'AITA for never telling my sister-in-law that my brother is cheating because I hate her?' UPDATED
"AITA for never telling my sister-in-law that my brother is cheating because I hate her?"
My niece is 13 years old, my brother is 35, and my sister-in-law is 55. She is doing very well financially, and he lives in her shadow. He has often been unfaithful, having hookups, flings, and using Tinder, and I have never covered for him. He did all of this while spending her money freely.
I have not confronted him about it. He is not happy with me, but I am not willing to listen to him. I have my own family, a husband, and my kids, and I do not support his cheating. My sister-in-law is not a pleasant woman, and I try to avoid her as much as possible. She looks down on me, my siblings, and my parents. She is a very toxic person.
She has access to his emails, social media, medical records, and phone. My son is still young, just seven years old, but she does not want her daughter to be around her first-grade cousin. My brother and she fight a lot, and when things get ugly, my niece spends the night at her maternal grandmother’s house.
My brother is close with his daughter, and some time ago she told me she knows her dad is having “a relationship” with another woman. The woman she mentioned is his high school girlfriend, whom he loved very much.
I try not to get involved in their mess, but I love my niece a lot. She is an amazing child and she suffers because of this situation. My brother cried in front of her, telling her he loves this other woman, that he is unhappy with his wife, and my niece now feels it is her responsibility to take care of her father.
I do not know what to do. My niece begged me not to tell him because he would know I found out from her. She believes her father is a victim of her mother and that she can help him. She cannot.
What to do? My niece begged me to not tell him because he will know I know from her. She believes her father is a victim of her mother and she can do something. She cannot. But what can I do? I talked to her but I think professional help is needed here. She is getting more and more aware something is very unusual in her family, especially the huge age gap.
Here are some of the comments from the post.
LillianDove says:
NTA you're not the a&^#$ole, but your brother is a huge leech and your sister in law is a monster for manipulating a child into thinking she's responsible for her deadbeat dad.
OP responded:
My niece is in so much pain. She doesn't want to meet with her friends anymore, but this is mostly due to the fact kids are asking her about her parents and their age gap. She also has some older friends (like 15) who have a crush on my brother, but I guess this is normal for teenagers. But it makes her feel uneasy because for her he is her dad.
Waste-Phase-2857 says:
So brother was 22 and SIL 42 when niece was born? Such an age gap when one is so young really doesn't feel right. Was the brother even an adult when the relationship started out?
OP responded:
To be honest, I don't know. Our mother was horrified. He was working during the summer at her company, at the time still mostly managed by her father. At that time he was 17 but turned 18 the very same year. Then he went to college and went back to that company for an internship. So no one knows for sure if they started seeing each other the first time he was there or the second time.
He is now in his 30s. My niece is my priority, not him. They fight a lot and its gets nasty.
Why doesn‘t he divorce his wife? He loves his daughter so much that he is willing to dump his feelings for his affair partner on her rather than be the adult. I would be mad at him for not putting his daughter first
Because wife is rich and he doesn't want to give up the gravy train.
2 days later OP returned with this update:
I talked to him today about this and didn't tell him my niece opened up to me about him (to keep my word) but I said she is sad and doesn't want to go out with her friends anymore and cries a lot. I said she just told me she feels she needs to do something with her parents.
And this is how we started talking and he finally, after all these years told me that he was 17 when his now wife approached him for the very first time, while he was summer working at her company.
Not just approached. He said they took it to the next level the day he turned 18. The very same day. He met his the said high school girlfriend a few months later. So it turns out my sister in law was the first woman he had been with.