Woman publicly humiliates SIL over ravioli incident; police & lawyers get involved. UPDATED 3X OVER 4 MONTHS (2024)

Until today. Today was the first time since 2019 that my husband or I have been able to see our small friend group in person. We all got our shots 2 months ago and decided to meet up finally for dinner.

I cooked while our friends either pitched in ingredients, made appetizers, or brought wine. I made pasta ravioli by hand, which was HARD. I made enough for me, hubs, and our friends.

But after they arrived and we all caught up while I was finishing the food SIL showed up. She let herself in and greeted everyone happily. They know her and said hi, but I subtly asked Hubs what she was doing here.

Turns out he'd mentioned the gathering to her and he guessed she assumed she was invited? I told him to tell her to leave, because she can't just invite herself like this. He said that would be humiliating for her and asked if she could stay. I was annoyed but agreed.

Things were fine at the start, I had a few sips of wine to relax and was about to plate everyone's food at the kitchen island and bring it to them but forgot parmesan so went to get it. I heard SIL say she'd help bring the food to the table, I said no thanks and to stay seated.

My back was to her and she said something I missed because of the loud CLANG of a pot hitting the floor. I heard everyone gasp and I closed my eyes. I knew what happened but didn't want to look. When I did I just started crying. HOURS of work splattered on the floor. SIL said it was okay, it was "just some pasta, I'll buy more".

I lost it. I called her a stupid b&h that ruined the entire dinner because she refuses to listen. She started boo-hooing and I told her to shut up and leave. She ran out crying and I sat down to cry too.

Our friends consoled me and Hubs tried to say I went too far but our friends told him he was an asshole and SIL was in the wrong. They helped clean and we ordered pizza.

But after they left Hubs and I were flooded with calls from his family saying I was a horrible spoiled brat who made their baby cry over some stupid food. Now I'm just crying and feeling like garbage. Did I go too far? I don't usually get so angry or curse. AITA?

Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some of the top responses:

accomplishfu writes:

YTA but justified asshole. From her perspective and her brother's (your husband's), you went nuclear.

She's highly entitled and been brought up this way; you can't change her. And from your story, her family still continues to encourage her. Maybe she's clumsy, maybe she spilled it on purpose, but either way, you're not going un-spoil the food.

This may not be your hill to die on, but if she glamours in being "the baby", play along. "Oh no, no wine for you, you're still baby", "No, thanks, I don't need help, this is a big-girl thing, maybe when you're bigger", "Sorry, this dinner is for grown-ups and you're baby." I'm incredibly petty though.

catnipparad writes:

NTA. Bad enough she invited herself, but didn't listen to the homeowner when directed to stay the f out of the kitchen. You don't just insist on "helping" when told no. In case anyone here didn't know...

if someone declines your help, it means they DO NOT WANT YOU IN THEIR WAY, and that's the nicest way they can say it. I don't care if it was frozen ravioli. I'd be pissed. Like this brat is seriously going to come up in someone's house and trash the whole dinner? No, she doesn't get to cry. Apologize and get the hell out.

camanner writes:

ESH — but you least of all. She clearly knows no boundaries—and even if she is ignorant/ oblivious to what’s involved with handmade ravioli, “what’s the big deal? I’ll just buy more “ would have earned her a pop in the mouth from some of my relatives. I do think you could have handled it better...

but this was the proverbial ravioli that broke the camel’s back. This is why we have to address stuff before it gets out of hand. Speaking of out of hand— Your husband needs to get on the same page with you and take some serious ownership. She’s the biggest AH. Enough said.

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shabis writes:

YTA: You haven't backed up your claim that she's entitled at all. Here is a perfectly reasonably theory as to what happened from her perspective.

You husband invited her for dinner. She came. She asked to help, you said no. She decided to help anyway, because that's often what people do in the kitchen. "No no, don't do those dishes I'll handle it" when really you want them to insist. So she went to bring the food for you.

Then she ACCIDENTALLY dropped the food. Which sucks, but it could happen to anyone. And you ripped into her. You humiliated her in front of your friends (people who know her) and her brother. Ya, YTA.

catnis85 writes:

I see part of the issue as OP had the island set up to plate the food. The pasta and dishes were already on the island. There are 7 people at a table (so I’d imagine the space at the table was limited).

SIL had no reason to pick the pot up and no place to go with it If she successfully made it to the table. Plus her comment about “I’ll just buy more” minimizes the work OP put into doing it by hand and doesn’t actually apologize for ruining dinner.

The background info helps suggest that SIL doesn’t usual deal with consequences for her actions often. At 31 I wouldn’t be running crying to my mom that my SIL(OP) flipped out at me. She’s old enough to talk to OP herself after the fact (once tempers cooled) or cut OP out of her life if she thought her reaction was toxic.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure it was an accident. Op mentioned in another comment that this wasn’t the first time she has broken something she was told not to touch.

avebury7 writes:

NTA. When she showed up I would have told her this was a dinner for grownups, babies are not allowed. No alcohol for you, that is only for adults.

And best of all, if you invite the entire family for dinner, I would put her at the kids table.

For Christmas I would give her a copy of Emily Posts Etiquette book. Another book to give her would be How To Adult, A Practical Guide by Jamie Goldstein.

And you bet that I would be that petty.Edit to add- If they get upset about putting her at the kids table the response would be — You are the ones you call her baby. You are the ones who treat her like a baby. Why are you now Pikachu face when she is put at the kids table?

buckrid7 writes:

ESH. You've allowed pure rage to form within you because of a continuous string of allowances that you've made that your husband doesn't appreciate.

Your outburst was inappropriate and extreme compared to "a bit of food", but it was a response to the collection of humiliations you've gone through.

You need to stop reacting, explain to your husband that you hate her sister and it's a result of his forcing her unacceptable behavior onto you for an extended period of time. You need some time and support until you can build up your tolerance again if that's what you wish to do.

Stop discussing specifics in the abstract, discuss patterns of behavior and the attitude of your husband. Explain how being around someone that not only acts inappropriately, but who will be automatically excused makes you feel.

You were involved in something that was important to you. Your husband betrayed your trust by implicitly inviting someone you hate, he refused to defuse the situation and made excuses, the inevitable happened and you- having already gone through two betrayals- had nothing left inside to buffer your reaction.

The sister isn't the issue here. It's your husband and his family. You have no expectations from his family, but you should have at least a modicum of understanding from your husband.

"That's just how she is" is missing the point. You need him to recognize his behavior. "It's just a bit of food" is missing the point- it's the efforts and expectations that you put into it that you had thrown away by a chaotic element that you absolutely knew would do something.

If you do not set up and enforce boundaries while explaining that they were put up because your husband refuses to take responsibility then your outbursts are going to become more extreme and rage filled.

You cannot just get an apology because the sister didn't do anything, she just acted with characteristic intrusiveness and lack of care. It's the husband who needs to change and create a barrier between his sister and yourself.

natia8 writes:

NTA. I’m sorry is she old enough to hold a job? Because I can’t see any boss patting her on the head when she does her entitled act.

If she does have a job and has been there for any length of time this is proof that she knows how to act like a responsible adult and this baby schtick is BULL sh*t.
Does she have long lasting romantic relationships?

Has she found a man who is willing to live with the knowledge that this woman will wreck his life but her family will treat him like Batman treats low level henchmen for things that are obviously her fault?

Girl… if she don’t GTFO and STFO and take her enabling ass family with them! Just pasta my ass.

You spend HOURS hand rolling ravioli. So people are legit hungry at this point and people are supposed to wait around while she runs to the store and buys whatever cheap ass ravioli she finds and then wait for you to cook it in order to eat?

Chances are she would legit come back with something she wants to eat since “she’s the baby”.

In a few years they’re going to realize how expensive having a grown infant as a daughter is.

And now, OP's dramatic updates:

Update 1:

Hubs said he understands I'm upset the food was wasted but he doesn't think my outburst was warranted and was actually kind of extreme. Tomorrow is his off day and I told him he's going to be making the dish like I did, by hand and on his own and then at the end we'll see if he thinks my 'outburst' was unwarranted.

edit two: welp! Hubs made pasta for the first time today! And it went much like I'd anticipated. He was all confidence and 'it'll be easy!' during the first 30 minutes.

But towards the end of the first hour that disappeared as the burn in his arms really set in from making enough dough for almost 60 ravioli. I did not lift a finger to help him knead since I didn't get any help when I did it.

After the dough was done and wrapped up in the fridge he made the filling, which took another 40 or so minutes. Then the dough was brought out and he had to start crafting the ravioli, all by hand after rolling the dough out.

Lord that went on for ages. Just rolling some dough out, cutting out squares, filling them and putting the top on, rinse and repeat until the dough and filling was all gone.

All in all the entire process from start to finish for him on his own took a little over 4 hours! :) And that's with us not actually COOKING any of the ravioli.

Also he didn't make any sauce or cook any shrimp for the ravioli to be served in/with. Also he didn't prepare any salad to go with it. And when I told him this (that there was still more to do) he almost started crying.

He started saying sorry at the 1 hour mark and hasn't stopped apologizing since. We had a long talk about his sister and the dinner she ruined, the other times she's pulled similar incidents (there's a lot), and how him and his family always let her get away with it.

He says he knows how they treat her isn't normal and he doesn't like it but was raised to just 'go with the flow' regarding Ashley. But he said he's going to call her and tell her we need some space from her for now.

Update 2:

Hubs just got a message from his cousin of Ashley laughing and bragging about intentionally spilling the pasta to 'teach me a lesson' for being 'such a snobby b&ch'. A handful of you all thought she did it on purpose but I didn't actually think she did until hearing her admit to it.

I have never seen my husband this pissed off before. Idk what's going to happen now...

OP's FINAL UPDATE (4 months later):

Hi, everyone. So SO much has happened since the pasta fiasco that I'd honestly completely forgotten about this account until this morning. When I logged on I saw that I had a bunch of requests for an update so here I am.

I was going to post this in an edit on my original post but it ended up being way too long. Someone said I should post it in the comments but they're locked so I decided to just make my own post and put a link to it in the original AITA post since I'm not sure how to do an official update post on the am i the ahole sub sorry.

So for the update. Like I said, a LOT happened since then. I'll try to remember all of it. But be warned I'm just going to put down everything as I remember it, and try make it in order. But its been like four months so I may not do it perfectly. Here goes:

So SIL bragged to her and Hub's cousin (Brenda) that she ruined the dinner on purpose.

Hubs went to confront his family, SIL denied everything til Hubs played the recording. Hubs banned SIL from our house until she apologized to me sincerely and reimbursed us for all of the wasted food.

SIL went ballistic, sobbing and throwing a massive tantrum until MIL tried calming her down and scolding Hubs for 'choosing some floozy over your blood family' Hubs apparently flipped and called out his family on their weird babying of SIL, saying they'd made her into a spoiled monster.

This just started a huge screaming match between all of them before Hubs said he wasn't speaking to them for the foreseeable future before storming out.

That's when he called me and told me to block all of his family and before I could hang up I started getting tons of calls/texts from all of them just saying the most hateful stuff to me.

All of my socials (from my personal insta to my work email) were bombarded with hate until I managed to block all of them (but it took weeks for them to all stop).

The only people in Hubs family who weren't harassing us were his paternal grandparents, his maternal grandmother, a few of his cousins on both sides, and his paternal aunts/uncles. Actually I think all of the hate was from his maternal side though not all of them.

After blocking them all things were peaceful until a few weeks later our friend's (Kelly) car was vandalized really bad when she stayed at our house for the weekend.

I'm talking the sides were keyed, all the tires were slashed, the windows were spray painted, and they even tore off the tag and shoved it down into the driver side door where the window slides down.

We checked the doorbell cam and it was SIL and BIL. Seems they mistook Kelly's car for mine (I lent my car to my mom since hers needed new tires and I could use Hubs if needed) since both Kelly and my car are black.

Needless to say we called the cops and Kelly pressed charges on both of them. Thankfully with the video evidence she said she was able to make a no fault claim against Ashley (who had insurance) and Kelly got her repairs paid for (though barely..). We're literally talking to lawyers.

SIL and BIL getting arrested caused a huge rift in Hubs family between those who don't think it was necessary that they be arrested (most think they should have just paid for repairs out of pocket) and those who think they got what was coming to them.

Also the arrest cost BIL his job at a university? Hubs cousin Brenda who is keeping us in the loop told us that anyways. We didn't look into it.

Brenda also informed us that during the whole family drama thing it was revealed that Ashley is only their half sister. According to the maternal grandmother anyways. Seems she verbally tore MIL to pieces after MIL insinuated SIL 'hadn't done anything to deserve this treatment'.

Brenda said their grandmother said "You felt bad that your husband didn't love her because he knew she was just your shameful affair baby! So you loved her more than your other kids in some twisted effort to make up for it! And you pulled your other kids into doing it too and all you did was succeed in spoiling her rotten!"

Brenda told us more but that part is what really stuck in my mind. Honestly hearing all of that was unbelievable for me. I had no idea this level of drama was buried in my husband's family. Then again neither did he. And all of this snowballed from a ruined ravioli dinner.

Hubs and I have decided to distance ourselves from that part of his family for now. After handing Kelly a copy of the video of SIL and BIL tearing up her car we more or less washed our hands of dealing with them all. And I've been way less stressed lately, Hubs too that we've both noticed. So not a terrible end?

Not sure who will see this update but I'll be logging out of this account after a while since I think everything is mostly over. Thanks for reading and extra thanks for everyone who sent me so many kind messages after my first post. It made me feel a lot better. :)

What do YOU make of OP's saga? Was she justified in insulting her SIL or did she take things too far?