“My husband decided to teach me a lesson and moved in with his mother. When he came back, he couldn’t believe his eyes…”
“I’m leaving so you’ll understand what you’ve lost! Spend a week alone, howl at the moon without a man in the house, and maybe then you’ll learn to appreciate being cared for!” Vitalik dramatically stuffed a bundle of socks into his gym bag, nearly knocking my favorite vase off the shelf.
I watched this theatrical performance in silence, leaning against the doorframe. Inside, I was boiling with a mix of hurt and hysterical laughter. My husband, a thirty-year-old “boy,” stood in the middle of my one-room apartment — bought by me before the marriage, no less — and threatened me with his absence. Apparently, he genuinely believed that without his precious presence, the walls would collapse and I’d shrivel up like a forgotten geranium.
And it had all started, as usual, after Sunday’s visit to Vera Timurovna. My mother-in-law was a truly unique woman: she knew how to give compliments in a way that made you want to hang yourself on the spot, and she offered advice in the tone of a general scolding a new recruit for dirty boots.
Vitalik came back from his mother’s place “fully charged.” It was obvious right away: lips pressed tight, eyes scanning, nostrils flaring in search of dust.
“Anya, why are the towels in the bathroom hanging out of color order again?” he started from the doorway without even taking off his shoes. “Mom says it creates visual noise and destroys the harmony of chi in the house.”
I took a deep breath.
“Vitalik, your mother only ever saw ‘chi harmony’ on some TV program from the nineties, and the towels are hanging where they’re convenient for drying hands,” I replied calmly, stirring the stew on the stove.
Vitalik frowned, walked into the kitchen, and jabbed a finger at the pot lid.
“Vegetables in chunks again? Mom says a real wife should mash everything into a purée — it’s easier for the male body to digest. You’re just lazy.”
“Vitaly,” I said, putting the spoon down, “your mother just doesn’t have any teeth because she saved money on the dentist so she could buy a third china set for the display cabinet. You have teeth. Chew.”
My husband turned crimson, sucked in a breath to deliver another serving of “mommy’s wisdom,” but faltered.
“You… you’re just ungrateful!” he finally burst out. “Mom is basically a PhD in homemaking, by the way!”
“Vitalik, your mother spent her whole life working as a dormitory watchwoman, and the only reason she calls herself a ‘candidate of science’ is because she likes the way it sounds,” I shot back with an icy smile.
He froze with his mouth open, struggling to find an argument, but his brain was treacherously stalling. Vitalik blinked, ground his teeth, and waved his hand as if shooing away a fly.
At that moment, he looked so ridiculous — like a penguin.
That was when he decided to “teach me a lesson.”
“That’s it! I’ve had enough of your vulgarity!” he declared, zipping up his bag. “I’m going to Mom’s. For a week. Sit here and think about your behavior. When I get back, I expect perfect order and an apology. In writing!”
The front door slammed. Silence fell.
There was a strange feeling of emptiness and… sudden relief. But the hurt still burned. He had left my home in order to punish me by making me stay in comfort and silence? A brilliant strategist.
But fate had an even bigger surprise in store for me than Vitalik’s tantrums.
On Monday morning, my boss called me in.
“Anna Sergeyevna, we’ve got a project on fire at the branch office. Vladivostok. You need to fly out tomorrow, for three months. Travel pay is double, plus a bonus big enough to buy a new car. Help us out — there’s no one else we can send.”
I stood there in his office and felt wings unfurling behind my back. Three months! Without Vitalik, without Vera Timurovna’s phone calls, on the shore of the ocean — even if it was a cold one — and with an excellent salary.
“I agree,” I blurted out.
Walking out of the office, I started thinking. The apartment would sit empty for three months. Utilities are expensive these days. And then my friend Lenka called.
“Anya, disaster! My sister and her husband just arrived from the south with their three kids. Their place is under renovation, they’ve got nowhere to stay, and hotels are too expensive. They’re noisy, sure, but they pay well — and upfront for the whole period!”
In my head, a devilish plan clicked into place. The puzzle pieces fit together.
“Len, let them move in. Tomorrow. I’ll leave the keys with the concierge. Only one condition: if some guy shows up and starts throwing his weight around, kick him to the curb.”
That same evening, I packed my things, put everything valuable into one box, took it to my mother’s place, and prepared the apartment to be rented out. Vitalik wasn’t answering my calls — he was “teaching me a lesson.” Sure, sure.
The next morning, I flew out, and a cheerful family named Gasparyan moved into my apartment: father Armen, mother Susanna, three little stair-step kids, and their enormous, good-natured but very loud Labrador named Baron.
A week passed.
As I later found out, Vitalik endured seven full days of “paradise” at his mother’s place. It turned out Vera Timurovna was wonderful only at a distance. In everyday life, her “love” strangled tighter than a noose.
“Vitashenka, don’t smack your lips,” she corrected him at breakfast.
“Vitaly, why do you flush the toilet twice? The water meter is spinning!”
“Son, you’re sitting wrong. Your spine will curve, and you’ll end up hunchbacked like Uncle Borya.”
By the end of the week, Vitalik was howling. He decided I had surely been punished enough by then, cried all my tears out, and fully realized his greatness. Time to return in triumph.
He bought three limp carnations — apparently a symbol of forgiveness — and headed home.
As he approached the door, already savoring my fear and joy, he put the key into the lock.
The key wouldn’t turn.
Vitalik frowned, tugged at the handle. Locked.
He pressed the doorbell…
To be continued just below in the first comment.
“I’m leaving so you’ll realize what you’ve lost! Spend a week on your own, howl at the moon without a man in the house—maybe then you’ll learn to appreciate being taken care of!” Vitalik theatrically hurled a bundle of socks into his gym bag, nearly knocking my favorite vase off the shelf.
I silently watched the performance, leaning against the doorframe. Inside, I was boiling with a mix of hurt and hysterical laughter. My husband—a thirty-year-old “boy”—was standing in the middle of my one-room apartment, which I had bought myself before marriage, and threatening me with his absence. Apparently, he sincerely believed that without his precious presence, the walls would collapse and I would wither like a forgotten geranium.
And it had all started, as usual, after a Sunday visit to Vera Timurovna. My mother-in-law was a truly unique woman: she could give compliments in such a way that you immediately wanted to hang yourself, and she offered advice in the tone of a general scolding a recruit for dirty boots.
Vitalik came back from his mother’s “all charged up.” It was obvious at once: lips pressed tight, scanning взгляд, nostrils flaring as if searching for dust.
“Anya, why are the towels in the bathroom hanging out of color order again?” he began right from the doorway, without even taking off his shoes. “Mom says it creates visual noise and destroys the harmony of chi in the house.”
I took a deep breath.
“Vitalik, your mother only ever saw ‘chi harmony’ on some nineties TV program, and the towels are hanging there so it’s convenient to dry our hands,” I replied calmly, stirring the stew on the stove.
Vitalik frowned, walked into the kitchen, and jabbed a finger at the pot lid.
“Vegetables in chunks again? Mom says a real wife should mash everything into puree—it’s better for the male body to digest. You’re just lazy.”
“Vitaly,” I said, setting down the spoon, “your mother just has no teeth because she saved money on the dentist to buy a third china set for the cabinet. You, however, do have teeth. Chew.”
My husband flushed crimson, drew in breath to deliver another batch of “mommy wisdom,” but faltered.
“You… you’re just ungrateful!” he blurted. “My mother is a candidate of sciences in housekeeping, by the way!”
“Vitalik, your mother worked as a dormitory porter her whole life, and the only reason she calls herself a ‘candidate’ is because she likes how it sounds,” I shot back with an icy smile.
He froze with his mouth open, struggling to find an argument, but his brain was treacherously stalling. Vitalik blinked, ground his teeth, and waved a hand as if shooing away a fly.
At that moment he looked so ridiculous, like a penguin.
That was when he decided to “teach me a lesson.”
“That’s it! I’ve had enough of your vulgarity!” he declared, zipping up the bag. “I’m going to Mom’s. For a week. Sit here and think about your behavior. When I come back, I expect perfect order and an apology. In writing!”
The front door slammed. Silence fell.
There was a strange feeling of emptiness and… sudden relief. But the hurt still burned. He had left my home in order to punish me by making me stay in comfort and silence? A brilliant strategist.
But fate had an even bigger surprise in store for me than Vitalik’s hysterics.
On Monday morning, the boss called me in.
“Anna Sergeyevna, there’s a project on fire at the branch office. Vladivostok. You need to fly out tomorrow, for three months. Travel pay is double, plus a bonus big enough for a new car. Help us out—there’s no one else to send.”
I stood in his office and felt wings unfurling behind my back. Three months! No Vitalik, no Vera Timurovna’s phone calls, on the shore of the ocean—even if a cold one—with a great salary.
“I agree,” I blurted out.
As I walked out of the office, I started thinking. The apartment would sit empty for three months. Utilities are expensive these days. And then my friend Lenka called.
“Anya, disaster! My sister and her husband and three kids just came up from the south. Their place is under renovation, they’ve got nowhere to live, hotels are too expensive. They’re noisy, sure, but they pay well and upfront for the whole stay!”
In my head, a devilish plan clicked into place. The puzzle pieces came together.
“Len, let them move in. Tomorrow. I’ll leave the keys with the concierge. Only one condition: if some guy shows up and starts throwing his weight around—kick him to the curb.”
That very evening, I packed my things, put everything valuable into one box, took it to my mother’s place, and got the apartment ready to rent out. Vitalik wasn’t answering my calls—he was “educating” me. Right. Sure.
The next morning I flew out, and into my apartment moved the cheerful Gasparyan family: father Armen, mother Susanna, three little children born one after another, and their huge, good-natured but very loud Labrador named Baron.
A week passed.
As I later found out, Vitalik endured seven full days of “paradise” at his mother’s place. It turned out Vera Timurovna was wonderful only at a distance. In everyday life, her “love” strangled worse than a noose.
“Vitashenka, don’t slurp,” she corrected him at breakfast.
“Vitaly, why are you flushing the toilet twice? The meter is spinning!”
“Son, you’re sitting wrong, your spine will curve—you’ll end up hunchbacked like Uncle Borya.”
By the end of the week, Vitalik was howling. He decided that I had surely been punished enough by now, cried all my tears, and realized his greatness. It was time for him to return in triumph.
He bought three wilted carnations—apparently a symbol of forgiveness—and went home.
As he approached the door, already anticipating my fear and joy, he stuck his key in the lock. The key wouldn’t turn. Vitalik frowned, tugged the handle. Locked. He pressed the doorbell.
Behind the door came a pounding sound like a herd of bison, followed by a booming bark that made the front door tremble.
“Who is it?” a male bass voice thundered with a distinct accent.
Vitalik recoiled.
“Uh… I’m Vitaly. The husband. Open up!”
The door swung open. Armen stood in the doorway—a man as wide as the doorframe, wearing a wife-beater tank top and holding a skewer in his hand (they were grilling shashlik on an electric grill). Baron stood beside him, tongue hanging out.
“What husband?” Armen said in surprise. “Anya’s not here. Anya left. We live here. Renting. We have contract, paid money. Who are you, huh?”
“I… I’m the owner!” Vitalik squealed, losing control. “This is my apartment! Well, my wife’s… We live here!”
“Listen, dear man,” Armen said, amiably patting him on the shoulder with the skewer and leaving a greasy stain on his shirt. “Anya said there is no husband, husband lives with mommy. Apartment free. Go to mommy, yes? Don’t bother people relaxing. Susanna, bring the adjika!”
The door slammed shut in Vitalik’s face.
A minute later, my phone nearly exploded with his call. I was sitting in a restaurant overlooking the Golden Horn, eating scallops and drinking white wine.
“Hello?” I answered lazily.
“What the hell have you done?!” Vitalik was yelling so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “Who are those people in our house?! Why won’t they let me in?! I came back and there’s some whole gypsy camp in there!”
“Vitalik, don’t shout,” I cut him off coldly. “You left. You said for a week, maybe forever, so I could ‘understand.’ Well, I understood. Living alone is boring and expensive. So I let tenants in. Three-month contract.”
“Three months?!” he broke into a shrill falsetto. “Where am I supposed to live?!”
“Well, you’re at your mom’s, aren’t you? You like it there—strained borscht, towels arranged by feng shui. Live there and enjoy it. I’m on a business trip. I won’t be back anytime soon.”
“I’ll file for divorce! I’ll call the police!” my husband sputtered, practically foaming at the mouth.
“Call them. The apartment is mine, I’m the legal owner. The rental contract is official, I pay taxes. Are you even registered there? No. You’re nobody there, Vitalik. Just a guest who abused hospitality.”
I hung up.
Ten minutes later Vera Timurovna called. I answered only for the sake of the show.
“Anna!” my mother-in-law’s voice rang like shattered glass. “How dare you? You threw your husband out into the street! It’s inhuman! The Family Code says a wife is obliged to provide her husband with a secure rear and a hot dinner!”
“Vera Timurovna,” I interrupted, savoring the moment, “Article 31 of the Family Code says spouses are equal. And the property certificate for the apartment has only my name on it. Your son decided to ‘teach me a lesson’ by leaving? Well, the educational experiment was a success. The student outdid the teacher.”
“You… you mercenary vulgar woman!” my mother-in-law choked out. “A man must have his own space! You’re destroying the family! I’ll complain to the trade union!”
“Complain to Sportloto for all I care,” I laughed. “And by the way, Vera Timurovna, you always said Vitalik was pure gold. So keep your treasure. Just don’t forget to mash his puree for him, or he may have forgotten how to chew.”
My mother-in-law gurgled something into the phone, tried to draw breath for a curse, but choked on her own malice.
The sound she made when she hung up reminded me of an old fax machine chewing up paper.
The three months flew by in a flash. I returned happy, with a new hairstyle, money, and a completely clear understanding that I did not want my old life anymore.
The apartment greeted me in perfect cleanliness—Armen and Susanna had turned out to be decent people. Before leaving, they scrubbed everything until it shone and even fixed the dripping faucet, the one Vitalik had spent a year whining he had no time to repair.
Vitalik showed up on my doorstep two hours after I got back. He looked pitiful. Thinner, gray-faced, in a wrinkled shirt. Three months with his “beloved mommy” had turned him into an old man.
“Anya,” he began, staring at the floor, “come on, stop sulking. I’ve realized everything. Mom too… she went too far. Let’s start over, okay? I even brought my things back.”
He tried to step into the hallway.
I blocked his way with my suitcase.
“Vitalik, there’s nothing to start over. You wanted me to learn to appreciate having a man in the house? I did. Armen fixed the faucet in half an hour. You spent a year whining you didn’t have time to buy a washer.”
“But I’m your husband!” he cried, and in his eyes flashed that same fear—the fear of a child being kicked out of the sandbox.
“You were a husband, now you’re baggage,” I snapped. “I packed your things before I left; they’re downstairs with the concierge. Give me the keys.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” he tried to switch on his usual aggression. “I’ll sue for half the renovation!”
“Vitalik, my dad did the renovation, and I’ve got all the receipts. The only thing you contributed here was wallpapering the place with your whining,” I said with a smile, looking him straight in the eyes. “That’s it, the show is over. The intermission dragged on too long, and the audience has gone home.”
He stood there blinking, trying to figure out the exact moment his perfect plan for disciplining his wife had turned into his own personal collapse.
I slammed the door. The click of the lock sounded like the crack of a starter pistol for my new life.
They say Vitalik still lives with his mother. Mutual acquaintances say Vera Timurovna now controls not only what he eats, but what time he goes to bed and who he talks to on the phone. And he walks around hunched, quiet, always watching his step, afraid to tread on the invisible landmines of his mother’s moods.
