIL) which is who came to me. BUT For me, this meant one thing clearly- I can’t say, ”I’m uncomfortable” and that simply be received. All of the side talk (BIL confirmed) showed me one thing. There clearly was tension and ill things being spoken so my husband suggested I speak with my in laws versus immediately separating myself. Maybe there was a misunderstanding, let’s just talk it out and see!
How did that conversation go? As you would expect- TERRIBLE. My in-laws were incredibly irate and yelled majority of the time. The part that hurt them the most was me talking to my mother (who’s also a part of the church community). Talking to her meant that I (IN THEIR WORDS) “exposed him” and now she “sees FIL in a different light”. Their words.
One part of the conversation sounded like this:
FIL: how would you feel if I told folks you prostitute?
Me: I would feel like that’s a lie.
FIL: EXACTLY! That’s how I feel.
Me: except I didn’t lie about anything. I just told my mom the facts and how it made me feel
MIL: well OP, doesn’t feel like she lied so she doesn’t understand.
Me: where was the lie? I only told the facts!
FIL: but OP you made me look bad. MIL: yeah OP you’ve now shown him in a different light and that doesn’t show his character. He has a good heart.
A lot of our conversation sounded like that. I’m also realizing a lot of the conversation was rooted in bullying (and that’s the nice way of me saying it) some of the comments sounded like…
- we can joke with all our married friends and married children about sexual conversation but we see we can’t do that with you (MIL)
- we just can’t make any jokes around you so I guess we probably need to be careful with how we talk. I don’t know how I’ll act around you now (MIL)
- what you did was BAD and you shouldn’t have told your family(FIL) To this point, all they know is that I talked to my mom. And what’s interesting about this is that when I asked who should I have spoken to about my discomfort, the respo…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1lgnja5/aitah_for_telling_my_fil_he_cant_hump_the_floor/
what you did was BAD and you shouldn’t have told your family(FIL) To this point, all they know is that I talked to my mom. And what’s interesting about this is that when I asked who should I have spoken to about my discomfort, the response was ”well we’re not saying who you CAN talk to but you shouldn’t have told anybody about this, you could’ve come talk to MIL”
I told them I wasn’t safe to talk to MIL because of what I’m seeing IN REAL TIME with the conversation we were having. Reddit readers, when I say it was a bunch of yelling, and insulting (saying don’t be dumb, what you did is bad, etc) I’m not kidding.
I told them, “in the future, I hope the in laws (their children’s spouses) can come to them when something makes them uncomfortable and it be received”. They said, “aren’t you being received now?”, and I said, “no. I’m being met with screaming, insults, threats of being cut off (FIL said this) and that this is emotionally unsafe”. I said that even with expressing myself. FIL is only getting angrier. He agreed. He explained that he’s the “adult” and that I should listen and thats my problem. I shouldn’t have talked to anyone; it made him look bad. He said that doesn’t want to talk to me and will move differently with me. He no longer wants to come over to our home (thank the heavens). He yelled these things and when I asked him to stop yelling, he said no I’m mad. When I asked could he stop insulting, he said no maybe we don’t need to talk. I said you’re right, we don’t if we can’t respect each other. He said OP, YOU need to respect me. I said grab control, he said you grab control. We ended the call with him repeating leave me alone and crying very hard while yelling. I’m not kidding.
Now let me say this. I never raised my voice, insulted, or over talked anyone because I’ve seen this with my other sister in law (married into the family like me). It’s easy to feel provoked and get into a screaming match, but when you’re cool as a cucumber emotionally, that sends them OVER the edge. And that’s what happened. And fortunately I “documented” the conversation for proof.
— how did it end? FIL kept repeating OP, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone and I told him he’s an autonomous being and that he’s able to hang up the phone anytime he wants so after saying leave me alone at least 4-5 times, he hung up.
They called my husband (who was NOT present for this conversation - and didn’t want to be) and simply told him the conversation was rough. Or at least that’s what he told me and I could tell the conversation lasted less than 10 minutes. My husband was overwhelmed with everything and honestly I think some of you were spot on. He named the “joke” (sexual gesture, humping the ground) as inappropriate with me privately but when he heard himself (after I reconfirmed) he said, no YOU (op) said it was inappropriate. He’s done this a few times so I really do believe he sees that it wasn’t appropriate, I just think he’s struggling to SAY it because that goes against all that he’s been taught and whatever else happened in that home.
Lastly I’ll say this. A few things that happened on the phone call with the in laws that felt off were these:
FIL named all the children in laws and stated that they all make these sexual jokes and he said, why is it that even tho I make them the most, you pick me out of them and you feel uncomfortable. (I told him I feel uncomfy when everybody does it and have spoken out about it, but the humping, took it too far and now I’m bringing it too the fore front because there is a power dynamic. He’s a father, an elder, deacon, leader, grandfather, ETC not a peer).
They questioned why I’m trying to make FIL look bad. And I asked why was the joke not what made him look bad? Why is it that me talking to MY mother the part that makes them upset and feel as tho he looks bad?
I asked if their daughter dealt with this with her FIL, how would they feel? Would they want her to feel comfortable talking to them? - no answer. Only, she can talk to her own MIL.
they’ve said I’ve made them uncomfortable before in the past for things like (arguing with my husband in their home in their presence) and they talked to us about it at the time (years ago). I said yes and yall told us it made you uncomfy and we resolved. why am I not able to do the same? They responded because you’re blowing this UP! I asked how? They said. Because you talked to your mom. (They only found that out on the phone call even tho they came in with yelling and told their children (my in laws).
This is long so I’ll stop here. There won’t be a TLDR, because HOW. Smh.
Nonetheless, Ask all the questions, and help me make sense of something that REALLY doesn’t make sense. I will be and am being as honest as I possibly can and I recognize that this is a hot mess. But unfortunately I can’t make this stuff up. I’ll respond to comments. Tell me your thoughts!
RELEVANT COMMENTS
olcea
Ok so you can’t tell your mom, but HE can tell his whole family to ridicule you… This is so unhealthy…and yes, he looks incredibly unstable. Shifting all the blame on you, and playing the victim after…I would definitely go NC…and expect my husband to defend me or I would serve him with divorce papers.
OOP
exactly
OOP on why she is being singled out
My hypothesis about why I’m being targeted is because I’m the only one who will respond to the nonsense with a boundary. Whether it’s prejudice/racist jokes (especially in public or in ear shot of said person of race), belittling jokes to women and the disabled, children, etc etc etc. I’ll continue to say that’s wrong- no matter who says it.
I also am not materialistic and I think that my priority for education over riches bothers them because I don’t align. I’m working towards the highest degree while they’ve only received high school diplomas and their children bachelors. I don’t talk like them, I’m not into television but instead I read books. Pretty much I stick out like a sore thumb with them. I’m different.
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP’s OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7
Holy f husband is a coward. No fing way id let my partner deal with this for me or even alone. If husband father cant accept this behavior is simply not acceptable around op let alone small children, husband need to resolve soon or divorce is on the table next.
