The TIFU subReddit is like the wild, wild west of internet.
This most recent story is a doozy.
For those unfamiliar with Reddit abbreviations, TIFU stands for "today I f*cked up" and the stories typically do not disappoint. If nothing else, they help us feel less alone in how badly we manage to screw our lives up sometimes.
So in today's episode of "oh god, no" theater we have the tale of a young man, a young woman, and her mother isolating together during this pandemic. It's a pretty common arrangement right now.
It's also a recipe for disaster in some cases. Like this one - which ends with our hero naked in the shower with his future mother-in-law. Well, more truthfully that's the middle. It doesn't end there. Dude so wishes that it had, but nope. The awkward just grows from there.
Story time, loves. Settle in. Things are about to get cringey.
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Our story starts with the isolation arrangement we just mentioned, but let's give a bit more backstory. Man and girlfriend live together.
Once the pandemic really kicked into high gear and people understood that we would need to isolate, girlfriend got worried about her mother and so they decided to bring her over to shelter/isolate with them in their house.
This is how the tale begins.
"So my fiancée and I live together in our house and because of the whole quarantine thing, she was worried about her mother being all alone so we invited her to stay with us and she agreed. A bit awkward at first but she's good company and passed the awkward stage within two days."
Aww good! The awkward is over. Everyone is one big happy family. Yeah it's not gonna stay that way.
Let's continue.
"Yah so I woke up this morning and my fiancée wasn't in bed but I could hear the shower in our en suite bathroom. Feeling a bit frisky, I decided to join her and maybe play around a bit. Got fully naked and "ready to go." I opened the door and the speakers in the bathroom were playing music and then it hit me. Maybe I should tiptoe in and seductively start kissing from behind like in the movies. It looks hot there so maybe it'll be the same in real life right?"
The sense of dread is palpable here. Never in the history of ideas with a foreseeably bad outcome has an idea foreseeably badded so hard.
Not because trying to be movie-sexy is a bad idea, though. We don't judge. Just make sure you have a non-stick shower mat and that you lift with your legs, not your back.
We care about you.
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Thing is, we all know where this ends, so that sense of dread is so real. We read the rest of the post cringing further and further into the corner of the couch hoping the secondhand embarrassment wouldn't be able to find us behind the cushions.
Spoiler alert: Secondhand embarrassment still got us. It'll get you too.
"So I stealthily made it into the shower and wrapped my arms around 'my fiancée'. When she screamed I just started laughing (second wrong move) and said in a deep voice, "it's just me baby" and tried again. It was only when she shouted my name and told me to get the fuck out I realized that it was actually her mother. I didn't realize it wasn't my fiancée sooner because the both of them literally look like sisters. Her mother doesn't age at all and they share the same hair color and body type (for lack of a better word). Since I'm a slow idiot, I just stood there for about 5 seconds just staring at her as she covered herself before apologizing and running out."
Y'all did this man just walk into the shower with a boner and feel all on his girlfriend's mom? Twice?
And then get so panicked when he realized it that he froze and just stood there, junk bobbing in the breeze, staring blanky so long that she had to get out of the shower she was in the middle of?
Oh God please end this.
"I'm sitting in my car in the garage right now typing this and I still don't know where my fiancée is or why the fuck her mother was showering in our private bathroom instead of the house bathroom. So that's my life right now and I don't know how I'll live through this."
Honestly, we don't know how he'll live through this either. But we do know that it didn't quite end there.
Dude had to go back inside his house at some point and face the ladies, right?
He was kind enough to provide Reddit with an update.
"After spending the past hours across the street with my friend building up confidence, I finally went back home and found both of them sitting on the couch. I first went up to kiss my fiance and greet her but she sort of turned her cheek as I came (I was bloody sweating bricks at this point) and said something around the lines of "So my mother says you two had quite the morning". Holy shit, I can't even explain how scared I was since they both looked serious so I just started explaining my side of the story. When all was said, they both kind of looked at each other then broke into laughter. Apparently her en suite's shower had terrible pressure this morning so my fiance said she could try ours."
"So basically we're back in the awkward phase and her mother can barely look me in the eye and though my fiance says she's fine with it and understands, I can tell she's a bit angry/disturbed by the fact her mother and we saw each other naked and also that I didn't realize it wasn't her soon. Needless to say I'll never surprise my fiance in the shower ever again."
Reddit pretty much threw buddy a funeral. This was was bad, real bad.
Having said that, there were some valid points brought up.
"Leave, start a new life somewhere else with a new name." - Meramien
"Embarrassed citizen relocation program." - U_gottriggered
"I feel like the MIL is responsible for this for not using her own bathroom. You can't go into someone's bedroom and private bath while they're sleeping and expect them not to walk in on you if the door is unlocked..." - 0io
"My toes actually cramped curling so hard at this level of cringe. You are literally never going to hear the end of this OP" - JustPassingShhh
"Telling your houseguest they can use the private en suite shower without giving your partner a heads up is a terrible idea for so many reasons. This is one." - loljetfuel
How would you recover from a blunder this bad? Is it even possible? What would your new name be, since clearly you'd need to relocate to some remote tent in the woods of a country whose name you can't even pronounce and start life all over?
Ash Stanton/Facebook
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Akira Karasu/Facebook
Cevanna Gilbert/Facebook
Troy Adam/Facebook
@GovPressOffice/X
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social