I will try to be brief; my husband and I have been together for 10 years. He used to have a close relationship with his sister, but he has avoided her since a few years before we were dating. This has somehow been put on me.
I am grateful that she lives far away, but whenever we are in the area, she texts and calls ME, not him, for us to come over. As he is fully aware of how spiteful she can be, he ignores it. Then, once again, the fault of our not visiting falls on me.
This has gone on for years.
I’ve ignored it.
I’ve sent emails for her to read in private expressing how this is hurtful and unnecessary.
I’ve asked my husband to talk to her; he knows her very well and says it will not improve and the best thing to do is ignore her. This has proven to be more impossible.
Not long ago she put a photo of herself on a social media site with a woman I had never seen and the caption read: “this should be my REAL sister in law!” I asked her to remove the photo, or change the caption, my husband completely ignored it and I felt very foolish as it remained online. I managed to ignore it and stopped speaking with her online completely, we only see one another at family gatherings. But it got worse…
A few months ago my son passed away at the age of 22. This woman has NEVER referred to him as her nephew until he died. She put her grief all over social media, and collected as many “pity points” as possible with responses from people I’ve never met telling her to be strong, they are praying for her, etc. She interfered with my grieving in an invasive format. That is how I feel. In the decade when her brother was my sons step father, she did not ONCE send him a birthday card, a holiday gift, she never asked how he was doing in school, or what college he attended. Nothing. Suddenly, online, she was stricken with grief. I believe it was fake. She also said to me “I know how you feel because I had a miscarriage once.” I am not minimizing the emotional turmoil that must follow a lost pregnancy, but I have found out that she lied to me. She has never been pregnant, her child is adopted. She is physically incapable of being pregnant, therefore lied to me about losing a baby. Even so: a miscarriage is hardly comparable to gearing up for college graduation and hearing the worst news of my life. She is unable to be around any situation that doesn’t only include her, but highlight her. She does this with her own child also; she does not like attention being turned away from her.
After all of this, my husband went to visit his father, who is age 93, and she (the sister in law) had an absolute fit that they did not come to see her also. (she is 2 hours away / a 4 hour trip ) Somehow this was put on me again. She wrote me a very angry email to which I replied “I understand.”
I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this? How did you deal with it? I am very close to losing my temper with her which would not help anything at all.