So, let me fast forward 40 years and your girlfriend is my mother in law.

As much as I like her as a person (she is a great mother in law) I have never met a dirtier person in my life. We don't eat at her house. I have seen her cook, it cuts your appetite, best diet ever. My husband stopped eating her food 25 years ago.

She is a well-off woman and lives in a beautiful home, but this home was acceptable 30 years ago. Her marble in the bathrooms has decades old build up of calcium everywhere. Her toilets as well. There is dust everywhere. Her refrigerator has not been cleaned in decades! You open it and it smells. She has spices in her cabinets that expired in the 90s and which she still uses.

She will also touch raw chicken or fish and then touch the entire kitchen.

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My father in law was married to her for 35 year sand then left her. But for other reasons.

My husband never invited friends over because he was embarrassed. The truth is: she doesn't see it. She doesn't see the dirt, hence she never changed. She doesn't see a stray hair on a kitchen counter. She doesn't see the discoloured marks inside the toilet bowl.

When I met her, I introduced her to kitchen paper!!! She never used kitchen paper before. She would wipe her kitchen counters with a 10 year old sponge that smelled and had dark rings of mould.

When I got to her house I bring her new sponges and throw away her old sponges.

She has changed a tiny bit since meeting me, and at her age it's a miracle. I do appreciate her as a mother in law, but you should know that your girlfriend will most likely not change. She just doesn't see what you see.