Honeymoons are supposed to be a relaxing time alone with your new spouse to get to know each other and get used to married life.
Not everyone's family believes that that pesky little "alone" part is all that important, apparently.
A Reddit user who has since deleted their account shared a disturbing tale of manipulation by her in-laws during their honeymoon.
The post, entitled "WIBTA for running away on our honeymoon?" describes the very uncomfortable first few days of the newly married couple's honeymoon.
The groom's parents gave the newlyweds a whole week in an all-inclusive hotel as a wedding present and they were excited for the getaway—until they arrived at the hotel to find that his parents were also staying there for the week.
"On arriving we found out that they'd also booked a room at this hotel for themselves for the whole week and want to do group things."
The groom and his parents definitely don't have a close enough relationship for anyone to have anticipated that they would show up to the honeymoon.
"Outside of this, we see them maybe 2 or 3 times a year for a couple days at a time as he finds them a bit overbearing at times and they don't really like me."
"It's not like they're in the room next door or anything and we can still do stuff in our room alone but they knock on our door regularly, waking us up at 6am, making us get all 3 meals a day with them."
Attempts to tactfully avoid the in-laws were utterly unsuccessful.
"We've tried telling them we wanted 'alone time' for our honeymoon and they shrugged us off saying that's what our room is for. We also tried faking illness to get out of eating with them and they just got room service to our room and sat with us while we faked stomach aches."
When the groom finally reached his breaking point and told his parents that they wanted some alone time, it didn't do any good.
"My husband snapped earlier and said this whole thing was way over the line and they had no right intruding on our honeymoon of all things, and they told us that they paid for this whole thing and that as adults we're allowed to take holidays at the same time to the same place."
In a desperate attempt to get some peace and privacy, the couple finally turned to considering their escape.
"We've been talking and we saved up to pay for our own honeymoon before they surprised us. We still have the money we would have spent in our joint wedding/honeymoon account."
"There's another town we wanted to go to on our honeymoon and we looked it up and we could get tickets from here to there and then back home for less than £60 total."
"We could also book a few days in a nice hotel for about half of what's left in our wedding/honeymoon fund and use the remainder of the week we booked off in another town without his parents knowing we'd left until we had."
"It's 9pm now, there's trains from here to the other town every hour, plus more half-hourly trains tomorrow."
"Would we be the ar*eholes if we ran away from his parents without telling them?"
All's well that ends well, though; the happy couple found a new hotel and chose to make their getaway on the last train out of town.
"Update: our train should be arriving in our final station in the next 30 mins, we've found a hotel that's able to take us tonight, and we are very excited about the next 4 days."
Reddit users nearly unanimously declared that the poster was not even remotely the one at fault in this situation, and that getting the heck out of there was a good plan.
"NTA. They deliberately withheld the knowledge that they would also be there from you and your husband until you were committed to the trip and had arrived. That is a seriously sketchy move, and you're under no obligation to make your honeymoon about them." -PedanticPlatypodes
"Also, how yucky is this? Your parents right down the hall on your romantic honeymoon getaway? Knocking on the door at all hours? Just gross." -Twiteena
"NTA. You're free to travel wherever you want, whenever you want.Turn your cell phone off and disappear for a few days with your husband. Have a real honeymoon."
"Running away from his parents on a train makes for a great story 10 years from now. Being cooped up in a hotel having tea with Mom and Dad for a week makes for a terrible story 10 years from now." -Jason_Samu
"DO IT!!! You don't get this time back. Run and if they or anyone else tries to guilt trip you just stick to that you were not informed they would be joining you on your honeymoon, and no one in their right mind would willing spend their honeymoon with their in-laws popping in sporadically."
"How are you supposed to "enjoy one another" when they just randomly knock or muscle their way in with room service?"
"Also, remind them (if you're planning on having kids) that their behavior now, dictates visitation in the future. If they're willing to bulldoze through your boundaries noe, how much worse will they be with grandkids?" -Ms1776
There are plenty of horror stories out there about overbearing in-laws, but this one takes the wedding cake.
