A woman shares the bizarre ritual she dreads her mother-in-law performing when she visits.

Every now and then your mother-in-law might do something a little bit questionable.

It’s a tale as old as time, yet nothing could quite be as bad as this new story.

According to a post on Mumsnet, a mother-in-law requests a formal tour of her daughter-in-law’s house every time she visits.

There have been no stylistic changes made to the home, she just wants to have a look around.

“She’s due to visit at the weekend, and as always, I am somewhat dreading it. She demands a ‘tour’ of the house EVERY time she visits, regardless of whether we have changed anything since her last visit or not,” she began the post.

“The house is a big old Victorian pile which we love and which people are always quite excited to see, but with four cats, me working from home, suffering from chronic fatigue and caring for my parents part-time, a pathologically messy DH (Dear Husband) and my parents renting part of the house from us, the fact is that I don’t want people to see every single room, as I’m pretty much the only person in the house who does much in the way of cleaning or tidying,” she added.

But the Mumsnet user said the inspections are far from innocent.

“The ‘tours’ are actually thinly-disguised inspections during which it always appears she is actively looking for things to criticise. Her own standards of cleanliness and tidiness are extremely high, and she frequently refers to people who don’t subscribe to her own high standards as lazy,” she wrote.

“We do show people around the house a little, and show them some of the rooms, but not all. I consider bedrooms, for example, to be private,” she added.

She continued to explain that her mother-in-law would criticise as much as possible during her tours.

“Highlights of her last visit: starting to pull branches off one of our trees because ‘they need to come off’, opening every cupboard and looking into it, sniffily remarking ‘Oh, well, the garden’s looking a bit better now’ in front of my mum and dad who put a LOT of time and effort into making this garden look great when they were more able-bodied,” she wrote.

“Opening cupboards and looking into them, and – the piece de resistance – pulling the classic ‘trailing finger along dusty surface, then looking at finger’ move. Basically, the more stuff she sees, the more she finds to criticise,” she added.

GIRL. RUN.

She continued to ask if she was being unreasonable to dread her mother-in-law visiting and no. You most certainly are not.

The comments were very very sympathetic.

“Do you ever visit her house? Maybe you could behave in the same way, opening doors and cupboards and making comments, and testing for dust, see how she likes it,” suggested one user.

“I can’t for the life of me work out why you have allowed this even once. It is completely bonkers to me! No one is allowed to go snooping around my home, and if they tried they would be quickly asked to leave. Stand up for yourself op, this isn’t normal,” wrote another.

Others called the request a “nightmare” and “awful”.

We are sending all of our sympathies.

Do you have a mother-in-law horror story? Tell us in the comments!