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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/highly_animated on 2023-09-05 16:16:08.

I (f37) have been married to my husband (m39) for 10 years. I am diagnosised OCD with a buttload of sensory issues. One thing that sends me into meltdown quickly is constant loud noises. My husband and his mother fight a lot; they call it spirited debates. It’s LOUD.

Everything blew up a few weeks ago and we’re still grinding on it. My husband and I own a business together. We had a super awful incident with an employee quiting (police, hospital, broken leases with another employee, cat kidnapping) and it left us in a tight spot. He asked his mother to come in to help. She helped a few days, all is well. But then a busy Friday rolls around and there’s some table/space issues. Gotta find her a work space. I leave it up to my husband because I am BUSY doing my own job as well as covering for the 2 employees we just lost not even a week ago. He becomes exasperated with her and asks me to help as I am the Operations Manager and he’s the CEO. As my husband and I are trying to talk, she is trying to talk over us. I’m trying to think and she just keeps talking. I say multiple times “Please stop. It’s ok. I’ve got it.” I basically start saying this on repeat but she doesn’t stop talking and she’s getting louder. Talking about this situation wouldn’t happen if she was running things. You should buy more tables on Amazon. You should you should you should. I walk away from her because I’m going to go fix the problem and I need to get away from her. BUT SHE FOLLOWS ME STILL YAMMERING ON. I keep repeating myself and my husband can tell I’m close to meltdown because of my repetition, so he starts following her and yelling at her to stop it and leave me alone. She goes LOUDER to be heard over his yelling. I can feel the tears welling up and I can’t hear myself think. So I do what is the AITA move in question: I cover my ears. I’m trying to protect myself and NOT meltdown or cry. We’re so busy at work, we ain’t got time for me to fall apart and put myself back together. I did not stick my fingers in my ears and go “la la la I can’t hear you.” I literally used my first and second finger to push that little fleshy bit into my ear canal to block as much sound as possible. I sped up. Started trying to unearth a table from a pile of work materials, when I was grabbed by the arm, forcefully turned around, and MIL got in my face to scream at me how I was to NEVER disrespect her like that again. I gave my husband a “you fucking deal with this” look, wrenched my arm away, and proceeded to have a 2 hour cry that took my prescribed panic meds to get me out of.

Husband says he is equally disappointed in us and we are both wrong. He’s not happy that I refuse to speak to his mother again at the very least until I have an appointment with my therapist (Sept 13). I want to be no contact with her since this is not the first time she’s: screamed at me, disrespected me in my place of business in front of my employees, thought she could parent me or discipline me.