They have no memory of the beast. Or they have chosen to repress it. Either way, I am left alone with the trauma. If you, dear reader, recognize your own spouse or sibling in this story, take heart. You are not alone. I have developed a few strategies for staying alive when the beast emerges.
And so it begins. Through years of careful observation (and therapy), I have identified exactly three triggers that cause my wife and sister-in-law to turn into beasts. Consider this your survival guide. Trigger #1: The First Betrayal For the first five minutes of any game, there is détente. They cooperate. They giggle. They pretend to be normal. But then comes the First Betrayal—the moment one sister does something even mildly competitive to the other. Perhaps Emily builds a road that blocks Sarah’s longest route. Maybe Sarah buys the last development card Emily was eyeing. My Wife and Sister in law Turn Into Beasts When...
The transformation begins slowly. First, there’s the smile. Not a real smile—a predatory baring of teeth. Then comes the reorganization of pieces. Emily will sort the colored tokens with the precision of a bomb squad technician. Sarah will read the rulebook aloud, even though we’ve played this game forty-seven times, her voice dripping with legalistic authority. They have no memory of the beast
And I don’t mean playful, nudging-each-other-on-the-couch beasts. I mean full-blown, hair-trigger, monopoly-money-tearing, rule-book-ripping, ancestral-resentment-unearthing beasts. If you’ve never witnessed two adult women who share DNA, a childhood bedroom, and a deep-seated grudge over who broke whose Cinderella snow globe in 1998 go to war over a fake red hotel on Boardwalk, then you haven’t lived. Or, perhaps more accurately, you haven’t hidden under a blanket while adult women scream about turn order. Let me paint a picture for you. Emily is 34, a pediatric nurse. She calms crying infants for a living. Sarah is 32, a librarian. She specializes in quietude and the Dewey Decimal System. By all accounts, they are rational, loving, kind-hearted people. They hug hello. They share recipes. They tag each other in cute animal videos on social media. If you, dear reader, recognize your own spouse
My wife and sister-in-law turn into beasts when the family board game comes out.
Before long, they’re screaming about who ate the last Pop-Tart in 1994. The board game is just a container. What’s really happening is a decades-old sibling rivalry fighting for air. The Game of Life isn’t about careers and kids; it’s about which daughter my mother-in-law loved more. Clue isn’t about murder mystery; it’s about which sister is more manipulative.
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