Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Armchair Anonymous: Mother-in-Law About this episode Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us a crazy story about their mother-in-law.
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Transcript 10,070 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.
0:05 Speaker 01 Hi.
0:06 Dax Shepard? This is Crazy Mother-in-Law Stories.
0:09 Speaker 01 Whoa.
0:10 Dax Shepard? Yes.
0:11 Speaker 01 I don't have one.
0:13 Dax Shepard? You don't have one, yeah.
0:15 Speaker 01 I can't relate and I can't say after listening that I'm sad I don't have one.
0:19 Dax Shepard? Okay, well, I guess that's the question. Not having one, do you think it made you less interested in the stories?
0:25 Speaker 01 No, I was just as interested, but it was cautionary tale.
0:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, cuz I love horrible bosses' stories and I don't have a horrible boss.
0:31 Speaker 01 True. Also, father-in-laws too. I think I'm a lone wolf now.
0:36 Dax Shepard? Because?
0:37 Speaker 01 Cuz of these episodes.
0:40 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're never gonna get married after hearing these. So this is for you a cautionary tale. So I guess maybe if you wanna get married, don't listen to this.
0:47 Speaker 01 Or it's the reality. Look, it's the reality of life. Dive right in.
0:51 Dax Shepard? It's a lottery. You hit the jackpot. Well, it's probably neutral more than anything else.
0:56 Speaker 01 Yet, nobody loves their mother-in-law more than the kid loves their mom. You know what I mean?
1:02 Dax Shepard? It's a uniquely weird dynamic.
1:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:06 Speaker 01 Like, as much as I love my parents so much, and I do think they're great, and I think they'd be a great mother-in-law and father-in-law, my husband isn't going to like them as much as I do.
1:17 Dax Shepard? Well, I don't know. I don't know about that because I've been around them before. And I'm just a pig in shit.
1:26 Speaker 01 They're good to be around.
1:26 Dax Shepard? You can be annoyed while I'm actually happy. So it could be, and then you could resent your husband.
1:32 Speaker 01 Okay, I'm gonna take back the word like, love. They're not gonna love my parents as much as I do. They might like them more.
1:41 Dax Shepard? Good distinction.
1:42 Speaker 01 But they just, you know, it's the way it goes. This is life. You can't expect it.
1:46 Dax Shepard? It's primal. It does make you think about, though, how most of mankind operated where someone completely left their family group and went and joined another family. I mean, that was it. You might see them at a festival once a year, but you left and now this is your new family. Probably worked better then.
2:06 Speaker 01 Why?
2:07 Dax Shepard? In the same way that arranged marriages work better, like they kind of are more successful.
2:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's different from not having your parents.
2:13 Dax Shepard? If it's your only option, you probably go like, well, fuck, I gotta get with the program.
2:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:18 Dax Shepard? As opposed to, I still got my parents and these ones are not.
2:23 Speaker 01 This is a tough.
2:24 Dax Shepard? This is a tough one. Don't listen. Please don't listen to crazy mother in laws. We get support from Quince.
2:32 Speaker 01 Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts and Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self gifting is a love language.
2:51 Dax Shepard? Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold and Italian leather. Full on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.
3:07 Speaker 01 It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.
3:18 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm going to tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California and I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.
3:25 Speaker 01 It's great.
3:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.
3:30 Speaker 01 Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.
3:53 Dax Shepard? Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.
4:29 Speaker 01 I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate and be cozy.
4:49 Dax Shepard? It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.
4:59 Speaker 01 I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.
5:06 Dax Shepard? Okay, tell me more.
5:08 Speaker 01 It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this and look super cute.
5:19 Dax Shepard? Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.
5:28 Speaker 01 All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.
6:08 Speaker 01 Hi.
6:09 Dax Shepard? Hello, is this Heidi?
6:10 Speaker 02 Oh, hi. You know, a lot of people when they got on here say they can't believe it's real until they see you. And I never understood that until this exact moment. I was convinced that some hacker named Emma really had me fooled for 48 hours.
6:28 Speaker 01 No, she's a good one.
6:30 Dax Shepard? Do we want a fake name for you?
6:31 Speaker 02 No, we don't want a fake name. I've actually gone back and forth with that a lot for the last 24 hours. I have faith that my armcherry community is not going to throw me under the bus because I don't think my mother-in-law is aware of podcasts.
6:45 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:47 Dax Shepard? Well, that was your first complaint. The first article submitted to evidence was that she hates podcasts.
6:53 Speaker 02 Right, right, right, right, right.
6:54 Speaker 01 Okay.
6:54 Dax Shepard? Okay, so mother-in-laws.
6:56 Speaker 02 I, last year, was very pregnant. I gave birth in January of this year.
7:01 Dax Shepard? Congrats.
7:02 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you. This is my husband and I's first baby. Baby boy, born in January. We were doing great as new parents who knew nothing of what they were doing.
7:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
7:12 Speaker 02 My only complaint was that I am a very type A person and I hadn't slept in a while. And so it was about a week after giving birth and I noticed that my mother-in-law, who is usually very active on social media, hadn't posted anything about the baby being born. And I should have just let it go. Not a big deal at social media, but there was some little person inside of me saying, we need to investigate. So I talked to my husband and he gave her a call. So both sets of parents, we were lucky enough to have them at the hospital when the baby was born. And he had mentioned to everyone who are loving to take a lot of photos with their cellphone cameras, like, please don't post anything on social media until we've had a chance to tell our friends and family.
7:57 Speaker 02 So that that way they're finding out on Facebook that he's been born. So again, it had been over a week at this point. And so when he called to check in about why she hadn't posted, she said, Well, like I know you had said at the hospital that this was something that you didn't want us doing. And I just feel like I've been put in Facebook jail. And my husband was like, well, I'm so sorry for the miscommunication. We really just meant like the first 24 hours, please, this is your debut to let everyone know that you have a grandbaby. You know, got off the phone, told me about that. I had honestly kind of forgotten about it. And later that evening, my husband encouraged me to like, go take a nap. That first week, you were awake with them, like especially as the mom feeding every two hour schedule.
8:38 Speaker 02 And so I had not gotten more than, I'm not exaggerating, probably 45 minutes of sleep at a time for like that full week. And so he was like, we've got milk stored up, go put on one of your podcasts, go to sleep. So I wake up two hours later, I had put my phone on airplane mode so that no one could wake me up. I was like, I'm going to mentally rest. And I wake up, I turn it off, like airplane mode, and I have texts and missed calls from my sister and my best friend saying, Heidi, I don't know how to tell you this, but your mother-in-law has posted a topless photo of you on her.
9:14 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
9:18 Speaker 02 Was like, surely this is a nightmare. This is like, I'm hallucinating, like I officially lost the amount of sleep where like I am crossed over to the other side. So I run downstairs and I tell my husband, she didn't mean to do this, but this is the situation that we're in. Please call her, please have her take this down immediately. And I was like, and don't tell her that I know about it. I don't want to embarrass her. Honestly, at this point, I was very calm about everything. Like, we all make mistakes. I was feeling very maternal about the whole thing. And so he calls and lets her know, we love the photos you've posted. Unfortunately, you slipped one in there. It was one of those nice video montages that your Apple phone will like create for you. Sure.
9:58 Speaker 02 And the second slide with really nice classical music to it was just me completely bare breast.
10:06 Speaker 02 I was a double A before this experience. I am now like a triple D. It's insane. My nipples were massive and this wasn't like a tasteful nude that was something that I would be proud to show my husband's friends and family. This was like I'm staring off into the abyss, looking like I have questioned every life decision at this point and exhausted. No makeup, hair a mess. I don't even recognize myself. And her response is, there's no way I've done that. And he's like, no, you did. And I need you to go on Facebook right now and take it down. So hangs up the phone. I'm like refreshing her page over and over and over again. And sure enough, 30 seconds later, it's gone. And again, it's funny at this point. We all make mistakes.
10:49 Speaker 02 And she ends up calling back five minutes later, I'm assuming to apologize. And when my husband picks up the phone, she is very defensive. Like, I can't believe I'm being censored like this.
11:01 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
11:02 Dax Shepard? You're not being censored. We're censoring my wife's breasts.
11:06 Speaker 02 He's starting to get defensive, like on my behalf. I'm starting to get angry. And then the line, look, I'm gonna be honest. I've sent that video to all of my friends and all of our family and no one has said anything about it. And in my head, I'm like, well, of course they haven't said anything about it. They're trying to figure out how to tell you what they've just seen. So in my head, I'm just picturing like my husband's uncle sitting there opening up this lovely video of the new baby in the family. And it just, there's Heidi. He ended up hanging up. I wish I could say that there was like some sort of resolution. I don't think she knows I even know that this happened to this day. We had no apology in true mom fashion. But it did get taken down. I can laugh about
11:50 Speaker 02 it now and knowing that it brought me to you guys. It makes the pill a little easier
11:56 Dax Shepard? It's hard for me not to fill in some blanks about that reaction. It does remind me that narcissists, whenever they fuck up, they're a victim. The fact that she was immediately a victim of doing that is a little triggering for me.
12:10 Speaker 02 I think that that is what was triggering for me too, because your autonomy, when you have a baby, my body wasn't my own. I didn't recognize myself. The one thing I could hold on to is that there were some intimate parts of myself that only I knew.
12:24 Dax Shepard? Not everyone had seen your breasts.
12:26 Speaker 02 Right.
12:27 Speaker 01 That's crazy.
12:28 Dax Shepard? I was gonna chalk it up to like, oh, you gotta love these seniors and how unsophisticated they are with technology, but then the response that just really nullifies that grace.
12:37 Speaker 02 The video also, I wish I could say that it was cinematic genius, but it was a lot of blurry photos. Like, I wish that one was just a little blurrier, but that one was Chris.
12:49 Dax Shepard? Razor sharp focus.
12:52 Speaker 01 Oh, mother in law.
12:53 Dax Shepard? Oh, God bless mother in laws.
12:55 Speaker 02 Thank you all so much for having me. I can't tell you how much this means to me. I have been an armcherry since literally day one, very sim. But I happened to hear about what a podcast was the same week that you all launched.
13:10 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
13:13 Speaker 02 And so I decided I would try and give yours a chance. And I've listened to every single episode since.
13:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, my gosh.
13:20 Speaker 01 Nice.
13:21 Speaker 02 And I was wondering, is it okay if I show you?
13:23 Dax Shepard? Yes, we would love to see you. We love babies.
13:27 Speaker 01 Oh, it's a cute one.
13:29 Speaker 02 This is Giovanni. He turned nine months yesterday.
13:33 Speaker 01 Oh, happy birthday.
13:35 Dax Shepard? He has yummy pudding on his belly.
13:37 Speaker 02 He's a chunky guy. He's nine months. These are 18 month clothes.
13:40 Dax Shepard? Good for him.
13:43 Speaker 02 But I also wanted to tell you in true sim fashion, it was really, really funny to get the email from Emma, because I also got an invitation this evening to drive up to DC and meet Auntie Anne of Auntie Anne's Pretzels.
13:57 Speaker 01 Oh.
13:59 Speaker 02 Something is weird in my simulation.
14:01 Dax Shepard? You should buy a lottery ticket today.
14:02 Speaker 02 That's what my husband said.
14:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, let's get into that Powerball. Let's see if we can also accumulate $600 million today.
14:11 Dax Shepard? Well, lovely meeting you, Heidi. Thank you for telling us that story. All right. Take care.
14:15 Speaker 01 Bye.
14:16 Speaker 02 Bye.
14:18 Speaker 03 Hi.
14:19 Dax Shepard? Hi, what should we call you? Did you already pick out a name?
14:21 Speaker 03 I debated, and my name's pretty basic, so I'm gonna just go with it.
14:25 Speaker 01 Okay.
14:26 Dax Shepard? Okay.
14:26 Speaker 03 There's a million of us.
14:27 Dax Shepard? I've met more than one.
14:29 Speaker 03 I figure we'll be safe that way.
14:30 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
14:31 Speaker 03 Everyone else I'll change names for.
14:33 Speaker 01 We do like knowing that you thought about doing a fake name, though, because that generally means it's juicy.
14:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's usually a good sign.
14:41 Speaker 03 It's definitely not one that I'm hoping she ever hears and circles back on us. That would not be ideal.
14:50 Speaker 01 I can't wait to hear it.
14:51 Speaker 03 Okay, so I have to give a little context. My husband was a dad at 16. When we met, he already had a six-year-old. I'm two years older than him, but we're babies. He was 22, about to turn 23. I was 24, about to turn 25. There was a six-year-old in the mix. It was a lot.
15:08 Dax Shepard? He must be a real stud, if you're like, oh, yeah.
15:12 Speaker 03 He's gorgeous.
15:13 Speaker 01 Oh, exciting.
15:15 Speaker 03 It excuses all the stuff I went through and makes sense why I turned a blind eye to the red flags. At 22, most guys would be out on their own, or maybe not living with their mom. But he was, because he had a six-year-old, and she was helping. So she was, from what I gathered, supportive and a good mom. He didn't want me to beat her, though.
15:35 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
15:36 Speaker 03 He was nervous. He has eight siblings.
15:40 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
15:41 Speaker 03 A little bit scattered around. So there were red flags when I first met her. But they're like funny red flags, quirky things. Like, she used to steal baby ducks from their mom behind Target and then sell them.
15:52 Speaker 01 What?
15:53 Dax Shepard? Whoa, okay.
15:54 Speaker 01 Wait, real ducks?
15:55 Speaker 03 Real, live, baby ducks.
15:58 Speaker 01 On, like, the black market?
16:00 Speaker 03 On, like, Facebook, I think. She used to hatch baby chicks in a room off her kitchen.
16:05 Speaker 01 Okay.
16:06 Dax Shepard? Interesting, okay.
16:08 Speaker 03 These were things that I thought were odd, but she was living off the land, homesteading. Also, this is Florida.
16:13 Dax Shepard? Okay, yeah.
16:15 Speaker 01 She's a Tanya type.
16:16 Speaker 03 Funnily enough, that's the name I'm gonna use for my oldest daughter.
16:21 Speaker 03 But yeah, so she was a little bit eccentric. But then there were other things that were harder for me to swallow. Her house was scary. There were flies everywhere.
16:30 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
16:31 Speaker 03 My oldest still doesn't eat strawberry jam, because she thought it had flies in it.
16:35 Speaker 01 Oh.
16:36 Speaker 03 And when you'd turn on the kitchen lights, all the cockroaches scared.
16:39 Speaker 01 Oh.
16:41 Dax Shepard? So it's dirty as hell.
16:42 Speaker 03 Yes, well, she used vinegar to clean because that's natural.
16:46 Dax Shepard? Okay.
16:47 Speaker 03 But here's the icing on the cake. She had a composting toilet.
16:52 Dax Shepard? What? How does composting toilet function?
16:55 Speaker 03 At her house, it was basically like a Lowe's bucket.
16:59 Dax Shepard? Oh.
17:00 Speaker 03 That people went in the bathroom.
17:01 Dax Shepard? No.
17:02 Speaker 03 Through Molchon.
17:03 Dax Shepard? No. Whoa.
17:05 Speaker 03 Yes. She had the kids emptying it.
17:07 Dax Shepard? Oh. She's like living in the 1800s. She's using vinegar and selling wildlife. Now, really quick, what was her day to day demeanor? Like, if you had met her out at Chili's, would you have been able to guess that all this madness was happening? Or no?
17:21 Speaker 03 Not exactly. And that's an interesting part about her because she plays the hero often and plays the savior often. So she talks a big game about being like this great human being. But she also has other things happening that I learned.
17:56 Speaker 03 So when I got to know her, she was telling me all about Tanya's biological mom, who was not really in the picture, but she was telling me horrible things. She was telling me that this woman had neglected Tanya, that she probably abused her, that when they used to get her back, she would be smelly, no diapers were changed. So painting a really negative picture, which wasn't hard for me to imagine just because this woman already wasn't in her daughter's life. So
18:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, sure.
18:25 Speaker 03 That's hard for me to fathom. But she also would talk about my husband's dad and stepmom. And she would say awful things about them. Said that he was in the relationship for the money. As soon as he could, he would get out of the relationship.
18:38 Dax Shepard? He just loves her because she's got a flush toilet.
18:41 Speaker 03 No kidding. It's like, I'm not marrying her, I'm marrying you. And he put a toilet in, a real toilet, while I was there so that I could actually go to the bathroom there. Because I used to have to go all the way to Target.
18:52 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God. Where the ducks were.
18:55 Speaker 01 So much action's happening at that target.
18:57 Speaker 03 I know, a lot happening at that target. That's all background. That's all before the craziness, really. And when I met my husband's daughter, I fell as in love with her as I had with him. There was no question about it. I was in. So we got married pretty quick. I'm happy to play nice about a lot of things, like when she told me that there was no autism in China because they don't do vaccinations.
19:21 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm, yeah.
19:23 Speaker 03 She told me that my husband had gotten SIDS as a baby from vaccines. And if you know what SIDS is, you know that makes no sense.
19:31 Speaker 01 Yep.
19:31 Speaker 03 But I tried not to confront her about things. But when we got married, we wanted Tanya, our daughter, to have some stability and some safety and security. And this was a chance for his mom to be grandma.
19:43 Dax Shepard? Instead of mom.
19:44 Speaker 03 This is the sweet spot. You get to be the fun one. You get to take a step back and just be grandma. Turns out that's not what she wanted at all. She wanted Tanya desperately. She started pulling some weird tricks where Tanya would be sleeping over with her. And when she got back to us, she would be telling us stories about the sleepover. And things weren't adding up. Like, one of the times, my husband's ex-girlfriend had also spent the night. But we were mad because this confused our six-year-old. And he was like, that isn't really appropriate. And when he confronted his mom, her answer was, you'd only be upset if you still had feelings for her.
20:20 Dax Shepard? Proved her point.
20:22 Speaker 03 We distanced ourselves a little bit. They were still seeing each other, but not as much. And we just tried to set some boundaries. But the shit hit the fan because we found out the day before Tanya's seventh birthday that I was having twins. When we called his mom to tell her, her response was, you're gonna need me. Not congratulations, not I'm so happy for you, nothing.
20:43 Dax Shepard? I'm back in the picture.
20:44 Speaker 03 Yeah. And on Tanya's birthday the next day, suddenly, her bio mom called. She hadn't seen her in years. And then within a few weeks, we got notified that bio mom was coming for a visit. We kind of suspected that my husband's mom was involved in getting her down there. We were honest with her. We're like, we're glad you're coming to see Tanya. We're not really on great terms with my husband's mom right now. So we're trying to kind of keep her out of being the middle man on this. It was all well and good. She came, she picked up Tanya. That evening rolled around, and she didn't bring her home.
21:17 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
21:19 Speaker 03 And we're like, where are you? Where is she? And she's like, I'm gonna stay the night with your mom. She's really upset. Didn't give us a lot of information, just kept her there. So the next morning, we go to the school and wait. No show. So they've basically kidnapped her at this point. We had to have the police intervene.
21:35 Speaker 01 Oh.
21:36 Speaker 03 The police had to go knock on the door and force them to bring her because they were not cooperating. Within days, we got served papers.
21:43 Dax Shepard? Grandparents' rights?
21:44 Speaker 03 Yes. Tanya's mom was suing us for custody in New Jersey and my husband's mom was suing us for custody in Florida.
21:52 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
21:55 Speaker 03 The icing on the cake was they also called DCF on us and said that we were forcing Tanya to exercise, locking her in her room and threatening to kill her.
22:07 Speaker 01 Oh, my god. What the fuck?
22:10 Dax Shepard? Wow, they went for it.
22:11 Speaker 03 They went for it. And the cops would show up for like well child checkups. We had DCF come to the house. Just ridiculously stressful. We were not abusing our daughter. We ended up having to lawyer up.
22:23 Dax Shepard? And I'm sure you're swimming in cash right now. You're young as hell and you have kids coming, yeah.
22:27 Speaker 03 Pregnant with twins. We met working at a cafe. Thankfully, we found a badass lawyer. She put them in their place immediately. Thankfully, my parents were actually in town visiting when DCF came for their home visit. So they were able to see none of it added up. They were able to see how happy she was and adjusted. A warm family surrounding her. So ultimately, that got dropped as well.
22:49 Dax Shepard? Well, you almost got to be grateful she went so nuclear so that you were justified. Yeah, that's a big blessing.
22:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, you don't have to worry if you made a mistake. You did not.
22:57 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. We all still deal with the traumas from it. My husband has some PTSD. My daughter has some PTSD. It's a good lesson in narcissistic personality disorder and a good lesson in how to set boundaries. And ultimately, my husband's super hot, so it was worth it.
23:13 Dax Shepard? You got three beautiful kids.
23:14 Speaker 01 We love that.
23:15 Speaker 03 Three beautiful daughters. It's all worth it. It just was a wild ride.
23:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:20 Dax Shepard? And also, good for him. If that's half your genetics and you avoid that, that's an accomplishment.
23:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, he wanted to make it clear. He knew something wasn't right growing up. He knew he had To get out, but anytime he tried to growing up.
23:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she didn't want to lose control over him. She sounds like someone that would own a chimp. Cause this is what they want. They want a child that doesn't grow up.
23:38 Speaker 03 She had two emus when I was there, a cow, a goat, all sorts of birds. A chimp is right up her alley.
23:45 Dax Shepard? If she can get her hands on eighty grand, I think they're pricey. Luckily, a lot of people are priced out of owning a chimp. Well, I'm glad it all worked out for you.
23:52 Speaker 03 Thank you.
23:53 Dax Shepard? It's so nice to meet you and I'm sorry you went through that and I'm happy for you that it all worked out.
23:57 Speaker 03 Got my beautiful kids and we're good to go.
23:59 Dax Shepard? Okay, good.
24:01 Speaker 01 Have a great day.
24:01 Dax Shepard? We'll take care. Bye bye.
24:03 Speaker 03 Bye.
24:04 Speaker 01 Hello, you look so familiar. I don't know why.
24:08 Dax Shepard? Who do people tell you you look like?
24:09 Speaker 04 I've been told Florence Pugh one time, but I would be lucky if that was real.
24:13 Speaker 01 I can see that.
24:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she's okay to look at.
24:17 Speaker 04 She's beautiful.
24:18 Dax Shepard? I'm also watching something right now, though, that you look like. We'll get it. It'll simmer in. Kylie, where are you?
24:25 Speaker 04 I'm in Dayton, Ohio.
24:27 Dax Shepard? There we go. Homer Chappelle?
24:29 Speaker 04 Yes.
24:30 Dax Shepard? Homer Van Hun?
24:31 Speaker 04 John Legend.
24:32 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
24:32 Dax Shepard? Legend, baby.
24:33 Speaker 01 You've got a lot of good ones.
24:34 Dax Shepard? Soulful.
24:35 Speaker 04 And right by Cedar Point in Kings Island.
24:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you look a little young to have a mother in law.
24:42 Speaker 04 Yes, so this is actually a story about an ex-boyfriend's mom. So this was a couple of years ago.
24:47 Dax Shepard? And that's totally fine.
24:48 Speaker 01 That counts.
24:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that definitely counts. Well, please set the stage for us.
24:52 Speaker 04 Absolutely. So I met this guy when I started college. It's a smaller college around Dayton. And we started dating as soon as I got there, my freshman year. He lived near the college, but like not on campus. And his mom lived a couple of streets away from him, so we would see her a lot. I don't know if you've ever watched the show, I'm Married to a Mama's Boy. Dating a Mama's Boy. This literally could be that story. That show is crazy.
25:16 Dax Shepard? Oh, I gotta see that.
25:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, he was a mama's boy through and through, and that should have been my first red flag. But at the time, I was like eighteen and really stupid and didn't care.
25:24 Dax Shepard? Well, and it's kind of endearing. You go like, oh, this person loves their mom. They're probably gonna be nice to ladies.
25:29 Speaker 01 Dax is like, it's endearing, right?
25:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, right? I love my mom. She's here.
25:33 Speaker 04 In the beginning, it might have been nice. It just ended up not being that way. So as we got more serious and I moved in with him, she got way more possessive of him to the point where they shared location. And every time he was out to eat with me, she would call crying. So like, we would have to take her food to her house afterwards. Or we would just invite her with us. So like, we didn't go out very often because we were in college and we were poor. But like, when we did, we had to take his mom.
25:58 Speaker 01 Was she a single mom?
26:00 Speaker 04 Yes, her husband and her had just gotten divorced like a year prior. So it was very fresh. So during COVID, this is like two years later, I got laid off from two jobs. I was working fifty hours a week because I wanted to graduate with no debt. But because of that, I was also paying for both of our rents. So when I lost both of my jobs, I was like, I don't know what we're gonna do. So his mom very graciously was like, you can come and stay with me. And I was a little more apprehensive. He was like, yeah, let's do this. And so we did it.
26:29 Dax Shepard? Home-cooked meals, laundry will be done.
26:31 Speaker 04 You would think.
26:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
26:32 Speaker 04 But that's kind of where we're going. So we would rotate cooking. And I noticed very quickly that I just started feeling really sick. I was having the liquid shits like all of the time. I was losing weight and I was super weak. And I could not figure out what was wrong with me.
26:47 Dax Shepard? And really quick, when you took turns cooking, I thought you and your boyfriend, but you're saying mother-in-law and you took turns.
26:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, he never did anything. He was a mama's boy. He would never be allowed to do anything. So I lost fifteen pounds in two months. So I went to visit my mom. I was there for two weeks and I was feeling a little better. I kind of just thought that the sickness that I was having was a lingering side effect of COVID because at the time, like, we really didn't know what COVID encompassed. So I came back after that two weeks at my mom's house and started getting sick again, like almost immediately was really sick.
27:20 Dax Shepard? This is fucking nuts.
27:21 Speaker 01 I know.
27:22 Dax Shepard? Is boyfriend getting sick?
27:24 Speaker 04 No. And every time I tell him, he's like, you know, I think you just need to go to the doctor. We're just chalking this up to COVID. So it was like a couple of weeks later, I am just distraught. Like, I can't do this anymore. It's making it hard to work. It's making it hard to go to class. My mom was like, well, have you been avoiding the foods that you're allergic to? And I was like, Yeah, when I was eighteen, I got diagnosed with a nut allergy. It just like came out of nowhere. It's just like a gastrointestinal allergy. No EpiPen, just because again, there's no anaphylaxis, but it was an issue for everything else. So this is when I started to put the pieces together because she knew I had a nut allergy. And she knew that it wasn't like an anaphylactic nut allergy.
28:05 Speaker 04 I had found out that instead of using my peanut butter, because I use like a special brand of peanut butter that doesn't have nuts. She was using real peanut butter when she made brownies and telling me that it was baked peanut butter.
28:17 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
28:18 Speaker 04 She was putting nut oils in the food and like grinding up peanuts and almonds and putting them in the food that we were eating.
28:25 Speaker 01 No.
28:26 Speaker 04 It was insane.
28:27 Dax Shepard? Wait, how did you find this out?
28:29 Speaker 04 I confronted her. I was like, hey, I've been getting really sick and no one can figure out why. Is there any possibility that there could be trace or cross contaminants with the nuts that you guys eat or the peanut butter you guys eat? And that's when she was like, well, I'm going to be honest, I haven't been using that and I haven't been catering to your dietary restrictions. And she admitted it fully, never apologized, never said anything. And she said she was poisoning me because I took her son away from her.
28:56 Speaker 01 Stop it. She said those words.
28:58 Dax Shepard? She said that? I'm attempting benefit of the doubt where I go like, she thinks all these young people think they have allergies and they don't. And she's gonna prove it, but no, no, no.
29:09 Speaker 04 No, it was the intentional using a food processor to powder.
29:14 Speaker 01 Holy shit.
29:15 Dax Shepard? This is evil?
29:17 Speaker 04 It was insane. And I was like, we live here. I haven't taken him anywhere.
29:21 Dax Shepard? I brought him back. In fact, I returned him.
29:23 Speaker 01 What did he say?
29:24 Speaker 04 That's where it gets worse. He didn't care. He was like, oh, she's going through a lot since her divorce, so that's probably just like her way of.
29:32 Dax Shepard? Oh, I hope they're married.
29:33 Speaker 01 Poisoning is just her way.
29:35 Dax Shepard? That's her way of saying she loves me.
29:36 Speaker 01 God.
29:37 Dax Shepard? Too much.
29:38 Speaker 01 Sick.
29:39 Speaker 04 So I moved out very shortly after that and he came with me.
29:42 Dax Shepard? Oh, he did?
29:44 Speaker 01 Are you married to him? Oh, god, no. Okay. Oh, my god. I was gonna have some scolding.
29:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, I stayed with him for like a full year after that. I just didn't eat at his mom's house afterward. And I didn't go over there very often, but it was insane. Fully admitted it, never apologized.
30:00 Dax Shepard? Did you cross your mind? I wonder if that's illegal.
30:03 Speaker 01 It's definitely poisoning someone.
30:04 Dax Shepard? Well, if it's lethal for sure, but diarrhea, is there a criminal offense like giving a stranger diarrhea?
30:11 Speaker 04 Putting laxatives in their foods, kind of, right?
30:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, or.
30:14 Speaker 01 I don't know, a danger to your well being.
30:17 Dax Shepard? What was her tone when she admitted it? Like tough titties, baby.
30:20 Speaker 04 You're very nonchalant.
30:22 Speaker 01 No one talks like that.
30:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Ma non Sheila.
30:25 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
30:27 Dax Shepard? She said tough titties.
30:30 Speaker 04 She just kind of looked at me and kind of shrugged it off casually like, oh yeah, I did that.
30:33 Speaker 01 Oh.
30:34 Dax Shepard? Also, Ma non Sheila poisoned people.
30:36 Speaker 01 No, I know.
30:37 Dax Shepard? It's perfect.
30:38 Speaker 01 I mean, no wonder she got divorced. This husband, oh my God.
30:43 Dax Shepard? Probably had diarrhea for years.
30:44 Speaker 01 He weighed six pounds.
30:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was crazy. He just did not care at all that she had done it and neither did he.
30:53 Speaker 01 That is a great story.
30:56 Dax Shepard? Care.
30:57 Speaker 01 He sucks.
30:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he blows. Have you had any updates on him?
31:00 Speaker 04 He still lives with his mom and it's been four years.
31:04 Speaker 01 They deserve each other.
31:05 Dax Shepard? I hope they get married.
31:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, me too. I hope they live happily ever after.
31:08 Speaker 04 Honestly, I don't think they would think anyone is good enough for them.
31:12 Speaker 01 Ew, it's so gross.
31:14 Speaker 04 It was so weird. You should definitely look at that show, though. I Married a Momboy. Because that's a hundred percent what this whole situation felt like. I was the third wheel the whole time in this relationship. And we were together for like three years.
31:25 Dax Shepard? You gave me a great plan in case I don't like one of the girl's boyfriends. Just got to find out what they're allergic to and turn it into a powder.
31:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, but then you'll probably eat it and you'll accidentally also get sick.
31:37 Dax Shepard? I'll die, yeah. Hoisted by my own petard. I'll have to say to the girls, I'm like, I love Michael. He is a great guy. But baby, you can't live with someone who's got diarrhea every day for the rest of their lives. You can't do that to yourself. Are you carrying diapers around for Michael?
31:51 Speaker 01 And then they're like, Dad, you. Have diarrhea all the time.
31:54 Dax Shepard? Shut up. We're not talking about me. We're talking about Michael.
31:56 Speaker 01 But you always have diarrhea.
31:58 Dax Shepard? Hey now, that's no.
31:59 Speaker 01 You call it honest.
32:00 Dax Shepard? You're thinking of Aunt Monica. She's the one with diarrhea all the time. I fixed my diarrhea and I stopped eating gluten.
32:05 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
32:07 Dax Shepard? That is fucking wild. You have a very good attitude about it. If like a girlfriend's dad told me, yeah, yeah, I was poisoning you, I would punch him.
32:14 Speaker 01 I know. I know.
32:15 Dax Shepard? You had a great reaction.
32:17 Speaker 01 I know. You saying I didn't steal him from you is like the last thing I would be thinking is like trying to assure her that you didn't, you didn't do something wrong.
32:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, oh, we're poisoning each other. Okay. Now I know. Let's fucking party.
32:30 Speaker 01 You wanna play poison? I can play poison, bitch.
32:35 Speaker 04 I'm like a people pleaser to the core. So I was just trying to figure out how I could get around this without it being super awkward and uncomfortable for everybody for the remainder of our relationship. Because at that time, I really thought that was it. And then obviously, thank God.
32:50 Speaker 01 Blessing in disguise. You should not have been with him.
32:53 Speaker 04 It should have also not taken me another year to figure that out.
32:56 Dax Shepard? Well, can I ask you a very personal question?
32:58 Speaker 04 Sure.
32:58 Dax Shepard? Was dad a mama's boy?
33:00 Speaker 04 My dad? No. So it wasn't even like a pattern thing.
33:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:04 Speaker 04 I'm in counseling school now. So like looking back at all of these things, I'm like, man, there was something wrong with me there.
33:11 Speaker 01 No, it takes time to learn these things about yourself.
33:14 Dax Shepard? By the way, that's the gift of being a counselor is you know what that's like and you can be non judgmental about people going through that stuff.
33:21 Speaker 01 Ooh, that was a great story.
33:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I like that a lot.
33:23 Speaker 01 Thank you for sharing it. Have a great rest of your day.
33:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, you too. Bye. It was nice to meet you.
33:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, nice meeting you. Take care.
33:47 Speaker 05 Hello.
33:48 Dax Shepard? How are you, Nicholas?
33:49 Speaker 05 Good. How are you?
33:51 Dax Shepard? Good. You have quite a collection of, you hang your T-shirts.
33:54 Speaker 05 I do.
33:55 Dax Shepard? And is your garage spotless and organized?
33:57 Speaker 05 Never.
33:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. So it's just the wardrobe.
34:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, this looks very nice.
34:02 Speaker 05 I do appreciate a hung T-shirt and all of my apparel to be hung for the most part, except for pants. Maybe the condition that my wife has also helps with that. She's a big fan of order. She comes to your house and you have a crooked painting or a picture or something that's gonna get straightened right out.
34:16 Dax Shepard? She's on it. Where are you at in the country, Nicholas?
34:18 Speaker 05 I live about an hour north of Seattle, so Washington State.
34:21 Dax Shepard? Okay, alright, set the stage.
34:23 Speaker 01 Organized wife of yours has a mother you're gonna be speaking of.
34:27 Speaker 05 She definitely does. She has quite the family. The mother is the tip of the iceberg, I guess. So I have many, many stories that I could probably share that would fit this bill. As I assume everyone who you talk to today probably has many stories.
34:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's rare that someone's crazy acutely. It's generally a kind of a chronic condition.
34:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:47 Speaker 05 A hundred percent. For this, we kind of go back to the beginning. My wife and I, we met in high school, but we started dating after high school in 2008. We got married in 2010 when we were about 22. And while that has its own list of drama that came with it, kind of the real unhinging of my wife's mother happened when, actually, my brother was getting married and when we had found out that we were having a baby. And the reason why that matters is because my brother married my wife's sister.
35:13 Dax Shepard? Boom! Okay, you know what's great about this? So that's what my grandparents did. And I always thought it was the coolest thing. My Papa Bob's brother married my Grammy Yoles's sister.
35:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, and it works. So it's my wife's half-sister, so there's at least some sort of separation there. So fortunately for my brother, he doesn't have to deal with my mother-in-law.
35:31 Dax Shepard? Oh, gotcha, they share a father.
35:33 Speaker 05 Same dad. There's four kids total among three different women that we know of. That does keep her off of ancestry.com and other, other things like that, just in case. So that was the start of what really set my wife's mother off was just that my brother and I, we had infiltrated their family in some way.
35:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
35:49 Speaker 05 And now, not only did I steal my wife from her mother, but now I've let my brother into this and now he has stolen another child from this family.
35:59 Dax Shepard? Right.
35:59 Speaker 01 Even though it's not her child.
36:00 Speaker 05 It's only her child when it's convenient.
36:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, she sees.
36:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are trying to outnumber them.
36:06 Speaker 05 Exactly, yeah. It's weird that we're brother and marrying sisters, brothers and whatever, but it's all still legal and fine and all those good things.
36:15 Speaker 05 We found out the week of my brother and wife's sister's wedding that we were gonna have a baby and we didn't wanna steal any of that thunder, so we decided, you know, let's not tell anyone. Let's just wait until after the wedding. That way, the congratulations on the day of are all going towards my brother and his new wife. So on the rehearsal wedding, the day before, we had found out that, for lack of better terms, my grandfather had passed away. He was like the grandfather type in my life. He was the guy that helped me with my first transmission swap, engine swap, doing anything automotive related. He was the guy. He had a big four-car shop.
36:45 Dax Shepard? Ooh, I'm jealous.
36:46 Speaker 05 He was the best. We spent so much time with him and it was very sudden and we did not know it was gonna happen. So the day of the wedding, everyone's kinda head down, doing their wedding things, trying to be as upbeat about things as they can. My wife, she informs her mom when she arrives, she says, hey, just so you know, their grandfather died last night. It was very sudden, so everyone's kinda in a somber mood, just so you can kinda be sensitive to what's going on. She already believes that my family has somehow brainwashed my wife. So that's lingering in the background as we start moving forward with this day. From there, she's mad at my parents because they didn't greet her with these warm, open arms. It was kind of like a, hey, how you doing? That we're still doing our thing. Also trying to pay attention to wedding coordinator.
37:26 Speaker 05 Nothing that would be crazy for any of us, but for someone who is unstable, it's very offensive. So then she found out that she was seated in the second row of the ceremony. So again, she's not the mother of the bride. She was there during some childhood stuff, but not till late.
37:42 Dax Shepard? And is it safe to assume that she is no longer with the father of these two? Or are they?
37:47 Speaker 05 That's like a whole nother thing.
37:49 Dax Shepard? Okay, yeah.
37:50 Speaker 05 They lived in the same house, but he lived in the basement in his weird dungeon that no one was allowed in and she lived on the main floor.
37:56 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay.
37:57 Speaker 05 They were roommates at that time. And then shortly after this, they end up separating, so they're no longer together. So once she found out that she was seated in the second row, so disrespectfully, she made a nice scene for the room to let us all know that she was being treated poorly and in her words, a second-class citizen.
38:13 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay.
38:15 Speaker 05 That second-class citizen quote comes up often.
38:18 Dax Shepard? Well, we're hearing her story. She feels like a second-class citizen.
38:21 Speaker 05 Yes. She storms out, she leaves. We don't know if she's coming. The wedding or not. Fortunately, she doesn't, which is great. You know, we all have a good time at the wedding. We all go home. Everyone's happy. Couple of days go by and my wife decides, hey, we gotta talk to my mom and let her know we're having a baby. But how do we want to do this? As 22 year olds, we're trying to figure out how do we manipulate the situation? So she doesn't freak out and just yell at us because that's what's coming and not necessarily for the pregnancy, but for whatever reason, she wants to list of how she was mistreated. So we decided, let's go get breakfast at this place near where she lives. It's like this little, small cafe and we'll get breakfast there because no one's going to scream at us in public. She'll have to put on a face because she likes to come across as being someone who is well to do.
39:04 Dax Shepard? This is seen in the movie where you gotta meet the killer, but you want to meet them in public. So they can't do the killing in public.
39:09 Speaker 05 When she first walks in, she thinks we're there to commiserate about how she was mistreated at the wedding. We kind of explained to her that, hey, you know, we're not here to talk about the wedding. We want to talk about something else. So before we could even break the news to her, she pulls out a yellow legal pad and she starts rifling off her grievances. Like it's a Costanza airing of grievances. It's one thing after the other. She's talking in circles. Some of it's made up. Some of it's just her augmented truth of what had happened during specific events over the last at least two years.
39:39 Dax Shepard? I think it's also worth remembering out loud that that wasn't your wedding. You didn't design the seating chart. This is your brother and her at one time stepdaughter's wedding. You're like telling the wrong people.
39:52 Speaker 05 Exactly. And that's kind of what we were trying to do is just say, we're not part of this. You can deal with them if you'd like. Trying to bring down the hysteria that's unfolding, but that only feeds the flames and she's getting louder. The whole restaurant is quiet and just watching this woman on her knees, half standing like in a booth. Finally, after she reads through her list, she gets through all of her grievances. My wife decides, okay, now's the time to share with her the news. And what I remember in the moment, and we differ on this, is that I physically kind of reached to block her hands from her purse. Cause she wants to pull out a onesie that we had bought for her that says, what happens to grandma's house stays at grandma's house.
40:33 Speaker 05 My kids have never been to grandma's house. So that didn't work out. Whatever happens there, she's alone.
40:40 Speaker 05 But anyway, so she whips out the onesie. My mother-in-law proceeds to rip the onesie out of her hand. She's shouting, oh, well, isn't that great?
40:47 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
40:49 Speaker 05 She shouts across the restaurant for the server to bring her a box for her food that had just arrived. She knew I was paying for the meal, and so she wasn't gonna leave without that food. She was leaving.
40:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, okay.
41:00 Speaker 05 So she loads up, leaves, and that was a pivotal moment in our relationship with her where we're like, okay, maybe we're not gonna do this anymore. Maybe this isn't worth all of the extra effort. And so that's when the harassment from her mom kind of started. Prior, it was more like I would come home from work. My wife would be crying, and I'd be like, what happened? Well, I just got the phone with my mom. She's mad that I haven't visited her in a day or since the weekend. In those moments, I would tell her mom, like, hey, you can't call her just to make her cry, and trying to be in between the two of them. Which nowadays, you know, if there's ever anything with her mom, it's not something I dismiss and say, like, you deal with it on your own. It's more of like, I don't wanna get in between it. So where it looks like I'm blocking that relationship.
41:40 Dax Shepard? Well, I think you learn pretty quickly. It's not helping.
41:44 Speaker 05 Exactly. That was all before telling her we're having a baby. And so after that, I was like, you know, I shouldn't be the one doing that anymore because it's just another excuse for her to say that I'm holding you captive or that my family has you locked away in this tower somewhere. So this is when she proceeds to nonstop call my phone, my wife's phone, our work, my parents. She's sending texts from random numbers. She's sending letters from zip codes that are not near us.
42:09 Speaker 01 Oh.
42:09 Speaker 05 To my parents and to us with threats.
42:12 Dax Shepard? What was the vibe of the threats?
42:13 Speaker 05 A majority of what she would send to my parents would be, how could you do this to my daughter? Like, you're keeping her from me, even though we didn't live with my parents or anything? Like, they weren't doing anything?
42:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
42:22 Speaker 05 They were just really nice and helpful to us when we were first buried. But then what turned for us was she would start to mention her grandmother rights.
42:29 Speaker 01 This is the second time this has come up. This is crazy.
42:33 Speaker 05 Maybe it's a thing then, because where I was working, I had someone nearby who was a lawyer. It just freaked me out. I was like, what does that mean? Could she try to take our kid? Because that was kind of the implication from some of the letters and texts and phone calls we'd get from her is that you guys are having a baby, but you won't be able to keep that baby from me. That was terrifying. And so this person that we knew who was a lawyer was like, you guys should just try to go get a no contact order. That'll give you at least a year for her to legally not be allowed to. I mean, first of all, like harassing enough at work and I worked in the food industry at the time. So like we had to unplug the phone to the restaurant.
43:04 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
43:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah.
43:07 Speaker 05 So we decided to go down that path. And so my wife, she did all of the submissions. I didn't want to be the one who was petitioning for a no contact order against my mother in law. Six months pregnant, we go to court. She gives her statement on theme with the organization in the closet. She has a binder full of every voicemail ever left, all transcribed.
43:25 Dax Shepard? Wow. She's the wrong person to threaten.
43:27 Speaker 05 Yes, every document has been photocopied. We have like witness statements on things. We gave all that to the judge. So she's going through her thing saying, I don't know what's going on, but she won't leave us alone, essentially. Her mom gets up there and then proceeds to talk in circles. Eventually she's screaming at the judge because the judge isn't doing what she wants her to do. That's not going over well.
43:46 Dax Shepard? I bet it would be hard to contain a smile if I were you at that point.
43:50 Speaker 05 A hundred percent.
43:51 Speaker 01 But you don't feel alone. Now somebody else sees how crazy this is.
43:55 Speaker 05 Not just somebody else, but somebody else outside of our bubble.
43:58 Speaker 01 Exactly.
43:58 Dax Shepard? And a judge.
43:59 Speaker 05 Yeah. So one of her big statements, so she had somehow found out, I don't know, through social media, through other people who knew us, that my wife wanted to have a home birth. That's what she wanted. For me, she's the one having the kid. I'm just there to, what do you want me to do? You want to have the baby at home? Fine. You want to have the baby underwater? I don't care.
44:16 Dax Shepard? Right.
44:16 Speaker 05 Whatever makes you happy.
44:18 Speaker 01 That's correct. That's the correct thing for a husband to say. I'll do whatever you want.
44:22 Speaker 05 Her big thing was she thought that my mother in particular, through her brainwashing tactics, had convinced my wife that a home birth was the only way to have like a good delivery and that there's no pain with home birth or something crazy. And in reality, so I have a younger sister and an older brother. My mom had all three of us in a hospital. She had epidurals with my brother and my sister, and she did not have an epidural with me. And to this day, like last weekend, we were at their house for family dinner like we do every weekend, and she always brings up how big my head was.
44:55 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure. It's memorable.
44:56 Speaker 05 She would not be the one necessarily advocating for the. Home birth.
44:59 Dax Shepard? Right.
45:00 Speaker 05 Even the judge is like, that has nothing to do with why we're here. We were granted that no contact order. The no contact order for a year was like a sigh of relief. If she violates it, we can call the police, they'll have her arrested and then it's legal trouble for her. We moved and we just would start spotting her mom's car near where we had moved to. She should have had no idea where we had moved to. Even to this day, we had moved in the last two years and we've seen her drive by our new house.
45:22 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
45:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, we probably haven't spoken to her in four years at this point now. She's always kind of keeping tabs on where we are.
45:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
45:30 Speaker 05 So we get a phone call shortly after my son was born because my wife would go on walks around the neighborhood. So six months later, we're only halfway through this no contact order. It's one of her mom's friends saying, hey, your mom had a heart attack. She's in the hospital. You guys need to get down there as soon as possible. She's in critical condition. Initially, we're like, okay, let's take a step back and think about this. Part of me is like, well, if this is true, we can't just let this go. But also, if she's just trying to get us to show up, I wouldn't put that past her.
45:56 Speaker 01 Right.
45:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, a little test.
45:57 Speaker 05 We would be the ones in violation of the no contact order. So even if we go see her, she won't get in trouble for that. We would. So we call the hospital first and there, as I'm sure you know, they're not very forthcoming. Well, I'm asking a nurse, we just need to know because of X, Y, Z, you kind of lay out the situation, no contact order. And she goes, okay, let me get a doctor and let them decide what they want to tell you. Doctor gets on the phone. I tell her the whole thing again and the doctor goes, okay, there was never a heart attack. She has heartburn and gas. She's going home shortly.
46:23 Dax Shepard? She's farting.
46:24 Speaker 05 Yes.
46:28 Speaker 05 That was a dodge bullet. Part of the no contact order, if we did want to try to resume relationship was to seek counseling, which we had done. I had been a part of it at times. I had not been a part of it at times. They've done counseling kind of off and on for years after that. Even those sessions would get a little wild. There's one session where the counselor just left.
46:49 Dax Shepard? She filed her own no contact form against both of them.
46:53 Speaker 05 We got a major apology from her later saying like, that was not okay. But I've never in my life been so fed up with a patient before that had to leave the room.
47:00 Speaker 01 Holy shit. That's validating.
47:03 Speaker 05 Yeah, there's been some wild things that have happened over the years since then, for sure. Like I said, I could go on. That was our first year of marriage. Our first kid, our first no contact order.
47:13 Dax Shepard? Well, congratulations. So many firsts. Okay, so here's what's sad, I think. Kids are pieces of shit because they refuse to acknowledge their parents are human beings. That's what we do as kids. But then what parents do, which is bullshit, is they refuse to acknowledge that the child is an adult and a real person. So they keep treating everything like it's cute, or they don't know what they're doing, or they know better. It's like these two things we both do on both sides. And what's heartbreaking is what's obvious is she's dying to be in her daughter's life and she's doing everything possible to ensure that won't happen.
47:48 Speaker 01 And she's unstable. I mean, it's just hard when people are unstable.
47:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's hard to argue with a, as they say, a crazy man.
47:55 Speaker 01 Can't out crazy crazy.
47:57 Dax Shepard? Is that a new saying?
47:58 Speaker 01 Some people say that.
47:59 Dax Shepard? You can't out crazy crazy. You can't fight crazy with crazy?
48:02 Speaker 01 That's one version.
48:03 Dax Shepard? Does it make your wife sad, or is she at peace with that?
48:06 Speaker 05 She kind of goes back and forth. We have a 10 year old daughter and a 12 year old son. And her dad is a whole nother story, the father in law story. I'll probably write back in. He's never met our kids and he has no interest in that. I guess I just don't know how you get to that point where you choose to be right in your mind over having that relationship with your children and your grandchildren.
48:27 Speaker 01 I know.
48:27 Dax Shepard? I know.
48:28 Speaker 01 I know.
48:28 Dax Shepard? I've had this exact moment with my kids where I've realized in the moment, okay, one of us has to change for this to be a good relationship. And I realized, oh, my dad had that same realization probably, but he's like, yeah, I gotta change this kid. But you know, I was like, yeah, it's not gonna be her. It's not gonna be a little kid. It's gonna be me. I've got to adjust. A lot of folks don't make that decision.
48:48 Speaker 01 Regardless of whether you know, I can't really have this person in my life. It's still a loss.
48:53 Dax Shepard? Although not for you, because it's not your mother.
48:55 Speaker 05 As nice as it is for me, it is heartbreaking for my kids. And all we've told them is just like, Grammys hasn't been nice to your mom. And until she can choose to make good choices with your mom and work out whatever issues they have, she's not going to be coming around. But we really hope that she decides to make the necessary changes and steps to have that good relationship. So you guys can have a relationship with her.
49:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's great.
49:16 Speaker 05 Like you said, you can't out crazy crazy.
49:21 Speaker 01 Thank you for sharing that.
49:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Nicholas, that was great. And sorry to your wife. It's so unfortunate. All right. Well, nice meeting you. Take care.
49:31 Speaker 01 Whoa.
49:31 Dax Shepard? Whoa.
49:32 Speaker 01 That's a lot to deal with. That's a lot to handle.
49:34 Dax Shepard? Lots to deal with, a lot to handle.
49:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:36 Dax Shepard? It's so stressful.
49:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is.
49:38 Dax Shepard? Okay, I love you.
49:39 Speaker 01 Love you.
49:41 Dax Shepard? Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song. Oh. Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fire, Rhymedish. On the fire, Rhymedish. Enjoy.
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