Woman Says Her MIL Begged Them to Book a Family Trip — Then Told Them Not to Come After They Paid

A woman says her mother-in-law spent weeks pressuring her and her husband to travel out of state to see an ailing relative. Then, after the couple bought flights and booked a hotel, the MIL told them they should not come after all.

She explained in a Reddit post that the situation started the previous year when her MIL kept urging them to visit a sick relative out of state. It was not a casual suggestion. According to the woman, every time her MIL saw or spoke to them, she pushed the idea that they needed to make the trip because of the relative’s illness.

Eventually, the couple listened.

They bought plane tickets and booked a hotel.

Then, only a few days before they were supposed to leave, the MIL changed the plan. She told the husband they should not go because his sister would also be there, and the husband and his sister do not get along.

The poster said the sister’s issues with her husband seemed to begin after he married her. They do not see or speak to the sister, and the MIL keeps them apart because the sister apparently does not want to be around him.

That put the couple in an awful position. They had already spent money. They had arranged the trip. They were going to see a sick relative, not to force a reunion with the sister. But instead of telling the sister to manage her own feelings, the MIL told the couple to cancel.

The MIL did not even tell the wife directly.

She “summoned” her husband over and told him to cancel the trip, leaving the poster out of the conversation even though she was also traveling, also affected, and also had money tied up in the plans.

The couple did not cancel.

But the trip became painfully strange. They went to the town where the entire family was, yet they did not see anyone.

That hurt her husband deeply.

The wife felt like they could have gone somewhere else entirely if they had known the trip would end up like that, but by then, it was too late to change plans. They were stuck in the same town as the family they had traveled to see, blocked from actually seeing them because of family drama managed by the MIL.

After that, the wife kept her distance.

She stopped speaking to her MIL because she felt the woman owed both of them an apology. To the wife, the issue was not only the wasted trip. It was the way her MIL controlled the situation, refused accountability, and acted like the couple’s time and money did not matter.

She also said this was part of a bigger pattern. Her MIL has a history of being bossy and condescending toward her, and the wife said the woman has acted like a “mean girl” around her adult daughters in the past.

Then the MIL tried to pull them back in.

Instead of addressing what happened with the trip, the MIL invited them to dinner because another sister would be in town with a male friend. The wife did not buy it. She said that sister had come to town many times with her boyfriend and had never once asked to get together with them.

To the wife, this dinner felt suspicious. It seemed less like a warm family invitation and more like another staged situation where everyone was expected to sit down and pretend nothing had happened.

The MIL kept pressing them to come.

The wife refused.

She said she would not attend unless the MIL addressed what happened during the holidays. She did not want to smile through dinner with people who had already shown they could discard her and her husband’s plans without apology.

That is where she asked if she was wrong.

From the outside, it could be easy to say, “It’s just dinner.” But for the wife, dinner was not just dinner. It was being asked to re-enter the same family dynamic where her MIL makes decisions, avoids accountability, and expects everyone else to move on quietly.

The sick-relative trip was the real breaking point. The MIL begged them to come, let them spend money, then told them not to show up because another adult could not handle being in the same town as her brother.

Now the wife was being asked to come sit at a table and act like family peace mattered more than what had actually happened.

She was not willing to do it.

Commenters overwhelmingly told her she was not wrong for refusing the dinner. Many said the MIL had far too much power over the couple’s choices and that they needed to stop letting her control who they could see, where they could go, and when they could visit family.

Several people said the couple should have visited the sick relative anyway once they were already in town. If the sister did not want to be around them, commenters felt the sister could change her own plans instead of forcing everyone else to accommodate her.

A lot of commenters advised the wife to stay home if her husband wanted to attend the dinner. They said she did not need to subject herself to people who had treated her badly and had not apologized.

Others said the husband needed to have a direct conversation with his mother about how she treats his wife and how she handled the trip.

Some commenters focused on the larger family dynamic, saying the MIL sounded like she was gatekeeping relationships and keeping family members apart through drama and control.

The strongest advice was simple: do not go to a dinner meant to smooth things over when nobody has acknowledged the thing that needs smoothing over.