gottawonder

As you will know from my earlier posts, my sweetie's parents were here this past week helping us move out of the trailer to our new farm house.

If you've been attentive over the months and years, you will know that I have always had an uneasy relationship with them, and they usually either irritate me, or outright drive me nuts at some point during their visit.

My sweetie's Mom seems to be mellower than she was 20 years ago. Partly because she has the beginnings of Dementia, and also maybe time has made her shift her opinion of me a bit, or maybe she's become more accepting of my eccentricities. That doesn't mean that there aren't moments when I have to fight back the urge to be upset, or that I don't get kind of burnt out over having people around for too much, but it's better than it was.

My sweetie's Dad has honestly always kind of bothered me for different reasons. MOST of the time he's okay, but then he'll say something kind of gross that just seems...off. For example, in May we were all at a fun little restaurant, the last night they were with us, and we were having a normal kind of pleasant exchange. Then, out of nowhere, his Dad gets his "I'm about to say something dirty" look (I can actually tell now). I actually stopped him, and directly asked him if this was going to be some stupid dirty story that no one, including his wife, would want to hear, and if it was, could he please not tell it.

He went ahead anyway, to tell an unwilling audience how when he was younger and working at a bank, that he went to a work conference and stayed in a hotel. When he was in his room, two very pretty women knocked on his door and asked if he had playing cards, and flirted with him and so on. They were strippers (strippers often stay in the rooms above the hotel bar where they work). He was supposedly so young and naive that he didn't realize until years later that they were seeing if he wanted sex. The moral of the story I guess, was that this was his one glorious moment where he could have had sex with two gorgeous young girls, and was too stupid to have said "yes".

I said "well, they were prostitutes, and if you really feel like you've missed something special, prostitutes still exist. I'm sure you could still go find some if it feels like that would make life better."

He was sort of going "no, they weren't hookers. They were DANCERS who just wanted to have sex". Wow. Does he really think that two young women just randomly knock on doors looking for sex and they weren't hookers? Did his ego really think that he was so awesome that women just show up looking for threesomes? I'm pretty sure he knows they were hookers, but it ruins his story to say that.

Anyhow, this is what it's like being around him. He CAN be nice to talk with. He is also very helpful, and so on.

Then he says some gross, awful thing, or he does something like: This time visiting us, we were chatting in the yard, and I noticed that he had a nice leather belt on, so I said so. He responded by saying "yes, and if I wear it loose, my pants fall off" and proceeded to pull his pants off (still had underwear) and stand there laughing in his underpants. I did NOT want to participate in this, and yet, here I was. I didn't laugh. It's basically a form of sexual indecency.

Anyhow, now there is a new dimension to this ickyness. When we were all moving stuff in the trailer and moving past one another, THREE TIMES he managed to brush by me and touch me inappropriately. Twice he brushed my butt with his hand, and once my chest. The one time I was supporting a window that we were pulling out of a wall, and he walked behind me and brushed my butt, and we were outside. He had the whole yard to walk through, but he chose to walk right behind me.

It happens so quick, you don't even know what happened, and you sit there thinking "was that just an accident?" By the time it even registers, you just don't know what to do, or if it was what you think it was. After the third time, I guess it likely wasn't an accident.

I've done lots of work like this around lots of our male friends, and they don't brush my chest or butt when they walk by me. I know from working around men that we make a point of not being that close to each other.

I had an elderly male friend start doing this to me a few years ago, and I just cut him out of my life. I can't just cut my sweetie's Dad out my life.

It feels gross enough that his Dad has to tell gross stories, or make sexual comments all the time (things like joking about how us needing have to have sex in our house the first night we moved our bed in). It's funny that somehow his jokes seem creepy, because I don't usually mind it when people make sexual jokes. That said, I have to honor my gut. If someone's joking seems creepy, then there's likely good reason for it.

I sat down with my sweetie today, and talked with him about the touching (I've already expressed my discomfort with his Dad's sense of humor many times before), and neither one of us knew what to do. My husband was just kind of "well, he's done working on the house with us, so maybe it won't happen again". I wasn't too happy about that response, because his Dad could always just find other moments to touch me, or pull his pants off again, or some other bullshit.

I felt that perhaps the next time his Dad wants to visit, we confront him about his actions, and tell him that it will not be tolerated. I know that my Sweetie loves his Dad, even though I think it is finally starting to sink in that his Dad is a pervert, but he agreed too that I shouldn't have to deal with this crap.

I was starting to feel like, what if his Dad just comes in the house and walks into our bedroom on the pretense of another "joke", or "forgets" that I'm in the bathroom, or "forgets" to close his bathrobe or "accidentally" pulls down his underwear the next time he does his pants joke.

Personally, I want to just hit him. I'm big enough and strong enough to do serious damage. I'm no joke.

What sucks though, is that my sweetie then just chats an hour later about his parents texting him about their drive home, and he's all like "oh, they're having a nice drive and they're doing good, and they're going to stop tonight at a place with a spa", and I'm at the point where, why am I expected to have a nice chat about your Dad's day? I literally don't give a fuck about how his day went. Not now.

So now, while I appreciate how much help they gave us in the move, am just so upset about the sexual grossness. My husband wants to pretend that "we just have to not let it happen again".

I would be okay with his Dad never being in my presence again, but my Sweetie loves him, and feels like somehow I should be able to move past this.

So, what do I do? I now have decided that this is a form of sexual abuse, and I will likely have him in my house again.

I will have to listen to my husband talking on the phone with his Dad, like his Dad didn't assault me. Like his Dad isn't wondering if next time he could get away with more.

Fuck this shit.